Personal Finance Quotes

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.

Your comfort zone is a place where you keep yourself in a self-illusion and nothing can grow there but your potentiality can grow only when you can think and grow out of that zone.

Every time you borrow money, you're robbing your future self.

Remember that every government service, every offer of government - financed security, is paid for in the loss of personal freedom... In the days to come, whenever a voice is raised telling you to let the government do it, analyze very carefully to see whether the suggested service is worth the personal freedom which you must forgo in return for such service.

Personal finances are like people’s personal health, crucial and tragic to the sufferer but tedious to the listener.

Cheap people often are not very happy because they love money more than they love their families

If you don't take good care of your credit, then your credit won't take good care of you.

It really is something ... that men disapprove even of our doing things that are patently good. Wouldn't it be possible for us just to banish these men from our lives, and escape their carping and jeering once and for all? Couldn't we live without them? Couldn't we earn our living and manage our affairs without help from them? Come on, let's wake up, and claim back our freedom, and the honour and dignity that they have usurped from us for so long. Do you think that if we really put our minds to it, we would be lacking the courage to defend ourselves, the strength to fend for ourselves, or the talents to earn our own living? Let's take our courage into our hands and do it, and then we can leave it up to them to mend their ways as much as they can: we shan't really care what the outcome is, just as long as we are no longer subjugated to them.

Your VISION and your self-willingness is the MOST powerful elements to conquer your goal

Financial peace isn't the acquisition of stuff. It's learning to live on less than you make, so you can give money back and have money to invest. You can't win until you do this.

This is true in personal finance, where you’re told to have a six-month emergency fund and save 10% of your salary.

To have a caring and committed heart toward someone—a heart so firm in its devotion as to sooner stop beating than neglect the object of its desire despite the person's state of health, appearance, reputation, finances, troubles, or challenges—that, dear world, is love. It is a rare find.

There is much more to wealth than simply a bank account with many zeros. A well-balanced, whole life is made up of wealth and success that comes from many facets; family, friends, work, faith, it is the complete person who works on each of these areas and creates the whole,

If repairing one's credit is as easy as sending some dispute letters to the credit bureaus then why doesn't everyone have good credit?

We were brand strategists and property lawyers and human resources specialists and personal finance consultants. We didn't know how to do anything so we Googled everything.

Are you willing to accept anything less than the credit you want, the credit you need and the credit you deserve?

You do pay a price for your Financial Freedom, but it is far lesser than what you pay for a Lifetime Slavery.

We cannot have a society, in which, if two people wish to communicate the only way that can happen is if it's financed by a third person who wishes to manipulate them.

Your assets are your employees. Invest more on those performing well. Let the non performers go.

put time on your side. Start saving early and save regularly. Live modestly and don't touch the money that's been set aside.

Thou shalt not forget that money is only money and not character or fame.

Budgeting has only one rule: Do not go over budget.

No matter what you do with your life during the day, there's always that moment when you have to wake up with yourself, with yourself and with the person that's sleeping beside you. That's the person that you make a home with, discuss life's big decisions with, share your finances, eat, shop, maybe parent with. That's the person you share your body with forever, kiss, touch, the one you sit on the couch with and watch movies, the one who gives you a hug when you've had a rough day. That's the person you put up a Christmas tree with and arrive home with for the holidays, the person you watch grow old and who still loves you when you're not as nice to look at, the one who holds your hand when you're dying. And none of that had anything to do with wrestling.

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.

At the end of the day, if you’re wasting your time by not investing in yourself, you’re going to waste away—and that would be the greatest waste of all.

Wealth is a person’s ability to survive a certain number of days forward.

Autumn is a momentum of the natures golden beauty…, so the same it’s time to find your momentum of life

A person either disciplines his finances or his finances disciplines him.

he took a survey of personal finance authors who recommend that people keep budgets, and he found that none of them actually kept budgets themselves.

Debt is just as dangerous in business as it is in personal finance. Entrepreneurs need to be careful not to cripple the businesses they lead with debt. Because one thing debt does well is cripple it's host.

Death and taxes in life are certain, knowing how to pay only your fair share is third.

How you think and create your inner world that you gonna become in your outer world. Your inner believe manifest you in the outside

Not a single person has died of boredom reading this book.

Your traditional EDUCATION is not going to CHANGE your life but the life you are experiencing that can change you. Choose a POSITIVE life STYLE with positive ATTITUDE which could bring you a life with HAPPINESS and WISDOM

Better to look broke and debt-free than to look good and in deep debt.

