1. If it’s worth doing, California will do it to excess.

Anonymous. Comment on National Public Radio in the United States (1996)

2. America is still a place where most people react to seeing a man in a Ferrari by redoubling their own efforts to be able to afford one, rather than by trying to let down his tires.

Anonymous. “Let down” means “deflate.” Economist (London) (January 3, 1998)

3. It seems to be a law in American life that whatever enriches us anywhere except in the wallet inevitably becomes uneconomic.

Russell Baker (b.1925) U.S. journalist. New York Times (March 24, 1968)

4. There is no business in America…which will not yield a fair profit if it receive the unremitting, exclusive attention, and all the capital of capable and industrious men.

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) U.S. industrialist and philanthropist Speech at Curry Commercial College, Pittsburgh, Pennysylvania. “The Road to Business Success” (June 23, 1885)

5. The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control-indoctrination, we might say-exercised through the mass media.

Noam Chomsky (b.1928) U.S. linguist and political activist. Politics (1979)

6. America needs a new approach to economics that will give new hope to our people and breathe new life into the American Dream.

Bill Clinton (b.1946) U.S. former president. Putting People First: How We Can All Change America (co-written with Al Gore; 1992)

7. Big business could do business anywhere.

Amadeo Giannini (1870-1949) U.S. banker and founder of Bank of America. Referring to his strategy of opening local branches of the Bank of America. Quoted in Biography of a Banker (Marquis James and Bessie R. James; 1954)

8. Texaco is the quintessence of what is wrong with corporate America. We have a corporate welfare state in this country, which is why we can’t compete.

Carl C. Icahn (b.1936) U.S. financier. One of the leading corporate raiders of the 1980s, Icahn made this statement during his unsuccessful bid to take over the major oil company. Sunday Times (London) (June 5, 1988)

9. Miami’s single most important economic development agent turned out to be Fidel Castro.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter (b.1943) U.S. management theorist, academic, and writer. World Class (1995)

10. If there is anything of which American industry has a superfluity

It is green lights, know-how, initiative, and ingenuity.

Ogden Nash (1902-71) U.S. humorist and writer. 1956. “Ring Out the Old, Ring In The New, but Don’t Get Caught In Between,” You Can’t Get There from Here (1957), 1: First Chime

11. European countries treat timber as a crop. We treat timber resources as if they were a mine.

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) U.S. president. Attrib.

12. With the supermarket as our temple and the singing commercial as our library, are we likely to fire the world with an irresistible vision of America’s exalted purpose and inspiring way of life?

Adlai E. Stevenson (1900-65) U.S. statesman and author. Wall Street Journal (June 1, 1960)