Jim Hightower Quotes

There is one and only one responsibility of business: to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game.

The question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not.

As to the meaning of "corporate social responsibility," Friedman and I would agree: If a certain action improves the corporation's bottom line, there's no point in labeling it "socially responsible." It's just good business.

The history of business has shown that companies usually only regulate themselves if they're forced to by legislation, or out of self-interest - often in the shape of a marketable message that will help sell more products.

I'm less concerned about whether being a good corporate citizen burnishes a company's reputation. That's just an added benefit. I believe it's a responsibility, and there is no negotiating on responsibilities.

Corporations are not capable of doing things out of the goodness of their hearts. They don’t have hearts.

Corporation. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

It is difficult but not impossible to conduct strictly honest business. What is true is that honesty is incompatible with the amassing of a large fortune.

It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience, but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.

There is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.

We don't have to reinvent the wheel, just go back to what it was in terms of how corporations acted in terms of their collective responsibility just 20 years ago.

There is only one social responsibility of business

The main social responsibility for a company is to win.

Since when do corporations not have responsibility to the community? Since when to the not have responsibility to their employees?

Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it - their shareholders would revolt at anything less.

I feel that the world is increasingly about the bottom line, and not so much about human respect or human dignity. In that regard, people who care about other people will not be in a position to make choices and do things that other people who they're competing against will get to do.

Do business managers have a commitment to anything more than the success of their company and to making money? It would be hard to say that they do. Indeed, many business leaders deny that there is any conflict between self-interest and the interests of all.

Is it possible to run a big industrial corporation in a benevolent fashion? We see these days that even the hippest companies hide some rotten practices to make their profit margins work.

The reality is that most companies are not about any values at all - they are about making money. It is extremely rare for a business to stand for anything because most businesses don't want to alienate potential customers, and if you believe in anything you are going to alienate someone.

I’ll stop demonizing business when business stops putting their profits before the country and starts putting their workers before their greed.

Business’s objective is to maximize profits—not maximize benefits to the American worker.

The public be damned. What does the public care for railroads except to get as much out of them for as small a consideration as possible? I don't take any stock in this silly nonsense about working for anybody's good but our own, because we are not. When we make a move, we do it because it is in our interest to do so, and not because we expect to do somebody else good.

Any business whose sole purpose is making money is not worth doing. Business must serve a larger purpose.

Altruism, especially involving basic freedoms, can be what shareholders value most.

The unhappy theory of business ethics is this: you have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit. Period. To do anything other than that is to cheat your investors. And in a competitive world, you don't have much wiggle room here.