Finding Money Maturity means resolving your inner conflicts around money. It really comes down to discovering a sense of ease around money.

As soon as we become aware of money, we develop beliefs about it-- beliefs we cling to, sometimes for the rest of our lives, often at the cost of our souls.

Finances flow along the lines of relationships in the kingdom of God.

Your every positive action in your life will increase your self-esteem and this self-esteem will boost you for more positive action to take you on success

Thy shalt not worship thy investment advisor, for if she were so smart she would be retired by now.

I am sometimes asked about the concept or definition of a 'public intellectual,' and though I find the whole idea faintly silly, I believe it should ideally mean that the person so identified is self-sustaining and autonomously financed. Susan was pre-eminently one such.

If you are not EXCITED enough at your present life its mean your future is not EXITING. Excitement will give you ENTHUSIASM and enthusiasm will give you a positive energetic LIFE STYLE which could give you a successful exiting life…

Personal qualities today are increasingly marginalized in favor of technocratic, market-driven skills. Instead, finance is the new courage, branding is the new compassion, and coding is the new contemplation.

The truly wealthy don't often pursue status. They don't need to. They have already made it. The pursuit of Rolex watches and $100,000 vehicles is for wannabes like you and me. Why pursue status when you've already achieved it?

At the end of the day, taking 50% off a $250 dress still means walking out of the store $125 poorer.

We can't all be bakers or chefs. Many of us have modest ambitions. But we can all buy a piece of the pie.

The first rule in making money is not to lose it.

You will never learn to fly unless you jump!

When you know the impact of little expenses, you will realise that there is nothing little in this world.

Money Compounding is one concept that does not hit you unless your stars are aligned

Cultivate an environment fertile for good habits to flourish

CONFIDENCE is not showing off your VANITY, it’s about to be HUMBLED and KIND to others what are you truly SKILLED and PROFESSIONAL about…

Give yourself a great self-respect to know who you are then your confidence will shine on you

Your money habits and investment strategy is not all about what you do, but much about who you are. Become the person it takes to do, succeed, and innovate.

Financial stability is much more about doing the best with what you have and not about achieving a certain level of income.

Stop making debt and going broke and calling that 'living'. That's not living, it's lying.

Debt is a dream killer.

Not money, Not skills, but Time is the biggest lever for massive wealth creation

Who would appreciate such candor? No one. None of us really likes honesty. We prefer deception –but only when it is unabashedly flattering or artfully camouflaged. Groups seem to need to believe that they are superior to others and that they have a purpose greater than just passing along their genes to the next generation. Individuals seem to need similar delusions – about who they are and why they do what they do. They need heroes, however fraudulent… Studies show that people are more likely to accept the opinion of a confident con man than the cautious view of someone who actually knows what he is talking about. And professionals who form overconfident opinions on the basis of incorrect readings of the facts are more likely to succeed than their more competent peers who display greater doubt. What’s more, deception works best, according to studies by psychologists, when the person doing the deceiving is fool enough to be deceived, too; that is, when he believes his own lies. That is why incompetent leaders – who are naïve enough to fall for their own guff – are such a danger to civilized life. If they are modern leaders, they must also delude themselves into thinking they know how to make the world a better place. Invariably, the answers they propose to problems are ones that bubble up from their own vanity, the essence of which is to make the rest of the world look just like them!

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth. It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.

Materialism has defeated feminism as well. In a sign of the times, Gloria Steinem was on the picket line when the first American DeBeers store opened on Fifth Avenue in June 2005, protesting the evictions of Bushmen in Botswana to make room for diamond miners and the charges that the company dealt in "blood diamonds" used to finance civil wars in Africa. Her presence meant nothing to young Hollywood beauties who are pleased to shill for the diamond industry in magazine layouts and personal appearances. As Steinem stood outside, Lindsay Lohan was inside the party, gushing over the possibility that she could get to wear one of the big rocks. Asked by reporters about the Bushmen controversy, she shrugged it off: "I don't get involved in any drama.

We’re creatures of habit when it comes to mobile contracts and the wires piping high-speed data into our homes. It’s a pain to deal with transfers, installations, and customer service interactions, so we shrug and keep paying a premium.

In the end, managing your finances well is a lot like developing a strong personal productivity system: You keep track of everything without making it your full-time job; you set goals; you break them down into small bite-size tasks; you save yourself time by automating manual work; and you spend your time and brainpower focusing on the big picture. That’s what I try to do with my time and money.

