Coleman D. Ross

I had never been east of Winston-Salem when I first got here.
I was so homesick, I could die.

— Andy Griffith (UNC Class of 1949)

North Carolina has long been identified with enlightened and progressive leaders and people, and I can think of no more important reason for that reputation than this university, which year after year has sent educated men and women who have had a recognition of their public responsibility as well as their private interests…. (T)he graduate of this university is a man of his nation as well as a man of his time. And it is my hope … that this university will still hew to the old line of responsibility that its graduates owe to the community at large – that in your time, too, you will be willing to give to the state and country a portion of your lives and all of your knowledge and all of your loyalty.

— President John F. Kennedy (University Day address at
The University of North Carolina, October 12, 1961)

I am blessed to have gone to school here for four years. You are blessed for the same reason. You won't realize the depth of it until later in life, which is natural. There is something about this campus – the tradition here, the social life, the athletics, the academics, the pride of being a Tar Heel.

— Stuart Scott (UNC Class of 1987 and former ESPN Sports Center anchor;
May 2001 Commencement address)

In the long run, we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in the tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean will be flat.

— John Maynard Keynes

[Economics is] not a 'gay science', I should say, like some we have heard of, no, a dreary, desolate and, indeed, quite abject and distressing one; what we may call, by way of eminence, the dismal science.

— Thomas Carlyle

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual value of society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

— Adam Smith, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

One quarter of Americans think that buying lottery tickets is a better retirement plan than saving or investing.

— The New York Times (May 14, 2000)

"Come in!" [said the Professor]

"Only the tailor, Sir, with your little bill," said a meek voice outside the door.

"Ah, well, I can soon settle this business," the Professor said to the children, "if you'll just wait a minute. How much is it, this year, my man?" The tailor had come in while he was speaking.

"Well, it's been a doubling so many years, you see," the tailor replied a little gruffly, "and I think I’d like the money now. It's two thousand pounds, it is!"

"Oh, that's nothing!" the Professor carelessly remarked, feeling in his pocket, as if he always carried that amount with him. "But wouldn't you like to wait just another year, and make it four thousand? Just think how rich you'd be! Why you might even be a King, if you liked!"

"I don't know as I'd care to be a King," the man said thoughtfully. "But it dew sound a powerful sight o' money! Well, I think I'll wait –"

"Of course you will!" said the Professor. "There's good sense in you, I see. Good-day to you, my man!"

"Will you ever have to pay him that four thousand pounds?" [one of the children] asked as the door closed on the departing creditor.

"Never, my child!" the Professor replied emphatically. "He'll go on doubling it, till he dies. You see it's always worth while waiting another year, to get twice as much money!"

— Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno

Alumni of the University of North Carolina can be a puzzle sometimes. We graduate and go our separate ways and spend the rest of our lives repeating to our friends and families those fond memories we all acquire. We fix the time spent in Chapel Hill in a special section in our minds. And so we never leave and can always come home again. And when we do come home, for a reunion, to watch a son or daughter graduate, or just by chance, we wander with nostalgia down the old brick paths, across the still green grasses, beneath the poplars and along the stone walls we can never forget and whisper to one another, "I don't recognize the place".

— Sam J. Ervin, Jr. (UNC Class of 1917 and U.S. Senator from North Carolina)

[There are] also some useful management lessons to be learned … particularly how to survive under stress…. I [recall] a quotation used by Albert Camus: "the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on." In conversations and communications with Equitable people, I sought to portray these almost daily irritations [media sniping, credit-rating agencies' threatened downgrades, regulators' delays, and competitors' bashing] as being akin to jackals snapping at the heels of the camels in the caravan. The important point is not to let the caravan stop and try to fight it out with the dogs. Rather one must keep the caravan moving. I reminded our people that we knew precisely where our caravan was going – to the promised land of demutualization with an oasis containing [capital] at which we could refuel and quench our thirst. We just had to keep the caravan moving and not slow down.

— Richard H. Jenrette
(UNC Class of 1951 and Retired CEO, The Equitable Companies)
Jenrette: The Contrarian Manager

One afternoon in 1637 … a Cretan scholar named Canopius sat down in his chambers at Balliol College, Oxford, and made himself a strong cup of coffee. Canopius's brew is believed to mark the first time coffee was drunk in England; it proved so popular when it was offered to the public that hundreds of coffee houses were soon in operation all over London….

The coffee house that Edward Lloyd opened in 1687 near the Thames on Tower Street was a favorite haunt of men from ships that moored at London's docks…. [Lloyd] was a lot more than a skilled coffee-house host. Recognizing the value of his customer base and responding to the insistent demand for information, he launched "Lloyd's List" in 1696 and filled it with information on the arrival and departure of ships and intelligence on conditions abroad and at sea…. One corner [of his coffee house] was reserved for ships' captains where they could compare notes on the hazards of the new routes that were opening up….

Then, as now, anyone who was seeking insurance would go to a broker, who would then hawk the risk to individual risk-takers who gathered in the coffee houses or in the precincts of the Royal Exchange. When a deal was closed, the risk-taker would confirm his agreement to cover the loss in return for a specified premium by writing his name under the terms of the contract; soon these one-man insurance operators came to be known as "underwriters"…. Lloyd's coffee house served from the start as the headquarters for marine underwriters, in large part because of its excellent mercantile and shipping connections….

In 1771, nearly a hundred years after Edward Lloyd opened his coffee house on Tower Street, seventy-nine of the underwriters who did business at Lloyd's subscribed £100 each and joined together in the Society of Lloyd's, an unincorporated group of individual entrepreneurs operating under a self-regulated code of behavior. These were the original Members of Lloyd's; later, members came to be known as "Names". The Names committed all their worldly possessions and all their financial capital to secure their promise to make good on their customers' losses. That reason was one of the principal reasons for the rapid growth of business underwritten at Lloyd's over the years. And thus did Canopius's cup of coffee lead to the establishment of the most famous insurance company in history.

— Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

There are some who would argue that the role of the bank supervisor is to minimize or even eliminate bank failure, but this view is mistaken, in my judgment. The willingness to take risk is essential to the growth of a free market, capitalist economy…. [I]f all savers and their financial intermediaries invested only in risk-free assets, the potential for business growth would never be realized.

— Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan

A person's character traits are not developed in isolation, but within and by the communities to which he belongs

— Aristotle

We can't turn back the days that have gone. We can't turn life back to the hours when our lungs were sound, our blood hot, our bodies young. We are a flash of fire – a brain, a heart, a spirit. And we are three-cents-worth of lime and iron – which we cannot get back.

— Thomas Wolfe (UNC Class of 1920), Look Homeward, Angel