Auctions Quotes

Auctions are a venerable selling institution, in use since the time of Herodotus. The word comes from the Latin auctus, meaning to increase. An obscure term for auction, one guaranteed to impress friends and neighbors, is the Latin word subhastare. It is the conjunction of sub, meaning "under," and hasta, meaning "spear." After a military victory, a Roman soldier would plant his spear in the ground to mark the location of his spoils. Later, he would put these goods up for sale by auction.
¹The highest bidder was called the emptor, whence the term caveat emptor. ~ Rakesh V. Vohra

Publication - is the auction of the mind ... ~ Emily Dickinson

I hate art auctions. ~ Jerry Saltz

I love going to tag sales, to auctions. ~ Lara Spencer

The results speak for themselves: Businesses that competitively sourced service contracts saved an average of about 22 percent. Even more impressive - nearly every e-auction delivered cost savings. ~ Brian Miller

The lesson here, and my advice for other developers, is to find a way that you can quantify for people what your product is worth. We were leery to do it ourselves, but being near Vetro when they did, the auction was a good technique for that. No one wants to be first, and the auction proved to people that others were buying and gave them that boost of confidence they needed. ~ Bob Horner

The US needs a cap and trade system with auctioning of licenses for emissions rights. The revenues from these auctions can be used to launch a new, environmentally friendly energy policy. That would be yet another federal program that could help us to overcome the stagnation. ~ George Soros

Before I was a cosplayer, I was a fan artist. I would draw my favorite characters and sell the pieces at art auctions. But once I discovered cosplay, it was like, 'I don't have to draw my favorite characters, I can become my favorite characters.' ~ Yaya Han

(It should be noted that the Honorable Guild of Evil Warlords has worked very hard to counter the negative stereotype of its members. After several dozen bake sales and charity auctions, someone suggested that they remove the word evil from the title of their organization. The suggestion was eventually rejected on account of Gurstak the Ruthless having just ordered a full box of embossed business cards.) The ~ Brandon Sanderson

I am not opposed to the art market. I have lots of friends who are collectors. But the whole idea of the art market is complex. Sadly we have a situation where auction houses and secondary market dealers are creating a lot of confusion and unnecessary pollution. ~ Olafur Eliasson

I still feel pangs of remorse over an insidious habit I've had since I was a teenager. About three times a week, I attend estate auctions and make insulting, low-ball bids for prized heirlooms until I'm asked to leave. ~ Dennis Miller

In all fairness to the auction companies ? most companies are not car experts, they are marketers. I caution buyers to make sure that they have done their homework before they raise their hand and not after. ~ Mark Hyman, M.D.

Try not to let the excitement overwhelm you, but I have more good news.'
I groaned. I knew that tone of voice. 'Don't say it.'
'Vasily is back from Caryeva.'
'You could do the kind thing and drown me now.'
'And suffer alone? I think not.'
'Maybe for your birthday you can ask that he be fitted with a royal muzzle,' I suggested.
'But then we'd miss all his exciting stories about the summer auctions. You're fascinated by the breeding superiority of the Ravkan racehorse, right?'
I let out a whimper. ~ Leigh Bardugo

The fratricidal Yoruba wars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were a great boost to the transatlantic traffic in human beings. There were constant skirmishes between the Ijebus, the Egbas, the Ekitis, the Oyos, the Ibadans, and many other Yoruba groups. Some of the smaller groups might even have been wiped out from history, as the larger ones enlarged their territory and consolidated their power. The vanquished were brought from the interior to the coast and sold to the people of Lagos and to communities along the network of lagoons stretching westward to Ouidah. And they in turn arranged the auctions at which the English, the Portuguese, and the Spanish loaded up their barracoons and slave ships. Some of these intertribal wars were waged for the express purpose of supplying slaves to traders. At thirty-five British pounds for each healthy adult male, it was a lucrative business. ~ Teju Cole

Everything I commission - whether it is for me or for a client's home or for a hotel or office - is absolutely unique to that job. I have everything made, or I find vintage and antique pieces at markets and auctions. ~ Kelly Wearstler

My first ball I ever got from a Big League player I actually got to purchase in Dodger Stadium in a silent auction, was Reggie Jackson. ~ Pedro Martinez

There is a kind of laughter people laugh at public events, as if a joke were a charity auction and they want to be seen to be bidding. ~ William McIlvanney

My first crime novel, "Wild Horses," sold at auction, and that changed my life at an ideal time. ~ Brian Hodge

You do it a day at a time. You just put your rejection slips in a shoebox and tell yourself one day you're going to autograph them and sell them at auction. ~ James Lee Burke

By nature, an auction is kind of a wholesale beast anyway. You're buying second hand goods, even with the historical, antique or aesthetic value. You look to get the wholesale price and you hope for retail spikes periodically when you get two or three people in the audience that want the same thing. ~ Paul Brown

