Quotes about Trade

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
Were every blade of grass a quill,
Were the world of parchment made,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor would the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

My experience to date has been that change, particularly relative to business, rarely happens in a revolutionary way. That isn't to say there are not times when major change happens, but my experience is that particularly when you're encouraging businesses to change of their own volition, the change is more slow over time. I don't think global trade is going to go away. I think it's unlikely that global trade and multinationals are not going to be around.

Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short in all management of human affairs.

Young people at universities study to achieve knowledge and not to learn a trade. We must all learn how to support ourselves, but we must also learn how to live. We need a lot of engineers in the modern world, but we do not want a world of modern engineers.

Bernard Loomer's father was a sea captain. He was acquainted with his small place in an uncontrollable nature. In a talk in 1974 Loomer described his father's instructions about the uses of a baseball glove. The father had just overheard his son's sandlot complaints about the thinness of a glove inherited from his older brothers. When his father asked him what a baseball glove was for, young Loomer had said that it was to protect the hand. In the words of Bernard Loomer in his sixties, his father replied: Son, I never have played baseball, but it seems to me you ought to be able to catch the ball bare-handed. The way I look at it, you use a glove not to protect your hand, but to give you a bigger hand to help catch balls that are more difficult to reach. I assume that in this as in all walks of life there are tricks to the trade. I suggest you learn how to catch with that glove for two reasons. First, because you are not going to get another one, and second, because you don't need protection from life. You need a glove to give you a bigger hand to catch baseballs you might otherwise miss. As the decade of the 1970s progressed, Loomer reflected increasingly on the fact that what you might otherwise miss [in theology] was irrational, even evil, but [that it] must be caught anyway. Loomer grew increasingly dissatisfied with those who seemed to restrict their reach-even Whitehead was faulted. And increasingly it appeared that Christian theology was the theology Loomer had-that he was not going to get another one-and so, although it was thin in places, he attempted to use the one theology he had, to catch all he could. [This] suggests the meaning of Loomer's special term, "size." Size signifies "the volume of life you can take into your being and still maintain your integrity."

Irish poets, learn your trade, Sing whatever is well made.

It is July 15, 1903. Cockran is speaking to the Liberal Club in London, England, and "liberal" at the turn of the century means what "conservative" means today - freedom. Your free trade system makes the whole industrial life of the world one vast scheme of cooperation for your benefit. At this moment, in every quarter of the globe, forces are at work to supply your necessities and improve your condition. As I speak, men are tending flocks on Australian fields and shearing wool which will clothe you during the coming winter. On western lands, men are reaping grain to supply your daily bread. In mines deep underground, men are swinging pickaxes and shovels to wrest from the bosom of the Earth the ores essential to the efficiency of your industry. Under tropical skies, hands are gathering, from bending boughs, luscious fruits which in a few days will be offered for your consumption in the streets of London. Over shining rails, locomotives are drawing trains, on heaving surges, sailors are piloting barks, through arid deserts Arabs are guiding caravans, all charged with the fruits of industry to be placed here freely at your feet. You alone, among all the peoples of the Earth, encourage this gracious tribute and enjoy its full benefit, for here alone it is received freely, without imposition, restriction or tax, while everywhere else, barriers are raised against it by stupidity and folly.

A day will come when markets, open to trade, and minds, open to ideas, will become the sole battlefield.

Don't learn the tricks of the trade. Learn the trade.

Regarding trade relations, most people would like to.

When trade grew slack, and notes fell due, The merchant's face grew long and blue; His dreams were troubled through the night With sheriff bailiffs all in sight. At this his wife unto him said "Rise up at once, get out of bed, And get your paper, ink, and pen, And advertise to all good men." He did as his good wife advised, And in the papers advertised. Crowds came and bought of all he had; His notes were paid, his dreams were glad; And he will tell you to this day, How well did printer's ink repay.

Watson's answer to a question about competition in his first company meeting, 1914, as the new president, of the CTR (Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company), the company that was to become IBM: ". . . the only way that we want you men to handle the competition proposition is the only way we can afford to allow you men to handle it, that is, strictly on the merits of our goods. . . . You people when you come down to competition-must not do anything that's in restraint of trade, anything that will restrain the other fellow from selling his goods, anything that could be construed by anybody as unfair competition," he said, stammering in his earnestness. "You know, gentlemen, it is bad policy to do anything unfair with anybody, anywhere at any time, isn't it, in business or outside of business? No man ever won except in the one honest, fair and square way in which you men are working." The audience burst into applause, interrupting Watson again and again as he assured them that he would uphold fairness no matter what the competition did. . . . The spirit of the meeting quickened; and Watson, for the first time, began to take command.

Time is your chief stock in trade.

Not a place on earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wreangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them.

This high official, all allow, Is grossly overpaid, There wasn't any Board; and now There isn't any trade.

Trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay.

On her first voyage, the Columbia had solved the riddle of the China trade. On her second, empire followed in the wake.

The greatest saints and sinners have been made The proselytes of one another's trade.

They're all mine. . . . Of course, I'd trade any one of them for a dishwasher.

Where others fear trade and economic growth, we see opportunities for creating new wealth and undreamed-of opportunities for millions in our own land and beyond. Where others seek to throw up barriers, we seek to bring them down; where others take counsel of their fears, we follow our hopes.

Gardens are inevitably a trade-off of successes and failures.

So . . . I feel in regard to this aged England . . . pressed upon by transitions of trade and . . . competing populations,-I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before;-indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that, in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon.

We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

There is no prosperity, trade, art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a thought of some individual man.

The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering Trade.

In politics and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks.

We do not yet trust the unknown powers of thought. Whence came all these tools, inventions, book laws, parties, kingdoms? Out of the invisible world, through a few brains. The arts and institutions of men are created out of thought. The powers that make the capitalist are metaphysical, the force of method and force of will makes trade, and builds towns.

The glory of the farmer is that, in the division of labors, it is his part to create. All trade rests at last on his primitive activity. He stands close to Nature; he obtains from the earth the bread and the meat. The food which was not, he causes to be.

Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short in all management of human affairs.