I always thought that Drucker said it best: "Profit is the cost of doing business."<p>Businesses exist for a purpose: to provide goods and/or services to customers. They don't exist <i>just</i> to make money. You can make money in plenty of other ways and not have a business. (Think about a lottery winner or speculator.)<p>But if you want to keep doing business, you have to make money, and you have to make money over and above the cost of capital. Otherwise, you'll never be able to marshal the resources necessary to keep providing your goods and services.
Somehow, it seems like making money and making meaning are two sides of a Mobius strip. They are really the same thing, although they appear to be different. Fooling oneself into thinking they really are separate things is harmful to the wealth of an entrepreneur.