Welcome to our collection of inspiring and thought-provoking Accounting Quotes! Whether you’re a seasoned accountant, a financial enthusiast, or simply someone intrigued by the world of numbers, you’ll find valuable insights and witty perspectives on the art and science of accounting here. Throughout history, influential figures, renowned economists, and witty thinkers have shared their wisdom and humor about the world of finance and bookkeeping. These quotes offer a glimpse into the complex yet fascinating world of accounting, shedding light on its importance in both business and personal finance.
As you explore this page, you’ll discover a curated selection of quotes that delve into various aspects of accounting, from the meticulous precision it demands to the broader implications it has on our financial lives. Whether you’re looking for a quote to include in your financial presentation, to share with your fellow accountants, or simply to gain a deeper appreciation for the field, you’ll find a diverse range of insights and perspectives. Feel free to copy these quotes, incorporate them into your presentations, or enhance them with stylish fonts and imagery to make them truly stand out. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the world of Accounting Quotes and uncover the wisdom within!
The U.S. tax code was written by A students. Every April 15, we have to pay somebody who got an A in accounting to keep ourselves from being sent to jail. P. J. O’Rourke
Electronic Accounting Systems processed my little payrolls like one big payroll. I did the selling, and the people I hired did most of the operations. Tom Golisano
This Department of Treasury, run by this administration, using the same tried and true accounting methods that every business in America uses, cast new light on the fiscal severity that our Nation is facing, what some would call a mess. Jim Costa
If an alien with an accounting degree touched down in America, it might conclude that we’re a weird cult that spends 11 months living frugally and four crazy weeks buying tons of stuff we don’t need. It wouldn’t be entirely wrong, either. Adam Davidson
Life as we know it, with all its ups and downs, will soon be over. We all will give an accounting to God of how we have lived. William Wilberforce
The concept of fair value accounting is correct and useful, but the application during periods of crisis is problematic. It’s another one of those unintended consequences of making a rule that’s supposed to be good that turns out the other way. Stephen A. Schwarzman
If you want an accounting of your worth, count your friends. Mary Browne
I don’t let it bother me too much if someone doesn’t like me. I just figure there’s no accounting for taste. It’s not me, it’s my acting. It’s like if someone doesn’t like someone’s food, they just don’t like my acting. Anna Chlumsky
In the tradition of national income accounting, economic policymakers have typically focused on variables such as income, wealth, and consumption. Ben Bernanke
The revenue stream for Social Security benefits comes from payroll taxes, which are credited to the Social Security Trust Fund – accounting for the program’s finances separately from the rest of the budget. Jerome Powell
It was the king’s army, the king’s people, the king’s taxes; and he who questioned the propriety of the royal prerogative of taking from his people without return or accounting, was reckoned, and felt himself to be, a criminal, guilty of the highest crime of disloyalty. John Buchanan Robinson
Some of what I consider my best work, and some of the best films that I’ve ever worked on, kind of disappear without a trace. There’s no accounting for it. Something connects, or something doesn’t. Roger Deakins
There are tens of thousands of bank branches and 4,000 currency chests. We need to be careful and try that this is a number which is not a mere estimate but a verified number both physically and in the accounting sense. Urjit Patel
To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust. John F. Kennedy
A record company used to be a very good thing, but they ended up soul-destroyingly trapping people in the accounting department. And you couldn’t get any further, and the heads of each department were changing all the time, so you couldn’t have any permanent relationship within the corporation. John Lydon
One of the disconcerting things about writing for publication is that you’re trying to clear your little parcel of land in a field where Taste is king – and, as we all know, there’s no accounting for Taste. Darin Strauss
While one can’t always begrudge the wealth of people who have at least produced something of value, the rich of the financial world don’t make anything but more money. They’re not creative, aside from, perhaps, in accounting. Lionel Shriver
My mom bought a computer in the ’80s to do accounting, and she was so smart at computers that we spent all our time with them. My childhood was sitting on the floor of her office and figuring out how to program with my mom. Brianna Wu
My father told me when I went to college that I needed to take an accounting class. I enrolled and went the first day. I didn’t understand a thing that was being said and dropped the class. I really regret that decision. I should have stuck it out and learned the basics of accounting, but I took the easy way out. Georgina Bloomberg
We have a remarkably complete picture in many ways – and it could be that we’re not accounting for something that’s almost three-quarters of the entire universe. Saul Perlmutter
