A key difficulty in measuring profit is in defining costs. Pure economic monetary profits can be zero or negative even in competitive equilibrium when accounted monetized costs exceed monetized price.
A movie like House of the Dead with around $7 million budget or Alone in the Dark with around $16 million budget are much easier to make profit than the typical $50 million major motion picture. Uwe Boll
According to Adam Smith, the expectation of profit from "improving one's stock of capital" rests on private property rights. It is a belief central to capitalism that property rights encourage the property holders to develop the property, generate wealth, and efficiently allocate resources based on the operation of the market.
Adversity is a great teacher, but this teacher makes us pay dearly for its instruction; and often the profit we derive, is not worth the price we paid. Elizabeth Hardwick
All my ambition is, I own, to profit and to please unknown; like streams supplied from springs below, which scatter blessings as they go. Charles Cotton
All told, these profit levels have put the world's five largest publicly traded oil companies on track to earn more than $100 billion before year's end. Yet, at the same time that Big Oil's bottom line is going up, so are Americans' energy costs. Allyson Schwartz
And if we are in this state, if we had an eternity of probation, what reason have we to suppose that we should profit by it - if we had ever so long a time to chose for ourselves we should pursue our own will, to gratify our carnal I desires. Elias Hicks
