Robert Ford Quotes

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

I find myself fascinated by a man who admits to enjoying fairy tales and uses the word "impinge"- barely misses a beat while indulging in a brief girl-on-girl fantasy. You're a man of layers, Ford." Me and Shrek, we're onions.
Nora Roberts (Tribute)
Do you know what it is you're most afraid of?" "Yes." "What?" "I'm afraid of being forgotten," Bob said, and having admitted that, wondered if it was true. He said, "I'm afraid I'll end up living a life like everyone else's and me being Bob Ford won't matter one way or the other.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
You hear people mention being in love. It's like a sickness I've never had.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
He also had a condition that was referred to as granulated eyelids and it caused him to blink more than usual, as if he found creation slightly more than he could accept.
Ron Hansen
He said, "He was bigger than you can imagine, and he couldn't get enough to eat. He was hungry all the time. He ate all the food in the dining room and then he ate all the plates and the glasses and the light off the candles; he ate all the air in your lungs and the thoughts right out of your mind. You'd go to him, wanting to be with him, wanting to be like him, and you'd always come away missing something." Bob looked at the girl with anger and of course she was looking peculiarly at him. He said, "So now you know why I shot him.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
...the grass actually IS greener on the other side, but it's only because of the bodies buried there.
Robert Ford
As Henry Ford said, "Thinking is the hardest work there is. That is why so few people engage in it.
Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad's Guide to Investing)
They weren't penitent over what they'd attempted; their sorrow reached to the limits of their bodies and no further, all their anguish was in their skin.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
So it went. Bob was increasingly cynical, leery, uneasy; Jesse was increasingly cavalier, merry, moody, fey, unpredictable. If his gross anatomy suggested a strong smith in his twenties, his actual physical constitution was that of a man who was incrementally dying. He was sick with rheums and aches and lung congestions, he tilted against chairs and counters and walls, in cold weather he limped with a cane. He coughed incessantly when lying down, his clever mind was often in conflict, insomnia stained his eye sockets like soot, he seemed in a state of mourning. He counteracted the smell of neglected teeth with licorice and candies, he browned his graying hair with dye, he camouflaged his depressions and derangements with masquerades of extreme cordiality, courtesy, and good will toward others.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
For the man was canny, he was intuitive, he anticipated everything. He continually looked over his shoulders, he looked into the background with mirrors, he locked his sleeping room at night, he could pick out a whisper in the wind, he could register the slightest added value a man put into his words, he could probably read the faltering and perfidy in Bob's face. He once numbered the spades on a playing card that skittered across the street a city block away; he licked his daughter's cut finger and there wasn't even a scar the next day; he wrestled with his son and the two Fords at once one afternoon and rarely even tilted - it was like grappling with a tree. When Jesse predicted rain, it rained; when he encouraged plants, they grew; when he scorned animals, they retreated; whomever he wanted to stir, he astonished.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
One of the quotes credited to Ford goes: "Thinking is the hardest work there is. That is why so few people engage in it.
Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad's CASHFLOW QUADRANT)
A man of principles," Jesse said. "People say that about themselves when really they only want to make you unhappy.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
No one talked as Jesse moved - it was as if his acts were miracles of invention wonderous to behold.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Bob was not yet twenty, after all, while Jesse was thirty-four and in physical decline; each calendar week subtracted from Jesse the powers that Bob accrued.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Then the night lessened, the clouds ashened slightly, and the men became starkly black and brown against the gray of the snow.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
We look up, if only to see if we're likely to be rained on. The sky calls attention to itself, whether scored by herons, cranes, or wires; illumined by sunsets, Perseids, or ballparks; broken up by the twigwork of oaks or maples, painted in rainbows, or just primed in the pale gray of my '52 Ford. If we are truthful, the sky is never neutral.
Robert Michael Pyle (Sky Time in Gray's River: Living for Keeps in a Forgotten Place)
Bob slid his chair back and moved the coal-oil lamp from the kitchen to the sitting room. He said, "Oftentimes things seem impossible up until they're attempted." Then he lidded the chimney glass with his palm and suffocated the light.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
but nothing upset and preoccupied him like the phrase whatever they dread most, that will happen. It seemed more than a simple curse; there was the ring of something presaging and prophetic about it, it was the sort of thing Jesse would say.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Jesse rounded forward under the towel and cozied his feet in the bath water. It was as if no one else were around and Jesse was once again alone and at ease with his meditations. He said, "I can't figure it out: do you want to be like me, or do you want to be me?
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Charley looked over at him. "About how much you and Jesse have in common." Jesse said, "Why don't you tell it, Bob; if you remember." Bob inched forward in his chair. "Well, if you'll pardon my saying so, it is interesting, the many ways you and I overlap and whatnot. You begin with my daddy, J.T. Ford. J stands for James! And T is Thomas, meaning 'twin.' Your daddy was a pastor of the New Hope Baptist Church; my daddy was part-time pastor of a church at Excelsior Springs. You're the youngest of the three James boys; I'm the youngest of the five Ford boys. You had twins as sons, I had twins as sisters. Frank is four and a half years older than you, which incidentally is the difference between Charley and me, the two outlaws in the Ford clan. Between us is another brother, Wilbur here (with six letters in his name); between Frank and you was a brother, Robert, also with six letters. Robert died in infancy, as most everyone knows, and he was named after your father, Robert, who was remembered by your brother's first-born, another Robert. Robert, of course, is my Christian name. My uncle, Robert Austin Ford, has a son named Jesse James Ford. You have blue eyes; I have blue eyes. You're five feet eight inches tall; I'm five feet eight inches tall. We're both hot-tempered and impulsive and devil-may-care. Smith and Wesson is our preferred make of revolver. There's the same number of letters and syllables in our names; I mean, Jesse James and Robert Ford. Oh me, I must've had a list as long as your nightshirt when I was twelve, but I lost some curiosities over the years.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Well, I'd have more zing with George Clooney and Harrison Ford in a threesome, but neither of us are going to get that wish.
Nora Roberts (Angels Fall)
Inside, cooking smells maneuvered through the house: cow liver, sweet potatoes, stewed onions, cabbage - scents that were as assertive as colors.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.” —Henry Ford
Robert Glazer (Elevate: Push Beyond Your Limits and Unlock Success in Yourself and Others)
The message being that the divine gift does not come from a higher power, but from our own minds.
