Poverty To Success Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Poverty To Success. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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It takes nothing to stay in poverty, but everything to break free from it.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for all Africans: How Every African Can Live the Life of Their Dreams)
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Some people are born into families that encourage education; others are against it. Some are born into flourishing economies encouraging of entrepreneurship; others are born into war and destitution. I want you to be successful, and I want you to earn it. But realize that not all success is due to hard work, and not all poverty is due to laziness. Keep this in mind when judging people, including yourself.
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Morgan Housel (The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness)
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A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.
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Lewis Mumford
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Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken...
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F. Scott Fitzgerald
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It is a common condition of being poor... you are always afraid that the good things in your life are temporary, that someone can take them away, because you have no power beyond your own brute strength to stop them.
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Rick Bragg
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How do I change? If I feel depressed I will sing. If I feel sad I will laugh. If I feel ill I will double my labor. If I feel fear I will plunge ahead. If I feel inferior I will wear new garments. If I feel uncertain I will raise my voice. If I feel poverty I will think of wealth to come. If I feel incompetent I will think of past success. If I feel insignificant I will remember my goals. Today I will be the master of my emotions.
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Og Mandino
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Should happiness and success be hidden, in view of the misery and poverty around. Would it be a sign of selfishness and un-intellectual behavior, if we admit to a pursuit of happiness? Could it, on the contrary, not work out as a motivation and an incentive? When giving voice to our happiness, could it not be perceived as a positive challenge? Could happiness not be contagious and become a salutary infectious syndrome? A beneficial infection. ( "Happy days are back again" )
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Erik Pevernagie
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Some people will insult your intelligence by suddenly being nice or nicer to you once you make it … or they think you have.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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I grew up hearing over and over, to the point of tedium, that "hard work" was the secret of success: "Work hard and you'll get ahead" or "It's hard work that got us where we are." No one ever said that you could work hard - harder even than you ever thought possible - and still find yourself sinking ever deeper into poverty and debt.
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Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America)
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To be conscious of being poor while praying for riches is to be rewarded with that which you are conscious of being, namely, poverty. Prayers to be successful must be claimed and appropriated. Assume the positive consciousness of the thing desired.
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Neville Goddard (Your Faith is Your Fortune)
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Poverty, I realized, wasn’t only a lack of financial resources; it was isolation from the kind of people who could help you make more of yourself.
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Keith Ferrazzi (Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time)
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Life is too short to be anything but happy. So kiss slowly. Love deeply. Forgive quickly. Take chances and never have regrets. Forget the past but remember what it taught you.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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I saw that "success," "failure," "poverty", "riches," were price tags, money values of the market place which had mesmerized and sidetracked me for years.
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Anzia Yezierska
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If a man is to lose his fortune, it is a good thing if he were poor before he acquired it, for poverty requires aptitude.
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Geraldine Brooks (March)
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When a destitute mother starts earning an income, her dreams of success invariably center around her children. A woman's second priority is the household. She wants to buy utensils, build a stronger roof, or find a bed for herself and her family. A man has an entirely different set of priorities. When a destitute father earns extra income, he focuses more attention on himself. Thus money entering a household through a woman brings more benefits to the family as a whole.
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Muhammad Yunus (Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty)
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But death and life, success and failure, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these happen to good and bad alike, and they are neither noble or shamefulβ€”and hence neither good nor bad.
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Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
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Live a life that leaves a memory, nobody can steal.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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Success" If you want a thing bad enough To go out and fight for it, Work day and night for it, Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for it If only desire of it Makes you quite mad enough Never to tire of it, Makes you hold all other things tawdry and cheap for it If life seems all empty and useless without it And all that you scheme and you dream is about it, If gladly you'll sweat for it, Fret for it, Plan for it, Lose all your terror of God or man for it, If you'll simply go after that thing that you want. With all your capacity, Strength and sagacity, Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity, If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt, Nor sickness nor pain Of body or brain Can turn you away from the thing that you want, If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it, You'll get it!
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Berton Braley
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A criminal is undoubtedly a poor soul, who is punished for his poverty.
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Thomas Bernhard (Prose)
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The Rooster Coop was doing its work. Servants have to keep other servants from becoming innovators, experimenters or entrepreneurs. The coop is guarded from the inside.
