Businessman Quotes

Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.

The type of person you are is usually reflected in your business. To improve your business, first improve yourself.

You have to work on the business first before it works for you.

When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work – the most you will make is 5 dollars.

I don't speak Japanese, I don't know anything about Japanese business or Japanese culture. Apart from sushi. But I can't exactly go up to him and say "Sushi!" out of the blue. It would be like going up to a top American businessman and saying, "T-bone steak!

I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man!

The more you know, the less you need.

How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top.

I’m a businessman,” he’d told her. “No more, no less.” “You’re a thief, Kaz.” “Isn’t that what I just said?

The life of a writer is absolute hell compared to the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him...A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.

People will trust a reliable criminal more readily than a shady businessman.

I am not a businessman, I am an artist

Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last 'trick', whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school. 'But how?' we ask. Then the voice says, 'They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.' There they are. There *we* are - the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life's tribulations, but through it all clung to faith. My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace.

And he absolutely had to find her at once to tell her that he adored her, but the large audience before him separated him from the door, and the notes reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was not available; that she was inaugurating a fire; that she had married an american businessman; that she had become a character in a novel; that she was dead.

I had never seen hair that purely black. It was glossy and slightly long, the ends drifting over his collar. That sexy length was the crowning touch of bad boy hotness over the successful businessman, like whipped cream topping on a hot fudge brownie sundae. As my mother would say, only rogues and raiders had hair like that." (Eva about Gideon)

Real adventure is defined best as a journey from which you may not come back alive, and certainly not as the same person.

I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.

A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him," my father had told me more than once. "A businessman has business books and a dream has novels and books of poetry. Most women like reading about love, and a true revolutionary will have books about the minutiae of overthrowing the oppressor. A person with no books is inconsequential in a modern setting, but a peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.

Perhaps the most revolting character that the United States ever produced was the Christian Businessman.

The businessman is only tolerable so long as his gains can be held to bear some relation to what, roughly and in some sense, his activities have contributed to society.

In business 'professionalism' is not a tactic but a moral value.

If you don’t take more risks with time, your business will become stagnant and can start its downfall.

Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear.

If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, "This sucks. I'm going to do my own thing.

A businessman who expects his output to be stolen, expropriated, or entirely taxed away will have little incentive to work, let alone any incentive to undertake investments and innovations.

Businessman sat in his car calculating the net worth of everyone who passed and he noticed something peculiar. While some people were worth millions and other people were deep in debt, they all looked stressed and worried. He concluded that there is only one amount of money – just not enough.

My breath slipped from me, almost a groan. Trent Kalamack. The obscenely successful, smiling businessman, ruthless bio- and street-drug lord, elf in hiding, and pain-in-my-ass-extraordinaire Trent Kalamack. Right on schedule. "Why is it you show up only when I need money?

How is it possible for one to own the stars?" "To whom do they belong?" the businessman retorted, peevishly. "I don't know. To nobody.

the worst thing said about him is that he was "uncurious.

If you don't believe it, go down to your local karaoke bar on a busy night. Wait until the third hour, when the drunk frat boys and gastropub waitresses with headshots are all done with Backstreet Boys and Alicia Keys and locate the slightly older Asian businessman standing patiently in line for his turn, his face warmly rouged on Crown or Japanese lager, and when he steps up and starts slaying "Country Roads," try not to laugh, or wink knowingly or clap a little too hard, because by the time he gets to "West Virginia, mountain mama," you're going to be singing along, and by the time he's done, you might understand why a seventy-seven-year-old guy from a tiny island in the Taiwan Strait who's been in a foreign country for two-thirds of his life can nail a song, note perfect, about wanting to go home.

the Afternoon Depression Zone. Too late to get anything meaningful done; too early to go home. Doesn’t matter if you’re a homemaker, a fourth grader, a bricklayer, a businessman—no one is immune.

All men have the stars," he answered, "but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travellers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all the stars are silent. You--you alone--will have the stars as no one else has them--

Every dream begins with a dreamer.

It’s very possible that your inexperienced intern knows more than you think, even if you have been part of the industry for over thirty years.

You never know where your next big idea will come from.

