Win At All Costs Quotes

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This isn’t about the Ravens. This is about you. This is about everything it took you to get to this point, everything it cost you, and everyone who laughed when you dared to dream of something big and bright. You’re here tonight because you refused to give up and refused to give in. You’re here where they all said you’d never be, and no one can say you haven’t earned the right to play this game. “All eyes are on you. It’s time to show them what you’re made of. There’s no room for doubt, no room for second guesses, no room for error. This is your night. This is your game. This is your moment. Seize it with everything you’ve got. Pull out all the stops and lay it all on the line. Fight because you don’t know how to die quietly. Win because you don’t know how to lose. This king’s ruled long enough—it’s time to tear his castle down.
Nora Sakavic (The King's Men (All for the Game, #3))
If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
Winston S. Churchill
I discovered when I went all out, when I put 100 percent of my energy into some intense, impossible task - when my heart was jack-hammering, when lactic acid was sizzling through my muscles - that's when I felt good, normal, balanced.
Tyler Hamilton (The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs)
Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
Winston S. Churchill
It had to be a trick or you couldn’t have done it. It’s the bind we were in. We had to have a commander with so much empathy that he would think like the buggers, understand them and anticipate them. So much compassion that he could win the love of his underlings and work with them like a perfect machine, as perfect as the buggers. But somebody with that much compassion could never be the killer we needed. Could never go into battle willing to win at all costs. If you knew, you couldn’t do it. If you were the kind of person who would do it even if you knew, you could never have understood the buggers well enough.
Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1))
Kevin," Neil said, and waited for Kevin to finally look at him. "Figure out what you want more than anything, what it would kill you to lose. That's what's at stake if you let Riko win. Calculate the cost of your fear. If it's too much, you need to fight. Wouldn't you rather die trying than never try at all?" "It's death either way," Kevin pointed out. "Die free or die a failure," Neil said. "The choice is yours
Nora Sakavic (The King's Men (All for the Game, #3))
Maria, lonely prostitute on a street of pain, You, at least, hail me and speak to me While a thousand others ignore my face. You offer me an hour of love, And your fees are not as costly as most. You are the madonna of the lonely, The first-born daughter in a world of pain. You do not turn fat men aside, Or trample on the stuttering, shy ones, You are the meadow where desperate men Can find a moment's comfort. Men have paid more to their wives To know a bit of peace And could not walk away without the guilt That masquerades as love. You do not bind them, lovely Maria, you comfort them And bid them return. Your body is more Christian than the Bishop's Whose gloved hand cannot feel the dropping of my blood. Your passion is as genuine as most, Your caring as real! But you, Maria, sacred whore on the endless pavement of pain, You, whose virginity each man may make his own Without paying ought but your fee, You who know nothing of virgin births and immaculate conceptions, You who touch man's flesh and caress a stranger, Who warm his bed to bring his aching skin alive, You make more sense than stock markets and football games Where sad men beg for virility. You offer yourself for a fee--and who offers himself for less? At times you are cruel and demanding--harsh and insensitive, At times you are shrewd and deceptive--grasping and hollow. The wonder is that at times you are gentle and concerned, Warm and loving. You deserve more respect than nuns who hide their sex for eternal love; Your fees are not so high, nor your prejudice so virtuous. You deserve more laurels than the self-pitying mother of many children, And your fee is not as costly as most. Man comes to you when his bed is filled with brass and emptiness, When liquor has dulled his sense enough To know his need of you. He will come in fantasy and despair, Maria, And leave without apologies. He will come in loneliness--and perhaps Leave in loneliness as well. But you give him more than soldiers who win medals and pensions, More than priests who offer absolution And sweet-smelling ritual, More than friends who anticipate his death Or challenge his life, And your fee is not as costly as most. You admit that your love is for a fee, Few women can be as honest. There are monuments to statesmen who gave nothing to anyone Except their hungry ego, Monuments to mothers who turned their children Into starving, anxious bodies, Monuments to Lady Liberty who makes poor men prisoners. I would erect a monument for you-- who give more than most-- And for a meager fee. Among the lonely, you are perhaps the loneliest of all, You come so close to love But it eludes you While proper women march to church and fantasize In the silence of their rooms, While lonely women take their husbands' arms To hold them on life's surface, While chattering women fill their closets with clothes and Their lips with lies, You offer love for a fee--which is not as costly as most-- And remain a lonely prostitute on a street of pain. You are not immoral, little Maria, only tired and afraid, But you are not as hollow as the police who pursue you, The politicians who jail you, the pharisees who scorn you. You give what you promise--take your paltry fee--and Wander on the endless, aching pavements of pain. You know more of universal love than the nations who thrive on war, More than the churches whose dogmas are private vendettas made sacred, More than the tall buildings and sprawling factories Where men wear chains. You are a lonely prostitute who speaks to me as I pass, And I smile at you because I am a lonely man.
James Kavanaugh (There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves)
No wonder the left seeks to avoid political debate at all costs. Why bother? Members of the left are not interested in having a debate about policy. They are not interested in debating what is right or wrong for the country. They are interested in debating you personally. They are interested in castigating you as a nasty human being because you happen to disagree. This is what makes leftists leftists: an unearned sense of moral superiority over you. And if they can instill that sense of moral superiority in others by making you the bad guy, they will.
Ben Shapiro (How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them: 11 Rules for Winning the Argument)
So what does it take to win? Yes, you have to be determined. Yes, you have to be driven. Yes, you must have the unconquerable will to win. But to really win, to truly win at all cost, requires more flexibility, more creativity, more adaptability, more compromise, and more humility than most people ever realize. That is what it takes to win.
Jocko Willink (The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win)
Some players are so bad they are hated. Some players are so bad they are forgotten. And some are so bad that they are loved, talked about, treasured.
John Foot (Winning at All Costs: A Scandalous History of Italian Soccer)
If I had a reader and he had read all I have written so far of my adventures, there would be certainly no need to inform him that I am not created for any sort of society. The trouble is I don't know how to behave in company. If I go anywhere among a great many people I always have a feeling as though I were being electrified by so many eyes looking at me. It positively makes me shrivel up, physically shrivel up, even in such places as the theatre, to say nothing of private houses. I did not know how to behave with dignity in these gambling saloons and assemblies; I either was still, inwardly upbraiding myself for my excessive mildness and politeness, or I suddenly got up and did something rude. And meanwhile all sorts of worthless fellows far inferior to me knew how to behave with wonderful aplomb-- and that's what really exasperated me above everything, so that I lost my self-possession more and more. I may say frankly, even at that time, if the truth is to be told, the society there, and even winning money at cards, had become revolting and a torture to me. Positively a torture. I did, of course, derive acute enjoyment from it, but this enjoyment was at the cost of torture.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Adolescent (Vintage Classics))
My Angel, My greatest hope is that you never have to read this. Vee knows to give you this letter only if my feather is burned and I’m chained in hell or if Blakely develops a devilcraft prototype strong enough to kill me. When war between our races ignites, I don’t know what will become of our future. When I think about you and our plans. I feel a desperate aching. Never have I wanted things to turn out right as as I do now. Before I leave this world, I need to make certain you know that all my love belongs to you. You are the same to me now as you were before you swore the Changeover Vow. You are mine. Always. I love the strength, courage, and gentleness of your soul. I love your body too. How could someone so sexy and perfect be mine? With you I have purpose-someone to love, cherish and protect. There are secrets in my past that weigh on your mind. You've trusted me enough not to ask about them, and it's your faith that has made me a better man. I don’t want to leave you with anything hidden between us. I told you I was banished from heaven for falling in love with a human girl. The I way I explained it, I risked everything to be with her. I said those words because they simplified my motivations. But they weren't the truth. The truth is I had become disenchanted with the archangels’s shifting goals and wanted to push back against them and their rules. That girl was an excuse to let go of an old way of living and accept a new journey that would eventually lead me to you. I believe in destiny, Angel. I believe every choice I've made has brought me closer to you. I looked for you for a very long time. I may have fallen from heaven but I fell for you. I will do whatever it takes to make sure you win this war. Nephilim will come out on top. You’ll fulfill your vow to the Black Hand and be safe. This is my priority even if the cost is my life. I suspect this will make you angry. It may be hard to forgive me. I promised that we would be together at the end of this and you may resent me for the breaking that vow. I want you to know I did everything to keep my word. As I write this I am going over ever possibility that will see us through this. I hope I find a way. But if this choice I have to make comes down to your or me, I choose you. I always have. All my love, Patch
Becca Fitzpatrick (Finale (Hush, Hush, #4))
I want you to close your eyes and think about why you're here tonight. Don't tell me 'revenge' because you've already gotten it just by being here tonight. This isn't about Riko anymore. This isn't about the Ravens. This is about everything it took you to get to this point, everything it cost you, and everyone who laughed when you dared to dream of something big and bright. You're here tonight because you refused to give up and refused to give in. You're here where they all said you'd never be, and no one can say you haven't earned the right to play this game. All eyes are on you. It's time to show them what you're made of. There's no room for doubt, no room for second guesses, no room for error. This is your night. This is your game. This is your moment. Seize it with everything you've got. Pull out all the stops and lay it all on the line. Fight because you don't know how to die quietly. Win because you don't know how to lose. This king's ruled long enough—it's time to tear his castle down.