Dr. Robert Ford
He said Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin never died. They simply became music.
Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins)
He was increasingly irritable and suspicious, and a cantankerous mood could fly over him as quickly as the shadow of a bird. But Jesse was neither close-mouthed nor sulky for long, and over the weeks that he and Charley were on the road, he unscrolled yarns and anecdotes that excited interest in Charley only insofar as they permitted him a corresponding reminiscence.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Jesse said, "You know what we are, Tim? We're nighthawks. We're the ones who go out at night and guard everything so people can sleep in peace. We've got our eyes peeled; no one's going to slip anything past us.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
And for the first time in years, Rick realizes how fortunate he is and was. All the wonderful actors he's worked with through the years—Meeker, Bronson, Coburn, Morrow, McGavin, Robert Blake, Glenn Ford, Edward G. Robinson. All the different actresses he got to kiss. All the affairs he had. All the interesting people he got to work with. All the places he got to visit. All the fun stories he got to live. All the times he saw his name and picture in the papers and magazines. All the nice hotel rooms. All the fuss people made over him. All the fan mail he never read. All the times driving through Hollywood as a citizen in good standing. He looks around at the fabulous house he owns. Paid for by doing what he used to do for free when he was a little boy: pretending to be a cowboy.
Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)
There are business and investment opportunities coming that will create bigger fortunes than the automobile did for Henry Ford, oil did for John D. Rockefeller, computers did for Bill Gates, and the Internet did for the young founders of Yahoo, Google, and Facebook.
Robert T. Kiyosaki (Retire Young Retire Rich: How to Get Rich Quickly and Stay Rich Forever! (Rich Dad's (Paperback)))
He had given work to a nightwalker named Dorothy Evans and gradually became beguiled by her. She was a plump, pretty, cattleman's daughter, pale as a cameo, with the sort of overripe body that always seems four months pregnant. Her long brown hair was braided into figure eights and pinned up over her ears in the English country-girl style. Grim experience was in her eyes, many years of pouting shaped her lips, but everything else about her expression seemed to evince an appealing cupidity, as if she could accept anything as long as it was pleasing.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Her ravings were so crowded with recriminations and insults and petitions, with weeping and caterwauling and wild expressions of love, that it seemed bewildering to Bob and Charley that Jesse remained there for minutes, let alone hours; yet he did. She was four inches taller than Jesse, a giant of a woman, but she made him seem even smaller, made him seem stooped and spiritless. She made him kiss her on the mouth like a lover and rub her neck and temples with myrtleberry oil as he avowed his affection for her and confessed his frailties and shortcomings.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Death has been tolerable to me only because Death has been the Great Democrat, treating all alike. But now Death plays favorites. Zaccur Barstow, can you understand the bitter, bitter jealousy of the ordinary man of-oh, say‚ fifty- who looks on one of your sort? Fifty years . . . twenty of them he is a child, he is well past thirty before he is skilled in his profession. He is forty before he is established and respected. For not more than the last ten years of his fifty he has really amounted to something." Ford leaned forward in the screen and spoke with sober emphasis: "And now, when he has reached his goal, what is his prize? His eyes are failing him, his bright young strength is gone, his heart and wind are‚ not what they used to be. He is not senile yet . . . but he feels the chill of the first frost. He knows what is in store for him. He knows-he knows!
Robert A. Heinlein
The casting of the brash United States Army Air Force officer Colonel Robert E. Hogan and the pompous German Luftwaffe officer Colonel Wilhelm Klink was inspired. For this series—a comedy with the serious backdrop of war—to succeed, the lead players had to be the perfect fit. The dynamic portrayal of this military odd couple had to be articulate, accurate, and precise. For the show to work, for the concept to be accepted, for one of the most outlandish premises in television history to be believed, the actors signed to play the two leading characters not only had to bring these extreme individuals to life with broad, fictional strokes, they had to make them real in the details.
Carol M. Ford (Bob Crane The Definitive Biography)
XII. If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk Above its mates, the head was chopped, the bents Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk All hope of greenness? Tis a brute must walk Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents. XIII. As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Stood stupified, however he came there: Thrust out past service from the devil's stud! XIV. Alive? he might be dead for aught I knew, With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain. And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane; Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain. XV. I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart, As a man calls for wine before he fights, I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights, Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. Think first, fight afterwards, the soldier's art: One taste of the old time sets all to rights. XVI. Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face Beneath its garniture of curly gold, Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold An arm to mine to fix me to the place, The way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace! Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold. XVII. Giles then, the soul of honour - there he stands Frank as ten years ago when knighted first, What honest man should dare (he said) he durst. Good - but the scene shifts - faugh! what hangman hands Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst! XVIII. Better this present than a past like that: Back therefore to my darkening path again! No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain. Will the night send a howlet or a bat? I asked: when something on the dismal flat Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train. XIX. A sudden little river crossed my path As unexpected as a serpent comes. No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath For the fiend's glowing hoof - to see the wrath Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes. XX. So petty yet so spiteful! All along, Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it; Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: The river which had done them all the wrong, Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit. XXI. Which, while I forded - good saints, how I feared To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek, Each step, of feel the spear I thrust to seek For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard! - It may have been a water-rat I speared, But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek. XXII. Glad was I when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage - XXIII. The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque, What penned them there, with all the plain to choose? No footprint leading to that horrid mews, None out of it. Mad brewage set to work Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.