When you’ve got African parents, you go to uni, do finance, and go into accounting. But I’m not good with systems. I dropped out in my final year of college to become a Christian poet. Then went back to do my A-levels and went to uni in Birmingham to do political science and theology. I lasted 12 weeks. Michaela Coel
Accounting does not make corporate earnings or balance sheets more volatile. Accounting just increases the transparency of volatility in earnings. Diane Garnick
I have gone to great lengths, and in some cases beyond what is required by the reporting guidelines to ensure all of my filings are beyond reproach, by hiring an independent third-party accounting firm to review and audit all of my previous annual financial disclosures. Bob Corker
We have the most crude accounting tools. It’s tragic because our accounts and our national arithmetic doesn’t tell us the things that we need to know. Susan George
Pain is the most private experience, but its causes, whether natural or man-made, demand public accounting. Nancy Gibbs
I almost drowned in a hot tub at a writing workshop once after I had some drinks without accounting for how the high elevation would impact my tolerance. Tim Pratt
Don’t ever let your business get ahead of the financial side of your business. Accounting, accounting, accounting. Know your numbers. Tilman J. Fertitta
What you get out of an M.B.A. programme, no matter how much experience, is functional tools and understanding in disciplines: you’ll understand economics, you’ll understand marketing, finance, accounting. That, M.B.A. programmes do very well. Henry Mintzberg
Hunted for sport by the rich, then driven from large tracts of its natural habitat by agricultural and housing development, the giant panda deserves better than to be scrubbed from conservation’s ledger books through false accounting. John Burnside
I went to work in accounting at Arthur Andersen. At one point, it was the creme de la creme. I wanted to work there because it looked like the hardest thing I could find, and I loved being on a steep learning curve. I progressed quickly, and two years out of college, I was managing a small team of people. Lynn Good
Although more than 500 million maritime containers move around the world each year, accounting for 90 per cent of international trade, only 2 per cent are inspected. Strengthening customs and immigration systems is essential. Ban Ki-moon
My dad for a long time was an accounting professor at Rice University. And then he went out on his own, and he got hired by a client. He ended up being CEO of a hospital management company before he retired, called Lifemark. John Mackey
I loved my accounting class; doing a ledger was very fun to me. I don’t think I’d be an accountant. I’d be a headhunter or recruiter, because I love helping people find what they’re looking for. Ego Nwodim
No one would suggest completely ignoring news about your investments. Enron investors, for example, would have been well served to sell once early reports of accounting irregularities surfaced. But the key is to keep news in context and act only if further reflection or study indicates that the core thesis for an investment has changed. Whitney Tilson
The accounting of the sacrifice is, more than anything else, the attitude toward war memorials in our time. Friedrich St. Florian
Every generation inherits a world it never made; and, as it does so, it automatically becomes the trustee of that world for those who come after. In due course, each generation makes its own accounting to its children. Robert Kennedy
Almost all decisions based on cost accounting are utterly wrong. Eliyahu Goldratt
While it’s trendy to outsource your accounting to a third party, once you hit a certain size, it’s dangerous. Brad Feld
I went to a special public school that was much more focused on academics and learning. My two best teachers were in accounting and calculus, so I fell in love with that, which made me want to go into business. Stacy Brown-Philpot
You have various institutions like law firms and accounting firms which bill by the hour. I’m really against that. You have an incentive to go slowly, be there as long as possible, to over-research things and over-staff. Robert Pozen
While expanding market access for American industry, financial markets and farmers is critical, I believe it needs to be done responsibly, accounting for the treatment and protection of workers and the environment. Mark Udall
We fear hackers lifting our digital wallet, a public accounting of our private lives, and we wonder if the shoes that follow us around the Internet will someday, with the click of a distant mouse, look like the jackboots of old. Richard Cohen
When I graduated from college, I tried my hardest to get a job at an accounting firm, and it just wasn’t meant to be. I ended up delivering pizzas and newspapers. I knew my life was cracked up to be a little more. Ronnie Coleman
In the old days, you would have one lawyer to handle everything: speeding tickets, buying a house, contracts, litigation, real estate, copyrights, leasing, entertainment, intellectual property, forensic accounting, criminal offenses… the list goes on. Now, you have to have a separate lawyer for each one of those categories! James Belushi
We will be judged. There will be an accounting; there will be a reckoning sooner or later. It will either come from ourselves and our own conscience, or it will come from our kids when they ask that inconvenient question: ‘What were you doing when they turned those kids back from the border?’ Beto O’Rourke