1. Value Creation. Discovering what people need or want, then creating it. 2. Marketing. Attracting attention and building demand for what you’ve created. 3. Sales. Turning prospective customers into paying customers. 4. Value Delivery. Giving your customers what you’ve promised and ensuring that they’re satisfied. 5. Finance. Bringing in enough money to keep going and make your effort worthwhile.

The only person that should wear your ring is the one person that would never… 1. Ask you to remain silent and look the other way while they hurt another. 2. Jeopardize your future by taking risks that could potentially ruin your finances or reputation. 3. Teach your children that hurting others is okay because God loves them more. God didn’t ask you to keep your family together at the expense of doing evil to others. 4. Uses religious guilt to control you, while they are doing unreligious things. 5. Doesn't believe their actions have long lasting repercussions that could affect other people negatively. 6. Reminds you of your faults, but justifies their own. 7. Uses the kids to manipulate you into believing you are nothing. As if to suggest, you couldn’t leave the relationship and establish a better Christian marriage with someone that doesn’t do these things. Thus, making you believe God hates all the divorced people and will abandon you by not bringing someone better to your life, after you decide to leave. As if! 8. They humiliate you online and in their inner circle. They let their friends, family and world know your transgressions. 9. They tell you no marriage is perfect and you are not trying, yet they are the one that has stirred up more drama through their insecurities. 10. They say they are sorry, but they don’t show proof through restoring what they have done. 11. They don’t make you a better person because you are miserable. They have only made you a victim or a bitter survivor because of their need for control over you. 12. Their version of success comes at the cost of stepping on others. 13. They make your marriage a public event, in order for you to prove your love online for them. 14. They lie, but their lies are often justified. 15. You constantly have to start over and over and over with them, as if a connection could be grown and love restored through a honeymoon phase, or constant parental supervision of one another’s down falls. 16. They tell you that they don’t care about anyone other than who they love. However, their actions don’t show they love you, rather their love has become bitter insecurity disguised in statements such as, “Look what I did for us. This is how much I care.” 17. They tell you who you can interact with and who you can’t. 18. They believe the outside world is to blame for their unhappiness. 19. They brought you to a point of improvement, but no longer have your respect. 20. They don't make you feel anything, but regret. You know in your heart you settled.

A new car can be driven for 10 years or more if it’s properly maintained. Heck, drive that sucker into the ground before you replace it!

Are your kids better off watching 10 hours of Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel every week?

Either you create million excuses or you create million rupees. But you cannot create both.

Financial planning and discipline is key to one's financial freedom.

Being the highly trained investment mogul that I am, I could certainly find places to put that money where it would earn more. Or would it? Remember, personal finance is personal. I have come to realize that Sharon’s peace of mind bought with the oversized emergency fund is a great return on investment. Guys, this can be a wonderful gift to your wife. An Emergency Fund Can

when you become addict in to MATERIAL things in life then the TRUE natural life start to run away from you, YES! it's can give you certain pleasure in the society but in the same time it will sabotage your true HAPPINESS of life which we could have simply with GRATITUDE and FORGIVENESS

Out in the real world, in which actual human beings live, it’s hard to come up with a more stupid example than 'ditching the daily latte'. Want to get your finances in order? Great! All you have to do is wean yourself off an addictive, stimulatory drug, which you’ve been using all your adult life, will cause withdrawal symptoms and impair your performance when you try to quit, is universally available, woven into the very fabric of social life, is the only addiction that carries no stigma whatsoever, and helped bring about the Enlightenment. Oh, and it’s also really frickin’ delicious.

The Decentralization of Finance is really good for humanity and it’s ultimately a win for each and every one of us. Because now that we can circumvent banks, exchanges and brokerage companies by using smart contracts on the blockchain… every person, every family, and every business will experience more more liberty, more freedom, more opportunities, more abundance, more power, and more wealth.

The exhausted are the saints of the wasted life, if a saint is a person who is better than others at suffering. What the exhausted suffer better is the way bodies and time are so often at odds with each other in our time of overwhelming and confused chronicity, when each hour is amplified past circadianism, quadrupled in the quarter-hour's agenda, Pomodoro-ed, hacked, FOMO-ed, and productivized. The exhausted are the human evidence of each minute misunderstood to be an empire for finance, of each human body misunderstood to be an instrument that should play a thousand compliant songs at once.

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.