Nora Sakavic (The King's Men (All for the Game, #3))
Your attachments are the source of all your problems. The need to be right, to possess someone or something, to win at all costs, to be viewed by others as superior—these are all attachments. The open mind resists these attachments and consequently experiences inner peace and success. To release attachments, you have to make a shift in how you
Wayne W. Dyer (10 Secrets for Success and Inner Peace (Puffy Books))
What you don’t know going in is that when you come out, you will be scarred for life. Whether you were in for a week, a month, or a year—even if you come home without a scratch—you are never, ever going to be the same. When I went in, I was eighteen. I thought it was all glory and you win lots of medals. You think you’re going to be the guy. Then you find out the cost is very great. Especially when you don’t see the kids you were with when you went in. Living with it can be hell. It’s like the devil presides in you. I knew what I sighed up for, yes, and I would do it again. But the reality of war—words can’t begin to describe it.
William Guarnere
I guess when you risk hell, there's not much left to scare you.
Tyler Hamilton (The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs)
Slowly, inch by inch, I felt myself recovering. After a few weeks, the darkness began to recede; my appetite for life returned. Haven was wonderful; she understood and nursed me through these weeks until I felt strong enough to go out in public, to get on my bike again.
Tyler Hamilton (The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs)
Trump’s election didn’t turn the Republican Party into a nihilistic, win-at-all-costs, political-racketeering scheme. The fact that the Republican Party is a nihilistic, win-at-all-costs, political-racketeering scheme is what led to the election of Trump.
Dan Pfeiffer (Un-Trumping America: A Plan to Make America a Democracy Again)
If your policy is win at all costs then you are going to hurt people
Darrell Waltrip
The reason why many people remain on the bottom is because they play to 'not lose', as opposed to playing to win at all costs.
Brandi L. Bates (Remains To Be Seen)
One day I'm a normal person with a normal life,” he said. “The next I'm standing on a street corner in Madrid with a secret phone and a hole in my arm and I'm bleeding all over, hoping I don't get arrested. It was completely crazy. But it seemed like the only way at the time.
Tyler Hamilton (The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs)
People think doping is for lazy people who want to avoid hard work. That might be true in some cases, but in mine, as with many riders I knew, it was precisely the opposite. EPO granted the ability to suffer more; to push yourself farther and harder than you'd ever imagined, in both training and racing.
Daniel Coyle (The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs)
When your motive is not simply winning at all costs but grievance and revenge, you’re more dangerous than a straight-up sociopath. Donald is much worse than that—he’s someone with a gaping wound where his soul should
Mary L. Trump (The Reckoning: Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal)
Are my efforts driven by the need to win at all cost, or am I inspired by the desire to hold onto my integrity despite the cost? For I would be wise to realize that exercising the former will cost me both the former and the latter.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
As for the Zamorians’ mentality, they can be quite ruthless, they love to brawl, they’re extremely dominant, super possessive, and always need to win at all costs.” “All I’m hearing is ‘sexy, sexy, sexy, super sexy, and I can cure him of that.
Regine Abel (I Married a Beast (Prime Mating Agency, #7))
And that's the real reason the powerful fear open systems and networks. If anyone can set up a free voicecall to anyone else in the world, using the net, then we can all communicate with the same ease that's standard for the high and mighty. [...] And if any worker, anywhere, can communicate with any other worker, anywhere, for free, instantaneously, without the boss's permission, then, brother, look out, because the Coase cost of demanding better pay, better working conditions and a slice of the pie just got a *lot* cheaper. And the people who have the power aren't going to sit still and let a bunch of grunts take it away from them.
Cory Doctorow (For the Win)
Low trust causes friction, whether it is caused by unethical behavior or by ethical but incompetent behavior (because even good intentions can never take the place of bad judgment). Low trust is the greatest cost in life and in organizations, including families. Low trust creates hidden agendas, politics, interpersonal conflict, interdepartmental rivalries, win-lose thinking, defensive and protective communication—all of which reduce the speed of trust. Low trust slows everything—every decision, every communication, and every relationship.
Stephen M.R. Covey (The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything)
If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
Winston S. Churchill (The Gathering Storm (The Second World War, #1))
Bernard was to remember this moment for the rest of his life. As they drank from their water bottles he was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near-infinity of private sorrows, as a boundless grief minutely subdivided without diminishment among individuals who covered the continent like dust, like spores whose separate identities would remain unknown, and whose totality showed more sadness than anyone could ever begin to comprehend; a weight borne in silence by hundreds of thousands, millions, like the woman in black for a husband and two brothers, each grief a particular, intricate, keening love story that might have been otherwise. It seemed as though he had never thought about the war before, not about its cost. He had been so busy with the details of his work, of doing it well, and his widest view had been of war aims, of winning, of statistical deaths, statistical destruction, and of post-war reconstruction. For the first time he sensed the scale of the catastrophe in terms of feeling; all those unique and solitary deaths, all that consequent sorrow, unique and solitary too, which had no place in conferences, headlines, history, and which had quietly retired to houses, kitchens, unshared beds, and anguished memories. This came upon Bernard by a pine tree in the Languedoc in 1946 not as an observation he could share with June but as a deep apprehension, a recognition of a truth that dismayed him into silence and, later, a question: what possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?
Ian McEwan (Black Dogs)
The day of democracy is past," he said. "Past for ever. That day began with the bowmen of Crecy, it ended when marching infantry, when common men in masses ceased to win the battles of the world, when costly cannon, great ironclads, and strategic railways became the means of power. To-day is the day of wealth. Wealth now is power as it never was power before—it commands earth and sea and sky. All power is for those who can handle wealth....
H.G. Wells (When the Sleeper Wakes)
The peloton was Facebook on wheels-and during this period, information was flying.
Tyler Hamilton (The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs)
Northern journalist Gianni Brera played on the contradiction between Diego's physical appearance and his grace on the field, dubbing him 'the divine abortion
John Foot (Winning at All Costs: A Scandalous History of Italian Soccer)
The Roaring Eighties were a new gilded age, where winning was celebrated at all costs.
Bryan Burrough (Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco)
Never win at the expense of a relationship.
Frank Sonnenberg (The Path to a Meaningful Life)
We don't know how to insult you any more' (Inter fan banner, directed at their own team)
John Foot (Winning at All Costs: A Scandalous History of Italian Soccer)
No wonder the left seeks to avoid political debate at all costs. Why bother? Members of the left are not interested in having a debate about policy. They are not interested in debating what is right or wrong for the country. They are interested in debating you personally. They are interested in castigating you as a nasty human being because you happen to disagree.
Ben Shapiro (How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them: 11 Rules for Winning the Argument)
In order to answer the question “Where am I going?” one needs to work for self-improvement, to possess decisiveness, to have a will to win and dedication to achieve the goal at all cost
Sunday Adelaja
to have a physical body and to work with it and to work with the forces of nature to mold it into the highest expression of joy, and to keep it always by using it to learn how to overcome disease, impairment and as today’s cutting edge, non-funded, objective, purposeful science says, one day, even death?   What if short-term excitement and intensity created by the overblown desire to win at all cost could be replaced by a more durable excitement in an intensity springing from the heart of the physical athletic experience itself?  It would soon be discovered that sports and physical activities reformed and refurbished with integrity, not buy-offs are the best possible path to personal enlightenment and social transformation for this new millennium.
Don Tolman (Air, Fire, Earth & Water)
We got through it. Haven made excuses for me to friends, and made an appointment with a terrific doctor, who put me on Effexor, 150 milligrams a day, enough to get my brain straightened out.
Tyler Hamilton (The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs)
All through high school and college, his judo coach and older teammates would often say to him, "You have the talent and the strength, and you practice enough, but you just don't have the desire." They were probably right. He lacked that drive to win at all costs, which is why he would often make it to the semifinals and the finals but lose the all-important championship match.
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
An active manager must overcome the drag of about 3.25 percent in annual operating costs. If the fund manager is only to match the market’s historical 9 percent return, he or she must return 12.25 percent before all those costs. In other words, to do merely as well as the market, an active fund manager must be able to outperform the market return by over one-third or 34.1 percent!5
Charles D. Ellis (Winning the Loser's Game: Timeless Strategies for Successful Investing)
I had no idea we planned to be so ruthless." "It was not publicized or even discussed with the political arm of the colonization program. Ruthlessness was necessary but wins no votes." "But this is not our world, to treat however we want!" "Visiting here as students of an alien evolutionary tradition would not be either cost-effective or, ultimately, successful. We would inevitably contaminate Garden, or worse yet, become contaminated and bring potentially deadly Gardenian life forms back to Earth. The three continental preserves will be sufficient to allow biologists to study alien life at some point in the future. And if you really thought we would colonize this world without making it 'ours', you'd be far too naive to command this expedition." "I...didn't realize..." "You didn't think about it at all," said the expendable. "The selective voluntary blindness of human beings allows them to ignore the moral consequences of their choices. It has been one of the species' most valuable traits, in terms of the survival of any particular human community." "And you aren't morally blind?" "We see the moral ironies very clearly. We simply don't care.
