Will Rogers Business Quotations

People's minds are changed through observation and not through argument.

It's not what you pay a man, but what he costs you that counts.

Get someone else to blow your horn and the sound will carry twice as far.

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

The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.

An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.

Why don't somebody print the truth about our present economic situation? We spent six years of wild buying on credit - everything under the sun, whether we needed it or not - and now we are having to pay for 'em, and we are howling like a pet coon.

Wall Street is being investigated, but they are not asleep while it's being done. You see where the Senate took that tax off the sales of stocks, didn't you? Saved 'em $48,000,000. Now, why don't somebody investigate the Senate and see who got to them to get that tax removed? That would be a real investigation.

Prosperity this Winter is going to be enjoyed by everybody that is fortunate enough to get into the poor farm.

We have been just going like a house afire, and we couldent see any reason why we shouldent keep right on burning. Our tastes were acquired on credit, and we wanted to keep on enjoying 'em on credit.

It wasn't what we needed then that was hurting us, it was what we was paying for that we had already used up. The country was just buying gasoline for a leaky tank. Everything was going into a gopher hole and you couldent see where you was going to get any of it back.

Politics are receiving a lot of attention because we have nothing else to interest us. No nation in the history of the world was ever sitting as pretty. If we want anything, all we have to do is go and buy it on credit. So that leaves us without any economic problem whatever, except perhaps some day to have to pay for them. But we are certainly not thinking about that this early.

America already holds the record for freak movements. Now we have a new one. It's called "Restoring Confidence." Rich men who never had a mission in life outside of watching a stock ticker are working day and night "restoring confidence." Writers are working night shifts, speakers' tables are littered up, ministers are preaching statistics, all on "restoring confidence."

Now I am not unpatriotic, and I want to do my bit, so I hereby offer my services to my President, my country and my friends to do anything, outside of serving on a commission, that I can in this great movement. But you will have to give me some idea of where "confidence" is. And just who you want it restored to.

I am telling folks that the Country as a whole is "Sound," and that all those who's heads are solid are bound to get back into the market again. I tell 'em that this Country is bigger than Wall Street, and if they don't believe it, I show 'em the map.

Sure must be a great consolation to the poor people who lost their stock in the late crash to know that it has fallen in the hands of Mr. Rockefeller, who will take care of it and see that it has a good home and never be allowed to wander around unprotected again. There is one rule that works in every calamity. Be it pestilence, war or famine, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The poor even help arrange it.

Candidates have been telling you that if elected they would 'pull you from this bog hole of financial misery.' Now is a good chance to get even with 'em, by electing 'em, just to prove what a liar they are.

If you got a dollar, soak it away, put it in a savings bank, bury it, do anything but spend it. Spending when we didn't have it put us where we are today. Saving when we've got it will get us back to where we was before we went cuckoo.

Say, this new home building idea of President Hoover's sounds good. They are working out a lot of beneficial things. The only thing is it took 'em so long to think of any of 'em. We ought to have plans in case of depression, just like we do in case of fire, 'Walk, don't run, to the nearest exit.'

The business of government is to keep the government out of business - that is, unless business needs government aid.

The small town is passing. It was the incubator that hatched all our big men, and that's why we haven't got as many big men today as we used to have. Take every small-town-raised leader out of business and you would have nobody left running it but vice-presidents.

You could be the World's greatest orator and if you don't say anything while orating, they are going to walk out on you after a while.

If your time is worth anything, travel by air. If not, you might just as well walk.

I am a great believer in high-priced people. If a thing cost a lot it may not be any better, but it adds a certain amount of class that the cheap thing can never approach; in the long run it's the higher-priced things that are the cheapest.

It's no laughing matter being a Republican in these perilous times. Anyone can be a Republican when the stock market is up, but when stocks are selling for no more than they're worth, I tell you, being a Republican - it's a sacrifice.

You can take any line of business and skill and the ones who do it the best are the ones who get the most money for it.

I am always going to do my best, no matter where I am.

Just been talking today out here to all the Senators investigating these stock swindles and overcapitalizations. There has been hundreds of millions lost. There ought to be some form of guardianship for people that buy all this junk. Education won't do it. The buyers are the ones we have educated up till they are just smart enough to fall for everything that comes along.

Borrowing money on what's called 'easy terms,' is a one-way ticket to the Poor House. If you think it ain't a Sucker Game, why is your Banker the richest man in your Town? Why is your Bank the biggest and finest building in your Town? Instead of passing Bills to make borrowing easy, if Congress had passed a Bill that no Person could borrow a cent of Money from any other person, they would have gone down in History as committing the greatest bit of Legislation in the World.

President Coolidge said, 'I don't want the Government to go into business.' Well, if I was Mr. Coolidge I wouldn't worry over that. The Government never has been accused of being a business man.

If a bank fails in China, they behead the men at the top of it that was responsible... If we beheaded all of ours that were responsible for bank failures, we wouldn't have enough people left to bury the heads.

You could transfer Congress over to run Standard Oil or General Motors, and they would have both things bankrupt in two years.

We never will have any prosperity that is free from speculation till we pass a law that every time a broker or person sells something, he has got to have it sitting there in a bucket, or a bag, or a jug, or a cage, or a rat trap, or something, depending on what it is he is selling. We are continually buying something that we never get from a man that never had it.

But we can't alibi all our ills by just knocking the old banker. First he loaned the money, then the people all at once wanted it back, and he didn't have it. Now he's got it again, and is afraid to loan it, so the poor devil don't know what to do.

You have a wonderful organization. I understand you have ten thousand here. And if you count the ones in the various federal prisons, it brings your total membership up to around thirty thousand.

The bankers just got a good cussing by everybody for loaning too much money. Well, they got some awful nice buildings. So when a banker fails, he fails in splendor.

I guess there is no two races of people in worse repute with everybody than the international bankers, and the folks that put all those pins in new shirts.

When you are satisfied, you are successful. For that's all there is to success is satisfaction.

I go too fast to see much, only the tops of everything. I've got to prowl slow some time through this country.

It looks like the financial giants of the world have bungled as much as the diplomats and politicians. This would be a great time in the world for some man to come along that knew something.

Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth.

You must judge a man's greatness by how much he will be missed.

No man is great if he thinks he is.

People that pay for things never complain. It's the guy you give something to that you can't please.

Ability is all right but if it is not backed up by honesty and public confidence you will never be a successful person. The best a man can do is to arrive at the top in his chosen profession. I have always maintained that one profession is deserving of as much honor as another provided it is honorable.