Understanding what businesses actually do to create and deliver value is essential knowledge, but many business programs have de-emphasized value creation and operations in favor of finance and quantitative analysis.

The most important factor to growing your financial stability isn't your income. Rather, your success is much more related to how well you keep your eye on the ball. Organize your finances around the principles of financial stability. Aim for that goal, and over time you will find many unexpected ways to actually put money aside.

The Decentralization of Finance is really good for humanity. Now that we circumvent can banks, exchanges and brokerages by using smart contracts on the blockchain… every person, every family, and every business will experience more freedom, more liberty, more opportunities, more power, more abundance, and more wealth. So DeFi is a win for humanity.

A 10% loss in any investment can be recovered, not by 10%, but only by 11% gain. A 50% loss in any investment can be recovered only by 100% gain. And a 90% loss in any investment can be recovered only by a whopping 1,000% gain. Yes, all the above statements are true. Numbers can confuse the best of financial wizards. It needs a rare trait of common sense to unravel the mysteries of finance. For your investments: - Keep them Simple. - Avoid Jargons. - Exhibit Discipline. - Be Consistent. - Apply Common Sense

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let’s be kind to the people in our own existence. Let’s occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever. Yesterday I knew I had no future, and that it was impossible for me to accept my life as it is now. And yet today, that same messy life seems full of hope. Potential. The impossible, I suppose, happens via living. Will my life be miraculously free from pain, despair, grief, heartbreak, hardship, loneliness, depression? No. But do I want to live? Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.

Value can’t be created without understanding what people want (market research). Attracting customers first requires getting their attention, then making them interested (marketing). In order to close a sale, people must first trust your ability to deliver on what’s promised (value delivery and operations). Customer satisfaction depends on reliably exceeding the customer’s expectations (customer service). Profit sufficiency requires bringing in more money than is spent (finance).

The starting point for ‘discounts’ may be the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP), an arbitrarily high price that no one will ever pay. By crossing out the high MSRP, retailers are handing shoppers a psychological victory that will make them feel good about the purchase, even if the discounted price is still expensive.

Meanwhile there was work to do: raising our children, wading through a mass of legal papers, finances, and taxes, and recovering the professional life that was now our sole support, while, at a subterranean level, feeling adrift in dark, unknown waters. And though I'd flared with anger when the priest at Heinz's funeral had warned not to be "angry at God" because of his sudden and violent death, I struggled not to sink under currents of fear, anger, and confusion that roiled an ocean of grief.

The majority of the employees here are civilians," explained my Alderman guide/protector/companion/would-be-executioner as we strode without a word to the security guards through the foyer towards the lifts. "They conduct themselves within perfectly standard financial services and regulations. There is one specialist suboperational department catering to the financing of more...unusual extra-capital ventures, and the executive assets who operate it have to undergo a rigorous level of training, psyche evaluation, personality assessment, and team operational analyses." We stared at him, and said, "We barely understood the little words." "No," he replied, "I didn't think you would.

Creating a home that makes you feel wonderful is a gift you give yourself that echoes through the rest of your life. A bedroom you love is one in which you want to have an organized, well-cared-for wardrobe, which means less money spent replacing your battered items. A happy, practical, smartly appointed kitchen is one you actually *want* to cook in, which means much less money spent eating out or ordering in. A chic and comfortable living room means more entertaining at home and embracing the lost art of dinner parties (always cheaper than doing drinks and a restaurant dinner!). Even a Zen, candle-filled, clean bathroom is one in which you want to spend time doing home spa treatments instead of feeling like you have to go somewhere expensive to feel beautiful. If you create a home that is most attuned to your life and somewhere you really enjoy being, everything benefits.

The Decentralization of Finance is really good for humanity and it’s ultimately a win for each and every one of us. Because now that we can circumvent banks, exchanges and brokerage companies by using smart contracts on the blockchain… every person, every family, and every business will experience more liberty, more freedom, more opportunities, more abundance, more power, and more wealth. This makes way for more opportunities around financial wellness, permaculture investing, more effective crowdfunding, better ownership and equity arrangements, and more.

The motivation for taking on debt is to buy assets or claims rising in price. Over the past half-century the aim of financial investment has been less to earn profits on tangible capital investment than to generate “capital” gains (most of which take the form of debt-leveraged land prices, not industrial capital). Annual price gains for property, stocks and bonds far outstrip the reported real estate rents, corporate profits and disposable personal income after paying for essential non-discretionary spending, headed by FIRE [Finance, Insurance, Real Estate]-sector charges.