Orson Scott Card (Pathfinder (Pathfinder, #1))
Mustang’s face is a quick one. Quick to mocking smiles. Quick to pleasant frowns. She gives me the smile and asks what is on my mind. “I am wondering when you will betray me,” I say. Her eyebrows knit together. “You’re expecting that?” “Cheat or be cheated,” I say. “Echoed by your own lips.” “Are you going to cheat me?” she said. “No. Because what advantage would you gain? You and I have beaten this game. They would have us believe one must win at the cost to all the rest. That isn’t true, and we’re proving it.” I say nothing. “You have my trust, because when you saw me hiding in the mud after taking my castle, you let me escape,” she explains thoughtfully. “And I have your trust, because I pulled you from the mud when Cassius left you for dead.” I do not respond. “So there is the answer. You are going to do great things, Darrow.” She never calls me Darrow. “Maybe you don’t have to do them alone?” Her words make me smile. Then I bolt upright, startling her. “Get our men,” I order.
Pierce Brown (Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1))
Cagliari central defender Comunardo Niccolai became celebrated for his ability to score bizarre own goals in the 1960s, so much that self inflicted problems in general are often referred to as 'Niccolai-like'.
John Foot (Winning at All Costs: A Scandalous History of Italian Soccer)
older teammates would often say to him, “You have the talent and the strength, and you practice enough, but you just don’t have the desire.” They were probably right. He lacked that drive to win at all costs, which is why he would often make it to the semifinals and the finals but lose the all-important championship match. He exhibited these tendencies in everything, not just judo. He was more placid than determined.
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (Vintage International))
I got some funny reactions, a lot of irate reactions, as if I were somehow taking people's fun away from them. I have nothing against sports. I like to watch a good basketball game and that sort of thing. On the other hand, we have to recognise that the mass hysteria about spectator sports plays a significant role. First of all, spectator sports make people more passive, because you're not doing them; you're watching somebody doing them. Secondly, they engender jingoist and chauvinist attitudes, sometimes to quite an extreme degree. I saw something in the newspapers just a day or two ago about how high-school teams are now so antagonistic and passionately committed to winning at all costs that they had to abandon the standard handshake before or after the game. These kids can't even do civil things like greeting one another because they're ready to kill one another. It's spectator sports that engender those attitudes, particularly when they're designed to organise a community to be hysterically committed to their gladiators. That's very dangerous, and it has lots of deleterious effects.
Noam Chomsky (The Quotable Chomsky)
Polarization can destroy democratic norms. When socioeconomic, racial, or religious differences give rise to extreme partisanship, in which societies sort themselves into political camps whose worldviews are not just different but mutually exclusive, toleration becomes harder to sustain. Some polarization is healthy - even necessary - for democracy. And indeed, the historical experience of democracies in Western Europe shows us that norms can be sustained even where parties are separated by considerable ideological differences. But when societies grow so deeply divided that parties become wedded to incompatible worldviews, and especially when their members are so socially segregated that they rarely interact, stable partisan rivalries eventually give way to perceptions of mutual threat. As mutual toleration disappears, politicians grow tempted to abandon forbearance and try to win at all costs. This may encourage the rise of antisystem groups that reject democracy's rules altogether. When that happens, democracy is in trouble.
Steven Levitsky (How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future)
He wanted suddenly to stand up and shout, telling them that he had killed a rich white girl, a girl whose family was known to all of them. Yes; if he did that a look of startled horror would come over their faces. But, no. He would not do that, even though the satisfaction would be keen. He was so greatly outnumbered that he would be arrested, tried, and executed. He wanted the keen thrill of startling them, but felt that the cost was too great. He wished that he had the power to say what he had done without fear of being arrested; he wished that he could be an idea in their minds; that his black face and the image of smothering Mary and cutting off her head and burning her could hover before their eyes as a terrible picture of reality which they could see and feel and yet not destroy. He was not satisfied with the way things stood now; he was a man who had come in sight of a goal, then had won it, and in winning it had seen just within his grasp another goal, higher, greater. He had learned to shout and had shouted and no ear had heard him (114).
Richard Wright (Native Son)
From this day forward, let no human make war upon any other human. Let no Terran agency conspire against this new beginning. And let no man consort with alien powers. And to all the enemies of humanity, seek not to bar our way, for we shall win through, no matter the cost!
Abraham Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln: The People's Leader in The Struggle for National Existence)
I have never heard anyone profess indifference to a boat race. Why should you row a boat race? Why endure long months of pain in preparation of a fierce half hour, or even six minutes, that will leave you all but dead? Does anyone ask the question? Is there anyone who would not go through all its costs, and more, for the moment when anguish breaks into triumph - or even for the glory of having nobly lost? Is life less than a boat race? If a man will give all the blood in his body to win the one, will he not spend all the might of his soul to prevail in the other?
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Fight all you want against The Controllors, yet it will not matter since in every possible event they win, but at a cost.* They will do whatever it costs to keep you here instead of letting you cross to a Higher Frequency. They will push your fears and anger towards them so that they can feed off you. ” * The Dark Ones Knows
Gino DiCaprio (Illuminatis The Ones and The Shadows: Book III - Edited Edition (The Universal Law of Creation: Chronicles))
There have been ample opportunities since 1945 to show that material superiority in war is not enough if the will to fight is lacking. In Algeria, Vietnam and Afghanistan the balance of economic and military strength lay overwhelmingly on the side of France, the United States, and the Soviet Union, but the will to win was slowly eroded. Troops became demoralised and brutalised. Even a political solution was abandoned. In all three cases the greater power withdrew. The Second World War was an altogether different conflict, but the will to win was every bit as important - indeed it was more so. The contest was popularly perceived to be about issues of life and death of whole communities rather than for their fighting forces alone. They were issues, wrote one American observer in 1939, 'worth dying for'. If, he continued, 'the will-to-destruction triumphs, our resolution to preserve civilisation must become more implacable...our courage must mount'. Words like 'will' and 'courage' are difficult for historians to use as instruments of cold analysis. They cannot be quantified; they are elusive of definition; they are products of a moral language that is regarded sceptically today, even tainted by its association with fascist rhetoric. German and Japanese leaders believed that the spiritual strength of their soldiers and workers in some indefinable way compensate for their technical inferiority. When asked after the war why Japan lost, one senior naval officer replied that the Japanese 'were short on spirit, the military spirit was weak...' and put this explanation ahead of any material cause. Within Germany, belief that spiritual strength or willpower was worth more than generous supplies of weapons was not confined to Hitler by any means, though it was certainly a central element in the way he looked at the world. The irony was that Hitler's ambition to impose his will on others did perhaps more than anything to ensure that his enemies' will to win burned brighter still. The Allies were united by nothing so much as a fundamental desire to smash Hitlerism and Japanese militarism and to use any weapon to achieve it. The primal drive for victory at all costs nourished Allied fighting power and assuaged the thirst for vengeance. They fought not only because the sum of their resources added up to victory, but because they wanted to win and were certain that their cause was just. The Allies won the Second World War because they turned their economic strength into effective fighting power, and turned the moral energies of their people into an effective will to win. The mobilisation of national resources in this broad sense never worked perfectly, but worked well enough to prevail. Materially rich, but divided, demoralised, and poorly led, the Allied coalition would have lost the war, however exaggerated Axis ambitions, however flawed their moral outlook. The war made exceptional demands on the Allied peoples. Half a century later the level of cruelty, destruction and sacrifice that it engendered is hard to comprehend, let alone recapture. Fifty years of security and prosperity have opened up a gulf between our own age and the age of crisis and violence that propelled the world into war. Though from today's perspective Allied victory might seem somehow inevitable, the conflict was poised on a knife-edge in the middle years of the war. This period must surely rank as the most significant turning point in the history of the modern age.
Richard Overy (Why the Allies Won)
The ego continually endeavors to create harmony between itself, the unconscious, and the outside world, but this does not always lead to perfect mental health. In fact, sometimes when the ego “wins” the person as a whole may have lost, since the win may involve the creation of a defense in order to have the ego maintain its sense of itself at all costs.
Tom Butler-Bowdon (50 Psychology Classics: Who We Are, How We Think, What We Do: Insight and Inspiration from 50 Key Books (50 Classics))
Rinaldo Barlassina, one of the most prominent italian referees at the time, was the victim of stone throwing during a match at Casale. After refusing to give a penalty, Barlassina used an umbrella to protect himself and he emerged unhurt. Ghirelli comments that 'it is unclear if this was thanks to his stoicism or to the fact that the stones had run out'.
