The 19th century philosopher, Elbert Hubbard, described the typical accountant as:
“A man past middle age, spare, wrinkled, intelligent, cold, passive, non-committal, with eyes like a cod-fish, polite in contact, but at the same time, unresponsive, cold, calm and damnably composed as a concrete post or plaster-of-paris cast; a human petrfication with a heart of feldspar and without charm of the friendly germ, minus bowels, passion, or a sense of humour.
Happily, they never reproduce and all of them finally go to hell”
(Source: Horngren, C.T., (1982) Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis, 5th Ed, Prentice Hall, p350.
Thanks to my colleague Tony O’Dea for bringing this to my attention)
– Professor Niamh Brennan, Michael Mac Cormac Prof of Management, UCD
[Prof. Brennan currently lectures in Financial Reporting for the FT MBA Class)