The goal of climbing big, dangerous mountains should be to attain some sort of spiritual and personal growth, but this won’t happen if you compromise away the entire process.

When we stick to our views and aren’t even willing to consider what others have to say, we lose an opportunity to grow and become better.

In a socialistic economy, the small businessman has to be a thief to prosper.

There is no such thing as a self-made man. Every businessman has used the vast American infrastructure, which the taxpayers paid for, to make his money.

They copied my product, they copied my strategies yet they failed miserably in the business, because they couldn't copy my professionalism.

It's okay to be eccentric if you're rich; otherwise you're just crazy.

What are you trying to say?" All men have the stars," he answered, "but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they are wealth. But all these stars are silent. You - only you - will have stars that can laugh!" And he laughed again. And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure... And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, "Yes, the stars always makes me laugh!" And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you..." And he laughed again. It will be as if, in place of the stars, I have given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh..." And he laughed again.

I could become a businessman and run some big corporation, I'd scramble and maneuver until I was at the top of everything and what would I have? Nothing.

When I want a broad-minded opinion for general enlightenment, distinct from special advice, I never go to a man who deals in the subject professionally. So I like the parson's opinion on law, the lawyer's on doctoring, the doctor's on business, and my business-man's . . . on morals.

The personality of Muhammad, it is most difficult to get into the whole truth of it. Only a glimpse of it I can catch. What a dramatic succession of picturesque scenes! There is Muhammad, the Prophet; there is Muhammad, the Warrior; Muhammad, the Businessman; Muhammad, the Statesman; Muhammad, the Orator; Muhammad, the Reformer; Muhammad, the Refuge of Orphans; Muhammad, the Protector of Slaves; Muhammad, the Emancipator of Women; Muhammad, the Judge; Muhammad, the Saint. All in all these magnificent roles, in all these departments of human activities, he is like a hero.

…most of the damage we cause to the planet is the result of our own ignorance.

Consider it this way: what would you say if a blond homecoming queen fell in love with a short Japanese businessman? He treats her cruelly, then goes home for three years, during which time she prays to his picture and turns down marriage from a young Kennedy. Then, when she learns he has remarried, she kills herself. Now I believe you should consider this girl to be a deranged idiot, correct? But because it's an Oriental who kills herself for a Westerner–ah!–you find it beautiful.

Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living, like other businessmen, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modem people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.

At Patagonia, making a profit is not the goal because the Zen master would say profits happen 'when you do everything else right'.

Sculley found Jobs as memorable as his machine. " He seemed more a showman than a businessman. Every move seemed calculated, as if it was rehearsed, to create an occasion of the moment.

Anti-intellectualism has long been the anti-Semitism of the businessman," by which he meant that those at the top of the heap use intellectuals as a scapegoat to distract people from the societal inequities that actually affect their lives: those of wealth and power. Intellectuals are posited as both sinister and powerful, conspiratorially undermining the values of ordinary people.

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.

When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman. Maybe it will grow on me. THERE

I have no idea what to say next. I don't speak Japanese, I don't know anything about Japanese business or Japanese culture. Apart from sushi. But I can't exactly go up to him and say "Sushi!" out of the blue. It would be like going up to a top American businessman and saying "T-bone steak!

my god! i'm thinking, what incredible shit we've put up with most of our lives - the domestic routine (same old jobs, insufferable arrogance of elected officials, the crafty cheating and the slimy advertising of the businessman, the tedious wars in which we kill our buddies instead of our real enemies back home in the capital, the foul diseased and hideous cities and towns we live in, the constant petty tyranny of automatic washers and automobiles and tv machines and telephones -! ah christ!, i'm thinking, at the same time that i'm waving goodby to that hollering idiot on shore, what intolerable garbage and what utterly useless crap we bury ourselves in day by day, while patiently enduring at the same time the creeping strangulation of the clean white collar and the rich but modest four-in-hand garrote)

Kelly looked at the cop, then sighed. “What a cluster. I take it you haven’t been killing young women and leaving their half-eaten bodies in the desert?” Adam was ticked. I could tell it even if he was looking like a reasonably calm businessman. Adam’s temper was the reason he wasn’t one of Bran’s werewolf poster boys. When angered, he often gave in to impulses he wouldn’t otherwise have given in to. “Sorry to disappoint you,” Adam told Kelly in silky tones. “But I prefer rabbits. Humans taste like pork.” And then he smiled. Kelly took an involuntary step backward. Tony gave Adam a sharp look. “Let’s not make things worse, if we can help it, gentlemen.