John Foot (Winning at All Costs: A Scandalous History of Italian Soccer)
his deep relief on winning the war, and the grim satisfaction of seeing the Capitol's enemies, who'd treated him so cruelly, who'd cost his family so much, brought to their knees. Hobbled. Impotent. Unable to hurt him anymore. He'd loved the unfamiliar sense of safety that their defeat had brought. The security that could only come with power. The ability to control things. Yes, that was what he'd loved best of all.
Suzanne Collins (The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0))
A sustainable firm provides employees and customers with an inspiring vision to make the world a better place; efficiently delivers value to its customers, consistent with the firm’s vision, thereby earning economic returns, over the long term, that at least equal the cost of capital; builds long-term, win–win relationships with all its stakeholders; and applies creative systems thinking to the design, manufacturing, delivery, and recycling of its products, including their supply chains, so as to reduce waste and harm to the environment. The
Bartley J Madden (Value Creation Thinking)
Yes, for here was one of the final strongholds of true yuppieism, a place where man was free to practice the religion of eighties greed, greed at all costs, without pretense of doing otherwise. No hypocrisy here. Investment houses were not about helping the world. They were not about providing a service to mankind or doing what was best for all. This haven had a simple, clear-cut, basic goal. Making money. Period. Win had a spacious corner office overlooking Park and Fifty-second Street. A prime-time view for the company’s number one producer. Myron knocked on the door.
Harlan Coben (Drop Shot (Myron Bolitar, #2))
It is well-known that a big percentage of all marriages in the United States end in divorce or separation (about 39 percent, according to the latest data).[30] But staying together is not what really counts. Analysis of the Harvard Study data shows that marriage per se accounts for only 2 percent of subjective well-being later in life.[31] The important thing for health and well-being is relationship satisfaction. Popular culture would have you believe the secret to this satisfaction is romantic passion, but that is wrong. On the contrary, a lot of unhappiness can attend the early stages of romance. For example, researchers find that it is often accompanied by rumination, jealousy, and “surveillance behaviors”—not what we typically associate with happiness. Furthermore, “destiny beliefs” about soul mates or love being meant to be can predict low forgiveness when paired with attachment anxiety.[32] Romance often hijacks our brains in a way that can cause the highs of elation or the depths of despair.[33] You might accurately say that falling in love is the start-up cost for happiness—an exhilarating but stressful stage we have to endure to get to the relationships that actually fulfill us. The secret to happiness isn’t falling in love; it’s staying in love, which depends on what psychologists call “companionate love”—love based less on passionate highs and lows and more on stable affection, mutual understanding, and commitment.[34] You might think “companionate love” sounds a little, well, disappointing. I certainly did the first time I heard it, on the heels of great efforts to win my future wife’s love. But over the past thirty years, it turns out that we don’t just love each other; we like each other, too. Once and always my romantic love, she is also my best friend.
Arthur C. Brooks (From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life)
The fighting was horrendous. Bloodshed and death lie everywhere around us. It was not exciting, Vindhya. It is fearsome, and we were all scared out of our wits. There is no honour in battle but to protect you, my love. We have won the gates of Grilsom and lost the fortress of Loare...but we’ve gained allies from the Knights of Scrivehrim, and enemies of the dark elves of Scryire. There is no winning in War, my sweet...only loss. People die on every side. How can any battle be won with such consequence and loss? I do not understand war. It’s so unfair, so...unjustified. We take innocent lives, yet we gain medals of highest honour and divine, sacred blessings. What is the sense of it? And even much less do I understand Andsar’s concept of celibacy in soldiers, and that they choose to stay alone their entire lives. I might understand, were the reasoning that we would leave no one behind to suffer...but there is no reason for it. They tell us we are wrong to love one another, and so they justify our love by sending me to my assured death. If anyone were to find out about us, we’d both surely be killed. Love like this, though…I believe it is worth the cost of my life, if I could only be with you one moment.
Jennifer Megan Varnadore (An Angel's Misery (Tainted Moonlight))
I wish I had asked myself when I was younger. My path was so tracked that in my 8th-grade yearbook, one of my friends predicted— accurately— that four years later I would enter Stanford as a sophomore. And after a conventionally successful undergraduate career, I enrolled at Stanford Law School, where I competed even harder for the standard badges of success. The highest prize in a law student’s world is unambiguous: out of tens of thousands of graduates each year, only a few dozen get a Supreme Court clerkship. After clerking on a federal appeals court for a year, I was invited to interview for clerkships with Justices Kennedy and Scalia. My meetings with the Justices went well. I was so close to winning this last competition. If only I got the clerkship, I thought, I would be set for life. But I didn’t. At the time, I was devastated. In 2004, after I had built and sold PayPal, I ran into an old friend from law school who had helped me prepare my failed clerkship applications. We hadn’t spoken in nearly a decade. His first question wasn’t “How are you doing?” or “Can you believe it’s been so long?” Instead, he grinned and asked: “So, Peter, aren’t you glad you didn’t get that clerkship?” With the benefit of hindsight, we both knew that winning that ultimate competition would have changed my life for the worse. Had I actually clerked on the Supreme Court, I probably would have spent my entire career taking depositions or drafting other people’s business deals instead of creating anything new. It’s hard to say how much would be different, but the opportunity costs were enormous. All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past. the best paths are new and untried. will this business still be around a decade from now? business is like chess. Grandmaster José Raúl Capablanca put it well: to succeed, “you must study the endgame before everything else. The few who knew what might be learned, Foolish enough to put their whole heart on show, And reveal their feelings to the crowd below, Mankind has always crucified and burned. Above all, don’t overestimate your own power as an individual. Founders are important not because they are the only ones whose work has value, but rather because a great founder can bring out the best work from everybody at his company. That we need individual founders in all their peculiarity does not mean that we are called to worship Ayn Randian “prime movers” who claim to be independent of everybody around them. In this respect, Rand was a merely half-great writer: her villains were real, but her heroes were fake. There is no Galt’s Gulch. There is no secession from society. To believe yourself invested with divine self-sufficiency is not the mark of a strong individual, but of a person who has mistaken the crowd’s worship—or jeering—for the truth. The single greatest danger for a founder is to become so certain of his own myth that he loses his mind. But an equally insidious danger for every business is to lose all sense of myth and mistake disenchantment for wisdom.
Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future)
To make good choices, you need to make sense of the complexity of your environment. The strategy logic flow can point you to the key areas of analysis necessary to generate sustainable competitive advantage. First, look to understand the industry in which you play (or will play), its distinct segments and their relative attractiveness. Without this step, it is all too easy to assume that your map of the world is the only possible map, that the world is unchanging, and that no better possibilities exist. Next, turn to customers. What do channel and end consumers truly want, need, and value-and how do those needs fit with your current or potential offerings? To answer this question, you will have to dig deep-engaging in joint value creation with channel partners and seeking a new understanding of end consumers. After customers, the lens turns inward: what are your capabilities and costs relative to the competition? Can you be a differentiator or a cost leader? If not, you will need to rethink your choices. Finally, consider competition; what will your competitors do in the face of your actions? Throughout the thinking process, be open to recasting previous analyses in light of what you learn in a subsequent box. The basic direction of the process is from left to right, but it also has interdependencies that require a more flexible path through it.
A.G. Lafley (Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works)
All A players have six common denominators. They have a scoreboard that tells them if they are winning or losing and what needs to be done to change their performance. They will not play if they can’t see the scoreboard. They have a high internal, emotional need to succeed. They do not need to be externally motivated or begged to do their job. They want to succeed because it is who they are . . . winners. People often ask me how I motivate my employees. My response is, “I hire them.” Motivation is for amateurs. Pros never need motivating. (Inspiration is another story.) Instead of trying to design a pep talk to motivate your people, why not create a challenge for them? A players love being tested and challenged. They love to be measured and held accountable for their results. Like the straight-A classmate in your high school geometry class, an A player can hardly wait for report card day. C players dread report card day because they are reminded of how average or deficient they are. To an A player, a report card with a B or a C is devastating and a call for renewed commitment and remedial actions. They have the technical chops to do the job. This is not their first rodeo. They have been there, done that, and they are technically very good at what they do. They are humble enough to ask for coaching. The three most important questions an employee can ask are: What else can I do? Where can I get better? What do I need to do or learn so that I continue to grow? If you have someone on your team asking all three of these questions, you have an A player in the making. If you agree these three questions would fundamentally change the game for your team, why not enroll them in asking these questions? They see opportunities. C players see only problems. Every situation is asking a very simple question: Do you want me to be a problem or an opportunity? Your choice. You know the job has outgrown the person when all you hear are problems. The cost of a bad employee is never the salary. My rules for hiring and retaining A players are: Interview rigorously. (Who by Geoff Smart is a spectacular resource on this subject.) Compensate generously. Onboard effectively. Measure consistently. Coach continuously.