The Big Dream of any entrepreneur really has very little to do with the entrepreneur. If you truly love repairing automobiles, chances are, you’ll be a lousy business owner. Likewise, if you are fascinated by debits and credits, the dream of building an accounting firm with you at the helm is probably best left unfulfilled. Michael Gerber
I suppose that the scope and implications of such forces have rendered my personal accounting ritual pretty much obsolete. That’s how things sometimes go. Brian Ferneyhough
I don’t really care about money. I find money boring and accounting boring, so I’m probably not going to ever make a lot of money. Juliana Hatfield
I have some classes in accounting, but I don’t know anything about accounting. I – you know, when my accountant tells me all the things he does, it’s a foreign language to me. Ray Romano
The scriptures make the danger of delay clear. It is that we may discover that we have run out of time. The God who gives us each day as a treasure will require an accounting. Henry B. Eyring
The Macau casinos have a wonderful business, it’s taking in money from Chinese businessmen elsewhere who send it through junky companies to casinos to gamble. The growth continues and they have basically western managers and western accounting, so we trust the numbers a little bit more. James Chanos
I was getting a degree in accounting, and I was going to go off and account. And as it worked out, I haven’t accounted for anything since. Nick Nurse
I’m a good learner. I can dig in. I knew nothing about mark-to-market accounting when I started the ‘Enron’ film. Alex Gibney
With demands for special education or standardized test prep being shouted in their ears, public schools can’t always hear a parent when he says: ‘I want my child to be able to write contracts in Spanish,’ or, ‘I want my child to shake hands firmly,’ or, ‘I want my child to study statistics and accounting, not calculus.’ Amity Shlaes
Art history and Elizabethan poetry don’t employ workers; the arduous and tedious application of business sciences such as computer programming and accounting does. Edward Conard
Even before he came to power in 1997, Gordon Brown promised to change the accounts to parliament from simple litanies of cash in and cash out, to a more commercial system that took notice of the public property the departments were using. This system is known as resource accounting. James Buchan
I know what I don’t know. To this day, I don’t know technology, and I don’t know finance or accounting. Bernard Ebbers
Accounting rules give financial institutions flexibility about when they choose to recognize venture capital profits. Alex Berenson
I was never a Certified Public Accountant… I just had a degree in accounting. The reason I was never a Certified Public Accountant was because it would require passing a test, which I would not have been able to do. Bob Newhart
I studied finance and accounting in college, and I worked at a massive accounting firm out of graduation. Simu Liu
It’s really amazing that in the age of unbelief, as a smart man called it, there isn’t even more fraud. After all, with no God, there’s no one to ever call you to account, and no accounting at all if you can get away with it. Ben Stein
Identity theft involving these cards is a growing form of white collar crime, facilitating illegal immigration, banking and accounting fraud, tax evasion, and other nefarious activities. Ron Lewis
It is important that carbon storage is carefully regulated, that the process is transparent to the public, and that there is a clear accounting of what happened to the CO2. This is particularly true of underground storage, where there is always a small chance that pressurized CO2 could escape. Klaus Lackner
Housing has led our nation’s economic expansion over the past few years, accounting for 16 percent of our Gross Domestic Product. New housing starts and home sales hit record levels from 2003 through 2005. Randy Neugebauer
Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets. Thomas Sowell
We don’t understand the equity market well, and so we deploy funds in fixed-income securities, and like any other securities, investment in those securities also need to follow the mark-to-market accounting principle. Chanda Kochhar
Every quarter, we need to see the portfolio and follow the accounting practice of mark-to-market that values investments according to the prevailing market prices and at the price at which they are made. Chanda Kochhar
There’s no business like show business, but there are several businesses like accounting. David Letterman
My mom works at an accounting firm; my dad’s a math teacher. Joshua Henry
Today brands are everything, and all kinds of products and services – from accounting firms to sneaker makers to restaurants – are figuring out how to transcend the narrow boundaries of their categories and become a brand surrounded by a Tommy Hilfiger-like buzz. Tom Peters
My philosophy is not a bean-counting, accounting ‘look at this.’ It is a philosophy that smaller government is better government, and government that is closer to the people is best of all. John Bolton
The Glassco Commission was really not interested in good science. It was interested in good accounting. Gerhard Herzberg
I came up with the idea for what later became Paychex in 1970 when I was working for Electronic Accounting Systems, a company that sold payroll processing to companies with 50 to 1,000 employees. Tom Golisano
