Ours is not so much an age of vulgarity as of vulgarization; everything is tampered with or touched up, or adulterated or watered down, in an effort to make it palatable, in an effort to make it pay.

A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.

It takes no more actual sagacity to carry on the everyday hawking and haggling of the world, or to ladle out its normal doses of bad medicine and worse law, than it takes to operate a taxicab or fry a pan of fish.

A man in business must put up many affronts if he loves his own quiet.

A man who is always ready to believe what is told him will never do well, especially a businessman.

If you can build a business up big enough, it's respectable.

You never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose, nor a body to kick.

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

In democracies, nothing is more great or more brilliant than commerce: it attracts the attention of the public, and fills the imagination of the multitude; all energetic passions are directed towards it.

To ensure that no one gained an advantage over anyone else, commercial law [in the 14th century] prohibited innovation in tools or techniques, underselling below a fixed price, working late by artificial light, employing extra apprentices or wife and underage children, and advertising of wares or praising them to the detriment of others.