I think business is very simple.Profit. Loss. Take the sales, subtract the costs, you get this big positive number. The math is quite straightforward.

-Gates, Bill (William Henry III)
  Quoted in the US News and World Report,15 Feb.

Costs merely register competing attractions.

-Knight, Frank Hyneman
Risk, Uncertainty and Profit.

Why stir the wasps that rim Fame's luscious pot? Love costs us nothing, satire costs a lot!

-Rickword, Edgell
  'The Contemporary Muse'.

Thereal priceofeverything, whateverything reallycosts to themanwho wants to acquire it, isthetoil and trouble of acquiring it. Labour was the first price, the original purchase money that was paid for all things.

-Smith, Adam
  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.1, ch.5.

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.

-Updike,John Hoyer
  A Month of Sundays, ch.18.