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Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger)
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Working really hard is what successful people do, and the genius of the culture formed in the rice paddies is that hard work gave those in the fields a way to find meaning in the midst of great uncertainty and poverty.
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Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers: The Story of Success)
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The only unreachable dream is the one you don’t reach for.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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Many skills, as every successful entrepreneur knows, cannot be taught in school. They require doing. Sometimes a life of doing. And where money-making is concerned, nothing compresses the time frame needed to leap from my-shit-just-sits-there-until-it-rains poverty to which-of-my-toilets-shall-I-use affluence like an apprenticeship with someone who already has the angles all figured out.
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Mohsin Hamid (How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia)
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We seek God in our vigor, but he often comes to us in suffering. We pursue God in success; we find him in defeat. We assume following him will mean gain; he is our Lord in loss. We want him in abundance; but he speaks to us in poverty. 

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David A. Fiensy (The Journey: Spiritual Growth in Galatians and Philippians)
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If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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Tenderhearted people are silent sufferers they just learn the art to fly with broken wings.
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Abhysheq Shukla (Feelings Undefined: The Charm of the Unsaid Vol. 1)
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The richest people in the world build networks and invest in people; everyone else looks for work and invests in survival.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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Neatness and cleanliness is not a function of how rich or poor you are but that of mentality and principle.
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Ikechukwu Izuakor (Great Reflections on Success)
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Life's too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, So ... Love the people who treat you right and pray for the ones who don't. Life is 10% what you make it 90% how you take it.
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Abhysheq Shukla (Feelings Undefined: The Charm of the Unsaid Vol. 1)
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You can perhaps, in a number of circumstances, tell yourself that you can't have more than you have until you do better than you're doing, but by all means steer clear of its reverse, the creed of defeat, in saying that you can't do better than you're doing until you can have more than you have.
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Criss Jami (Healology)
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Obsessed with success and wealth and despising failure and poverty, our society is systematically dividing the population into winners and losers, using institutions like the courts to speed the process.
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Matt Taibbi (The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap)
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Theres no competition in DESTINY. Run your own RACE and wish others WELL!!!
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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No body is a looser either he is a Winner or a Learner
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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Have and show motivation to do and learn. That's the key for a good career. Everything else is an extrapolation of that.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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Don't only learn from the rich and successful men, also learn from the poor and those that failed woefully, for in their failures lies the secret of success as well.
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Ikechukwu Izuakor (Great Reflections on Success)
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Many argue that the twentieth century’s council estates have had disastrous social consequences. People in poverty feel, and indeed actually grow, poorer if forced to live in a sink estate, while the middle classes flee to their own leafy ghettoes outside city centres. A successful β€˜place’ mixes up the different groups in society, forcing them to mingle and to look out for each other.
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Lucy Worsley (If Walls Could Talk: An intimate history of the home)
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The only difference between success and failure is Lack of Vision
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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IF you want to be a winner than follow one simple rule and feed it in your mind. Take each task and work as " Do it yourself project.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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True Relations never break and relation which breaks were never true
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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Time change - Moments don't.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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Smiling is not a choice It’s a Lifestyle Pass it on
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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Never forget a man who weathered and rescued you from the storm just because you can see the shores.
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Ikechukwu Izuakor (Great Reflections on Success)
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Memories of the past are what drive us, whether to a life of beauty or a life of insanity is up to us.
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Abhysheq Shukla (Feelings Undefined: The Charm of the Unsaid Vol. 1)
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There's a story behind every "I don't believe in love" "Period
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Abhysheq Shukla (Feelings Undefined: The Charm of the Unsaid Vol. 1)
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Your true love for God is demonstrated through your ability to hold onto your faithfulness in the midst of Prosperity and Poverty, Happiness and Hardships, Sickness and Success; in whatever is Appealing or Appalling!
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Israelmore Ayivor (The Great Hand Book of Quotes)
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Growing older doesn't mean that you are more mature than everyone who is younger than you. Maturity is a lot of things, and age has nothing to do with it.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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The thing about our choices is that after we have made them, they turn around and make us.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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What seems like the right thing to do could also be the hardest thing you have ever done in your life
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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Living your life is a task so difficult it has never been attempted before.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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The only goal in life is to be happy, genuinely, intensely and consistently , regardless of what it looks like to others.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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Sometimes life is like living in a chamber of Liquid Oxygen. Liquid don't allow you to live and Oxygen don't let you die.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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Life is a do-it-yourself project.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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Life doesn't walk away, we do.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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As long as we have MEMORIES, yesterday REMAINS and as long as we have HOPE, tomorrow AWAITS...
