George Bernard Shaw

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession.

Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.

Only a fool never changes his mind.

There has never been a time when a career in the Penney Company was not a challenge that brought out the best in a man.

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.

A nation that knows how to work will never suffer.

No one loses anything by raising wages as soon as he is able. It has always paid us. Low wages are the most costly any employer can pay. It is like using low-grade material–the waste makes it very expensive in the end. There is no economy in cheap labor or cheap material. The hardest thing I ever had to do was to reduce wages. I think we were the last big company to come to it. Now I am mighty glad that wages are climbing again.

If I had to think where I could live if not Moscow, London would be my first choice and second would be New York.

I have no Napoleonic dream. I’m just hard-working and pragmatic.

What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.

This is a perverse thing, personally, but I would rather be in the cycle where people are underestimating us. It gives us latitude to go out and make big bets that excite and amaze people.

The thought in my mind was that I must be a good merchant. If I were a good merchant, the rest would probably take care of itself.

Selling is our No. 1 job. Never get away from selling a lot of merchandise personally. The more you sell the more you learn.

When bankers get into business they usually destroy it.

Machines were devised not to do a man out of a job, but to take the heavy labor from man’s back and place it on the broad back of the machine.

I always kind of see how I want things to be better, and I’m generally not happy with how things are or the level of service that we’re providing for people or the quality of the teams that we built. But if you look at this objectively, we’re doing so well on so many of these things. I think it’s important to have gratitude for that.