I don't really believe that humans are evil; it is just that we are not very intelligent animals. No animal is so stupid as to foul its only nest, except humans.

Everything we personally own that’s made, sold, shipped, stored, cleaned, and ultimately thrown away does some environmental harm every step of the way, harm that we’re either directly responsible for or is done on our behalf.

And at night you will look up at the stars. It's too small, where I live, for me to show you where my stars is. It's better that way. My star will just be one of the stars, for you. So you'll like looking at all of them. They'll all be your friends. And, besides, I am going to make you a present...' He laughed again. 'Ah, little prince, dear little prince! I love to hear that laughter!' 'That is my present. Just that. It will be as it was when we drank the water...' 'What do you mean?' 'People have stars, but they aren't the same. For travelers, the stars are guides. For other people, they're nothing but tiny lights. And for still others, for scholars, they're problems. For my businessman, they were gold. But all those stars are silent stars. You, though, you'll have stars like nobody else.' 'What do you mean?' 'When you look up at the sky at night, since I'll be living on one of them, since I'll be laughing on one of them, for you it'll be as if all the stars are laughing. You'll have stars that can laugh!' And he laughed again. 'And when you're consoled (everyone eventually is consoled), you'll be glad you've known me. You'll always be my friend. You'll feel like laughing with me. And you'll open your window sometimes just for the fun of it...And your friends will be amazed to see you laughing while you're looking up at the sky. Then you'll tell them, "Yes, it's the stars; they always make me laugh!" And they'll think you're crazy. It'll be a nasty trick I played on you...' And he laughed again. 'And it'll be as if I had given you, instead of stars, a lot of tiny bells that know how to laugh...' And he laughed again.

The Chinese say that you should never, ever buy a used desk unless you know the history of it. They claim that if it belonged to a bad businessman, his karma will befall you. This one here belonged to President Kennedy. So what do you think that means? (Randy) I don’t know, but if I were you, I wouldn’t ride through Dallas in a convertible in November. Bad feng shui. (Steele)

The word courage is very interesting. It comes from a Latin root cor, which means “heart.” So to be courageous means to live with the heart. And weaklings, only weaklings, live with the head; afraid, they create a security of logic around themselves. Fearful, they close every window and door—with theology, concepts, words, theories—and inside those closed doors and windows, they hide. The way of the heart is the way of courage. It is to live in insecurity; it is to live in love, and trust; it is to move in the unknown. It is leaving the past and allowing the future to be. Courage is to move on dangerous paths. Life is dangerous, and only cowards can avoid the danger—but then, they are already dead. A person who is alive, really alive, vitally alive, will always move into the unknown. There is danger there, but he will take the risk. The heart is always ready to the the risk, the heart is a gambler. The head is a businessman. The head always calculates—it is cunning. The heart is noncalculating. This

It is worth saying something about the social position of beggars, for when one has consorted with them, and found that they are ordinary human beings, one cannot help being struck by the curious attitude that society takes towards them. People seem to feel that there is some essential difference between beggars and ordinary 'working' men. They are a race apart--outcasts, like criminals and prostitutes. Working men 'work', beggars do not 'work'; they are parasites, worthless in their very nature. It is taken for granted that a beggar does not 'earn' his living, as a bricklayer or a literary critic 'earns' his. He is a mere social excrescence, tolerated because we live in a humane age, but essentially despicable. Yet if one looks closely one sees that there is no ESSENTIAL difference between a beggar's livelihood and that of numberless respectable people. Beggars do not work, it is said; but, then, what is WORK? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course--but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout--in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering. I do not think there is anything about a beggar that sets him in a different class from other people, or gives most modern men the right to despise him. Then the question arises, Why are beggars despised?--for they are despised, universally. I believe it is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living. In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. In all the modem talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except 'Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it'? Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living, like other businessmen, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modem people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.

