Profit is not a cause but a result-

Profit is not the purpose of a business, but rather the test of its validity.

For those who think business exists to make a profit, I suggest they think again. Business makes a profit to exist. Surely it must exist for some higher, nobler purpose than that’ - Ray Anderson, founder of Interface Inc.

To supply goods is a source of profit, but to supply services is a ' burden upon industry '. It is for this reason that when, as a nation, ' we have never had it so good ' we find that we ' cannot afford ' just what we most need.

Every product and service is sold on the promise of a better future. The purpose of business is to deliver on the promise, and profit is the reward for doing so.

If profits are a condition of successful growth, but profits are sought primarily for the sake of the firm, that is, to reinvest in the firm rather than to reimburse owners for the use of their capital or their 'risk bearing,' then, from the point of view of investment policy, growth and profits become equivalent as the criteria for the selection of investment programmes.

Success is not the result of making money; making money is the result of success - and success is in direct proportion to our service.

Profit can only arise upon alienation, i.e. in the act of exchange, when the seller sells more dearly than he has bought gaining profits and enabling a procurement adequate to demands and return on investments.

Profit for a company is like oxygen for a person. If you don't have enough of it, you're out of the game. But if you think your life is about breathing, you're really missing something.

Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success — and success is in direct proportion to our service.

The should not be confused with the profit system. By the profit system, of course, we mean the institution of private property in capital goods and the free private enterprise that goes along with it. There is no reason why the "profit motive" should be necessarily connected with the profit system. In a profit system there is nothing to prevent anyone acting on altruistic lines; there is no law that says a businessman must maximize his profits. If a businessman chose to operate with outputs, prices, and wages that yielded him a smaller profit than the maximum, but which he felt were socially more desirable, there is nothing in the profit system that would prevent him from doing this. Nothing in the profit system would prevent the most ardent liberal from refusing an increase in wages, or from accepting an unpleasant and poorly paid job. At the other extreme, there is nothing in a communist system that would do away with the profit motive, or the "advantage motive."

It is not the government's purpose to make a profit the way a company does, because a company doesn't have to give a damn about the unemployed poor or provide services that are non-commercial by definition.

Profits are what you make when not working.

Webster defines profit as excess of value over cost, and gain as that which is obtained as an advantage. I have availed of this well-expressed though delicate distinction between the two terms, to coin a name for the system herein described, whereby to differentiate it from profit-sharing as ordinarily understood and practised. The right solution of this problem will manifestly consist in allotting to each member of the organization an interest in that portion of the profit fund which is or may be affected by his individual efforts or skill, and in protecting this interest against diminution resulting from the errors of others or other extraneous causes not under his control. Such a solution, while not simple, is attainable under many circumstances, and attainable by methods which experience has shown to be both practical and successful.