We must investigate without fear or favour the so-called ‘accounting irregularities’ that cause turmoil in the markets and wipe billions off the investments of ordinary South Africans. Cyril Ramaphosa
Accounting was the course that helped me more than anything. Julian Robertson
Mark-to-market accounting is like crack. Don’t do it. Andrew Fastow
My first profession was public accounting; I became a CPA. I was three years into public accounting – great profession, great skill set, but I didn’t want to do it forever. Louis DeJoy
There are no accounting issues, no trading issues, no reserve issues, no previously unknown problem issues. Kenneth Lay
The U.S. government uses cash accounting. That is illegal for any enterprise of any size in America except for the U.S. government. Every for-profit business, every not-for-profit business, every state and local government has to use real accounting except for Uncle Sam. Jim Cooper
Enron had already collapsed and filed for bankruptcy protection by the beginning of 2002. But despite complaints from short sellers that corporations had used accounting gimmickry to inflate their profits, many investors thought the crisis at Enron was an isolated case. Alex Berenson
Instead of the cashier and ticket-ripper of the movie theater, the block chain consists of thousands of computers that can process digital tickets, money, and many other fiduciary objects in digital form. Think of thousands of robots wearing green eye shades, all checking each other’s accounting. Nick Szabo
You can’t be the accountant in your accounting firm. You can’t cut the grass in your landscaping business. You can’t work on the vehicles in your auto repair shop… And you really can’t spend all of your time managing those actions, either. Michael Gerber
I’ve met them down in the Cost and Accounting Department, clean-shaven and in white collars. They can’t see a damn thing ridiculous about themselves… only about you. Jean Shepherd
Companies figured out that the easiest way to make money was to reissue records that the accounting department had paid for years ago and already made a profit. Chris Cornell
Developing safe products for people around the world will mean accounting for a much wider variety of devices, networks, infrastructure, and political environments. Alex Stamos
I worked in accounting for two and a half years, realized that wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and decided I was just going to give comedy a try. Bob Newhart
One of the things that we’re missing from our political dialogue right now is the idea that the United States is a home. It is more than an accounting sheet. It is more than the sum of its G.D.P., its total tax collections, or its total outlays. America is a family. Stephen Miller
I got fired from a job years ago. It was an accounting job. They were basically trying to cut corners, so they employed a bunch of temps to do proper accounting. And it just caused absolute bedlam and I did get fired. Nish Kumar
The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80% of the total health care bill out there. There is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. The decision is not whether or not we will ration care. The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. Donald Berwick
Probably the best advice I ever got in my life was from the head of the accounting department, Mr. Hutchinson, I believe at the Glidden Company in Chicago, and he told me, ‘You really aren’t cut out for accounting.’ Bob Newhart
How many married couples do you know who met over accounting books in a Starbucks? David Schweikert
Jobs offshoring began with manufacturing, but the rise of the high-speed Internet made it possible to move offshore tradable professional skills, such as software engineering, information technology, various forms of engineering, architecture, accounting, and even the medical reading of MRIs and CT-Scans. Paul Craig Roberts
By the end of 1978, we had 11 partners and six franchisees, we were operating in 22 cities, and we had about 6,000 clients. We had left Electronic Accounting Systems and were doing our own processing on our own computers. Tom Golisano
And just remember, every dollar we spend on outsourcing is spent on U.S. goods or invested back in the U.S. market. That’s accounting. Arthur Laffer
I actually studied accounting in college. So I’m a CPA. Stacy Brown-Philpot
At Gallaudet, deafness isn’t an issue. You don’t even think about it. Students can pay attention to accounting or psychology or journalism. But when a deaf person goes to another college, no matter how supportive it is, that person doesn’t get the same access. I. King Jordan
Accounting for the unpaid care economy can drive progressive policies such as paid family leave, social security credits for early childcare, tax credits, and quality early childhood education. Sri Mulyani Indrawati
As an artist, your only way to battle your label if you have a discrepancy is to go to court. I don’t understand why you can’t both agree if you have an accounting problem to have a third party to assess the situation. Martie Maguire
If the U.S. Government was a company, the deficit would be $5 trillion because they would have to account by general accepted accounting principles. But actually they encourage government spending, reckless government spending, because the government can issue Treasury bills at extremely low interest rates. Marc Faber
Capital isn’t this pile of money sitting somewhere; it’s an accounting construct. Bethany McLean