They all had a thousand good economic and political reasons why they couldn’t stop. I’m not a politician or a businessman; how am I supposed to persuade them about these things. What are we supposed to do; quite likely the world will collapse and disappear under water; but at least that will happen for political and economic reasons we can all understand, at least it will happen with the help of science, technology and public opinion, with human ingenuity of all sorts! Not some cosmic catastrophe but just the same old reasons to do with the struggle for power and money and so on. There’s nothing we can do about that.

A businessman is someone who buys at ten and is happy to get out at twelve. The other kind of man buys at ten, sees it rise to eighteen and does nothing. He is waiting for it to get to twenty. The beauty of numbers. When it drops to ten again he waits for it to get back to eighteen. When it drops to two he waits for it to get back to ten. Well, it gets back there. But he has wasted a quarter of his life. And all he's got out of his money is a little mathematical excitement.

And so to read is, in truth, to be in the constant act of creation. The old lady on the bus with her Orwell, the businessman on the Tube with Patricia Cornwell, the teenager roaring through Capote -- they are not engaged in idle pleasure. Their heads are on fire. Their hearts are flooding. With a book, you are the landscape, the sets, the snow, the hero, the kiss -- you are the mathematical calculation that plots the trajectory of the blazing, crashing zeppelin. You -- pale, punchable reader -- are terraforming whole worlds in your head, which will remain with you until the day you die. These books are as much a part of you as your guts and your bone. And when your guts fail and your bones break, Narnia, or Jamaica Inn, or Gormenghast will still be there; as pin-sharp and bright as the day you first imagined them -- hiding under the bedclothes, sitting on the bus. Exhausted, on a rainy day, weeping over the death of someone you never met, and who was nothing more than words until you transfused them with your time, and your love, and the imagination you constantly dismiss as "just being a bit of a bookworm.

Millions of business people are each constantly forced to choose between their desire to not be a bad person and their desire to be a good business person, that is to say, to make as much money as they possibly can by maximizing their revenue while minimizing the cost of producing whatever it is that they sell.

Good design is as little design as possible.

I've always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession that doesn't appeal to me. Once I reach 80 percent level I like to go off and do something totally different; that probably explains the diversity of the Patagonia product like - and why our versatile, multifaceted clothes are the most successful.

ALTERNATE UNIVERSE IN WHICH I AM UNFAZED BY THE MEN WHO DO NOT LOVE ME when the businessman shoulder checks me in the airport, i do not apologize. instead, i write him an elegy on the back of a receipt and tuck it in his hand as i pass through the first class cabin. like a bee, he will die after stinging me. i am twenty-four and have never cried. once, a boy told me he doesn’t “believe in labels” so i embroidered the word chauvinist on the back of his favorite coat. a boy said he liked my hair the other way so i shaved my head instead of my pussy. while the boy isn’t calling back, i learn carpentry, build a desk, write a book at the desk. i taught myself to cum from counting ceiling tiles. the boy says he prefers blondes and i steam clean his clothes with bleach. the boy says i am not marriage material and i put gravel in his pepper grinder. the boy says period sex is disgusting and i slaughter a goat in his living room. the boy does not ask if he can choke me, so i pretend to die while he’s doing it. my mother says this is not the meaning of unfazed. when the boy says i curse too much to be pretty and i tattoo “cunt” on my inner lip, my mother calls this “being very fazed.” but left over from the other universe are hours and hours of waiting for him to kiss me and here, they are just hours. here, they are a bike ride across long island in june. here, they are a novel read in one sitting. here, they are arguments about god or a full night’s sleep. here, i hand an hour to the woman crying outside of the bar. i leave one on my best friend’s front porch, send my mother two in the mail. i do not slice his tires. i do not burn the photos. i do not write the letter. i do not beg. i do not ask for forgiveness. i do not hold my breath while he finishes. the man tells me he does not love me, and he does not love me. the man tells me who he is, and i listen. i have so much beautiful time.

There's no difference between a pessimist who says, 'It's all over, don't bother trying to do anything, forget about voting, it won't make a difference,' and an optimist who says, 'Relax, everything is going to turn out fine.' Either way the results are the same. Nothing gets done.