Robert Browning
Graham and the undertaker's assistants strapped the body to a wide board with a rope that crossed under his right shoulder and again over his groin, then they tilted the man until he was nearly vertical and let the camera lens accept the scene for a minute. The man's eyes were shut, the skin around them was slightly green, and the sockets themselves seemed so cavernous that photographic copies were later repainted with two blue eyes looking serenely at some vista in the middle distance. Likewise missing in the keepsake photographs was the mean contusion over his left eyebrow that wound convince some reporters that it was the gunshot's exit wound and others that it showed the incidence of Bob Ford's smashing the stricken man with a timber. The body's cheeks and chest and belly were somewhat inflated with preservatives, necessitating the removal of the man's thirty-two-inch brown leather belt, and making his weight seem closer to one hundred eighty-five pounds than the one hundred sixty it was. His height was misjudged by four inches, being recorded as six feet or more by those who wrote about him.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Tim collected his gifts within the metal hoop and then pestered Santa for more, investigating pockets, sticking his hands into straw, lifting the sides of the red coat until he contacted a Smith and Wesson revolver. The boy snatched his hand back as if it were burnt and scowled at the man in the red suit. "You're not Santa Claus; you're Daddy." Charley called across the room, "He's one of Santa's helpers!" Jesse sat low in the chair with his boots kicked out, drew off the soft red cap by its cotton ball, then reached out and snuggled Tim close to his chest. He said, "Let me tell you a secret, son: there's always a mean old wolf in Grandma's bed, and a worm inside the apple. There's always a daddy inside the Santa suit. It's a world of trickery.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
....One dark night, my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull; I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down, they lay together, hull to hull, where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . . My mind's not right. A car radio bleats, "Love, O careless Love. . . ." I hear my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell, as if my hand were at its throat. . . . I myself am hell; nobody's here-- only skunks, that search in the moonlight for a bite to eat. They march on their soles up Main Street: white stripes, moonstruck eyes' red fire under the chalk-dry and spar spire of the Trinitarian Church. I stand on top of our back steps and breathe the rich air-- a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail. She jabs her wedge-head in a cup of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail, and will not scare.
Robert Lowell
Craig inscribed something in the journal and Bob walked over to study the entry. "Does the name Bob Ford mean anything to you? Craig dipped his quill in the ink bottle and scripted cursively on a brown blotter. "Is that your actual name or your alias?" "Actual," said Bob, and he grinned with delight when he saw the name recorded in Craig's elegant calligraphy. "Pretty soon all of America will know who Bob Ford is.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
He’s interested in Willie. Quite simply and directly. And when anybody is interested in himself quite simply and directly the way Willie is interested in Willie you call it genius. It’s only the half-baked people like Mr. Patton who are interested in money. Even the big boys who make a real lot of money aren’t interested in money. Henry Ford isn’t interested in money. He is interested in Henry Ford and therefore he is a genius.
Robert Penn Warren
Charley's consumption and indigestion had only become more lacerating; his eye sockets were as deep and dark as fistholes in the snow, his gums were strangely purple, he wore extravagant gold rings on every finger and a clove of garlic around his neck according to the guidance of a gypsy named Madame Africa. Bob was skinny, sallow, peevish, his complexion spoiled with so many pimples that some correspondents thought it was measles.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Size me up and get goosebumps, boys. I’m the widowmaker and the slayer of jungles, the mean-eyed harbinger of desolation! I’ve ripped a catamount asunder and sprinkled his fragments in my stew; one screech from me makes vultures fly, one glance puts blisters on grizzly bears, devastation rides on my every breath! Where is that stately stag to stamp his hoof or rap his antlers to these proclamations! Where is the mangy lion what will lick the salt off my name!
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
He had intended at first to send Ford down in the Chili. It was not gratitude that changed his mind, but respect. Once he had lost office Ford had gone straight to Huxley Field north of Novak Tower, cleared for the vacation satellite Monte Carlo, and had jumped for the New Frontiers instead. Lazarus liked that. "Go for broke" took courage and character that most people didn’t have. Don’t grab a toothbrush, don’t wind the cat-just do it! "Of course you’re coming along," he said easily: "You’re my kind of boy, Slayton.
Robert A. Heinlein
During his time at VGIK, Tarkovsky and his fellow students studied all aspects of filmmaking, watching the classics of Soviet cinema and taking part in workshops in which they would demonstrate their technical ability. This even included acting; Tarkovsky’s fellow student and friend, Alexander Gordon, remembers him giving a superb performance as the aging Prince Bolkonsky when Romm got the students to perform scenes from War and Peace during their third year at VGIK. Tarkovsky saw many classics from outside the Soviet Union, including Citizen Kane, the films of John Ford and William Wyler, and the works of the fathers of the French New Wave, Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo. Tarkovsky developed a personal pantheon that included Bergman, Bunuel, Mizoguchi and Kurosawa, Fellini and Antonioni. The only Soviet director who made it into his pantheon was Dovzhenko, although he was good friends with the Georgian director Sergei Parajanov, whom he regarded as ‘a genius in everything’. He also spoke highly of Iosseliani, and, on occasion, of Boris Barnet. But above them all was the towering figure of Robert Bresson, whom Tarkovsky regarded as the ultimate film artist.
Sean Martin (Andrei Tarkovsky (Pocket Essential series))
Lazarus had studied those eyes during the long hours they had been shut up together in the control room. They bore an expression Lazarus had seen many times before in his long life. The condemned man who has lost his final appeal, the fully resolved suicide, little furry things exhausted and defeated by struggle with the unrelenting steel of traps-the eyes of each of these hold a single expression, born of hopeless conviction that his time has run out. Ford’s eyes had it. Lazarus had seen it grow and had been puzzled by it. To be sure, they were all in a dangerous spot, but Ford no more I than the rest. Besides, awareness of danger brings a live expression; why should Ford’s eyes hold the signal of death? Lazarus finally decided that it could only be because Ford had reached the dead-end state of mind where suicide is necessary.
Robert A. Heinlein
In the Mountains, they cooked, too. Joe Godwin made liquor in Muscadine. Moe Shealey made it in Mineral Springs. Junior McMahan had a still in ragland. Fred and Alton Dryden made liquor in Tallapoosa, and Eulis Parker made it on Terrapin Creek. Wayne Glass knew their faces because he drove it, and made more money hauling liquor than he ever made at the cotton mill. He loaded the gallon cans into his car in the deep woods and dodged sheriffs and federal men to get it to men like Robert Kilgore, the bootlegger who sold whiskey from a house in Weaver, about ten minutes south of Jacksonville. "I could haul a hundred and fifty gallons in a Flathead Ford, at thirty-five dollars a load," he said. Wayne lost the end of one finger in the mill, but he was bulletproof when he was running liquor, and only did time once, for conspiracy. "They couldn't catch me haulin' liquor," he said, "so they got me for thinkin' about it.
