Top 294 Accounting Quotes & Sayings

I have to say accounting almost killed me.

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.

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.

I don't really enjoy finance and accounting.

Everyone caved, adopted loose [accounting] standards, and created exotic derivatives linked to theoretical models. As a result, all kinds of earnings, blessed by accountants, are not really being earned. When you reach for the money, it melts away. It was never there. It [accounting for derivatives] is just disgusting. It is a sewer, and if I'm right, there will be hell to pay in due course. All of you will have to prepare to deal with a blow-up of derivative books.

I studied finance and accounting in college, and I worked at a massive accounting firm out of graduation.

I actually studied accounting in college. So I'm a CPA.

The SEC does way more good than harm - the last thing I would do is get rid of the SEC...if accounting were thoroughly fixed, a lot of other sins would go away. We're paying a huge price for deterioration of accounting.

There is always something for which there is no accounting. Take, for example, the whole world.

To multiply the years and divide by the desire to live is a kind of false accounting.

Each generation makes it's own accounting to its children.

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.

My mom works at an accounting firm; my dad's a math teacher.

If you do any thriller or horror movie a big part of the process is accounting for the cell phone.

To be successful, you should concentrate on the world of companies, not arcane accounting mathematics.

Creative accounting is an absolute curse to a civilization. One could argue that double-entry bookkeeping was one of history's great advances. Using accounting for fraud and folly is a disgrace. In a democracy, it often takes a scandal to trigger reform. Enron was the most obvious example of a business culture gone wrong in a long, long time.

Capital isn't this pile of money sitting somewhere; it's an accounting construct.

Go is to Western chess what philosophy is to double-entry accounting.

Anyone with an engineering frame of mind will look at [accounting standards] and want to throw up.

Accounting consequences do not influence our operating or capital-allocation decisions. When acquisition costs are similar, we much prefer to purchase $2 of earnings that is not reportable by us under standard accounting principles than to purchase $1 of earnings that is reportable.

Mark-to-market accounting is like crack. Don't do it.

RICH, adj. Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless.

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.

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.'

Accounting does not make corporate earnings or balance sheets more volatile. Accounting just increases the transparency of volatility in earnings.

Don't ever let your business get ahead of the financial side of your business. Accounting, accounting, accounting. Know your numbers.

Cost Accounting is enemy number one of productivity.

I actually never acted on "Deadwood." I have meetings all the time where people look at my IMDb page and see that I played the part of "Accounting Clerk" on Deadwood. Actually, I was the accounting clerk for production of "Deadwood."

The great myth is the manager as orchestra conductor. It's this idea of standing on a pedestal and you wave your baton and accounting comes in, and you wave it somewhere else and marketing chimes in with accounting, and they all sound very glorious. But management is more like orchestra conducting during rehearsals, when everything is going wrong.

Managers and investors alike must understand that accounting numbers are the beginning, not the end, of business valuation.

The American business man cannot consider his work done when he views the income balance in black at the end of an accounting period. It is necessary for him to trace the social incidence of the figures that appear in his statement and prove to the general public that his management has not only been profitable in the accounting sense but salutary in terms of popular benefits.

There is no accounting for tastes.

There are only two things as complicated as insurance accounting and I have no idea what they are.

Creativity is great-but not in accounting.

Accounting is the language of business.

On a personal level, as a Christian, it will not be Barbra Streisand I'm standing in front of when I have to make an accounting of my life.

Mathematics is less related to accounting than it is to philosophy.

There's no accounting for laws. Or the changes wrought by men and time.

The Social Sciences are good at accounting for disasters once they have taken place.

Almost all decisions based on cost accounting are utterly wrong.

There are no new cash payments or obligations here. This is an accounting reflection of the deal they announced on Monday. It`s all by the books.

Destiny gave me only two things: a few accounting books and the gift of dreaming.

How many married couples do you know who met over accounting books in a Starbucks?

Aggressive accounting does not mean illegal accounting.

Proper accounting is like engineering. You need a margin of safety. Thank God we don't design bridges and airplanes the way we do accounting.

I would argue that a majority of the horrors we face would not have happened if the accounting profession developed and enforced better accounting.

What is meat for one is not for another--no accounting for fancy.

To say accounting for derivatives is Americais a sewer is an insult to sewage.

The only accounting we had of the origins and the structure of nature was Biblical Genesis.

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.

People don't pay attention. And then one day there's an accounting. And after that, nothing is the same.

Accounting was the course that helped me more than anything.

There’s no accounting for the mysteries of the human heart

There is no accounting for human beings.

Political elections are a good deal like marriages, there's no accounting for anyone's taste.

You have to understand accounting and you have to understand the nuances of accounting. It's the language of business and it's an imperfect language, but unless you are willing to put in the effort to learn accounting - how to read and interpret financial statements - you really shouldn't select stocks yourself

One day I was in Starbucks going through one of my books on accounting, and this beautiful young woman came up to me and said, 'My accounting book is different from yours.' Her name was Joyce, she had a background in finance and administration and ran a surgery center. Within a short time, we were married.

In the corporate world, sometimes things aren`t exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures.

I do think that in many cases, where crimes have been covered up and perpetrators can escape justice, history can provide some accounting. It can identify the killers, ensure that their names are remembered, and it can give voice to and record the victims, and make sure, even more importantly, that their voices and their stories are remembered and heard. And I don't think there's justice, but I do think history can play an important role in that accounting.

... preliminary accounting, banking and surveying (known as arithmetic, algebra and geometry).