Dividends Quotes

The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others

Use money to gain control over your time, because not having control of your time is such a powerful and universal drag on happiness. The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want to, pays the highest dividend that exists in finance.

Controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays.

They say of me, and so they should, It's doubtful if I come to good. I see acquaintances and friends Accumulating dividends And making enviable names In science, art and parlor games. But I, despite expert advice, Keep doing things I think are nice, And though to good I never come Inseparable my nose and thumb.

Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due.

Luck is the dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.

The best dividends on the labor invested have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power.” Signed Wilbur and Orville Wright, March 12, 1906.

I very frequently get the question: 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one. I almost never get the question: 'What's not going to change in the next 10 years?' And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two -- because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. ... [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, 'Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,' [or] 'I love Amazon; I just wish you'd deliver a little more slowly.' Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.

Just as life has no quick fix; transformation lacks a flick-switch approach as well. Investing in a better version of yourself will take time but pay you rich dividends as well.

Regret never pays dividends

The Right thinks that the breakdown of the family is the source of crime and poverty, and this they very insightfully blame on the homosexuals, which would be amusing were it not so tragic. Families and 'family values' are crushed by grinding poverty, which also makes violent crime and drugs attractive alternatives to desperate young men and sends young women into prostitution. Family values are no less corrupted by the corrosive effects of individualism, consumerism, and the accumulation of wealth. Instead of shouting this from the mountain tops, the get-me-to-heaven-and-the-rest-be-damned Christianity the Christian Right preaches is itself a version of selfish spiritual capitalism aimed at netting major and eternal dividends, and it fits hand in glove with American materialism and greed.

One of the fables we live by is that some day the killing will stop. If only we rid ourselves of Chinese, white men will have jobs and white women will have virtue, and then we can stop killing. If only we rid ourselves of Indians, we will fulfill our Manifest Destiny, and then we can stop killing. If only we rid ourselves of Canaanites, we will live in the Promised Land, and then we can stop killing. If only we rid ourselves of Jews, we can build and maintain a Thousand Year Reich, and then we can stop killing. If only we stop the Soviet Union, we can stop the killing (remember the Peace Dividend that never materialized?). If only we can take out the worldwide terrorist network of bin Laden and others like him. If only. But the killing never stops. Always a new enemy to be hated is found.

I mean … we’d just passed our one-year dating anniversary. I figured I was a sort of long-term investment for her. She hoped I would pay dividends eventually; if I died now, she would’ve put up with all my annoying qualities for nothing.

The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what we are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others.

Travel is costly yes, but it pays dividends too.

Valor rarely reaps the dividends it should.

The heralded social dividends of education are largely illusory: rising education’s main fruit is not broad-based prosperity, but credential inflation

I view investing as a method of purchasing assets to gain profit in the form of reasonably predictable income (dividends, interest, or rentals) and /or appreciation over the long term.

Children get food shelter pocket money longholidays and love, all of it apparently free gratis, and most of the little fools think it's a sort of compensation for having been born. 'There are no strings on me!' They sang; but I, pinnoccio, saw the strings. Parents are impelled by the profit motive - nothing more, nothing less. For their attentions, they expected, from me, the immense dividend of greatness.

You will invest in something as you live your life, so make sure it is something that will pay dividends you will enjoy.

An investment in self-development pays the highest dividends.

Many people object to “wasting money in space” yet have no idea how much is actually spent on space exploration. The CSA’s budget, for instance, is less than the amount Canadians spend on Halloween candy every year, and most of it goes toward things like developing telecommunications satellites and radar systems to provide data for weather and air quality forecasts, environmental monitoring and climate change studies. Similarly, NASA’s budget is not spent in space but right here on Earth, where it’s invested in American businesses and universities, and where it also pays dividends, creating new jobs, new technologies and even whole new industries.

Keep at it. Persistence does pay dividends. But there is a catch; you gotta believe it before manifestation will validate conviction as [your] truth. And sacrifice is a required path to fulfillment.

Short-term profits are not reliable indicator of performance of management. Anybody can pay dividends by deferring maintenance, cutting out research, or acquiring another company.

She grinned, a silty grin. 'You were my two dividends, yes? Don't you forget that.' Then she sighed, took a deep breath, and said, 'But what an investment. My life.

Now arrogance and error would reap the usual dividends

Performance of management should be measured by potential to stay in business, to protect investment, to ensure future dividends and jobs through improvement of product and service for the future, not by the quarterly dividend.

Connor pockets his cell. “Lily,” he says. “If I wanted to date for a last name, I’d have a girl on my arm every single day. I would never be single.” He leans forward. “I promise you, that my intentions are pure. And I think it’s sweet you’re looking out for Rose, but she’s more than capable of taking care of herself, which is one of the many reasons why I want to pursue her.” “What’s another reason?” I test him. He smiles. “I won’t have to taxingly explain to her menu items in a real French restaurant.” He knows she’s fluent? “I won’t have to explain financial statements or dividends. I’ll be able to discuss anything and everything in the world, and she’ll have an answer.

A patient willingness to defer dividends is a hallmark of individual maturity.

