Public Accounts

Famous quotes containing the words public and/or accounts:

    “If when a businessman speaks of minority employment, or air pollution, or poverty, he speaks in the language of a certified public accountant analyzing a corporate balance sheet, who is to know that he understands the human problems behind the statistical ones? If the businessman would stop talking like a computer printout or a page from the corporate annual report, other people would stop thinking he had a cash register for a heart. It is as simple as that—but that isn’t simple.”
    —Louis B. Lundborg (1906–1981)

    “No common-place is ever effectually got rid of, except by essentially emptying one’s self of it into a book; for once trapped in a book, then the book can be put into the fire, and all will be well. But they are not always put into the fire; and this accounts for the vast majority of miserable books over those of positive merit.”
    —Herman Melville (1819–1891)