The statement was meant for effect, and effect it got. Declan gave Matthew his most Declan of faces. He generally used one of two expressions. The first was Bland Businessman Nodding at What You’re Saying While Waiting for His Turn to Talk and the other was Reticent Father with Irritable Bowel Syndrome Realizes He Must Let His Child Use the Public Restroom First. They suited nearly every situation Declan found himself in. This, however, was a third expression: Exasperated Twentysomething Longs to Yell at His Brothers Because Oh My God. He rarely used it, but the lack of practice didn’t make it any less accomplished or any less pure Declan.

We want customers who need our clothing, not just desire it.

If the devil decided to run for President, do you think he/she would put on their horns and wicked grin, or a suit with an angelic smile? If the wicked witch stayed green and ugly, would she have been able to give Snow White a poisoned apple? And if the Big Bad Wolf had not disguised himself as an old granny, would he have been able to lure Little Red Riding Hood into the house to eat her? And if a drug dealer wanted to seduce some school kids to get on his drugs, would he act like a greedy businessman — or a caring friend? Salt and sugar look exactly the same but taste very different. We live in a world of illusions, one filled with Luciferians acting like righteous men, and righteous men condemned as criminals.

Doing risk sport had taught me another important lesson: never exceed your limits. You push the envelope and you live for those moments when you’re right on the edge, but you don’t go over. You have to be true to yourself; you have to know your strengths and limitations and live within your means.

Love is not a businessman who wants to see a return on his investments. And imagination needs only a few nails on which to hang its veil. Whether they are of gold, tin, or covered with rust makes no difference to it. Wherever it gets caught, it is caught. Thornbush or rosebush, as soon as the veil of moonlight and mother-of-pearl has fallen on it, either becomes a fairy tale out of A Thousand and One Nights

Uncurious people do not lead examined lives; they cannot see causes that lie deeper than the surface.

As a writer, politician, scientist, and businessman, [Ben] Franklin had few equals among the educated of his day—though he left school at ten. (...) Boys like Andrew Carnegie who begged his mother not to send him to school and was well on his way to immortality and fortune at the age of thirteen, would be referred today for psychological counseling; Thomas Edison would find himself in Special Ed until his peculiar genius had been sufficiently tamed.

It is precisely because I valued myself that I was unwilling to remain miserable in a school and whole social environment that did not fit my needs. It is because the housewife had regard for herself that she refused to tolerate any longer a marriage that so totally limited her freedom and repressed her personality. It is because the businessman cared for himself that he was no longer willing to nearly kill himself in order to meet the expectations of his mother.

At cocktail parties, I played the part of a successful businessman's wife to perfection. I smiled, I made polite chit-chat, and I dressed the part. Denial and rationalization were two of my most effective tools in working my way through our social obligations. I believed that playing the roles of wife and mother were the least I could do to help support Tom's career. During the day, I was a puzzle with innumerable pieces. One piece made my family a nourishing breakfast. Another piece ferried the kids to school and to soccer practice. A third piece managed to trip to the grocery store. There was also a piece that wanted to sleep for eighteen hours a day and the piece that woke up shaking from yet another nightmare. And there was the piece that attended business functions and actually fooled people into thinking I might have something constructive to offer. I was a circus performer traversing the tightwire, and I could fall off into a vortex devoid of reality at any moment. There was, and had been for a very long time, an intense sense of despair. A self-deprecating voice inside told me I had no chance of getting better. I lived in an emotional black hole. p20-21, talking about dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder).

Providing employment is the best form of social service, as it serves you, others, your country, your world - the entire society.

The Devil is by no means the worst that there is; I would rather have dealings with him than with many a human being. He honours his agreements much more promptly than many a swindler on Earth. To be true, when payment is due he comes on the dot; just as twelve strikes, fetches his soul and goes off home to Hell like a good Devil. He’s just a businessman as is right and proper. —-J.N. NESTROY, Hollenangst

If they were going to be like that, then I just wished they hadn't actually been German. It was too easy. Too obvious. It was like coming across an Irishman who actually was stupid, a mother-in-law who actually was fat, or an American businessman who actually did have a middle initial and smoked a cigar. You feel as if you are unwillingly performing in a music-hall sketch and wishing you could rewrite the script. If Helmut and Kurt had been Brazilian or Chinese or Latvian or anything else at all, they could then have behaved in exactly the same way and it would have been surprising and intriguing and, more to the point from my perspective, much easier to write about. Writers should not be in the business of propping up stereotypes. I wondered what to do about it, decided that they could simply be Latvians if I wanted, and then at last drifted off peacefully to worrying about my boots.