Lured by the wilderness, and by the chance of spotting rare desert elephants, a few intrepid tourists make their way to the Skeleton Coast each year. It's just about as remote as any tourist destination on earth, but one that pays fabulous dividends.

Whatever the reason we first mustered the _Apollo_ program, however mired it was in Cold War nationalism and the instruments of death, the inescapable recognition of the unity and fragility of the Earth is its clear and luminous dividend, the unexpected final gift of _Apollo_. What began in deadly competition has helped us to see that global cooperation is the essential precondition for our survival. Travel is broadening. It's time to hit the road again.

Love reaches a pitch at those moments when our beloved turns out to understand, more clearly than others have ever been able to, and perhaps even better than we do ourselves, the chaotic, embarrassing and shameful parts of us. That someone else gets who we are and both sympathizes with and forgives us for what they see underpins our whole capacity to trust and to give. Love is a dividend of gratitude for our lover’s insight into our own confused and troubled psyche.

Knowledge is a commodity to be shared. For knowledge to pay dividends, it should not remain the monopoly of the selected few.

The greatest dividends in life are those that we give away.

It takes courage to quit something, but often you get that courage back with dividends.

Invest in love to earn dividends of happiness.

how unfortunate that we should have had that very cold weather at a time when coal was so dear! So distressing for the poor.” “Someone has observed that Providence is always on the side of the big dividends,” remarked Reginald.

[Scapegoating] blames societal ills on the groups with the least power and the least say in how the country operates while allowing the larger framework and those who control and reap the dividends of these divisions to go unchecked.

Oh, my dear boy, one mustn't expect gratitude. It's a thing that no one has a right to. After all, you do good because it gives you pleasure. It's the purest form of happiness there is. To expect thanks for it is really asking too much. If you get it, well, it's like a bonus on shares on which you've already received a dividend; it's grand, but you mustn't look upon it as your due. [The back of beyond]

He thought she was happy. She didn't have the heart to tell him the truth. There was no need, anyway. Happiness never lasted, because happiness didn't pay dividends. That was just the way the world worked.

Everywhere I went, I found that the people who had replaced the zero sum with a new formula of cross-racial solidarity had found the key to unlocking what I began to call a “Solidarity Dividend,” from higher wages to cleaner air, made possible through collective action. And

The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others.

I have observed that when any of us embarks on the pursuit of happiness for ourselves, it eludes us. Often I've asked myself why. It must be because happiness comes to us only as a dividend. When we become absorbed in something demanding and worthwhile above and beyond ourselves, happiness seems to be there as a by-product of the self-giving. That should not be a startling truth, yet I'm surprised by how few people understand and accept it. Have we made a god of happiness?..."You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide." John 15:16 RSV....Somehow that passage was like light penetrating their darkness: much of their unhappiness, they realized, was caused by self-centeredness.

I believe that higher wages to men who respect their employers and are happy and contented are a good investment, yielding, indeed, big dividends. The

Few things will pay you bigger dividends in life than the time and trouble you take to understand people and build relationships. As

The true investor . . . will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operating results of his companies.

One can never tell what will be the result of faithful service rendered, nor do we know when it will come back to us or to those with whom we are associated. The reward may not come at the time, but in dividends later. I believe we will never lose anything in life by giving service, by making sacrifices, and doing the right thing.

Sin always overpromises and underdelivers, while righteousness pays dividends for eternity... Nothing is more illogical than sin. It's the epitome of poor judgment. It's temporary insanity with eternal consequences. And we have no alibi, save the cross of Jesus Christ.

You can’t always choose your future. Not in a world of risk and uncertainty. No matter what the self-help gurus tell you. You can only attempt to guide it in the right direction, like a willful horse, but accept there will be times when it will gallop off in a direction not of your choosing. No one can tell you what lies ahead with one hundred percent accuracy. If your doctor tells you ninety-nine out of one hundred people die of your disease, you most likely will die, but you might also be the one who beats the odds, and if you do, you will believe yourself special and blessed, and your loved ones will believe the fervency of their prayers for you paid dividends, but it’s just math. It’s all just math.

Practical knowledge is the ultimate commodity, and is what will pay you dividends for decades to come—far more than the paltry increase in pay you might receive at some seemingly lucrative position that offers fewer learning opportunities.

Yeah, it's real easy to look in the mirror and be proud when you're wearing pleated shorts. And you know what's really pathetic? I don't even have any dividends to get tax-decreased. When'll they cut taxes on not-having-health-insurancends?

The principal object of management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employee. The words "maximum prosperity" are used, in their broad sense, to mean not only large dividends for the company or owner, but the development of every branch of the business to its highest state of excellence, so that the prosperity may be permanent.