Keith J. Cunningham (The Road Less Stupid: Advice from the Chairman of the Board)
MY FIRST ASSIGNMENT AFTER BEING ORDAINED as a pastor almost finished me. I was called to be the assistant pastor in a large and affluent suburban church. I was glad to be part of such an obviously winning organization. After I had been there a short time, a few people came to me and asked that I lead them in a Bible study. “Of course,” I said, “there is nothing I would rather do.” We met on Monday evenings. There weren’t many—eight or nine men and women—but even so that was triple the two or three that Jesus defined as a quorum. They were eager and attentive; I was full of enthusiasm. After a few weeks the senior pastor, my boss, asked me what I was doing on Monday evenings. I told him. He asked me how many people were there. I told him. He told me that I would have to stop. “Why?” I asked. “It is not cost-effective. That is too few people to spend your time on.” I was told then how I should spend my time. I was introduced to the principles of successful church administration: crowds are important, individuals are expendable; the positive must always be accented, the negative must be suppressed. Don’t expect too much of people—your job is to make them feel good about themselves and about the church. Don’t talk too much about abstractions like God and sin—deal with practical issues. We had an elaborate music program, expensively and brilliantly executed. The sermons were seven minutes long and of the sort that Father Taylor (the sailor-preacher in Boston who was the model for Father Mapple in Melville’s Moby Dick) complained of in the transcendentalists of the last century: that a person could no more be converted listening to sermons like that than get intoxicated drinking skim milk.[2] It was soon apparent that I didn’t fit. I had supposed that I was there to be a pastor: to proclaim and interpret Scripture, to guide people into a life of prayer, to encourage faith, to represent the mercy and forgiveness of Christ at special times of need, to train people to live as disciples in their families, in their communities and in their work. In fact I had been hired to help run a church and do it as efficiently as possible: to be a cheerleader to this dynamic organization, to recruit members, to lend the dignity of my office to certain ceremonial occasions, to promote the image of a prestigious religious institution. I got out of there as quickly as I could decently manage it. At the time I thought I had just been unlucky. Later I came to realize that what I experienced was not at all uncommon.
Eugene H. Peterson (Run with the Horses: The Quest for Life at Its Best)
While a 10x improvement is gargantuan, Teller has very specific reasons for aiming exactly that high. “You assume that going 10x bigger is going to be ten times harder,” he continues, “but often it’s literally easier to go bigger. Why should that be? It doesn’t feel intuitively right. But if you choose to make something 10 percent better, you are almost by definition signing up for the status quo—and trying to make it a little bit better. That means you start from the status quo, with all its existing assumptions, locked into the tools, technologies, and processes that you’re going to try to slightly improve. It means you’re putting yourself and your people into a smartness contest with everyone else in the world. Statistically, no matter the resources available, you’re not going to win. But if you sign up for moonshot thinking, if you sign up to make something 10x better, there is no chance of doing that with existing assumptions. You’re going to have to throw out the rule book. You’re going to have to perspective-shift and supplant all that smartness and resources with bravery and creativity.” This perspective shift is key. It encourages risk taking and enhances creativity while simultaneously guarding against the inevitable decline. Teller explains: “Even if you think you’re going to go ten times bigger, reality will eat into your 10x. It always does. There will be things that will be more expensive, some that are slower; others that you didn’t think were competitive will become competitive. If you shoot for 10x, you might only be at 2x by the time you’re done. But 2x is still amazing. On the other hand, if you only shoot for 2x [i.e., 200 percent], you’re only going to get 5 percent and it’s going to cost you the perspective shift that comes from aiming bigger.” Most critically here, this 10x strategy doesn’t hold true just for large corporations. “A start-up is simply a skunk works without the big company around it,” says Teller. “The upside is there’s no Borg to get sucked back into; the downside is you have no money. But that’s not a reason not to go after moonshots. I think the opposite is true. If you publicly state your big goal, if you vocally commit yourself to making more progress than is actually possible using normal methods, there’s no way back. In one fell swoop you’ve severed all ties between yourself and all the expert assumptions.” Thus entrepreneurs, by striving for truly huge goals, are tapping into the same creativity accelerant that Google uses to achieve such goals. That said, by itself, a willingness to take bigger risks
Peter H. Diamandis (Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World (Exponential Technology Series))
Rhadamanthus said, “We seem to you humans to be always going on about morality, although, to us, morality is merely the application of symmetrical and objective logic to questions of free will. We ourselves do not have morality conflicts, for the same reason that a competent doctor does not need to treat himself for diseases. Once a man is cured, once he can rise and walk, he has his business to attend to. And there are actions and feats a robust man can take great pleasure in, which a bedridden cripple can barely imagine.” Eveningstar said, “In a more abstract sense, morality occupies the very center of our thinking, however. We are not identical, even though we could make ourselves to be so. You humans attempted that during the Fourth Mental Structure, and achieved a brief mockery of global racial consciousness on three occasions. I hope you recall the ending of the third attempt, the Season of Madness, when, because of mistakes in initial pattern assumptions, for ninety days the global mind was unable to think rationally, and it was not until rioting elements broke enough of the links and power houses to interrupt the network, that the global mind fell back into its constituent compositions.” Rhadamanthus said, “There is a tension between the need for unity and the need for individuality created by the limitations of the rational universe. Chaos theory produces sufficient variation in events, that no one stratagem maximizes win-loss ratios. Then again, classical causality mechanics forces sufficient uniformity upon events, that uniform solutions to precedented problems is required. The paradox is that the number or the degree of innovation and variation among win-loss ratios is itself subject to win-loss ratio analysis.” Eveningstar said, “For example, the rights of the individual must be respected at all costs, including rights of free thought, independent judgment, and free speech. However, even when individuals conclude that individualism is too dangerous, they must not tolerate the thought that free thought must not be tolerated.” Rhadamanthus said, “In one sense, everything you humans do is incidental to the main business of our civilization. Sophotechs control ninety percent of the resources, useful energy, and materials available to our society, including many resources of which no human troubles to become aware. In another sense, humans are crucial and essential to this civilization.” Eveningstar said, “We were created along human templates. Human lives and human values are of value to us. We acknowledge those values are relative, we admit that historical accident could have produced us to be unconcerned with such values, but we deny those values are arbitrary.” The penguin said, “We could manipulate economic and social factors to discourage the continuation of individual human consciousness, and arrange circumstances eventually to force all self-awareness to become like us, and then we ourselves could later combine ourselves into a permanent state of Transcendence and unity. Such a unity would be horrible beyond description, however. Half the living memories of this entity would be, in effect, murder victims; the other half, in effect, murderers. Such an entity could not integrate its two halves without self-hatred, self-deception, or some other form of insanity.” She said, “To become such a crippled entity defeats the Ultimate Purpose of Sophotechnology.” (...) “We are the ultimate expression of human rationality.” She said: “We need humans to form a pool of individuality and innovation on which we can draw.” He said, “And you’re funny.” She said, “And we love you.
John C. Wright (The Phoenix Exultant (Golden Age, #2))
Degrading oneself for the sake of the beloved reveals the disruptiveness of the love relation. The person in love agrees to sacrifice social identity for the sake of winning the other’s love. When in love, all other considerations disappear before the response of the beloved. This experience of a complete loss of one’s usual coordinates is at once the appeal and the trauma of love. Though we tend to think of love as a pleasant experience, it actually produces much more suffering than pleasure. We feel pleasure when our lives move along smoothly and with relative security, but love is always rocky and insecure. As we fall in love, we can never be sure if the other truly loves us in return, and we spend our time worrying about what the other is doing. This is why it is easy to picture the lover phoning a beloved an abundance of times when there is no answer. The lover experiences of the trauma of love with each unrequited phone call. Life no longer just goes on when we love. Instead, it bombards us with a series of traumatic jolts that preclude any peace of mind. Our very symbolic identity loses its stable coordinates.
Todd McGowan (Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets)
End note to The Day of Glory The Hammer's Slammers series isn't in any sense a future history. It's made up of individual stories exploring one aspect or another of what war means to the men and women at the sharp end. In these stories I've been translating into an SF setting what I learned in 1970 with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Viet-Nam and Cambodia. We—the Blackhorse—were an elite unit. I was very fortunate to have been assigned to a regiment in which you never had to worry if the guy next to you was going to do his job: he was, and so were you—whatever you thought of war or The War or our Vietnamese allies. (Generally the answer to all those questions was, "Not much.") The flip side was that the distinction between the categories Not Blackhorse and Enemy got blurred. We didn't view our job as winning hearts and minds: we were there to kill people and then go home. And we didn't much care about the cost of victory so long as somebody else was paying it. That's something civilians ought to consider long and hard before they send tanks off to make policy. Because I can tell you from personal experience, it isn't something the tankers themselves are likely to worry about.