A human rights activist is the worst type of person to mess with. If I can choose an enemy between the worst finance CEO, or the worst human rights violating dictator, and a human rights activist, I would choose the former. A human rights activist doesn't let go; doesn't have a peace of mind till responsibility for a wrongful act is finally reached. That's the uncomfortable type of person that cannot stand injustice, the type of person that doesn't fear "social desirability" sanctions for confronting wrongdoers directly, upsetting the silence and the status quo, and for screaming loud. That's the person that dares to stand up -- for themselves, for others. That's the type of person who doesn't lay low, doesn't fear being perceived as uncomfortable, the type of person that doesn't just "go along". I do not want as an enemy a person who cannot let go and forget injustice, but who instead will plug away till the very end, till justice is reached. I do not want that man or woman as an enemy.

The answer, of course, is that we are always and forever influenced by those with whom we associate. If a man keeps company with those who curse and complain—he will soon find curses and complaints flowing like a river from his own mouth. If he spends his days with the lazy—those seeking handouts—he will soon find his finances in disarray. Many of our sorrows can be traced to relationships with the wrong people.

I have never understood the importance of having children memorize battle dates. It seems like such a waste of mental energy. Instead, we could teach them important subjects such as How the Mind Works, How to Handle Finances, How to Invest Money for Financial Security, How to Be a Parent, How to Create Good Relationships, and How to Create and Maintain Self-Esteem and Self-Worth. Can you imagine what a whole generation of adults would be like if they had been taught these subjects in school along with their regular curriculum? Think how these truths would manifest. We would have happy people who feel good about themselves. We would have people who are comfortable financially and who enrich the economy by investing their money wisely. They would have good relationships with everyone and would be comfortable with the role of parenthood and then go on to create another generation of children who feel good about themselves. Yet within all this, each person would remain an individual expressing his or her own creativity.

I will never not be poor, so what does it matter if I don't pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing? It's not like the sacrifice will result in improved circumstances; the thing holding me back isn't that I blow five bucks at Wendy's. It's that now that I have proven that I am a Poor Person that is all that I am or ever will be. It is not worth it to me to live a bleak life devoid of small pleasures so that one day I can make a single large purchase. I will never have large pleasures to hold on to. There's a certain pull to live what bits of life you can while there's money in your pocket, because no matter how responsible you are you will be broke in three days anyway. When you never have enough money it ceases to have meaning. I imagine having a lot of it is the same thing.

On another night, in a different dream I was asking a question. “How is it that you say all are equal, yet the obvious contradictions smack us in the face: inequalities in virtues, temperances, finances, rights, abilities and talents, intelligence, mathematical aptitude, ad infinitum?” The answer was a metaphor. “It is as if a large diamond were to be found inside each person. Picture a diamond a foot long. The diamond has a thousand facets, but the facets are covered with dirt and tar. It is the job of the soul to clean each facet until the surface is brilliant and can reflect a rainbow of colors. “Now, some have cleaned many facets and gleam brightly. Others have only managed to clean a few; they do not sparkle so. Yet, underneath the dirt, each person possesses within his or her breast a brilliant diamond with a thousand gleaming facets. The diamond is perfect, not one flaw. The only differences among people are the number of facets cleaned. But each diamond is the same, and each is perfect. “When all the facets are cleaned and shining forth in a spectrum of lights, the diamond returns to the pure energy that it was originally. The lights remain. It is as if the process that goes into making the diamond is reversed, all that pressure released. The pure energy exists in the rainbow of lights, and the lights possess consciousness and knowledge. “And all of the diamonds are perfect.” Sometimes