I have found that there is romance in housework: and charm in it; and whimsy and humor without end. I have found that the housewife works hard, of course–but likes it. Most people who amount to anything do work hard, at whatever their job happens to be. The housewife’s job is home-making, and she is, in fact, ‘making the best of it’; making the best of it by bringing patience and loving care to her work; sympathy and understanding to her family; making the best of it by seeing all the fun in the day’s incidents and human relationships. The housewife realizes that home-making is an investment in happiness. It pays everyone enormous dividends. There are huge compensations for the actual labor involved… There are unhappy housewives, of course. But there are unhappy stenographers and editresses and concert singers. The housewife whose songs I sing as I go about my work, is the one who likes her job (pp. 6-7). From Songs of a Housewife: Poems by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death. The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

I have observed that when any of us embarks on the pursuit of happiness for ourselves, it eludes us. Often I've asked myself why. It must be because happiness comes to us only as a dividend. When we become absorbed in something demanding and worthwhile above and beyond ourselves, happiness seems to be there as a by-product of the self-giving. That should not be a startling truth, yet I'm surprised by how few people understand and accept it. Have we made a god of happiness?..."You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide." John 15:16 RSV....Somehow that passage was like light penetrating their darkness: much of their unhappiness, they realized, was caused by self-centeredness.

The concept of ‘spending’ is problematic. When we are functioning with intention and wisdom, the only thing we really do with money is invest. There are small investments, and big investments. There are good investments and bad investments…The ROI we get for some investments is a product or service - the groceries in exchange for money, or the the car wash in exchange for money. And the ROI we get for other investments may be additional money in the form of interest or dividends, while the ROI in other cases is just a sense of fulfillment after maybe giving to charity or buying a gift for your spouse, or paying for your kids tuition, or creating art. When we look at it from this perspective, we get rid of the expectation that sending money out is a loss, and we replace it with an expectation that sending money out will always result in an ROI of some kind. Everything is an investment when we act with intention and wisdom.

Wisdom is really the key to wealth. With great wisdom, comes great wealth and success. Rather than pursuing wealth, pursue wisdom. The aggressive pursuit of wealth can lead to disappointment. Wisdom is defined as the quality of having experience, and being able to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting. Wisdom is basically the practical application of knowledge. Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs. Become completely focused on one subject and study the subject for a long period of time. Don't skip around from one subject to the next. The problem is generally not money. Jesus taught that the problem was attachment to possessions and dependence on money rather than dependence on God. Those who love people, acquire wealth so they can give generously. After all, money feeds, shelters, and clothes people. They key is to work extremely hard for a short period of time (1-5 years), create abundant wealth, and then make money work hard for you through wise investments that yield a passive income for life. Don't let the opinions of the average man sway you. Dream, and he thinks you're crazy. Succeed, and he thinks you're lucky. Acquire wealth, and he thinks you're greedy. Pay no attention. He simply doesn't understand. Failure is success if we learn from it. Continuing failure eventually leads to success. Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly. Whenever you pursue a goal, it should be with complete focus. This means no interruptions. Only when one loves his career and is skilled at it can he truly succeed. Never rush into an investment without prior research and deliberation. With preferred shares, investors are guaranteed a dividend forever, while common stocks have variable dividends. Some regions with very low or no income taxes include the following: Nevada, Texas, Wyoming, Delaware, South Dakota, Cyprus, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Panama, San Marino, Seychelles, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, Curaçao, Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Monaco, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Bermuda, Kuwait, Oman, Andorra, Cayman Islands, Belize, Vanuatu, and Campione d'Italia. There is only one God who is infinite and supreme above all things. Do not replace that infinite one with finite idols. As frustrated as you may feel due to your life circumstances, do not vent it by cursing God or unnecessarily uttering his name. Greed leads to poverty. Greed inclines people to act impulsively in hopes of gaining more. The benefit of giving to the poor is so great that a beggar is actually doing the giver a favor by allowing the person to give. The more I give away, the more that comes back. Earn as much as you can. Save as much as you can. Invest as much as you can. Give as much as you can.

As frustrating as people can be, it’s hard to find a good substitute.

The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want, is priceless. It is the highest dividend money pays.

Hope, once invested in, always pays dividends.

Spend your money for education; it will pay you the best dividend. No one will be able to steal is and you will not lose it for a second.

Love is the only investment that gives dividends without failure.

Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land, Drawing no dividend from time’s to-morrows. In the great hour of destiny they stand, Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.

Everybody wants friends. Everybody needs friends. No one wishes to be without them. But never lose sight of the fact that it is your friends who will lead you along the paths that you will follow. While you should be friendly with all people, select with great care those whom you wish to have close to you. They will be your safeguards in situations where you may vacillate between choices, and you in turn may save them. . . . Be Grateful. Be Smart. Be Involved. Be Clean. Be True. Be Positive. Be Humble. Be Still. Be Prayerful. There they are, nine Be's which, if observed, will bring handsome dividends to any young man or woman. They will add sparkle to your days and peace to your nights. They will save you from heartache and pain. They will bring purpose into your life and give direction to your energies. They will bring you friends of your own kind. They will protect you from associations that would pull you down and deflect you from your course.

To combat fear, the best strategy is to learn to bring your attention back to the present. Mark Twain said, “I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” I don’t think I can say it any better. Practice keeping your attention on the here and now. Your efforts will pay great dividends.