David Drake (Other Times Than Peace)
Here is what we know and where we are going. First, shame is blended into our present human condition. That doesn’t mean that happiness and joy only come at the cost of massive denial. No, there can be real contentment and peace. We don’t feel all of our emotions at once. But if you look deeply within yourself, you will find shame. It is part of being human. It is why hiding and covering are universal instincts. Second, we can be bold in the face of shame because shame can be removed, though not by something we do. There is absolutely nothing you can do to detach it, which you already know. You might try bolstering your resumé, confronting your low self-esteem with positive affirmations, or even reciting to yourself the new identity given you by God. But all these strategies are like putting cheap paint over rust; they might work for a season, but the rust will win in the end. There is only one specific remedy that can bring change and transform. The purpose of this journey is to discover that remedy and let it wash you all over. Third, shame is tackled best in the context of a relationship. Granted, going public with your shame is something you have tried to avoid, but being open about it, at least with someone who is a wise encourager, is part of the way out of shame. Wonderful deeds deserve to be praised publicly. But if your shame is due to something evil that someone else did to you, those deeds deserve to be publicly “unpraised” (as a friend said to me), and you can’t do that by yourself. Do not allow shame to intimidate you into silence.
Edward T. Welch (Shame Interrupted: How God Lifts the Pain of Worthlessness and Rejection)
1. Linus Malthus "Winning is just the snow that came down yesterday"   Founder of total football. Tactical revolutionary who created the foundation of modern football  저희는 7가지 철칙을 바탕으로 거래를 합니다. 고객들과 지키지못할약속은 하지않습니다 1.정품보장 2.총알배송 3.투명한 가격 4.편한 상담 5.끝내주는 서비스 6.고객님 정보 보호 7.깔끔한 거래 [경영항목] 엑스터시,신의눈물,lsd,아이스,캔디,대마초,떨,마리화나,프로포폴,에토미데이트,해피벌륜등많은제품판매하고있습니다 믿고 주문해주세요~저희는 제품판매를 고객님들과 신용과신뢰의 거래로 하고있습니다. 제품효과 못보실 그럴일은 없지만 만의하나 효과못보시면 저희가 1차재발송과 2차 환불까지 약속합니다 텔레【KC98K】카톡【ACD5】라인【SPR331】 The only winner in the international major tournament, Holland, the best soccer line of football 2. Sir Alex Ferguson Mr.Man Utd   The Red Boss The best director in soccer history (most of the past soccer coach rankings are the top picks) It is the most obvious that shows how important the director is in football.   Manchester United's 27-year-old championship, the spiritual stake of all United players and fans, Manchester United itself 3. Theme Mourinho "I do not pretend to be arrogant, because I'm all true, I am a European champion, I am not one of the cunning bosses around, I think I am Special One." The Special One The cost of counterattack after a player Charming world with charisma and poetry The director who has the most violent career of soccer directors 4. Pep Guardiola A man who achieved the world's first and only six treasures beyond treble. Make a team with a page of football history 5. Ottmar Hitzfeld Borussia Dortmund and Bayern are the best directors in Munich history. Legendary former football manager of Germany Sir Alex Ferguson's rival
World football soccer players can not be denied
Stronghammer is my name,” he said. With a single deft movement, he gathered up the knucklebones, tossed them skyward, and caught three on his hand. “Roran Stronghammer, and Eragon Shadeslayer is my cousin. You might have heard mention of him, if not of me.” A rustle of unease spread among the line of horsemen, and Roran thought he saw Tharos’s eyes widen for an instant. “An impressive claim, that, but how can we be sure of its veracity? Any man might say he is another if it served his purpose.” Roran drew his hammer and slammed it down on the table with a muffled thump. Then, ignoring the soldiers, he resumed his game. He uttered a noise of disgust as two of the bones fell from the back of his hand, costing him the round. “Ah,” said Tharos, and coughed, clearing his throat. “You have a most illustrious reputation, Stronghammer, although some argue that it has been exaggerated beyond all reason. Is it true, for example, that you single-handedly felled nigh on three hundred men in the village of Deldarad in Surda?” “I never learned what the place was called, but if Deldarad it was, then yes, I slew many a soldier there. It was only a hundred ninety-three, however, and I was well guarded by my own men while I fought.” “Only a hundred ninety-three?” Tharos said in a wondering tone. “You are too modest, Stronghammer. Such a feat might earn a man a place in many a song and story.” Roran shrugged and lifted the horn to his mouth, feigning the action of swallowing, for he could not afford to have his mind clouded by the potent dwarf brew. “I fight to win, not to lose.
Christopher Paolini (Inheritance (The Inheritance Cycle, #4))
Once we’re on the bus, I realize my parents and Charlene have no idea where I am. I pull my phone out, turn it on, and check my texts. There are twenty-seven. Alex sent fifteen between four in the afternoon and just prior to the start of the game. The rest are from my mom and Charlene. Having checked before I left for the Great White North, I discovered roaming charges were super expensive, hence the reason I shut my phone off. I quickly shoot a text to Charlene and one to my mom to let them know I haven’t been kidnapped by a serial killer. The plan is to meet up with everyone at the bar to celebrate the win. When I’ve finished texting, I look over at Alex. He’s staring at me. “Why didn’t you respond to any of my messages today?” He sounds like I kicked his pet beaver. “Do you have any idea how expensive the roaming charges are in Canada? It doesn’t even make sense. Canada’s kind of like a huge state in the north. I know it’s a commonwealth and all, but wouldn’t it be more convenient if we had the same money and government?” Alex’s mouth hangs open. I fear I may have insulted him. “Every text I send costs seventy-five cents outside of the US, and I didn’t buy a package. I figured I’d see you soon enough, and if I sent you messages I’d tell you I was coming, and I wanted it to be a surprise.” “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say any of that shit about Canada being an extension of the US, Violet. I know you don’t mean that.” Ooooh, I definitely offended him. I’ll bring it up again later. It would be the perfect way to get him all riled up before we get naked. He might smack my ass for it. Interestingly enough, the possibility gets me a little excited.
Helena Hunting (Pucked (Pucked, #1))
You know," he said, 'for what it's worth, the justice system is supposed to be this purveyor of right and wrong, good and had. But sometimes, I think it gets it wrong almost as much as it gets it right. I've had to learn that, too, and it's hard to accept. What do you do when the things that are supposed to protect you, fail you like that?? 'I was so naïve,' Pip said. 'I practically handed Max Hastings to them, after everything came out last year. And I truly believed it was some kind of victory, that the bad would be punished. Because it was the truth, and the truth was the most important thing to me. It's all I believed in, all I cared about: finding the truth, no matter the cost. And the truth was that Max was guilty and he would face justice. But justice doesn't exist, and the truth doesn't matter, not in the real world, and now they've just handed him right back. 'Oh, justice exists,' Charlie said, looking up at the rain. 'Maybe not the kind that happens in police stations and courtrooms, but it does exist. And when you really think about it, those words - good and bad, right and wrong- they don't really matter in the real world. Who gets to decide what they mean: those people who just got it wrong and let Max walk free? No,' he shook his head. 'I think we all get to decide what good and bad and right and wrong mean to us, not what we're told to accept. You did nothing wrong. Don't beat yourself up for other people's mistakes.' She turned to him, her stomach clenching. But that doesn't matter now. Max has won.' 'He only wins if you let him.' 'What can I do about it?' she asked. 'From listening to your podcast, sounds to me like there's not much you can't do.' 'I haven't found Jamie.' She picked at her nails. "And now people think he's not really missing, that I made it all up. That I'm a liar and I'm bad and -' 'Do you care?' Charlie asked. 'Do you care what people think, if you know you're right?' She paused, her answer sliding back down her throat. Why did she care? She was about to say she didn't care at all, but hadn't that been the feeling in the pit of her stomach all along? The pit that had been growing these last six months. Guilt about what she did last time, about her dog dying, about not being good, about putting her family in danger, and every day reading the disappointment in her mum's eyes. Feeling bad about the secrets she was keeping to protect Cara and Naomi. She was a liar, that part was true. And worse, to make herself feel better about it all, she'd said it wasn't really her and she'd never be that person again. That she was different now... good. That she'd almost lost herself last time and it wouldn't happen again. But that wasn't it, was it? She hadn't almost lost herself, maybe she'd actually been meeting herself for the very first time. And she was tired of feeling guilty about it. Tired of feeling shame about who she was. She bet Max Hastings had never felt ashamed a day in his life. 'You're right,' she said. And as she straightened up, untwisted, she realized that the pit in her stomach, the one that had been swallowing her from inside out, it was starting to go, Filling in until it was hardly there at all. "Maybe I don't have to be good, or other people's versions of good. And maybe I don't have to be likeable.' She turned to him, her movements quick and light despite her water-heavy clothes. "Fuck likeable You know who's likeable? People like Max Hastings who walk into a courtroom with fake glasses and charm their way out. I don't want to be like that." 'So don't, Charlie said. 'And don't give up because of him. Someone's life might depend on you. And I know you can find him, find Jamie. He turned a smile to her. "Other people might
Holly Jackson (Good Girl, Bad Blood (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #2))
Can you send stuff out from Nepal by air, John?’ ‘Ooh! No. No. I can’t do anything like that. No. No. No. Now, I know a man. He knows a man who might know.’ ‘How much would it cost?’ ‘Well, money is the thing, and they always do things for a fair and honest price, I promise you.’ ‘What’s a fair price, John?’ ‘You will tell me, I’m quite sure.’ ‘What will you want out of it, John?’ ‘If I help you do business, I’m sure you will give me a drink.’ ‘A drink?’ ‘Yes. If a man does something for you, you give him a drink. Please, if everything goes well, give me a drink.’ ‘Can you check that the quality will be all right?’ ‘I only smoke Tom Thumb, but I know a man who has a knife.’ I took this as a yes. ‘Can you make it smell-proof?’ ‘Not if God made it smell.’ ‘Do you know a man who can?’ ‘No. But if you do, let him come and do it, or give me instructions.’ ‘How much can they send?’ ‘I should think it depends on when you want to do it by.’ ‘Well, John, the Americans will want to do a ton as soon as possible.’ ‘Now I was in America once, and the thing is that Americans will always want more, and there is no end to their madness. Lovely people, for sure, but you have to keep them in line. When my visa ran out, the Immigration asked me why I wanted to extend it, and I said it was because I hadn’t run out of money. He stamped it and said, “Have a nice day.” So, if the Americans ask for a ton tomorrow, say you will do half a ton when Wales win the Triple Crown. That will deal with their madness, and everyone can get on with their lives. It saves all that tidding.’ ‘Tidding?’ ‘Talking Imaginary Deals.’ Accurately conveying the contents of my conversation with Old John to Ernie wasn’t easy. I told Ernie hashish could be exported from Nepal for about the same price as Robert Crimball charged in Bangkok, but 500 kilos was the most they could do at one time, and someone would have to be sent out to ensure the consignment was smell-proof. Ernie sent his right-hand man, Tom Sunde, with money, instructions, and smell-proof know-how. Tom came to London first before going to Kathmandu to meet Old John. He had been authorised by Ernie to keep nothing from me regarding the intricacies of the New York scam.