Despite the intervening six decades of scientific inquiry since Selye’s groundbreaking work, the physiological impact of the emotions is still far from fully appreciated. The medical approach to health and illness continues to suppose that body and mind are separable from each other and from the milieu in which they exist. Compounding that mistake is a definition of stress that is narrow and simplistic. Medical thinking usually sees stress as highly disturbing but isolated events such as, for example, sudden unemployment, a marriage breakup or the death of a loved one. These major events are potent sources of stress for many, but there are chronic daily stresses in people’s lives that are more insidious and more harmful in their long-term biological consequences. Internally generated stresses take their toll without in any way seeming out of the ordinary. For those habituated to high levels of internal stress since early childhood, it is the absence of stress that creates unease, evoking boredom and a sense of meaninglessness. People may become addicted to their own stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, Hans Selye observed. To such persons stress feels desirable, while the absence of it feels like something to be avoided. When people describe themselves as being stressed, they usually mean the nervous agitation they experience under excessive demands — most commonly in the areas of work, family, relationships, finances or health. But sensations of nervous tension do not define stress — nor, strictly speaking, are they always perceived when people are stressed. Stress, as we will define it, is not a matter of subjective feeling. It is a measurable set of objective physiological events in the body, involving the brain, the hormonal apparatus, the immune system and many other organs. Both animals and people can experience stress with no awareness of its presence. “Stress is not simply nervous tension,” Selye pointed out. “Stress reactions do occur in lower animals, and even in plants, that have no nervous systems…. Indeed, stress can be produced under deep anaesthesia in patients who are unconscious, and even in cell cultures grown outside the body.” Similarly, stress effects can be highly active in persons who are fully awake, but who are in the grip of unconscious emotions or cut off from their body responses. The physiology of stress may be triggered without observable effects on behaviour and without subjective awareness, as has been shown in animal experiments and in human studies.

Questions for Self-Examination 1.  How do you define creativity? Do you consider yourself a creative person? Do you follow through on your creative ideas? 2.  How often do you direct your creative energies into negative paths of expression? Do you exaggerate or embellish “facts” to support your point of view? 3.  Are you comfortable with your sexuality? If not, are you able to work toward healing your sexual imbalances? Do you use people for sexual pleasure, or have you felt used? Are you strong enough to honor your sexual boundaries? 4.  Do you keep your word? What is your personal code of honor? of ethics? Do you negotiate your ethics depending upon your circumstances? 5.  Do you have an impression of God as a force that exerts justice in your life? 6.  Are you a controlling person? Do you engage in power plays in your relationships? Are you able to see yourself clearly in circumstances related to power and money? 7.  Does money have authority over you? Do you make compromises that violate your inner self for the sake of financial security? 8. How often do survival fears dictate your choices? 9.  Are you strong enough to master your fears concerning finances and physical survival, or do they control you and your attitudes? 10.  What goals do you have for yourself that you have yet to pursue? What stands in the way of your acting upon those goals?

I remember talking to my friend Ben once about a person who had once lied to me. We’d been working on a project together, and this person lied about some of the finances. Ben is a decade older than me, a cinematographer with a gentle heart, a guy you’d think could easily be taken advantage of. But when I told him about my friend, Ben said, “Don, I’ve learned there are givers and takers in this life. I’ve slowly let the takers go and I’ve had it for the better.” He continued, “God bless them, when they learn to play by the rules they are welcomed back, but my heart is worth protecting.” At first, it was hard to act on what Ben was talking about, about the givers and the takers. I felt like a jerk for letting my friend go. But then I realized I didn’t have a healthy relationship with him in the first place. When there are lies in a relationship, it’s not like you’re actually connecting. And I realized another thing too: it wasn’t me who was walking away from my friend. It was my friend who hadn’t played by the rules and was incompatible in a healthy relationship. And here’s another thing that’s strange. After distancing myself from my friend I loved him more, not less. I protected myself for sure, but my anger went away. Once he wasn’t hurting me anymore, I could finally have compassion and grace. It makes me wonder how many people have damaged their own lives by mistaking enablement for grace?

So identified has the State become in the public mind with the provision of these services that an attack on State financing appears to many people as an attack on the service itself. Thus if one maintains that the State should not supply court services, and that private enterprise on the market could supply such service more efficiently as well as more morally, people tend to think of this as denying the importance of courts themselves. The libertarian who wants to replace government by private enterprises in the above areas is thus treated in the same way as he would be if the government had, for various reasons, been supplying shoes as a tax-financed monopoly from time immemorial. If the government and only the government had had a monopoly of the shoe manufacturing and retailing business, how would most of the public treat the libertarian who now came along to advocate that the government get out of the shoe business and throw it open to private enterprise? He would undoubtedly be treated as follows: people would cry, “How could you? You are opposed to the public, and to poor people, wearing shoes! And who would supply shoes to the public if the government got out of the business? Tell us that! Be constructive! It’s easy to be negative and smart-alecky about government; but tell us who would supply shoes? Which people? How many shoe stores would be available in each city and town? How would the shoe firms be capitalized? How many brands would there be? What material would they use? What lasts? What would be the pricing arrangements for shoes? Wouldn’t regulation of the shoe industry be needed to see to it that the product is sound? And who would supply the poor with shoes? Suppose a poor person didn’t have the money to buy a pair?” These questions, ridiculous as they seem to be and are with regard to the shoe business, are just as absurd when applied to the libertarian who advocates a free market in fire, police, postal service, or any other government operation. The point is that the advocate of a free market in anything cannot provide a “constructive” blueprint of such a market in advance. The essence and the glory of the free market is that individual firms and businesses, competing on the market, provide an ever-changing orchestration of efficient and progressive goods and services: continually improving products and markets, advancing technology, cutting costs, and meeting changing consumer demands as swiftly and as efficiently as possible.