Rick Bragg (The Prince of Frogtown)
In order to fulfill your quest -" "Would you please not use that word? It's so Robert E. Howard." "Fine. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to travel to the far ends of the earth...?" "What? In these shoes? You must be joking." "Crossing arid desserts and steaming jungles," the unicorn continued grimly, "fording mighty rivers and climbing snow-capped mountains-" "I take it scheduled public transport isn't an option." "Until you reach the Cradle of All Goblins, interrupt just once more and I wash my hooves of you, where you will encounter three trials. You must uncover the great truth that was hidden, you must right the ancestral wrong, and you must throw the fire into the ring of power. Only when you have done that -" "Excuse me-" "I warned you. Only when you have done that will you -" "Excuse me," Benny said firmly, "but I think you may have got the last one a bit turned round. Surely it should be throw the ring-
Tom Holt
The fascist leaders were outsiders of a new type. New people had forced their way into national leadership before. There had long been hard-bitten soldiers who fought better than aristocratic officers and became indispensable to kings. A later form of political recruitment came from young men of modest background who made good when electoral politics broadened in the late nineteenth century. One thinks of the aforementioned French politician Léon Gambetta, the grocer’s son, or the beer wholesaler’s son Gustav Stresemann, who became the preeminent statesman of Weimar Germany. A third kind of successful outsider in modern times has been clever mechanics in new industries (consider those entrepreneurial bicycle makers Henry Ford, William Morris, and the Wrights). But many of the fascist leaders were marginal in a new way. They did not resemble the interlopers of earlier eras: the soldiers of fortune, the first upwardly mobile parliamentary politicians, or the clever mechanics. Some were bohemians, lumpen-intellectuals, dilettantes, experts in nothing except the manipulation of crowds and the fanning of resentments: Hitler, the failed art student; Mussolini, a schoolteacher by trade but mostly a restless revolutionary, expelled for subversion from Switzerland and the Trentino; Joseph Goebbels, the jobless college graduate with literary ambitions; Hermann Goering, the drifting World War I fighter ace; Heinrich Himmler, the agronomy student who failed at selling fertilizer and raising chickens. Yet the early fascist cadres were far too diverse in social origins and education to fit the common label of marginal outsiders. Alongside street-brawlers with criminal records like Amerigo Dumini or Martin Bormann one could find a professor of philosophy like Giovanni Gentile or even, briefly, a musician like Arturo Toscanini. What united them was, after all, values rather than a social profile: scorn for tired bourgeois politics, opposition to the Left, fervent nationalism, a tolerance for violence when needed.
Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
The importance of condition in a book is much the same as condition in a used automobile. A used Ford in fine running condition is worth far more than a smashed-up Cadillac beyond repair.
Robert A. Wilson (Modern Book Collecting)
I have always believed that firing someone or asking for a resignation should be carried out face-to-face by the one making the decision. (The only two presidents I had worked for who were willing to do this were Ford and Carter.)
Robert M. Gates (Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War)
In 1914, Henry Ford announced he was paying workers on his Model T assembly line $5 a day—three times what the typical factory employee earned at the time. The Wall Street Journal termed his action “an economic crime,” but Ford knew it was a cunning business move. The higher wage turned Ford’s autoworkers into customers who could afford to buy Model Ts. In two years Ford’s profits more than doubled.
Robert B. Reich (Beyond Outrage: Expanded Edition: What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it)
That trip was epic. Every day was an adventure. Bindi sat down for her formal schooling at a little table under the big trees by the river, with the kookaburras singing and the occasional lizard or snake cruising through camp. She had the best scientists from the University of Queensland around to answer her questions. I could tell Steve didn’t want it to end. We had been in bush camp for five weeks. Bindi, Robert, and I were now scheduled for a trip to Tasmania. Along with us would be their teacher, Emma (the kids called her “Miss Emma”), and Kate, her sister, who also worked at the zoo. It was a trip I had planned for a long time. Emma would celebrate her thirtieth birthday, and Kate would see her first snow. Steve and I would go our separate ways. He would leave Lakefield on Croc One and go directly to rendezvous with Philippe Cousteau for the filming of Ocean’s Deadliest. We tried to figure out how we could all be together for the shoot, but there just wasn’t enough room on the boat. Still, Steve came to me one morning while I was dressing Robert. “Why don’t you stay for two more days?” he said. “We could change your flight out. It would be worth it.” When I first met Steve, I made a deal with myself. Whenever Steve suggested a trip, activity, or project, I would go for it. I found it all too easy to come up with an excuse not to do something. “Oh, gee, Steve, I don’t feel like climbing that mountain, or fording that river,” I could have said. “I’m a bit tired, and it’s a bit cold, or it’s a bit hot and I’m a bit warm.” There always could be some reason. Instead I decided to be game for whatever Steve proposed. Inevitably, I found myself on the best adventures of my life. For some reason, this time I didn’t say yes. I fell silent. I thought about how it would work and the logistics of it all. A thousand concerns flitted through my mind. While I was mulling it over, I realized Steve had already walked off. It was the first time I hadn’t said, “Yeah, great, let’s go for it.” And I didn’t really know why.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
Steve and I would go our separate ways. He would leave Lakefield on Croc One and go directly to rendezvous with Philippe Cousteau for the filming of Ocean’s Deadliest. We tried to figure out how we could all be together for the shoot, but there just wasn’t enough room on the boat. Still, Steve came to me one morning while I was dressing Robert. “Why don’t you stay for two more days?” he said. “We could change your flight out. It would be worth it.” When I first met Steve, I made a deal with myself. Whenever Steve suggested a trip, activity, or project, I would go for it. I found it all too easy to come up with an excuse not to do something. “Oh, gee, Steve, I don’t feel like climbing that mountain, or fording that river,” I could have said. “I’m a bit tired, and it’s a bit cold, or it’s a bit hot and I’m a bit warm.” There always could be some reason. Instead I decided to be game for whatever Steve proposed. Inevitably, I found myself on the best adventures of my life. For some reason, this time I didn’t say yes. I fell silent. I thought about how it would work and the logistics of it all. A thousand concerns flitted through my mind. While I was mulling it over, I realized Steve had already walked off. It was the first time I hadn’t said, “Yeah, great, let’s go for it.” And I didn’t really know why. Steve drove us to the airstrip at the ranger station. One of the young rangers there immediately began to bend his ear about a wildlife issue. I took Robert off to pee on a bush before we had to get on the plane. It was