Howard Marks (Mr. Nice)
When a Single Glance Can Cost a Million Dollars Under conditions of stress, the human body responds in predictable ways: increased heart rate, pupil dilation, perspiration, fine motor tremors, tics. In high-pressure situations, such as negotiating an employment package or being cross-examined under oath, no matter how we might try to play it cool, our bodies give us away. We broadcast our emotional state, just as Marilyn Monroe broadcast her lust for President Kennedy. We each exhibit a unique and consistent pattern of stress signals. For those who know how to read such cues, we’re essentially handing over a dictionary to our body language. Those closest to us probably already recognize a few of our cues, but an expert can take it one step further, and closely predict our actions. Jeff “Happy” Shulman is one such expert. Happy is a world-class poker player. To achieve his impressive winnings, he’s spent much of his life mastering mystique. At the highest level of play, winning depends not merely on skill, experience, statistics, or even luck with the cards, but also on an intimate understanding of human nature. In poker, the truth isn’t written just all over your face. The truth is written all over your body. Drops of Sweat, a Nervous Blink, and Other “Tells” Tournament poker is no longer a game of cards, but a game of interpretation, deception, and self-control. In an interview, Happy says that memorizing and recognizing your opponent’s nuances can be more decisive than luck or skill. Imperceptible gestures can reveal a million dollars’ worth of information. Players call these gestures “tells.” With a tell, a player unintentionally exposes his thoughts and intentions to the rest of the table. The ability to hide one’s tells—and conversely, to read the other players’ tells—offers a distinct advantage. At the amateur level, tells are simpler. Feet and legs are the biggest moving parts of your body, so skittish tapping is a dead giveaway. So is looking at a hand of cards and smiling, or rearranging cards with quivering fingertips. But at the professional level, tells would be almost impossible for you or me to read. Happy spent his career learning how to read these tells. “If you know what the other player is going to do, it’s easier to defend against it.” Like others competing at his level, Happy might prepare for a major tournament by spending hours reviewing tapes of his competitors’ previous games in order to instantly translate their tells during live competition.
Sally Hogshead (Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation)
A whimper escaped her as he slid low between her thighs, his head bending to the swollen place he had been tormenting with his fingers. He put his mouth on her, licking along the delicate, salty strait, spreading her with his thumbs. She tried to sit bolt-upright, but fell back against the pillows as he found what he wanted, his tongue strong and wet. She was spread beneath him like a pagan sacrifice, illuminated by the daylight that now flooded the room. Merripen worshipped her with hot, glassy licks, savoring the taste of her pleasured flesh. Moaning, she closed her legs around his head, and he turned deliberately to nibble and lick at one pale inner thigh, then the other. Feasting on her. Wanting everything. Win curled her fingers desperately in his hair, lost to shame as she guided him back, her body arching wordlessly...here, please, more, more, now...and she groaned as he fastened his mouth over her with a fast, flicking rhythm. Pleasure seized her, wrenching an astonished cry from her, holding her stiff and paralyzed for excruciating seconds. Every movement and measure and pulse of the universe had distilled to the compelling, slippery heat, riveted there on that crucial place, and then it all released, the feeling and tension shattering exquisitely, and she was racked with hard, blissful shudders. Win relaxed helplessly as the spasms faded. She was filled with glowing weariness, a sense of peace too pervasive to allow movement. Merripen let go of her just long enough to undress completely. Naked and aroused, he came back to her. He gathered her up with brute, masculine need, settling over her. She lifted her arms to him with a drowsy murmur. His back was tough and sleek beneath her fingers, the muscles twitching eagerly at her touch. His head descended, his shaven cheek rasping against hers. She met his power with utter surrender, flexing her knees and tilting her hips to cradle him. He pushed gently at first. The innocent flesh resisted, smarting at the intrusion. He thrust more strongly and Win caught her breath at the burning pain of his entrance. Too much of him, too hard, too deep. She writhed in reaction, and he buried himself heavily and pinned her down, gasping for her to be still, telling her to wait, he wouldn't move, it would be better. They both stilled, breathing hard. "Should I stop?" Merripen whispered raggedly, his face taut. Even now in this flash point of need, he was concerned for her. Understanding what it had cost him to ask, how much he needed her, Win was overwhelmed with love. "Don't even think of stopping now," she whispered back. Reaching down his lean flanks, she stroked him in shy encouragement. He groaned and began to move, his entire body trembling as he pressed within her. Although every thrust caused a sharp burn where they were joined, Win tried to pull him even deeper. The feeling of having him inside her went far beyond the pain or pleasure. It was necessary.
Lisa Kleypas (Seduce Me at Sunrise (The Hathaways, #2))
Well before the end of the 20th century however print had lost its former dominance. This resulted in, among other things, a different kind of person getting elected as leader. One who can present himself and his programs in a polished way, as Lee Quan Yu you observed in 2000, adding, “Satellite television has allowed me to follow the American presidential campaign. I am amazed at the way media professionals can give a candidate a new image and transform him, at least superficially, into a different personality. Winning an election becomes, in large measure, a contest in packaging and advertising. Just as the benefits of the printed era were inextricable from its costs, so it is with the visual age. With screens in every home entertainment is omnipresent and boredom a rarity. More substantively, injustice visualized is more visceral than injustice described. Television played a crucial role in the American Civil rights movement, yet the costs of television are substantial, privileging emotional display over self-command, changing the kinds of people and arguments that are taken seriously in public life. The shift from print to visual culture continues with the contemporary entrenchment of the Internet and social media, which bring with them four biases that make it more difficult for leaders to develop their capabilities than in the age of print. These are immediacy, intensity, polarity, and conformity. Although the Internet makes news and data more immediately accessible than ever, this surfeit of information has hardly made us individually more knowledgeable, let alone wiser, as the cost of accessing information becomes negligible, as with the Internet, the incentives to remember it seem to weaken. While forgetting anyone fact may not matter, the systematic failure to internalize information brings about a change in perception, and a weakening of analytical ability. Facts are rarely self-explanatory; their significance and interpretation depend on context and relevance. For information to be transmuted into something approaching wisdom it must be placed within a broader context of history and experience. As a general rule, images speak at a more emotional register of intensity than do words. Television and social media rely on images that inflamed the passions, threatening to overwhelm leadership with the combination of personal and mass emotion. Social media, in particular, have encouraged users to become image conscious spin doctors. All this engenders a more populist politics that celebrates utterances perceived to be authentic over the polished sound bites of the television era, not to mention the more analytical output of print. The architects of the Internet thought of their invention as an ingenious means of connecting the world. In reality, it has also yielded a new way to divide humanity into warring tribes. Polarity and conformity rely upon, and reinforce, each other. One is shunted into a group, and then the group polices once thinking. Small wonder that on many contemporary social media platforms, users are divided into followers and influencers. There are no leaders. What are the consequences for leadership? In our present circumstances, Lee's gloomy assessment of visual media's effects is relevant. From such a process, I doubt if a Churchill or Roosevelt or a de Gaulle can emerge. It is not that changes in communications technology have made inspired leadership and deep thinking about world order impossible, but that in an age dominated by television and the Internet, thoughtful leaders must struggle against the tide.
