We must protect big business from domination by fat- minded men whose principal business policy is to avoid a competitive race for efficiency† They believe in a system of soft enterprise,ösoft in the way that an octopus is soft, with tentacles that stifle and suffocate.

-Arnold,ThurmanWesley
  'The  Abuse of Patents', in  Atlantic Monthly,  Jul.

The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise isgone! it isgone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

-Burke, Edmund
  Reflections on the Revolution in France.

I hold no brief for private enterprise.But I have unshakeable faith in individual enterprise.

-Burton, C(harles) L(uther)
  A Sense of Urgency: Memoirs of a Canadian Merchant.

The earth was made for Dombeyand Son to trade in, and thesunandmoonweremadetogivethemlight.Riversand seas were formed to float their ships; rainbowsgave them promise of fair weather; winds blew fororagainst their enterprises; stars and planets circled intheir orbits, to preserve inviolate a system of whichthey were the centre.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^8  Dombey and Son, ch.1.

The line dividing the state from what is called private enterprise, orat least fromthehighlyorganized part of it, is a traditional fiction.

-Galbraith,John Kenneth
  The New Industrial State.

In enterprise of martial kind, When there was any fighting, He led his regiment from behindö He found it less exciting. But when away his regiment ran, His place was at the fore,Oö That celebrated, Cultivated Underrated Nobleman, The Duke of Plaza-Toro!

-Gilbert, Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck)
  Duke's song, The Gondoliers, act1.

If Enterprise is afoot,Wealth accumulates whatever may be happening toThrift; and if Enterprise is asleep,Wealth decays, whateverThrift may be doing.

-Keynes (of Tilton),John Maynard, 1st Baron
  A  Treatise on Money.

Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise.But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation.When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.

-Keynes (of Tilton),John Maynard, 1st Baron
  The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.

If theTreasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury themat suitable depthsindisusedcoalmineswhich are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again†there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, thereal income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably becomea good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but as there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.

-Keynes (of Tilton),John Maynard, 1st Baron
  The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

United thoughts and counsels, equal hope And hazard in the glorious enterprise.

-Milton,John
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.1, l.88^9.

The most important stage of any enterprise is the beginning.

-Plato
Republic, bk.2, 377b (translated by R Waterfield,1993).

I have made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat; But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world's eyes As though they'd wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there's more enterprise In walking naked.

-Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)
  'A Coat', complete poem. Collected in Responsibilities (1914).