As a result, studies have found we can reap immediate intellectual and emotional dividends from investing in exercise and sleep, or even from taking a moment to breathe deeply, smile broadly, and stand a little taller. In

Knowledge of Nature is an account at bank, where each dividend is added to the principal and the interest is ever compounded; and hence it is that human progress, founded on natural knowledge, advances with ever increasing speed.

How now in the contemplative evening of his days, the pious Bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do not know; but it did not seem to concern him much, and very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man's religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another. This world pays dividends.

Basically, CEOs have five essential choices for deploying capital—investing in existing operations, acquiring other businesses, issuing dividends, paying down debt, or repurchasing stock—and three alternatives for raising it—tapping internal cash flow, issuing debt, or raising equity. Think of these options collectively as a tool kit. Over the long term, returns for shareholders will be determined largely by the decisions a CEO makes in choosing which tools to use (and which to avoid) among these various options. Stated simply, two companies with identical operating results and different approaches to allocating capital will derive two very different long-term outcomes for shareholders.

Be willing for purpose; it pays huge returns on investment. And along the journey, those who dis your willing sacrifice(s) will ponder their own foolishness.

If there’s one place, then, where we can intervene in a way that will pay dividends for society down the road, it’s in the classroom. Yet that’s barely happening. All the big debates in education are about format. About delivery. About didactics. Education is consistently presented as a means of adaptation – as a lubricant to help you glide more effortlessly through life. On the education conference circuit, an endless parade of trend watchers prophesy about the future and essential twenty-first-century skills, the buzzwords being “creative,” “adaptable,” and “flexible.” The focus, invariably, is on competencies, not values. On didactics, not ideals. On “problem-solving ability,” but not which problems need solving. Invariably, it all revolves around the question: Which knowledge and skills do today’s students need to get hired in tomorrow’s job market – the market of 2030? Which is precisely the wrong question. In 2030, there will likely be a high demand for savvy accountants untroubled by a conscience. If current trends hold, countries like Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland will become even bigger tax havens, enabling multinationals to dodge taxes even more effectively, leaving developing countries with an even shorter end of the stick. If the aim of education is to roll with these kinds of trends rather than upend them, then egotism is set to be the quintessential twenty-first-century skill. Not

At Mayflower-Plymouth, we believe that nature has a multitude of lessons to learn about capital. We also believe that to invest wisely for the long term, one must truly and deeply understand business.

They forget to mention that he is the slowest mover in the universe; that his Eye that never sleeps, might as well, since it takes it a century to see what any other eye would see in a week; that in all history there is not an instance where he thought of a noble deed first, but always thought of it just a little after somebody else had thought of it and done it. He arrives then, and annexes the dividend.

Morgan then formed the U.S. Steel Corporation, combining Carnegie’s corporation with others. He sold stocks and bonds for $1,300,000,000 (about 400 million more than the combined worth of the companies) and took a fee of 150 million for arranging the consolidation. How could dividends be paid to all those stockholders and bondholders? By making sure Congress passed tariffs keeping out foreign steel; by closing off competition and maintaining the price at $28 a ton; and by working 200,000 men twelve hours a day for wages that barely kept their families alive. And so it went, in industry after industry—shrewd, efficient businessmen building empires, choking out competition, maintaining high prices, keeping wages low, using government subsidies. These industries were the first beneficiaries of the “welfare state.

The rental income served as a dividend, so to speak, but even at an early age, I focused more on the home appreciation. I came to understand the tax advantages of home ownership, implications of depreciation, and the opportunity to use the homes as leverage in borrowing money.

You and I were born with a number of God given commodities that were intended to be shared. Among them is our time, friendship and love. These three things pay immeasurable dividends when shared with others. Freely giving of your time, your friendship and your love is the greatest gift you can give someone. Materially, it costs very little and yet there is nothing on this earth that yields a higher return. ~Jason Versey

Have luncheon there this afternoon, all you jobless. Why not? Dine with some of the men and women who got rich off of your labor, who clip coupons with clean white fingers because your hands dug coal, drilled stone, sewed garments, poured steel to let other people draw dividends and live easy.

There are many people for whom hate and rage pay a higher dividend of immediate satisfaction than love. Congenitally aggressive, they soon become adrenaline addicts, deliberately indulging psychically stimulated endocrines. Knowing that on self-assertion always ends by evoking other and hostile self-assertions, they sedulously cultivate their truculence. And, sure enough, very soon they find themselves in the thick of a fight. But a fight is what they most enjoy; for it is while they are fighting that their blood chemistry makes them feel most intensely themselves. "Feeling good", they naturally assume that they *are good. Adrenalin addiction is rationalized as Righteous Indignation and finally, like the prophet Jonah, they are convinced, unshakably, that they do well to be angry.