He was one of those persons whom one loves not because of some lustrous streak of talent (this retired businessman possessed none), but because every moment spent with them fits exactly the gauge of one's life. There are friendships like circuses, waterfalls, libraries; there are others comparable to old dressing gowns. You found nothing especially attractive about Maximov's mind if you took it apart: his ideas were conservative, his tastes undistinguished: but somehow or other these dull components formed a wonderfully comfortable and harmonious whole.

This was solidarity. The debutante having her toenails pedicured - the housewife buying carrots from a pushcart - the bookkeeper who had wanted to be a pianist, but has the excuse of a sister to support - the businessman who hated his business - the worker who hated his work - the intellectual who hated everybody - all were united as brothers in the luxury of common anger that cured boredom and took them out of themselves, and they knew well enough what a blessing it was to be taken out of themselves.

When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman.

I'm halfway through my life, and as far as I can tell, the real lesson of the past isn't that I made some mistakes, it's that I didn't make nearly enough of them. I doubt I'll be lying on my deathbed in forty or fifty years, congratulating myself on the fact that I never had sex in an airplane with a handsome Italian businessman, or patting myself on the back for all those years of involuntary celibacy I endured after my divorce. If recent experience is any guide, I'll probably be lying in that hospital bed with my body full of tubes, sneaking glances at the handsome young doctor, wishing that I hadn't been such a coward. Wishing I'd taken more risks, made more mistakes, and accumulated more regrets. Just wishing I'd lived when I had the chance.

You pompous little bitch!” the infuriated Were shouted, red-faced and with his thugs backing him. “What are you doing here?” Mrs. Sarong pushed past the men who had put themselves in front of her. “Arranging your removal,” she said, her voice sharp and her eyes glaring. Removal? As if he were an overgrown tree clogging the sewer line? The short businessman seemed to choke on his own breath, becoming choleric. Mouth gaping to look like one of his prize fish, he struggled to respond. “Like hell you are!” he finally managed. “That’s what I wanted to talk to her about!” From my shoulder came a small, “Holy crap, Rache. How did you become Cincy’s assassin of choice?

Always remember that you are the observer and not the doer. Do not take life to be anything more than acting. Don’t identify yourself too much with the action. Whether you are a wife or husband, a businessman or client, don’t get too involved. Don’t lose yourself in it, for you are simply playing a role in the play. Keep outside of it, and within yourself. These are all necessary parts of life. You must go to work, it is necessary. The play is delightful if you see it as play, but it is fatal if you take it to be life. There is no reason so disrupt your life. You have to play the part that life has given you.

Admittedly, there's a certain coarseness about [businessmen]; for there's no point in even trying to be [one] unless your love for money is so absolute that you're ready to accompany it on the walk to a double suicide. For money, believe you me, is a hard mistress, and none of her lovers are let off lightly. As a matter of fact, I've just been visiting a businessman and, according to him, the only way to succeed is to practice the "triangled" technique: try to escape your obligations, annihilate your kindly feelings, and geld yourself of the sense of shame.

I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours and a fixed salary and very little original thinking to do. The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.

The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze… a person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.