just a tiny little prop plane and there would be no restroom until we got to Cairns. When we came back, all the general talk meant that there wasn’t much time left for us to say good-bye. Bindi pressed a note into Steve’s hand and said, “Don’t read this until we’re gone.” I gave Steve a big hug and a kiss. Then I kissed him again. I wanted to warn him to be careful about diving. It was my same old fear and discomfort with all his underwater adventures. A few days earlier, as Steve stepped off a dinghy, his boot had gotten tangled in a rope. “Watch out for that rope,” I said. He shot me a look that said, I’ve just caught forty-nine crocodiles in three weeks, and you’re thinking I’m going to fall over a rope? I laughed sheepishly. It seemed absurd to caution Steve about being careful. Steve was his usual enthusiastic self as we climbed into the plane. We knew we would see each other in less than two weeks. I would head back to the zoo, get some work done, and leave for Tasmania. Steve would do his filming trip. Then we would all be together again. We had arrived at a remarkable place in our relationship. Our trip to Lakefield had been one of the most special months of my entire life. The kids had a great time. We were all in the same place together, not only physically, but emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. We were all there.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
I blinked at the black man. “Are you the Syrian?” “Boy, I’m from Compton. The man ain’t here. We gonna search you again, and get you back on the road.” “Why do you have to search me again?” “Coz that’s the way we do things. Get your ass out of there.” Wander gave me the ugly smile, which he probably took to be encouraging. “You checked out fine, bro. Everything’s copacetic.” The black guy stepped back so I could get out in the tight space between the van and a dark green Ford Explorer. They brought me into an empty house to search me, but Wander stayed with the van. It was the last time I saw him. A
Robert Crais (Taken (Elvis Cole, #15; Joe Pike, #4))
Robert McNamara, el presidente del Banco Mundial que había sido presidente de la Ford y secretario de Defensa, afirma que la explosión demográfica constituye el mayor obstáculo para el progreso de América Latina y anuncia que el Banco Mundial otorgará prioridad, en sus préstamos, a los países que apliquen planes para el control de la natalidad.
Eduardo Galeano (Las venas abiertas de América Latina)
Thank you to my Emory family, now dispersed throughout the country, especially Nadia Behizadeh, Saundra Deltac, Jillian Ford, Keisha Green, David Morris, Michelle Purdy, Laura Quaynor, Mari Ann Roberts, Ana Solano-Campos, and Vera Stenhouse. Erica Dotson, who has helped to fill the past 8 years with laughter and friendship, treated this project as if it was her own and I am eternally thankful.
Alyssa Hadley Dunn (Teachers Without Borders? The Hidden Consequences of International Teachers in U.S. Schools (Multicultural Education))
Ford goes: “Thinking is the hardest work there is. That is why so few people engage in it.
Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad's CASHFLOW Quadrant: Rich Dad's Guide to Financial Freedom)
Hush.  I just read a report from the 82nd Reconnaissance Squadron from Kadena.  A RIVET JOINT crew that was doing collection on China a few hours ago, flying off North Korea over the water.  They intercepted a Chinese flight crew putting down their gear.”      “So what?” exclaimed Robert.
Lawrence A. Colby (The Devil Dragon Pilot (Ford Stevens Military-Aviation Thriller #1))
Jeśli mężczyzna wie, czego chce, mówi się, że jest męski. Jeśli kobieta mówi, co myśli, mówi się, że jest wredna - albo i gorzej.
Robert Lacey (Model Woman: Eileen Ford and the Business of Beauty)
He includes more than 150 quotations from the poet Samuel Garth, an old favourite of his cousin Cornelius Ford. Most of these come from Garth’s malarial burlesque, The Dispensary (1699). It is probably enough to list a few of the headwords under which quotations from Garth are to be found: ‘bilious’, ‘devastation’, ‘flagellation’, ‘galley-slave’, ‘haggard’, ‘maggot’, ‘nauseously’, ‘puker’, ‘tornado’, ‘unneighbourly’, ‘to waste’. Garth is the laureate of sickness, and Johnson turned to him, as to Robert Burton, for an anatomy of his infirmity.w
Henry Hitchings (Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr Johnson's Dictionary)
“In the South, football is confused with religion, chivalry, the Civil War, and women.” -Diane Roberts, The Quotable South
Deborah Ford (Grits (Girls Raised in the South) Guide to Life)
Thus began more than a decade of friendly warfare between Ford and Brinsmead. The former illustrated his own position in summary and in contrast to Robert's belief by saying that on the Cross, Christ had sin on Him, but not in Him, whereas the penitent thief had sin in him, but not on him (like all believers until the Second Coming), while the impenitent member of the Calvary trio had sin both on him and in him. Ford rejected both the sinful nature of Christ teaching and also perfectionism of all types. This was in harmony with the well-known teachings of Dr. Edward Heppenstall at Andrews University over many years. In
Desmond Ford (The Adventist Crisis of Spiritual Identity)
The Director’s Chair is with Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, etc.), and Robert refers later to this quote from Francis: “Failure is not necessarily durable. Remember that the things that they fire you for when you are young are the same things that they give lifetime achievement awards for when you’re old.” ROBERT: “Even if I didn’t sell Mariachi, I would have learned so much by doing that project. That was the idea—I’m there to learn. I’m not there to win; I’m there to learn, because then I’ll win, eventually. . . . “You’ve got to be able to look at your failures and know that there’s a key to success in every failure. If you look through the ashes long enough, you’ll find something. I’ll give you one. Quentin [Tarantino] asked me, ‘Do you want to do one of these short films called Four Rooms [where each director can create the film of their choosing, but it has to be limited to a single hotel room, and include New Year’s Eve and a bellhop]?’ and my hand went up right away, instinctively. . . . “The movie bombed. In the ashes of that failure, I can find at least two keys of success. On the set when I was doing it, I had cast Antonio Banderas as the dad and had this cool little Mexican as his son. They looked really close together. Then I found the best actress I could find, this little half-Asian girl. She was amazing. I needed an Asian mom. I really wanted them to look like a family. It’s New Year’s Eve, because [it] was dictated by the script, so they’re all dressed in tuxedos. I was looking at Antonio and his Asian wife and thinking, ‘Wow, they look like this really cool, international spy couple. What if they were spies, and these two little kids, who can barely tie their shoes, didn’t know they were spies?’ I thought of that on the set of Four Rooms. There are four of those [Spy Kids movies] now and a TV series coming. “So that’s one. The other one was, after [Four Rooms] failed, I thought, ‘I still love short films.’ Anthologies never work. We shouldn’t have had four stories; it should have been three stories because that’s probably three acts, and it should just be the same director instead of different directors because we didn’t know what each person was doing. I’m going to try it again. Why on earth would I try it again, if I knew they didn’t work? Because you figured something out when you’re doing it the first time, and [the second attempt] was Sin City.” TIM: “Amazing.
Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
As Jesse talked the sun down, the hours late, Zerelda smiled and dreamed of him as he had been and was and would be. It seemed everything about him was dynamic and masculine and romantic ; he was more vital even in his illness than any man she’d ever known.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Annie partially convinced Zee that Jesse was a preposterous, irresponsible man, but America seemed spellbound by him. Correspondents sought to locate him, mysteries about the James brothers were considered in editorials, reports of their robberies seemed to be such a national addiction that nickel books were being published in order to offer more imaginative adventures. Insofar as it wasn’t them that the James gang robbed, the public seemed to wish Jesse a prolonged life and great prosperity. He was their champion and their example, the apple of their eyes ; at times it even seemed to Zee that she wasn’t Jesse’s only wife, that America had married him too. And it seemed a joy to many of them when a reinvigorated James gang – without the man’s more prudential older brother – robbed the Chicago and Alton Railroad at Glendale, Missouri, in October 1879.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
[John C. Brown] “You ought to keep the Sabbath, Bob.” [Bob Ford] “You got your religion, I got my own. It isn’t right to spoon it down our throats every Sunday.” “It’s just that me and the missus, we’re Spirit-fired people, and when you think you’ve got the answer, well, you want to share it.” “I’d just as soon as you didn’t”, said Bob.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Oh, he was so dashing and romantic and cast-out by the world, I couldn’t help but love him. […] He was a figure out of a girl’s storybook. Gentle, adoring, dangerous, strong. Surely you must have felt the same things. He has a magic about him. He steps straight into your heart.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Divorce was legalized in Maryland and Holland adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1701. On that same date the German Hohenzollern royal family was developed from former emperors, kings, princes who were descended of the Germanic kingdoms scattered throughout central Europe. On April 9, 1865, in America, General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate States of America, ended the Civil War by surrendering to General Ulysses S. Grant, Commander of the United States Forces. It wasn’t even a week later, when on April 14th, Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, while watching “Our American Cousin” at the Ford Theater. The following day, as Lincoln lay dying in Washington, D.C., Otto Von Bismarck, a conservative Prussian statesman was elevated to the rank of Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen in Europe. During the second half of the 19th century as Bismarck ran German and dominated European history, Cuba fought for its independence from Spain. On April 25, 1898, at the start of the Industrial Revolution, the United States declared war against Spain. The century ended with turmoil in Europe, a free Cuba and the United States as the new world power!
Hank Bracker
Jesse sat low in the chair with his boots kicked out, drew off the soft red cap by its cotton ball, then reached out and snuggled Tim close to his chest. He said, “Let me tell you a secret, son: there’s always a mean old wolf in Grandma’s bed, and a worm inside the apple. There’s always a daddy inside the Santa suit. It’s a world of trickery.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Jesse recited, “ ‘Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.’ ” Bob nodded. “You hear it at funerals.” Jesse let the book divide from his finger and sought Psalm 41, which he scanned, vigorously scratching his two-inch beard, gingerly petting it smooth. He ironed out the page with his fist and knee and smiled wryly at Bob and then began a private study of the words, as if he were without company. Bob tried to imagine how Jesse’s children saw him: he would be the giant figure who could fling them high as the ceiling. They knew his legs, the sting of his mustache against their cheeks, the gentle way that Jesse had of fingering their hair. They didn’t know how he made his living or why they so often moved; they didn’t even know their father’s name; and it all seemed such an injustice to Bob that he asked, “Do you ever give your past life any thought?” Jesse squinted at him. “I don’t get your meaning.” Bob managed a grin and asked, “Do you ever give any thought to the men you’ve killed?
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Looking at sample five — "The car . . . was a blue Ford" we might again encounter Bertrand Russell's two-head paradox. It seems a blue Ford exists "in" the head of the witness, but whether the blue Ford also existed "outside" that head remains unsure. Even outside tricky psychology labs, ordinary perception has become problematical due to the whole sad history of eye-witness testimony frequently breaking down in court. Or does the "external universe" (including the blue Ford) exist in some super-Head somewhere? It seems that the translation into E-Prime — "I recall the car . . . as a blue Ford" better accords with the experiential level of our existence in space-time than the two heads and other paradoxes we might encounter in Standard English.
Robert Anton Wilson (Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You and Your World)
Even Aristotle, despite the abuse he has suffered in these pages, had enough common sense to point out, once, that "I see" always contains fallacy; we should say "I have seen." Time always elapses between the impact of energy on the eye and the creation of an image (and associated name and ideas) in the brain, which explains why three eyewitnesses to a hit-and-run such as we postulate here may report, not just the blue Ford of the first speaker, but a blue VW or maybe even a green Toyota.