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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Don't ask creator to guide your footsteps if you're not willing to move your feet.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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A lie near to truth is always difficult to catch
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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To be successful in life , Plan, Implement, Revise, Update, and Build on Change.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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No matter how much struggle you face in your journey towards success, someday you will look back and realize your struggles changed your life for the better.
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Abhysheq Shukla (The Reflection "Success or Stress"Choose Wisely)
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In the end it will be your β€œActions” β€œConvictions” & β€œThoughts” which will determine how you shaped your life.
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Abhysheq Shukla (The Reflection "Success or Stress"Choose Wisely)
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Opportunity comes to everyone it depends on you whether you take it or leave it. Learn to take risks and play hard because at the end you'd be thankful for your struggle.
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Abhysheq Shukla (The Reflection "Success or Stress"Choose Wisely)
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Pray GOD by HEART, Not by HABIT.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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Create your own path.Don't blindly follow the massess... because most of the time the "M" is silent.
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Abhysheq Shukla (The Reflection "Success or Stress"Choose Wisely)
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WHATEVER may be said in praise of poverty, the fact remains that it is not possible to live a really complete or successful life unless one is rich. No
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Wallace D. Wattles (Science of Getting Rich)
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If we try to see something positive in everything we do, life won't necessarily become easier but it becomes more valuable.
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Abhysheq Shukla (Feelings Undefined: The Charm of the Unsaid Vol. 1)
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Bill Gates wasn't born rich but he wasn't poor either even before he discovered Microsoft, he was just waiting for a connecting flight to the boulevards of greatness.
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Ikechukwu Izuakor (Great Reflections on Success)
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Everybody needs to be good-natured with a good heart, because in this way we can solve our own problems as well as those of others, and we can make our human life meaningful.
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Abhysheq Shukla (KARMA)
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Most poor people do not really aspire to end poverty; they merely aspire to escape it.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Strong people don't put others down. They lift them up and slam them on the ground for maximum damage.
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Abhysheq Shukla (Feelings Undefined: The Charm of the Unsaid Vol. 1)
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Being Wise & Being Smart are two different things anyone can be smart but those who master the art of knowing what to overlook in this journey called life deserves to be called Wise
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Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
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The hood is also a low-stress, comfortable life. All your mental energy goes into getting by, so you don’t have to ask yourself any of the big questions. Who am I? Who am I supposed to be? Am I doing enough? In the hood you can be a forty-year-old man living in your mom’s house asking people for money and it’s not looked down on. You never feel like a failure in the hood, because someone’s always worse off than you, and you don’t feel like you need to do more, because the biggest success isn’t that much higher than you, either. It allows you to exist in a state of suspended animation.
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Trevor Noah (Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood)
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I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
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Henry David Thoreau (Walden & Civil Disobedience)
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Universal housing programs have been successfully implemented all over the developed world. In countries that have such programs, every single family with an income below a certain level who meets basic program requirements has a right to housing assistance.
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Matthew Desmond (Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)
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So let us be clear about this up front: We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women's power as economic catalysts. That is the process under way - not a drama of victimization but of empowerment, the kind that transforms bubbly teenage girls from brothel slaves into successful businesswomen. This is a story of transformation. It is change that is already taking place, and change that can accelerate if you'll just open your heart and join in.
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Nicholas D. Kristof (Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide)
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Many people----women especially----remain trapped in the poverty into which they were born. The successful person from this background is the exception. The American dream is a double-edged sword in that those who are able to carve out their own destiny are also hard-pressed not to condemn those who get struck between the cracks.
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Nancy Isenberg (White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America)
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Nonetheless, the fact remains; he had hope in a better world he could not yet see that overwhelmed the cries of "you can't" or "you won't" or "why bother." More than anything else, mastering that faith, on cue, is what separated him from his peers, and distinguishes him from so many people in these literal, sophisticated times. It has made all the difference.