In times of crisis you either deepen democracy, or you go to the other extreme and become totalitarian. Our struggles for democracy have taught us some important and valuable lessons. Over a million citizen activists of all ethnic groups, mostly young people, made history by going door to door, urging voters to go to the polls and send Barack Obama to the White House in 2008. We did this because we believed and hoped that this charismatic black man could bring about the transformational changes we urgently need at this time on the clock of the world, when the U.S. empire is unraveling and the American pursuit of unlimited economic growth has reached its social and ecological limits. We have since witnessed the election of our first black president stir increasingly dangerous counterrevolutionary resentments in a white middle class uncertain of its future in a country that is losing two wars and eliminating well-paying union jobs. We have watched our elected officials in DC bail out the banks while wheeling and dealing with insurance company lobbyists to deliver a contorted version of health care reform. We have been stunned by the audacity of the Supreme Court as it reaffirmed the premise that corporations are persons and validated corporate financing of elections in its Citizens United decision.

The Proofs Human society has devised a system of proofs or tests that people must pass before they can participate in many aspects of commercial exchange and social interaction. Until they can prove that they are who they say they are, and until that identity is tied to a record of on-time payments, property ownership, and other forms of trustworthy behavior, they are often excluded—from getting bank accounts, from accessing credit, from being able to vote, from anything other than prepaid telephone or electricity. It’s why one of the biggest opportunities for this technology to address the problem of global financial inclusion is that it might help people come up with these proofs. In a nutshell, the goal can be defined as proving who I am, what I do, and what I own. Companies and institutions habitually ask questions—about identity, about reputation, and about assets—before engaging with someone as an employee or business partner. A business that’s unable to develop a reliable picture of a person’s identity, reputation, and assets faces uncertainty. Would you hire or loan money to a person about whom you knew nothing? It is riskier to deal with such people, which in turn means they must pay marked-up prices to access all sorts of financial services. They pay higher rates on a loan or are forced by a pawnshop to accept a steep discount on their pawned belongings in return for credit. Unable to get bank accounts or credit cards, they cash checks at a steep discount from the face value, pay high fees on money orders, and pay cash for everything while the rest of us enjoy twenty-five days interest free on our credit cards. It’s expensive to be poor, which means it’s a self-perpetuating state of being. Sometimes the service providers’ caution is dictated by regulation or compliance rules more than the unwillingness of the banker or trader to enter a deal—in the United States and other developed countries, banks are required to hold more capital against loans deemed to be of poor quality, for example. But many other times the driving factor is just fear of the unknown. Either way, anything that adds transparency to the multi-faceted picture of people’s lives should help institutions lower the cost of financing and insuring them.

While these tactics were aggressive and crude, they confirmed that our legislation had touched a nerve. I wasn’t the only one who recognized this. Many other victims of human rights abuses in Russia saw the same thing. After the bill was introduced they came to Washington or wrote letters to the Magnitsky Act’s cosponsors with the same basic message: “You have found the Achilles’ heel of the Putin regime.” Then, one by one, they would ask, “Can you add the people who killed my brother to the Magnitsky Act?” “Can you add the people who tortured my mother?” “How about the people who kidnapped my husband?” And on and on. The senators quickly realized that they’d stumbled onto something much bigger than one horrific case. They had inadvertently discovered a new method for fighting human rights abuses in authoritarian regimes in the twenty-first century: targeted visa sanctions and asset freezes. After a dozen or so of these visits and letters, Senator Cardin and his cosponsors conferred and decided to expand the law, adding sixty-five words to the Magnitsky Act. Those new words said that in addition to sanctioning Sergei’s tormentors, the Magnitsky Act would sanction all other gross human rights abusers in Russia. With those extra sixty-five words, my personal fight for justice had become everyone’s fight. The revised bill was officially introduced on May 19, 2011, less than a month after we posted the Olga Stepanova YouTube video. Following its introduction, a small army of Russian activists descended on Capitol Hill, pushing for the bill’s passage. They pressed every senator who would talk to them to sign on. There was Garry Kasparov, the famous chess grand master and human rights activist; there was Alexei Navalny, the most popular Russian opposition leader; and there was Evgenia Chirikova, a well-known Russian environmental activist. I didn’t have to recruit any of these people. They just showed up by themselves. This uncoordinated initiative worked beautifully. The number of Senate cosponsors grew quickly, with three or four new senators signing on every month. It was an easy sell. There wasn’t a pro-Russian-torture-and-murder lobby in Washington to oppose it. No senator, whether the most liberal Democrat or the most conservative Republican, would lose a single vote for banning Russian torturers and murderers from coming to America. The Magnitsky Act was gathering so much momentum that it appeared it might be unstoppable. From the day that Kyle Scott at the State Department stonewalled me, I knew that the administration was dead set against this, but now they were in a tough spot. If they openly opposed the law, it would look as if they were siding with the Russians. However, if they publicly supported it, it would threaten Obama’s “reset” with Russia. They needed to come up with some other solution. On July 20, 2011, the State Department showed its cards. They sent a memo to the Senate entitled “Administration Comments on S.1039 Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law.” Though not meant to be made public, within a day it was leaked.