Already the people murmur that I am your enemy because they say that in verse I give the world your me. They lie, Julia de Burgos. They lie, Julia de Burgos. Who rises in my verses is not your voice. It is my voice because you are the dressing and the essence is me; and the most profound abyss is spread between us. You are the cold doll of social lies, and me, the virile starburst of the human truth. You, honey of courtesan hypocrisies; not me; in all my poems I undress my heart. You are like your world, selfish; not me who gambles everything betting on what I am. You are only the ponderous lady very lady; not me; I am life, strength, woman. You belong to your husband, your master; not me; I belong to nobody, or all, because to all, to all I give myself in my clean feeling and in my thought. You curl your hair and paint yourself; not me; the wind curls my hair, the sun paints me. You are a housewife, resigned, submissive, tied to the prejudices of men; not me; unbridled, I am a runaway Rocinante snorting horizons of God's justice. You in yourself have no say; everyone governs you; your husband, your parents, your family, the priest, the dressmaker, the theatre, the dance hall, the auto, the fine furnishings, the feast, champagne, heaven and hell, and the social, "what will they say." Not in me, in me only my heart governs, only my thought; who governs in me is me. You, flower of aristocracy; and me, flower of the people. You in you have everything and you owe it to everyone, while me, my nothing I owe to nobody. You nailed to the static ancestral dividend, and me, a one in the numerical social divider, we are the duel to death who fatally approaches. When the multitudes run rioting leaving behind ashes of burned injustices, and with the torch of the seven virtues, the multitudes run after the seven sins, against you and against everything unjust and inhuman, I will be in their midst with the torch in my hand.

These haymeadow days were the Arcadian age for marsh dwellers. Man and beast, plant and soil lived on and with each other in mutual toleration, to the mutual benefit of all. The marsh might have kept on producing hay and prairie chickens, deer and muskrat, crane-music and cranberries forever. The new overlords did not understand this. They did not include soil, plants, or birds in their ideas of mutuality. The dividends of such a balanced economy were too modest. They envisaged farms not only around, but in the marsh. An epidemic of ditch-digging and land-booming set in. The marsh was gridironed with drainage canals, speckled with new fields and farmsteads.

What made me angrier was that none of the others seemed to care. To them, I knew, this didn’t make the slightest bit of difference. What was it to them if they had to go an extra term? What did it matter, if they failed to graduate, if they had to go back home? At least they had homes to go to. They had trust funds, allowances, dividend checks, doting grandmas, well-connected uncles, loving families. College for them was only a way station, a sort of youthful diversion. But this was my main chance, the only one. And I had blown it.

Thus, the ghettoization of the Palestinians in Gaza did not reap any dividends. The ghettoized community continued to express its will for life by firing primitive missiles into Israel. Ghettoizing or quarantining unwanted communities, even if they were regarded as dangerous, has never worked in history as a solution. The Jews know it best from their own history

No matter how little money we have, no matter what rung we occupy on anybody’s corporate ladder of success, in the end what everybody discovers is that what matters is other people. Human beings who give themselves to relational greatness—who have friends they laugh with, cry with, learn with, fight with, dance with, live and love and grow old and die with—these are the human beings who lead magnificent lives.

But the idea of a peace dividend could not be stifled so long as Americans were in need. Shortly after the war, historian Marilyn Young warned: The U.S. can destroy Iraq's highways, but not build its own; create the conditions for epidemic in Iraq, but not offer health care to millions of Americans. It can excoriate Iraqi treatment of the Kurdish minority, but not deal with domestic race relations; create homelessness abroad but not solve it here; keep a half million troops drug free as part of a war, but refuse to fund the treatment of millions of drug addicts at home. . . . . We shall lose the war after we have won it.

when i go to bed i go to bed with the lights on" Every morning I look up at the moon and I think You are a kiddie-pool and I will drown in you. I think about field trips and cold cuts. I think about dividends and other words I don’t understand. I make five hundred lunches in advance. I want to be prepared. I want new shoes. I want them to be waterproof and unforgettable. I want the kind of resume that takes home all the prizes and a salary commensurate with thunderstorms. I want to believe that there are people in this world whose lives are the size of houses and their bills are paid on time and when they see birds in the sky they think that’s a nice thing to see. In my free time I clip coupons and put them in my wallet where I forget to redeem them and this gnaws at me day in and day out and when I close my eyes I can feel my heart and it is trembling.

I’m an old man trying to give a young daughter advice, and it’s like a monkey trying to teach table manners to a bear. A drunk driver took my son’s life seventeen years ago and my wife has never been the same since. I’ve always seen the question of abortion in terms of Fred. I seem to be helpless to see it any other way, just as helpless as you were to stop your giggles when they came on you at that poetry reading, Frannie. Your mother would argue against it for all the standard reasons. Morality, she’d say. A morality that goes back two thousand years. The right to life. All our Western morality is based on that idea. I’ve read the philosophers. I range up and down them like a housewife with a dividend check in the Sears and Roebuck store. Your mother sticks with the Reader’s Digest, but it’s me that ends up arguing from feeling and her from the codes of morality. I just see Fred. He was destroyed inside. There was no chance for him. These right-to-life biddies hold up their pictures of babies drowned in salt, and arms and legs scraped out onto a steel table, so what? The end of a life is never pretty. I just see Fred, lying in that bed for seven days, everything that was ruined pasted over with bandages. Life is cheap, abortion makes it cheaper. I read more than she does, but she is the one who ends up making more sense on this one. What we do and what we think… those things are so often based on arbitrary judgments when they are right. I can’t get over that. It’s like a block in my throat, how all true logic seems to proceed from irrationality. From faith. I’m not making much sense, am I?