Robert Anton Wilson (Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You and Your World)
October of 1883, Bob Ford could be identified correctly by more citizens than could the accidental president of the United States (Chester Alan Arthur); he was reported to be as renowned at twenty as Jesse was after fourteen years of grand larceny, and though it was by then a presumption on his part, it was unanticipated by others that a poised but unscrupulous young man could be thought dapper and tempting to women: the courtroom was as packed during his second-degree murder trial in Plattsburg as was the Mount Olivet Baptist Church when the corpse of Jesse Woodson James was prayed over and dispatched to his Maker, and as the correspondents noted the crowds inside and on the courthouse steps, they were surprised by the presence of otherwise sophisticated ladies, reading in this a proof of the young man’s beguiling powers.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
He began: “Jesse James was a lad who killed many a man. He robbed the Glendale train. He stole from the rich and he gave to the poor, he’d a hand and a heart and a brain.” The man strolled the room, coming so near Bob that Bob pulled back his crossed legs as the man sang the chorus in a higher pitch. “Oh, Jesse had a wife to mourn for his life, three children, they were brave; but that dirty little coward that shot Mister Howard has laid Jesse James in his grave.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Bob was going on twenty-two when he went back to Kansas City to gamble for a living. He was dapper, glamorous, physically strong, comparatively rich, and psychologically injured. By his own approximation, Bob had by then assassinated Jesse over eight hundred times, and each repetition was much like the principal occasion: he suspected no one in history had ever so often or so publicly recapitulated an act of betrayal, and he imagined that no degree of grief or penitence could change the country’s ill-regard for him.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
A correspondent asked why, if Bob was right-handed, he’d gripped the gun with his left, and Bob answered, as if nothing further needed saying, “Jesse was left-handed.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Jesse creaked his rocker, scraped the fire from his cigar with his yellowed finger, and made the ash disintegrate and sprinkle off his lap when he stood. He said, “I’m a no good, Bob. I ain’t Jesus.” And he walked into his rented bungalow, leaving behind the young man who had played at capturing Jesse James even as a child.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Maybe his thinking had been affected by the attitude of the age, in which a man tended to be less and less identified as an individual and more and more regarded based on the symbolic status of the car he drove. When a stranger rode down the street, one seldom thought of him as a person; one’s only immediate reaction was, “There goes a Ford — there goes a Pontiac — there goes one of those big goddam Imperials.” And men bragged about their cars instead of their characters.
Robert Bloch (The Essential Robert Bloch)
The collision of material ejected from the volcano's craters caused a build-up of static electricity in the atmosphere, which when combined with the accumulation of charge from rising hot air and moisture from the crater's meltwater reaching many kilometers up, created a huge amount of electricity that needed to be discharged, leading to spectacular, if hellish, sights.
Robert J. Ford (Volcano: Live, Dormant and Extinct Volcanoes Around the World (Wonders of Our Planet))
As he slowly began to recover, the family was told that he needed psychological help to survive. Through the hospital, the family contacted the Betty Ford Center, a heralded new alcohol and drug addiction treatment facility in the celebrity-rich Palm Springs area a couple of hours east of Los Angeles.
Robert Hilburn (Johnny Cash: The Life)
Both of my dads were generous men. Both made it a practice to give first. Teaching was one of their ways of giving. The more they gave, the more they received. One glaring difference was in the giving of money. My rich dad gave lots of money away. He gave to his church, to charities, and to his foundation. He knew that to receive money, you had to give money. Giving money is the secret to most great wealthy families. That is why there are organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation. These are organizations designed to take their wealth and increase it, as well as give it away in perpetuity.
Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!)
I'll just say it: I've never liked stories about dogs. Stories about hunting dogs. Sheep dogs. Bloodhounds. St. Bernard's with casks of brandy. Dogs that could talk, count, sing arias, walk on two feet or dance the boogaloo. - Richard Ford, in the foreword 'The Beast at my Feet
Robert DeMott (Afield: American Writers on Bird Dogs)
He was a faulty judge of character, a prevaricator, a child at heart. He went everywhere unrecognized and lunched with Kansas City shopkeepers and merchants, calling himself a cattleman or commodities investor, someone rich and leisured who had the common touch.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
He considered himself a Southern loyalist and guerrilla in a Civil War that never ended.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
To write the history of neighborhood strife during this period of time without describing the efforts of people like Louis Wirth and his collaboration with the psychological warfare establishment during World War II, or the American Friends Service Committee and their work in both Philadelphia and Chicago, or Paul YIvisaker and his creation of the Gray Areas grants for the Ford Foundation and their subsequent takeover by a quintessential establishment figure like McGeorge Bundy, or Leon Sullivan, one of the players created by the Ford Foundation, and his collaboration with Robert Weaver while head of the Federal Housing Administration, is to tell less than half of the story. It is to do a remake of King Kong without the gorilla. It is also a bad example of whiggish history, a genre depressingly familiar to anyone who has done any reading in the conventional accounts of the sexual revolution and the civil rights movement, where effects have no causes and actual people making actual decisions in actual rooms are replaced by broad historical forces and Enlightenment melodramas like the triumph of liberation over bondage and light over darkness.
E. Michael Jones (The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing)
For the man was canny, he was intuitive, he anticipated everything. He continually looked over his shoulders, he looked into the background with mirrors, he locked his sleeping room at night, he could pick out a whisper in the wind, he could register the slightest added value a man put into his words, he could probably read the faltering and perfidy in Bob’s face.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
He could give me plenty of money but he’s got this philosophy that his boys ought to feel some hardships or else they’ll all spoil.” “A man of principles;” Jesse said. “People say that about themselves when really they only want to make you unhappy.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
instantly felt in jeopardy, for his impudence was plain and Jesse’s countenance was stern
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
once claimed his employer was Jesus Christ and Company. He was a swindler, insurance salesman, debt collector, a member of the Illinois bar;
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Charley said, “Why don’t everybody make up and be pleasant for once? Why don’t we pass the evening like pleasant human beings?
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
The Americans are certainly great hero worshippers, and always take their heroes from the criminal classes.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
As the Val dive-bombers sought other targets in addition to the Nevada, they found the battleship Pennsylvania as it sat in Dry Dock No. 1 along with two destroyers, Cassin and Downes. The lone occupant of Dry Dock No. 2 nearby was the destroyer Shaw. Several attacking planes dropped 550-pound bombs on the Shaw. Two penetrated the main deck near the five-inch guns forward of the bridge. A third went clean through the bridge superstructure and ruptured fuel tanks, setting the front half of the Shaw ablaze. This fire caused the forward magazines to detonate just as they had on the Arizona. A huge explosion, second only to that on the Arizona, sent a mass of flames and mangled metal into the air. A great deal of it landed on the decks of the nearby Nevada, making it twice in less than an hour that the battleship had come under such an assault. Meanwhile, the Shaw broke in two. Finding Hospital Point not so hospitable, a tug pushed the Nevada off the beach and across the channel to a new resting spot aground on Waipio Peninsula across from Ford Island. As Robert Meyer observed, the battleship “kept its deck above water but not by much.” Meanwhile, the Arizona and the rest of the battleships strewn along Battleship Row were not going anywhere.1
Walter R. Borneman (Brothers Down: Pearl Harbor and the Fate of the Many Brothers Aboard the USS Arizona)
Martin Ford, author of The Rise of the Robots, speaks for many when he predicts “75% unemployment by 2100.