Any relationship will have its difficulties, but sometimes those problems are indicators of deep-rooted problems that, if not addressed quickly, will poison your marriage. If any of the following red flags—caution signs—exist in your relationship, we recommend that you talk about the situation as soon as possible with a pastor, counselor or mentor. Part of this list was adapted by permission from Bob Phillips, author of How Can I Be Sure: A Pre-Marriage Inventory.1 You have a general uneasy feeling that something is wrong in your relationship. You find yourself arguing often with your fiancé(e). Your fiancé(e) seems irrationally angry and jealous whenever you interact with someone of the opposite sex. You avoid discussing certain subjects because you’re afraid of your fiancé(e)’s reaction. Your fiancé(e) finds it extremely difficult to express emotions, or is prone to extreme emotions (such as out-of-control anger or exaggerated fear). Or he/she swings back and forth between emotional extremes (such as being very happy one minute, then suddenly exhibiting extreme sadness the next). Your fiancé(e) displays controlling behavior. This means more than a desire to be in charge—it means your fiancé(e) seems to want to control every aspect of your life: your appearance, your lifestyle, your interactions with friends or family, and so on. Your fiancé(e) seems to manipulate you into doing what he or she wants. You are continuing the relationship because of fear—of hurting your fiancé(e), or of what he or she might do if you ended the relationship. Your fiancé(e) does not treat you with respect. He or she constantly criticizes you or talks sarcastically to you, even in public. Your fiancé(e) is unable to hold down a job, doesn’t take personal responsibility for losing a job, or frequently borrows money from you or from friends. Your fiancé(e) often talks about aches and pains, and you suspect some of these are imagined. He or she goes from doctor to doctor until finding someone who will agree that there is some type of illness. Your fiancé(e) is unable to resolve conflict. He or she cannot deal with constructive criticism, or never admits a mistake, or never asks for forgiveness. Your fiancé(e) is overly dependant on parents for finances, decision-making or emotional security. Your fiancé(e) is consistently dishonest and tries to keep you from learning about certain aspects of his or her life. Your fiancé(e) does not appear to recognize right from wrong, and rationalizes questionable behavior. Your fiancé(e) consistently avoids responsibility. Your fiancé(e) exhibits patterns of physical, emotional or sexual abuse toward you or others. Your fiancé(e) displays signs of drug or alcohol abuse: unexplained absences of missed dates, frequent car accidents, the smell of alcohol or strong odor of mouthwash, erratic behavior or emotional swings, physical signs such as red eyes, unkempt look, unexplained nervousness, and so on. Your fiancé(e) has displayed a sudden, dramatic change in lifestyle after you began dating. (He or she may be changing just to win you and will revert back to old habits after marriage.) Your fiancé(e) has trouble controlling anger. He or she uses anger as a weapon or as a means of winning arguments. You have a difficult time trusting your fiancé(e)—to fulfill responsibilities, to be truthful, to help in times of need, to make ethical decisions, and so on. Your fiancé(e) has a history of multiple serious relationships that have failed—a pattern of knowing how to begin a relationship but not knowing how to keep one growing. Look over this list. Do any of these red flags apply to your relationship? If so, we recommend you talk about the situation as soon as possible with a pastor, counselor or mentor.