What was so terrible about properly funded hospitals, student grants, decent working conditions, affordable houses, trains that ran for convenience not profit, water that poured from the tap whose function was to slake your thirst not to make shareholders a dividend. What exactly was so wicked about public libraries, free eye tests and council houses? We may be coming to realise that the people who complain about the nanny state are the people who had nannies.

It turns out that addressing the most urgent problems of our time is, well, hard. But what is maddening about this debate is not how difficult fair-tax implementation would be but how utterly easy it is to find enough money to defeat poverty by closing nonsensical tax loopholes. If you don’t like the changes I suggested above, I can propose twenty smaller reforms, or fifty tinier ones, or a hundred even more innocuous nudges to get us there. We could raise $25 billion by winding down the mortgage interest deduction, which disproportionately benefits high-income families and does nothing to promote homeownership. We could find $64.7 billion by increasing the maximum taxable amount of earnings for Social Security so that high- and low-income workers are taxed at the same rate. We could scratch out another $37.3 billion if we treated capital gains and dividends for wealthy Americans the same way we treat income for tax purposes.

For the Europeans there really is a peace dividend, because we provide the peace. They can afford social democracy without the capacity to defend themselves because they can always depend on the United States. So why not us as well? Because what for Europe is decadence--decline, in both comfort and relative safety--is for us mere denial. Europe can eat, drink and be merry for America protects her. But for America it's different. If we choose the life of ease, who stands guard for us?

God is your boss. He is your power, he is your promotion, and he determines your future. It's not you, or your boss that makes the decisions about your life, it's God! So if your circumstances are a warning that you should slow down, then you should listen up, take note, and start working in God's timing. Don't fight God's timing, because you can never win. Just a gentle submission to the will and purpose of God to move more slowly, will pay dividends, and help you from making too many mistakes.

The Adult Whose Needs Were Mostly Met in Childhood… • Is satisfied with reasonable dividends of need-fulfillment in relationships. • Knows how to love unconditionally and yet tolerates no abuse or stuckness in relationships. • Changes the locus of trust from others to himself so that he receives loyalty when others show it and handles disappointment when others betray. The Adult Whose Needs Were Mostly Not Met in Childhood… • Exaggerates the needs so that they become insatiable or addictive. • Creates situations that reenact the original hurts and rejections, seek relationships that stimulate and maintain self-defeating beliefs rather than relationships that confront and dispel them, • Refuses to notice how abused or unhappy she is and uses the pretext of hoping for change or of coping with what is unchanging. • Lets her feelings go underground. “If the only safe thing for me was to let my feelings disappear, how can I now permit the self-exposure and vulnerability it takes to be loved?” • Repeats the childhood error of equating negative attention with love or neurotic anxiousness with solicitude. • Is afraid to receive the true love, self-disclosure, or generosity of others. In effect: cannot receive now what was not received originally.

Knowledge is in some ways the most important (though intangible) capital of a software engineering organization, and sharing of that knowledge is crucial for making an organization resilient and redundant in the face of change. A culture that promotes open and honest knowledge sharing distributes that knowledge efficiently across the organization and allows that organization to scale over time. In most cases, investments into easier knowledge sharing reap manyfold dividends over the life of a company.

If I burst into a house and yell to all assembled, “Put on the kettle!” I have uttered an imperative English sentence, but some will probably infer that I would like to have a cup of tea or other hot beverage, while another may further surmise that I feel myself at home here, and may in fact be the occupant of this house. Yet another person present, a monoglot Hungarian, may infer only that I speak English, and so does whomever I am addressing (well, it sounds like English to her), while somebody really in the know will be instantly informed that I have decided after all to steam open that sealed envelope and surreptitiously read the letter inside in spite of the fact that it isn’t addressed to me; a crime is about to be committed. What semantic information can be gleaned from the event depends on what information the gleaner already has accumulated. Learning that somebody speaks English can be a valuable update to your world knowledge, a design improvement that may someday pay big dividends.

Meanwhile the thinking person, by intellect usually left-wing but by temperament often right-wing, hovers at the gate of the Socialist fold. He is no doubt aware that he ought to be a Socialist. But he observes first the dullness of individual Socialists, then the apparent flabbiness of Socialist ideals, and veers away. Till quite recently it was natural to veer towards indinerentism. Ten years ago, even five years ago, the typical literary gent wrote books on baroque architecture and had a soul above politics. But that attitude is becoming difficult and even unfashionable. The times are growing harsher, the issues are clearer, the belief that nothing will ever change (i.e. that your dividends will always be safe) is less prevalent. The fence on which the literary gent sits, once as comfortable as the plush cushion of a cathedral-stall, is now pinching his bottom intolerably; more and more he shows a disposition to drop off on one side or the other. It is interesting to notice how many of our leading writers, who a dozen years ago were art for art's saking for all they were worth and would have considered it too vulgar for words to even vote at a general election, are now taking a definite political standpoint; while most of the younger writers, at least those of them who are not mere footlers, have been 'political' from the start. I believe that when the pinch comes there is a terrible danger that the main movement of the intelligentsia will be towards Fascism. . . . That will also be the moment when every person with any brains or decency will know in his bones that he ought to be on the Socialist side. But he will not necessarily come there of his own accord; there are too many ancient prejudices standing in the way. He will have to be persuaded, and by methods that imply an understanding of his viewpoint. Socialists cannot afford to waste any more time in preaching to the converted. Their job now is to make Socialists as rapidly as possible; instead of which, all too often, they are making Fascists.

Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart from withholding in practice, (if I were of power to give or to withhold,) the real rights of men. In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficience; and law itself is only beneficience acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to do justice, as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in public function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry, and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents; to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring; to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things. He that has but five shillings in the partnership, has as good a right to it, as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock; and as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention.

In forests – Seeds are planted in the soil (capital) and become trees that shed leaves as they grow. Those shedded leaves become added capital to the soil (dividends/yields). The tree also provides a home for other life forms which return capital to the soil. Upon the death of the tree, it’s entire body becomes capital as it is returned to the soil. In this cycle, every tree is an investment which results in the long term accumulation of soil (capital) over time. As the soil grows, it becomes better able to invest in future trees and host future forests. And the yield of them all collectively becomes greater and greater as the capital accumulates. In fact, everything in a natural ecosystem both is capital and exists in service to capital. This duality of capital in natural ecosystems is why capital in natural ecosystems is able to compound and multiply so well. So when it comes to investing - managing portfolios, we apply this duality of capital perspective and pair it with our stewardship identity, which allows us to grow portfolios and maximize wealth.

And suddenly he became almost lyric. "For three thousand years the Common Man has been fended off from the full and glorious life he might have had, by Make Believe. For three thousand years in one form or another he has been asking for an unrestricted share in the universal welfare. He has been asking for a fair dividend from civilisation. For all that time, and still it goes on, the advantaged people, the satisfied people, the kings and priests, the owners and traders, the gentlefolk and the leaders he trusted, have been cheating him tacitly or deliberately, out of his proper share and contribution in the common life. Sometimes almost consciously, sometimes subconsciously, cheating themselves about it as well. When he called upon God, they said 'We'll take care of your God for you', and they gave him organised religion. When he calls for Justice, they say 'Everything decently and in order', and give him a nice expensive Law Court beyond his means. When he calls for order and safety too loudly they hit him on the head with a policeman's truncheon. When he sought knowledge, they told him what was good for him. And to protect him from the foreigner, so they said, they got him bombed to hell, trained him to disembowel his fellow common men with bayonets and learn what love of King and Country really means. "All with the best intentions in the world, mind you. "Most of these people, I tell you, have acted in perfect good faith. They manage to believe that in sustaining this idiot's muddle they are doing tremendous things -- stupendous things -- for the Common Man. They can live lives of quiet pride and die quite edifyingly in an undernourished, sweated, driven and frustrated world. Useful public servants! Righteous self-applause! Read their bloody biographies!

You are to make up your mind whether it is to be God or man. Whether you are to be free or a slave. Whether it is to be progress or stagnation. As long as man loves a phantom in the sky more than he loves his fellow man, there will never be peace upon this earth; so long as man worships a Tyrant as the "Fatherhood of God," there will never be a "Brotherhood of Man." You must make the choice, you must come to the decision. Is it to be God or Man? Churches or Homes—preparation for death or happiness for the living? If ever man needed an example of the benefit of the one against the other, he need but read the pages of history for proof of how religion retarded progress and provoked hatred among the children of men. When theology ruled the world, man was a slave. The people lived in huts and hovels. They were clad in rags and skins; they devoured crusts and gnawed bones; the priests wore garments of silk and satin; carried mitres of gold and precious stones, robbed the poor and lived upon the fat of the land! Here and there a brave man appeared to question their authority. These martyrs to intellectual emancipation slowly and painfully broke the spell of superstition and ushered in the Age of Reason and the Dawn of Science. Man became the only god that man can know. He no longer fell upon his knees in fear. He began to enjoy the fruits of his own labor. He discovered a way to relieve himself from the drudgery of continuous toil; he began to enjoy a few comforts of life—and for the first time upon this earth he found a few moments for happiness. It is far more important to learn how to live than to learn how to pray. A new day and a new era dawned for him. His labors produced enormous dividends. He looked at the sky for the first time and saw that it was blue! He searched the heavens and found no God. He no longer feared the manifestations of nature.