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Suskind (A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League)
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Life, death, preservation, loss, failure, success, poverty, riches, worthiness, unworthiness, slander, fame, hunger, thirst, cold, heat - these are the alternations of the world, the workings of fate. Day and night they change place before us, and wisdom cannot spy out their source. Therefore, they should not be enough to destroy your harmony; they should not be allowed to enter the storehouse of the spirit. If you can harmonize and delight in them, master them and never be at a loss for joy; if you can do this day and night without break and make it be spring with everything, mingling with all and creating the moment within your own mind - this is what I call being whole in power.
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Zhuangzi (The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu)
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It isn’t just racism. Being part of an oppressed minority groupβ€”being queer or disabled, for exampleβ€”can cause C-PTSD if you are made to feel unsafe because of your identity. Poverty can be a contributing factor to C-PTSD. These factors traumatize people and cause brain changes that push them toward anxiety and self-loathing. Because of those changes, victims internalize the blame for their failures. They tell themselves they are awkward, lazy, antisocial, or stupid, when what’s really happening is that they live in a discriminatory society where their success is limited by white supremacy and class stratification. The system itself becomes the abuser. When my boss said I was β€œdifferent,” I thought it meant broken. Now I think it meant something else.
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Stephanie Foo (What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma)
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One would never defeat one's circumstances by working and saving one's pennies; one would never, by working, acquire that many pennies, and, besides, the social treatment accorded even the most successful Negroes proved that one needed, in order to be free, something more than a bank account. One needed a handle, a lever, a means of inspiring fear. It was absolutely clear that the police would whip you and take you in as long as they could get away with it, and that everyone elseβ€”housewives, taxi-drivers, elevator boys, dishwashers, bartenders, lawyers, judges, doctors, and grocersβ€”would never, by the operation of any generous human feeling, cease to use you as an outlet for his frustrations and hostilities.
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James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time)
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If I feel depressed I will sing. If I feel sad I will laugh. If I feel ill I will double my labor. If I feel fear I will plunge ahead. If I feel inferior I will wear new garments. If I feel uncertain I will raise my voice. If I feel poverty I will think of wealth to come. If I feel incompetent I will remember past success. If I feel insignificant I will remember my goals. Today I will be master of my emotions.
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Og Mandino (The Greatest Salesman In The World)
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I’ve watched my dad move our family from extreme poverty to extreme wealth and then everywhere in between. Never once did I see or hear him be anything but a cheerleader for the accomplishments of others. It didn’t matter if he was down or up in life, he wanted everybody around him to succeed. I’ve even watched him praise the very people that have tried to destroy him over the years and then very publicly wish them success and happiness. He taught me the enthusiasm that should always come at the success of others. He constantly taught me that when others succeed, it gives us all more opportunity to succeed. He taught me that when there is conflict, minor or major, you can almost always walk away at the end with a handshake.
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Dan Pearce (Single Dad Laughing: The Best of Year One)
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I' the commonwealth I would by contraries Execute all things; for no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate; Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, And use of service, none; contract, succession, Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil; No occupation; all men idle, all; And women too, but innocent and pure; And no sovereignty; - SEBASTIAN: Yet he would be king on't. ANTONIO: The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning.
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William Shakespeare (The Tempest)
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Long after midnight the towers and spires of Princeton were visible, with here and there a late-burning light – and suddenly out of the clear darkness the sound of bells. As an endless dream it went on; the spirit of the past brooding over a new generation, the chosen youth from the muddled, unchastened world, still fed romantically on the mistakes and half-forgotten dreams of dead statesmen and poets. Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a reverie of long days and nights, destined finally to go out into the dirty grey turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all God’s dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken…
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F. Scott Fitzgerald (This Side of Paradise)
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Good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers, or horse swipes. People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand. They are afraid to find out how tough they are. Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don't have time to bother with success or getting rich. Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her, she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling.
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William Faulkner
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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.
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H.W. Charles (The Money Code: Become a Millionaire With the Ancient Jewish Code)
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The native American has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps, that his religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of luxury. To him, as to other single-minded men in every age and race, from Diogenes to the brothers of Saint Francis, from the Montanists to the Shakers, the love of possessions has appeared a snare, and the burdens of a complex society a source of needless peril and temptation. Furthermore, it was the rule of his life to share the fruits of his skill and success with his less fortunate brothers.
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Charles Alexander Eastman (The Soul of the Indian)
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People who have acquired academic degrees, without acquiring many economically meaningful skills, not only face personal disappointment and disaffection with society, but also have often become negative factors in the economy and even sources of danger, especially when they lash out at economically successful minorities and ethnically polarize the whole society they live in. . . . . In many places and times, soft-subject students and intellectuals have inflamed hostility, and sometimes violence, against many other successful groups.