And although I said it affects everyone,” he continued, “it’s an especially dangerous time for the homemaker. Because unlike a fourth grader who can put off her homework, or a businessman who can pretend to be listening, the homemaker must force herself to keep going. She has to get the kids down for a nap because if she doesn’t, the evening will be hell. She has to mop the floor because if she doesn’t, someone could slip on the spilled milk. She has to run to the store because if she doesn’t, there will be nothing to eat. By the way,” he said, pausing, “have you ever noticed how women always say they need to run to the store? Not walk, not go, not stop by. Run. That’s what I mean. The homemaker is operating at an insane level of hyperproductivity. And even though she’s in way over her head, she still has to make dinner. It’s not sustainable,

Secularity is a way of being dependent on the responses of our milieu. The secular or false self is the self which is fabricated, as Thomas Merton says, by social compulsions. 'Compulsive' is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to the need for ongoing and increasing affirmation. Who am I? I am the one who is liked, praised, admired, disliked, hated or despised. Whether I am a pianist, a businessman or a minister, what matters is how I am perceived by my world. If being busy is a good thing, then I must be busy. If having money is a sign of real freedom, then I must claim my money. If knowing many people proves my importance, I will have to make the necessary contacts. The compulsion manifests itself in the lurking fear of failure and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same - more work, more money, more friends.

Marx wrote about finance and industry all his life but he only knew two people connected with financial and industrial processes. One was his uncle in Holland, Lion Philips, a successful businessman who created what eventually became the vast Philips Electric Company. Uncle Philips' views on the whole capitalist process would have been well-informed and interesting, had Marx troubled to explore them. But he only once consulted him, on a technical matter of high finance, and though he visited Philips four times, these concerned purely personal mattes of family money. The other knowledgeable man was Engels himself. But Marx declined Engel's invitation to accompany him on a visit to a cotton mill, and so far as we know Marx never set foot in a mill, factory, mine or other industrial workplace in the whole of his life.

I knew there was evil in the world. Death and taxes were all necessary evils. So was shopping. "I hate shopping," I muttered. "Of course you do," Phaelan said. "You're a Benares, [the daughter of a long line of professional thieves]. We're not used to paying for anything." Phaelan was my cousin; he called himself a seafaring businessman. Law enforcement in every major city called him "that damned pirate," or less flattering epithets, none of them repeatable here. ... "Have you considered something in scarlet leather?" Phaelan mused from beside me. "Have you considered just painting a bull's eye on my back?" I retorted. My cousin wasn't with me because he liked shopping. He was by my side because being within five feet of me was a guarantee of getting into trouble of the worst kind. Phaelan hadn't plundered or pillaged anything in weeks. He was bored. So this morning, he was a cocky, swaggering invitation for Trouble to bring it on and do her worst.

The franchise and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder ― its DNA ― xerox it, and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a lef- turn lane. Then the growth will expand until it runs up against its property lines. In olden times, you’d wander down to Mom’s Café for a bite to eat and a cup of joe, and you would feel right at home. It worked just fine if you never left your hometown. But if you went to the next town over, everyone would look up and stare at you when you came in the door, and the Blue Plate Special would be something you didn’t recognize. If you did enough traveling, you’d never feel at home anywhere. But when a businessman from New Jersey goes to Dubuque, he knows he can walk into a McDonald’s and no one will stare at him. He can order without having to look at the menu, and the food will always taste the same. McDonald’s is Home, condensed into a three-ringed binder and xeroxed. “No surprises” is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin. The people of America, who live in the world’s most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto.

Then my hair was loose and his hands were buried in it, and he was kissing me so deeply his fangs grazed my teeth and I tasted blood. I was acutely aware of every inch of my body that was touching every inch of his: his forearm grazing the side of my neck, his hands cradling my skull, his mouth so soft yet ” “hard, his powerful chest against the only part of me that wasn’t muscle, one of his thighs slipping between my legs, making my knees tremble and nearly buckle. He kissed like he did everything, with exquisite skill, passion, and one hundred percent focus. Here was where Ryodan shed his aloof businessman attire, his cool facade, and came to life with the heat and intensity of a thousand suns. And I realized that was what had so entranced me on Level 4—I’d seen him drop all his guards and fuck like a man on fire, with nothing held back. Open, unguarded, just like he’d been when we’d talked. Ryodan, controlled, is formidably fascinating. Ryodan, open, is indescribably addictive.