You are personally responsible for so much of the sunshine that brightens up your life. Optimists and gentle souls continually benefit from their very own versions of daylight saving time. They get extra hours of happiness and sunshine every day. – Douglas Pagels, from Simple Thoughts That Can Literally Change Your Life The secret joys of living are not found by rushing from point A to point B, but by slowing down and inventing some imaginary letters along the way. – Douglas Pagels, from Simple Thoughts That Can Literally Change Your Life “There is nothing more important than family.” Those words should be etched in stone on the sidewalks that lead to every home. – Douglas Pagels, from Simple Thoughts That Can Literally Change Your Life I may be uncertain about exactly where I’m headed, but I am very clear regarding this: I’m glad I’ve got a ticket to go on this magnificent journey. – Douglas Pagels, from Simple Thoughts That Can Literally Change Your Life When your heart is filled with gratitude for what you do have, your head isn’t nearly so worried about what you don’t. – Douglas Pagels, from Simple Thoughts That Can Literally Change Your Life Don’t let cynical people transfer their cynicism off on you. In spite of its problems, it is still a pretty amazing world, and there are lots of truly wonderful people spinning around on this planet. – Douglas Pagels, from Required Reading for All Teenagers All the good things you can do – having the right attitude, having a strong belief in your abilities, making good choices and responsible decisions – all those good things will pay huge dividends. You’ll see. Your prayers will be heard. Your karma will kick in. The sacrifices you made will be repaid. And the good work will have all been worth it. – Douglas Pagels, from Required Reading for All Teenagers The more you’re bothered by something that’s wrong, the more you’re empowered to make things right. – Douglas Pagels, from Everyone Should Have a Book Like This to Get Through the Gray Days May you be blessed with all these things: A little more joy, a little less stress, a lot more understanding of your wonderfulness. Abundance in your life, blessings in your days, dreams that come true, and hopes that stay. A rainbow on the horizon, an angel by your side, and everything that could ever bring a smile to your life. – Douglas Pagels, from May You Be Blessed with All These Things Each day brings with it the miracle of a new beginning. Many of the moments ahead will be marvelously disguised as ordinary days, but each one of us has the chance to make something extraordinary out of them. – Douglas Pagels, from May You Be Blessed with All These Things Keep planting the seeds of your dreams, because if you keep believing in them, they will keep trying their best to blossom for you. – Douglas Pagels, from May You Be Blessed with All These Things I hope your dreams take you... to the corners of your smiles, to the highest of your hopes, to the windows of your opportunities, and to the most special places your heart has ever known. – Douglas Pagels, from May You Be Blessed with All These Things Love is what holds everything together. It’s the ribbon around the gift of life. – Douglas Pagels, from May You Be Blessed with All These Things There are times in life when just being brave is all you need to be. – Douglas Pagels, from May You Be Blessed with All These Things When it comes to anything – whether it involves people or places or jobs or hoped-for plans – you never know what the answer will be if you don’t ask. And you never know what the result will be if you don’t try. – Douglas Pagels, from Make Every Day a Positive One Don’t just have minutes in the day; have moments in time. – Douglas Pagels, from Chasing Away the Clouds A life well lived is simply a compilation of days well spent. – Douglas Pagels, from Chasing Away the Clouds

she feels lucky to have a job, but she is pretty blunt about what it is like to work at Walmart: she hates it. She’s worked at the local Walmart for nine years now, spending long hours on her feet waiting on customers and wrestling heavy merchandise around the store. But that’s not the part that galls her. Last year, management told the employees that they would get a significant raise. While driving to work or sorting laundry, Gina thought about how she could spend that extra money. Do some repairs around the house. Or set aside a few dollars in case of an emergency. Or help her sons, because “that’s what moms do.” And just before drifting off to sleep, she’d think about how she hadn’t had any new clothes in years. Maybe, just maybe. For weeks, she smiled at the notion. She thought about how Walmart was finally going to show some sign of respect for the work she and her coworkers did. She rolled the phrase over in her mind: “significant raise.” She imagined what that might mean. Maybe $2.00 more an hour? Or $2.50? That could add up to $80 a week, even $100. The thought was delicious. Then the day arrived when she received the letter informing her of the raise: 21 cents an hour. A whopping 21 cents. For a grand total of $1.68 a day, $8.40 a week. Gina described holding the letter and looking at it and feeling like it was “a spit in the face.” As she talked about the minuscule raise, her voice filled with anger. Anger, tinged with fear. Walmart could dump all over her, but she knew she would take it. She still needed this job. They could treat her like dirt, and she would still have to show up. And that’s exactly what they did. In 2015, Walmart made $14.69 billion in profits, and Walmart’s investors pocketed $10.4 billion from dividends and share repurchases—and Gina got 21 cents an hour more. This isn’t a story of shared sacrifice. It’s not a story about a company that is struggling to keep its doors open in tough times. This isn’t a small business that can’t afford generous raises. Just the opposite: this is a fabulously wealthy company making big bucks off the Ginas of the world. There are seven members of the Walton family, Walmart’s major shareholders, on the Forbes list of the country’s four hundred richest people, and together these seven Waltons have as much wealth as about 130 million other Americans. Seven people—not enough to fill the lineup of a softball team—and they have more money than 40 percent of our nation’s population put together. Walmart routinely squeezes its workers, not because it has to, but because it can. The idea that when the company does well, the employees do well, too, clearly doesn’t apply to giants like this one. Walmart is the largest employer in the country. More than a million and a half Americans are working to make this corporation among the most profitable in the world. Meanwhile, Gina points out that at her store, “almost all the young people are on food stamps.” And it’s not just her store. Across the country, Walmart pays such low wages that many of its employees rely on food stamps, rent assistance, Medicaid, and a mix of other government benefits, just to stay out of poverty. The