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Thomas Sowell (Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective)
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The Eternal may meet us in what is, by our present measurements, a day, or (more likely) a minute or a second; but we have touched what is not in any way commensurable with lengths of time, whether long or short. Hence our hope finally to emerge, if not altogether from time (that might not suit our humanity) at any rate from the tyranny, the unilinear poverty, of time, to ride it not to be ridden by it, and so to cure that always aching wound ('the wound man was born for') which mere succession and mutability inflict on us, almost equally when we are happy and when we are unhappy. For we are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. 'How he's grown!' we exclaim, 'How time flies!' as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the very wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed: unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.
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C.S. Lewis (Reflections on the Psalms)
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I began to meditate upon the writer's life. It is full of tribulation. First he must endure poverty and the world's indifference; then, having achieved a measure of success, he must submit to a good grace of its hazards...But he has one compensation, Whenever he has anything on his mind, whether it be a harassing reflection, grief at the death of a friend, unrequited love, wounded pride, anger at the treachery of someone to whom he has shown kindness, in short any emotion or any perplexing thought, he has only to put it down in black and white, using it as a theme of a story or the decoration of an essay, to forget all about it. He is the only free man.
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W. Somerset Maugham (Cakes and Ale)
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Both died, ignored by most; they neither sought nor found public favour, for high roads never lead there. Laurent and Gerhardt never left such roads, were never tempted to peruse those easy successes which, for strongly marked characters, offer neither allure nor gain. Their passion was for the search for truth; and, preferring their independence to their advancement, their convictions to their interests, they placed their love for science above that of their worldly goods; indeed above that for life itself, for death was the reward for their pains. Rare example of abnegation, sublime poverty that deserves the name nobility, glorious death that France must not forget!
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Charles-Adolphe Wurtz
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Truth always teaches you more than ignorance. Understanding always teaches you more than curiosity. Sight always teaches you more than blindness. Certainty always teaches you more than falsehood. Silence always teaches you more than noise. Stillness always teaches you more than motion. Growth always teaches you more than stagnation. Nature always teaches you more than appearance. Enemies always teach you more than friends. Composure always teaches you more than wrath. Humility always teaches you more than arrogance. Poverty always teaches you more than riches. Sorrow always teaches you more than happiness. Hardship always teaches you more than success. Contentment always teaches you more than greed. Pain always teaches you more than pleasure. Misery always teaches you more than comfort. Love always teaches you more than passion. Action always teaches you more than apathy. God always teaches you more than reality. Life always teaches you more than death. Light always teaches you more than darkness.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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When In The Soul Of The Serene Disciple When in the soul of the serene disciple With no more Fathers to imitate Poverty is a success, It is a small thing to say the roof is gone: He has not even a house. Stars, as well as friends, Are angry with the noble ruin. Saints depart in several directions. Be still: There is no longer any need of comment. It was a lucky wind That blew away his halo with his cares, A lucky sea that drowned his reputation. Here you will find Neither a proverb nor a memorandum. There are no ways, No methods to admire Where poverty is no achievement. His God lives in his emptiness like an affliction. What choice remains? Well, to be ordinary is not a choice: It is the usual freedom Of men without visions.