Have you ever thought about it? If somebody asks, “Who are you?” what do you answer? You say your name. The name is not yours, because you came into the world without a name. You came nameless; it is not your property, it has been given to you. And any name, A-B-C-D, would have been useful. It is arbitrary. It is not essential in any way. If you are called “Susan” good; if you are called “Harry” good, it makes no difference. Any name would have been as applicable to you as any other. It is just a label. A name is needed to call you by, but it has nothing to do with your being. Or you say, “I am a doctor” or you say, “I am an engineer”—or a businessman, or a painter, or this and that—but nothing says anything about you. When you say, “I am a doctor,” you say something about your profession, not about you. You say how you earn your living. You don’t say anything about life, you say something about your living. You may be earning your living as an engineer, or as a doctor, or as a businessman—it is irrelevant. It does not say anything about you. Or you say your father’s name, your mother’s name, you give your family tree—that too is irrelevant because that doesn’t define you. Your being born in a particular family is accidental; you could as well have been born in another family and you would not even have noticed the difference. These are just utilitarian tricks—and man becomes a “self.” This self is a pseudoself, a created, manufactured self, homemade. And your own real self remains deep down hidden in mist and mystery. I was reading:

Tom looked at St. Vincent. “I assume the editor at the Chronicle refused to divulge the writer’s identity?” St. Vincent looked rueful. “Categorically. I’ll have to find a way to pry it out of him without bringing the entire British press to his defense.” “Yes,” Tom mused, tapping his lower lip with a fingertip, “they tend to be so touchy about protecting their sources.” “Trenear,” Lord Ripon said through gritted teeth, “will you kindly throw him out?” “I’ll see myself out,” Tom said casually. He turned as if to leave, and paused as if something had just occurred to him. “Although … as your friend, Trenear, I find it disappointing that you haven’t asked about my day. It makes me feel as if you don’t care.” Before Devon could respond, Pandora jumped in. “I will,” she volunteered eagerly. “How was your day, Mr. Severin?” Tom sent her a brief grin. “Busy. After six tedious hours of business negotiations, I paid a call to the chief editor of the London Chronicle.” St. Vincent lifted his brows. “After I’d already met with him?” Trying to look repentant, Tom replied, “I know you said not to. But I had a bit of leverage you didn’t.” “Oh?” “I told him the paper’s owner would dismiss him and toss him out on the pavement if he didn’t name the anonymous writer.” St. Vincent stared at him quizzically. “You bluffed?” “No, that is what the business negotiations were about. I’m the new owner. And while the chief editor happens to be a staunch advocate for freedom of the press, he’s also a staunch supporter of not losing his job.” “You just bought the London Chronicle,” Devon said slowly, to make certain he hadn’t misheard. “Today.” “No one could do that in less than a day,” Ripon sneered. Winterborne smiled slightly. “He could,” he said, with a nod toward Tom. “I did,” Tom confirmed, picking idly at a bit of lint on his cuff. “All it took was a preliminary purchase agreement and some earnest money.

We are the last generation that can experience true wilderness. Already the world has shrunk dramatically. To a Frenchman, the Pyrenees are “wild.” To a kid living in a New York City ghetto, Central Park is “wilderness,” the way Griffith Park in Burbank was to me when I was a kid. Even travelers in Patagonia forget that its giant, wild-looking estancias are really just overgrazed sheep farms. New Zealand and Scotland were once forested and populated with long-forgotten animals. The place in the lower forty-eight states that is farthest away from a road or habitation is at the headwaters of the Snake River in Wyoming, and it’s still only twenty-five miles. So if you define wilderness as a place that is more than a day’s walk from civilization, there is no true wilderness left in North America, except in parts of Alaska and Canada. In a true Earth-radical group, concern for wilderness preservation must be the keystone. The idea of wilderness, after all, is the most radical in human thought—more radical than Paine, than Marx, than Mao. Wilderness says: Human beings are not paramount, Earth is not for Homo sapiens alone, human life is but one life form on the planet and has no right to take exclusive possession. Yes, wilderness for its own sake, without any need to justify it for human benefit. Wilderness for wilderness. For bears and whales and titmice and rattlesnakes and stink bugs. And…wilderness for human beings…. Because it is home. —Dave Foreman, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior We need to protect these areas of unaltered wildness and diversity to have a baseline, so we never forget what the real world is like—in perfect balance, the way nature intended the earth to be. This is the model we need to keep in mind on our way toward sustainability.