President George Washington's namesake capital, once a marketplace for slave auctions, is now synonymous with democracy and freedom; so is the iconic Jefferson, who wanted to build an "Empire of Liberty" for the world. ~ Patrick Mendis

It's the greatest game I ever saw. You can't lose. Everybody buys to sell and nobody buys to keep. What's worrying me is who is going to be the last owner. It's just like an auction; the only one stuck is the last one. ~ Will Rogers

So, you're seeing the Rolls-Royces and the Bentley's still selling for big prices. You're seeing jewelry still selling, art works at auction. There was a diamond that sold for I think 38 million, 48 million, something like that just a week ago. So prices are back up to their highs, getting stronger and more and more people seem to have more and more money to spend. ~ Robin Leach

Stand up and pledge with me: A government of the United States is not on the auction block. And America is not for sale! ~ Tom Selleck

God help us if we ever take the theater out of the auction business or anything else. It would be an awfully boring world. ~ A. Alfred Taubman

I don't know much about auctions. I sometimes go to previews and see art sardined into ugly rooms. I've gawked at the gaudy prices, and gaped at well-clad crowds of happy white people conspicuously spending hundreds of millions of dollars. ~ Jerry Saltz

There is no better feeling than doing well while you are doing good. If you really want to meet the nicest, most caring people in your field, get involved with charity work. The thankless hours that go into planning charity dinners, running a carnival, and gathering donations for silent auctions are noticed and appreciated. ~ Jay Samit

I was never like, "collect, collect," like people who go to auctions. I never spent a serious amount of time because I don't have any time! ~ Mikhail Baryshnikov

We're more familiar with what economists call an English auction - prices start low and rise as people bid. However, there is also the Dutch auction, where prices start high and go lower until somebody bites. Movies are sold to the audience via a very slow Dutch auction, where each phase between price drops can last weeks or months. ~ Nathan Myhrvold

Auction houses run a rigged game. They know exactly how many people will be bidding on a work and exactly who they are. In a gallery, works of art need only one person who wants to pay for them. ~ Jerry Saltz

I used to save all my rejection slips because I told myself, one day I'm going to autograph these and auction them. And then I lost the box. ~ James Lee Burke

'Reinventing the Bazaar,' by John McMillan, is a great and fun introduction to the wild variety and importance of markets throughout history and around the world. I finally understood how a Middle Eastern souk actually works economically and how to compare that to modern-day telecom-spectrum auctions. I love that book. ~ Adam Davidson

The book of the moment often has immense vogue, while the book of the age, which comes in its company from the press, lies unnoticed; but the great book has its revenge. It lives to see its contemporary pushed up shelf by shelf until it finds its final resting-place in the garret or the auction room. ~ Hamilton Wright Mabie

Pa Larkspur?"
She smiled. "Don't be so chauvinistic. He's the best cook in the county. His baskets bring in more money than any others at the picnic auctions."
"Jesus. Baskets? Picnic? Just how country is the Nest?"
"Very." His horrified expression made her laugh. "Clay, you live in a tree. I don't think you should throw stones. ~ Nalini Singh

As you start building the product, don't assume that you know all the answers. Listen to the community and adapt. We had a lot of our own ideas about how the service would evolve. Coming from PayPal and eBay, we saw YouTube as a powerful way to add video to auctions, but we didn't see anyone using our product that way, so we didn't add features to support it. ~ Chad Hurley

I don't like masterpieces having one-night stands in collectors' homes between auctions. ~ Robert Rauschenberg

I am currently doing about 30 charity auctions a year. ~ Jeffrey Archer

We saw farms go on the auction block while we bought food from foreign countries. Well, that's wrong. ~ Ann Richards

Dark money has turned our elections into auctions ~ Fred DuVal

Pay-Pal." People wrote down "payments." He said "Google." People wrote down "search." He said "eBay" and they wrote "auctions." After a few more companies, he said "Yahoo." He collected the thirty pieces of paper on Yahoo. Everybody had a different word. What was Yahoo trying to be? No one inside the company knew anymore. ~ Nicholas Carlson

My other hobby, because I just love any job with a gavel, is auctioneer. And I so often have presided over charity auctions in New York that many years ago Sotheby's sent me my own gavel. Now, the Sotheby's gavel is infinitely more elegant
it came in a little velvet bag, with "Sotheby's" inscribed in gold. It hangs in my library. I feel that everyone has occasion to use a gavel at various times everyday, they just don't think of it. ~ Fran Lebowitz

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. ~ H.L. Mencken

I talked to Larry the Cable Guy the other day. Larry's made more money than 10 people should ever make in a lifetime. He was excited because he'd gone over to the livestock auction and bought 20 new feeder pigs. ~ Jeff Foxworthy