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Thomas Merton (A Thomas Merton Reader)
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Argentina was also one of the richest countries in the world in the nineteenth century, as rich as or even richer than Britain, because it was the beneficiary of the worldwide resource boom; it also had the most educated population in Latin America. But democracy and pluralism were no more successful, and were arguably less successful, in Argentina than in much of the rest of Latin America. One coup followed another, and as we saw in chapter 11, even democratically elected leaders acted as rapacious dictators. Even more recently there has been little progress toward inclusive economic institutions, and as we saw in chapter 13, twenty-first-century Argentinian governments can still expropriate their citizens’ wealth with impunity. All
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Daron Acemoğlu (Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty)
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How do tyrants hold on to power for so long? For that matter, why is the tenure of successful democratic leaders so brief? How can countries with such misguided and corrupt economic policies survive for so long? Why are countries that are prone to natural disasters so often unprepared when they happen? And how can lands rich with natural resources at the same time support populations stricken with poverty? Equally, we may well wonder: Why are Wall Street executives so politically tone-deaf that they dole out billions in bonuses while plunging the global economy into recession? Why is the leadership of a corporation, on whose shoulders so much responsibility rests, decided by so few people? Why are failed CEOs retained and paid handsomely even as their company’s shareholders lose their shirts? In
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Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics)
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With these thoughts came another: Was that unity of effort, that sense of common purpose, possible only when the goal involved killing a terrorist? The question nagged at me. For all the pride and satisfaction I took in the success of our mission in Abbottabad, the truth was that I hadn't felt the same exuberance as I had on the night the health care bill passed. I found myself imagining what America might look like if we could rally the country so that our government brought the same level of expertise and determination to educating our children or housing the homeless as it had to getting bin Laden; if we could apply the same persistence and resources to reducing poverty or curbing greenhouse gases or making sure every family had access to decent day care. I knew that even my own staff would dismiss these notions as utopian. And the fact that this was the case, the fact that we could no longer imagine uniting the country around anything other than thwarting attacks and defeating external enemies, I took as a measure of how far my presidency still fell short of what I wanted it to be - and how much work I had left to do.
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Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
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Note that the best rationalizations are those that have an element of truth. Whether you vote or not will almost certainly have no influence on the outcome of an election. Nor will the amount of carbon you personally put into the atmosphere make a difference in the fate of the planet. And perhaps it really should be up to governments rather than the charities that are soliciting your contributions to feed the hungry and homeless in America or save children around the world from crushing poverty and abuse. But the fact that these statements are true doesn't mean they aren't also rationalizations that you and others use to justify questionable behavior. This uncomfortable truth is crucial to an understanding of the link between rationalization and evilβ€”an understanding that starts with the awareness that sane people rarely, if ever, act in a truly evil manner unless they can successfully rationalize their actions... [The] process of rationalizing evil deeds committed by whole societies is a collective effort rather than a solely individual enterprise.
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Thomas Gilovich (The Wisest One in the Room: How You Can Benefit from Social Psychology's Most Powerful Insights)
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Below the surface, the force driving noir stories is the urge to escape: from the past, from the law, from the ordinary, from poverty, from constricting relationships, from the limitations of the self. Noir found its fullest expression in America because the American psyche harbors a passion for independence . . . With this desire for autonomy comes a corresponding fear of loneliness and exile. The more we crave success, the more we dread failure; the more we crave freedom, the more we dread confinement. This is the shadow that spawns all of noir’s shadows: the anxiety imposed by living in a country that elevates opportunity above security; one that instills the compulsion to β€œmake it big," but offers little sympathy to those who fall short. Film noir is about people who break the rules, pursuing their own interests outside the boundaries of decent society, and about how they are destroyed by society - or by themselves. Noir springs from a fundamental conflict between the values of individual freedom and communal safety: a fundamental doubt that the two can coexist. . . . Noir stories are powered by the need to escape, but they are structured around the impossibility of escape: their fierce, thwarted energy turns inward. The ultimate noir landscape, immeasurable as the ocean and confining as a jail cell, is the mind - the darkest city of all.
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Imogen Sara Smith (In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City)
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The Industrial Revolution started and made its biggest strides in England because of her uniquely inclusive economic institutions. These in turn were built on foundations laid by the inclusive political institutions brought about by the Glorious Revolution. It was the Glorious Revolution that strengthened and rationalized property rights, improved financial markets, undermined state-sanctioned monopolies in foreign trade, and removed the barriers to the expansion of industry. It was the Glorious Revolution that made the political system open and responsive to the economic needs and aspirations of society. These inclusive economic institutions gave men of talent and vision such as James Watt the opportunity and incentive to develop their skills and ideas and influence the system in ways that benefited them and the nation. Naturally these men, once they had become successful, had the same urges as any other person. They wanted to block others from entering their businesses and competing against them and feared the process of creative destruction that might put them out of business, as they had previously bankrupted others.