Robert Atkinson (Don't Fear AI)
regarding your willingness to learn, even at your age. I even remind you of one of my favorite statements, a bit of wisdom from Henry Ford, a man whom many would say is among history’s greatest inventors: “Anyone who keeps learning stays young.” How’s that for a sweet promise?
Robert Wolgemuth (Gun Lap: Staying in the Race with Purpose)
Robert McNamara, the World Bank president who was chairman of Ford and then secretary of defense, has called the population explosion the greatest obstacle to progress in Latin America; the World Bank, he says, will give priority in its loans to countries that implement birth control plans. McNamara notes with regret that the brains of the poor do 25 percent less thinking, and the World Bank technocrats (who have already been born) set computers humming to produce labyrinthine abracadabras on the advantages of not being born
Eduardo Galeano (Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent)
Bir robot tarafından öldürülen ilk kişi, Flat Rock, Michigan'daki Ford fabrikasında bir işçi olan Robert Williams'dı.
Max Tegmark (La vie 3.0 - Etre humain à l'ère de l'intelligence artificielle: Etre humain à l'ère de l'intelligence artificielle)
In order to fulfill your quest -" "Would you please not usw that word? It's so Robert E. Howard." "Fine. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to travel to the far ends of the earth...?" "What? In these shoes? You must be joking." "Crossing arid desserts and steaming jungles," the unicorn continued grimly, "fording mighty rivers and climbing snow-capped mountains-" "I take it scheduled public transport isn't an option." "Until you reach the Cradle of All Goblins, interrupt just once more and I wash my hooves of you, where you will encounter three trials. You must uncover the great truth that was hidden, you must right the ancestral wrong, and you must throw the fire into the ring of power. Only when you have done that -" "Excuse me-" "I warned you. Only when you have done that will you -" "Excuse me," Benny said firmly, "bit I think you may have got the last one a bit turned round. Surely it should be throw the ring-
Tom Holt
One day in 1885, the twenty-three-year old Henry Ford got his first look at the gas-powered engine, and it was instant love. Ford had apprenticed as a machinist and had worked on every conceivable device, but nothing could compare to his fascination with this new type of engine, one that created its own power. He envisioned a whole new kind of horseless carriage that would revolutionize transportation. He made it his Life’s Task to be the pioneer in developing such an automobile. Working the night shift at the Edison Illuminating Company as an engineer, during the day he would tinker with the new internal-combustion engine he was developing. He built a workshop in a shed behind his home and started constructing the engine from pieces of scrap metal he salvaged from anywhere he could find them. By 1896, working with friends who helped him build a carriage, he completed his first prototype, which he called the Quadricycle, and debuted it on the streets of Detroit. At the time there were many others working on automobiles with gas-powered engines. It was a ruthlessly competitive environment in which new companies died by the day. Ford’s Quadricycle looked nice and ran well, but it was too small and incomplete for large-scale production. And so he began work on a second automobile, thinking ahead to the production end of the process. A year later he completed it, and it was a marvel of design. Everything was geared toward simplicity and compactness. It was easy to drive and maintain. All that he needed was financial backing and sufficient capital to mass-produce it. To manufacture automobiles in the late 1890s was a daunting venture. It required a tremendous amount of capital and a complex business structure, considering all of the parts that went into production. Ford quickly found the perfect backer: William H. Murphy, one of the most prominent businessmen in Detroit. The new company was dubbed the Detroit Automobile Company, and all who were involved had high hopes. But problems soon arose. The car Ford had designed as a prototype needed to be reworked—the parts came from different places; some of them were deficient and far too heavy for his liking. He kept trying to refine the design to come closer to his ideal. But it was taking far too long, and Murphy and the stockholders were getting restless. In 1901, a year and a half after it had started operation, the board of directors dissolved the company. They had lost faith in Henry Ford.
Robert Greene (Mastery (The Modern Machiavellian Robert Greene Book 1))
Jesse swiveled a little in his saddle to see Charley plodding his mare along to the right. “You ever consider suicide?” “Can’t say I have. There was always something else I wanted to do. Or my predicaments changed or I saw hardships from a different slant; you know all what can happen. It never seemed respectable.” “I’ll tell you one thing that’s certain: you won’t fight dying once you’ve peeked over to the other side; you’ll no more want to go back to your body than you’d want to spoon up your own puke.
Ron Hansen (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
For example, Twist is “call-ahead” software that sees where you are and knows where you are heading, as well as knowing the driving conditions en route. It sends a text message to your next appointment while you keep your hands and your mind on the road. Glympse, as we mentioned, is similar and lets you share your location with others—who just might rat you out when you speed. GasBuddy.com lets you find the cheapest gas near your location. Nooly Micro Weather reports uber-localized weather, within .4 miles of where you are and just 15 minutes into the future, preparing you for the fog bank around the next curve on a mountain road. As we write this, it is available as a phone app and the developer is working with Ford and Toyota for the app to be included in cars as they ship. The integrated, automotive Nooly will signal the car to turn on fog lights or the defroster a moment before the weather changes. Waze is a mobile app that lets drivers share updates on road conditions in near realtime. With a community of nearly 50 million members as of May 2013, it is perhaps the most robust source of user-generated road data in the world. Google acquired Waze in the summer of 2013 for just under $1 billion.
Robert Scoble (Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy)
Both the immigration legislation and the draconian regime of high tariffs (the Ford–McCumber tariff of 1922 and the Smoot–Hawley tariff of 1930) converted the U.S. into a relatively closed economy during the three decades between 1930 and 1960. The lack of competition for jobs from recent immigrants made it easier for unions to organize and push up wages in the 1930s. The high tariff wall allowed American manufacturing to introduce all available innovations into U.S.-based factories without the outsourcing that has become common in the last several decades. The lack of competition from immigrants and imports boosted the wages of workers at the bottom and contributed to the remarkable “great compression” of the income distribution during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.36 Thus the closing of the American economy through restrictive immigration legislation and high tariffs may indirectly have contributed to the rise of real wages in the 1930s, the focus of innovative investment in the domestic economy, and the general reduction of inequality from the 1920s to the 1950s.
Robert J. Gordon (The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World, 60))