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Daron Acemoğlu (Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty)
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Edward Amani
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One also, in our milieu, simply didn't meet enough Americans to form an opinion. And when one didβ€”this was in the days of crew-cuts and short-legged pantsβ€”they, too, often really did sport crew-cuts and trousers that mysteriously ended several inches short of the instep. Why was that? It obviously wasn't poverty. A colleague of my father's had a daughter who got herself married and found that an American friend she had met on holiday had offered to pay the whole cost of the nuptial feast. I forget the name of this paladin, but he had a crew-cut and amputated trouser-bottoms and a cigar stub and he came from a place called Yonkers, which seemed to me a ridiculous name to give to a suburb. (I, who had survived Crapstone… ) Anyway, once again one received a Henry Jamesian impression of brash generosity without overmuch refinement. There was a boy at my boarding school called Warren Powers Laird Myers, the son of an officer stationed at one of the many U.S. Air Force bases in Cambridgeshire. Trousers at The Leys School were uniform and regulation, but he still managed to show a bit of shin and to buzz-cut his hair. 'I am not a Yankee,' he informed me (he was from Norfolk, Virginia). 'I am a CON-federate.' From what I was then gleaning of the news from Dixie, this was unpromising. In our ranks we also had Jamie Auchincloss, a sprig of the Kennedy-Bouvier family that was then occupying the White House. His trousers managed to avoid covering his ankles also, though the fact that he shared a parent with Jackie Kennedy meant that anything he did was accepted as fashionable by definition. The pants of a man I'll call Mr. 'Miller,' a visiting American master who skillfully introduced me to J.D. Salinger, were also falling short of their mark. Mr. Miller's great teacher-feature was that he saw sexual imagery absolutely everywhere and was slightly too fond of pointing it out [...]. Meanwhile, and as I mentioned much earlier, the dominant images projected from the United States were of the attack-dog-and-firehose kind, with swag-bellied cops lying about themselves and the political succession changed as much by bullets as by ballots.
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Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
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Fifteen years ago, a business manager from the United States came to Plum Village to visit me. His conscience was troubled because he was the head of a firm that designed atomic bombs. I listened as he expressed his concerns. I knew if I advised him to quit his job, another person would only replace him. If he were to quit, he might help himself, but he would not help his company, society, or country. I urged him to remain the director of his firm, to bring mindfulness into his daily work, and to use his position to communicate his concerns and doubts about the production of atomic bombs. In the Sutra on Happiness, the Buddha says it is great fortune to have an occupation that allows us to be happy, to help others, and to generate compassion and understanding in this world. Those in the helping professions have occupations that give them this wonderful opportunity. Yet many social workers, physicians, and therapists work in a way that does not cultivate their compassion, instead doing their job only to earn money. If the bomb designer practises and does his work with mindfulness, his job can still nourish his compassion and in some way allow him to help others. He can still influence his government and fellow citizens by bringing greater awareness to the situation. He can give the whole nation an opportunity to question the necessity of bomb production. Many people who are wealthy, powerful, and important in business, politics, and entertainment are not happy. They are seeking empty things - wealth, fame, power, sex - and in the process they are destroying themselves and those around them. In Plum Village, we have organised retreats for businesspeople. We see that they have many problems and suffer just as others do, sometimes even more. We see that their wealth allows them to live in comfortable conditions, yet they still suffer a great deal. Some businesspeople, even those who have persuaded themselves that their work is very important, feel empty in their occupation. They provide employment to many people in their factories, newspapers, insurance firms, and supermarket chains, yet their financial success is an empty happiness because it is not motivated by understanding or compassion. Caught up in their small world of profit and loss, they are unaware of the suffering and poverty in the world. When we are not int ouch with this larger reality, we will lack the compassion we need to nourish and guide us to happiness. Once you begin to realise your interconnectedness with others, your interbeing, you begin to see how your actions affect you and all other life. You begin to question your way of living, to look with new eyes at the quality of your relationships and the way you work. You begin to see, 'I have to earn a living, yes, but I want to earn a living mindfully. I want to try to select a vocation not harmful to others and to the natural world, one that does not misuse resources.' Entire companies can also adopt this way of thinking. Companies have the right to pursue economic growth, but not at the expense of other life. They should respect the life and integrity of people, animals, plants and minerals. Do not invest your time or money in companies that deprive others of their lives, that operate in a way that exploits people or animals, and destroys nature. Businesspeople who visit Plum Village often find that getting in touch with the suffering of others and cultivating understanding brings them happiness. They practise like Anathapindika, a successful businessman who lived at the time of the Buddha, who with the practise of mindfulness throughout his life did everything he could to help the poor and sick people in his homeland.
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Thich Nhat Hanh (Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World)