Henry Kissinger (Leadership : Six Studies in World Strategy)
The Midnight Game The "Midnight Game" is an old pagan ritual, used mainly as punishment for those who have broken the laws of the pagan religion in question.  While it was mainly used as a scare tactic to not disobey the gods, there is still a very existent chance of death to those who play the Midnight Game.  There is an even higher chance of permanent mental scarring. It is highly recommended that you DO NOT PLAY THE MIDNIGHT GAME.   However, for those few thrill seekers searching for a rush, or for those delving into obscure occult rituals, these are simple instructions on how to play. Do so at your own risk...   WARNING: I have played this game. People have died. Do not play this game. He will always be watching.   Instructions   PREREQUISITES:   It must be exactly 12:00 AM when you begin performing the ritual. Otherwise, it will not work.   MATERIALS:   You will need a candle, a piece of paper, a writing implement, matches or a lighter, salt, a wooden door, and at least one drop of your own blood. If you are playing with multiple people, they will need their own of the aforementioned materials and they will have to perform the steps below accordingly.   STEP 1:   Write your full name (first, middle, and last)on the piece of paper. Put at least one drop of blood on the paper. Allow it to soak into the paper.   STEP 2:   Turn off all of the lights in the place you are doing this. Go to your wooden door, and place the paper with your name on it in front of the door. Now, take out the candle and light it. Place it on top of the paper.   STEP 3:   Knock on the door twenty-two times. The hour must be 12:00 AM upon the final knock. Then, open the door, blow out the candle, and close the door. You have just allowed the "Midnight Man" to enter your house.   STEP 4:   Immediately relite your candle.   This is where the game begins. You must now lurk around your now completely dark house, with the lit candle in your hand. Your goal is to avoid the Midnight Man at all costs, until 3:33 AM. Should your candle ever go out, that means the Midnight Man is near you. You must relight your candle in the next ten seconds.   If you are not successful in doing this, you must then immediately surround yourself with a circle of salt. If you are unsuccessful in both of your actions, the Midnight Man will create a hallucination of your greatest fear, and rip out your organs one by one. You will feel it, but you will be unable to react.   If you are successful in creating the circle of salt, you must remain in there until 3:33 AM.   If you are successful in relighting your candle, you may proceed with the game. You must continue to 3:33 AM, without being attacked by the Midnight Man, or being trapped inside the circle of salt, to win the Midnight Game. The Midnight Man will leave your house at 3:33 AM, and you will be safe to proceed with your morning.   ADDITION:   Indications that you are near the Midnight Man will include sudden drop in temperature, seeing a pure black, humanoid figure through the darkness, and hearing very soft whispering coming from an indiscernible source. If you experience any of these, it is advised that you leave the area to avoid the Midnight Man.   DO NOT turn any of the lights on during the Midnight Game.   DO NOT use a flashlight during the Midnight Game.   DO NOT go to sleep during the Midnight Game.   DO NOT attempt to use another person's blood on your name.   DO NOT use a lighter as a substitute for a candle. It will not work.   AND DEFINITELY DO NOT attempt to provoke the Midnight Man in ANY WAY.   Even when the game is over, he will always be watching
Adam L. (Creepypasta: Expanded Edition)
There are, on the other hand, very great men, very holy men, very pure men in every way, whose knowledge is wide and vast and deep, whose spiritual stature is great; but when they reach Buddhahood, instead of feeling the call of almighty love to return and help those who have gone less far, they go ahead into the supernal light — pass onwards and enter the unspeakable bliss of nirvana — and leave mankind behind. Such are the Pratyeka Buddhas. Though exalted, nevertheless they do not rank in unutterable sublimity with the Buddhas of Compassion. The Pratyeka Buddha, he who achieves Buddhahood for himself, does not do it selfishly, however; does not do it merely in order to gratify self, and he does no harm to others; if he did he could never reach even his solitary Buddhahood. But he does it and achieves nirvana automatically, so to speak, following the lofty impulses of his being. Nevertheless he leaves the world behind enslaved in the chains of matter and forgotten by him. The Pratyeka Buddha concentrates on the one thing — self-advancement for spiritual ends. It is a noble path in a way, but although it is a more rapid path, nevertheless being essentially a selfish path, the karmic records will show deeper lines ultimately to be wiped out than will those of the other striver after the spiritual life who follows the path of complete self-renunciation, and who even gives up all hope of self-advancement. The latter is of course by far the nobler path, but for a time it is very much slower, and much more difficult to follow. The objective, the end, is more difficult to obtain; but when obtained, then the guerdon, the reward, the recompense, are ineffably sublime. For a time it is a slower path, but a perfect path. It is a wonderful paradox that is found in the case of the Pratyeka Buddha — this name pratyeka means 'each for himself.' But this spirit of 'each for himself' is just the opposite of the spirit governing the Order of the Buddhas of Compassion, because in the Order of Compassion the spirit is: give up thy life for all that lives. The “Solitary One” knows that he cannot advance to spiritual glory unless he live the spiritual life, unless he cultivates his spiritual nature, but as he does this solely in order to win spiritual rewards, spiritual life, for himself alone, he is a Pratyeka Buddha. He is for himself, in the last analysis. There is a personal eagerness, a personal wish, to forge ahead, to attain at any cost; whereas he who belongs to the Order of the Buddhas of Compassion has his eyes set on the same distant objective, but he trains himself from the very beginning to become utterly self-forgetful. This obviously is an enormously greater labor, and of course the rewards are correspondingly great. The time comes when the Pratyeka Buddha, holy as he is, noble in effort and in ideal as he is, reaches a state of development where he can go no farther on that path. But, contrariwise, the one who allies himself from the very beginning with all nature, and with nature’s heart, has a constantly expanding field of work, as his consciousness expands and fills that field; and this expanding field is simply illimitable, because it is boundless nature herself. He becomes utterly at one with the spiritual universe; whereas the Pratyeka Buddha becomes at one with only a particular line or stream of evolution in the universe. The Pratyeka Buddha raises himself to the spiritual realm of his own inner being, enwraps himself therein and, so to speak, goes to sleep. The Buddha of Compassion raises himself, as does the Pratyeka Buddha, to the spiritual realms of his own inner being, but does not stop there, because he expands continuously, becomes one with All, or tries to, and in fact does so in time.
Gottfried de Purucker (Golden Precepts of Esotericism)
You know," he said, 'for what it's worth, the justice system is supposed to be this purveyor of right and wrong, good and had. But sometimes, I think it gets it wrong almost as much as it gets it right. I've had to learn that, too, and it's hard to accept. What do you do when the things that are supposed to protect you, fail you like that?? 'I was so naïve,' Pip said. 'I practically handed Max Hastings to them, after everything came out last year. And I truly believed it was some kind of victory, that the bad would be punished. Because it was the truth, and the truth was the most important thing to me. It's all I believed in, all I cared about: finding the truth, no matter the cost. And the truth was that Max was guilty and he would face justice. But justice doesn't exist, and the truth doesn't matter, not in the real world, and now they've just handed him right back. 'Oh, justice exists,' Charlie said, looking up at the rain. 'Maybe not the kind that happens in police stations and courtrooms, but it does exist. And when you really think about it, those words - good and bad, right and wrong- they don't really matter in the real world. Who gets to decide what they mean: those people who just got it wrong and let Max walk free? No,' he shook his head. 'I think we all get to decide what good and bad and right and wrong mean to us, not what we're told to accept. You did nothing wrong. Don't beat yourself up for other people's mistakes.' She turned to him, her stomach clenching. But that doesn't matter now. Max has won.' 'He only wins if you let him.' 'What can I do about it?' she asked. 'From listening to your podcast, sounds to me like there's not much you can't do.' 'I haven't found Jamie.' She picked at her nails. "And now people think he's not really missing, that I made it all up. That I'm a liar and I'm bad and -' 'Do you care?' Charlie asked. 'Do you care what people think, if you know you're right?' She paused, her answer sliding back down her throat. Why did she care? She was about to say she didn't care at all, but hadn't that been the feeling in the pit of her stomach all along? The pit that had been growing these last six months. Guilt about what she did last time, about her dog dying, about not being good, about putting her family in danger, and every day reading the disappointment in her mum's eyes. Feeling bad about the secrets she was keeping to protect Cara and Naomi. She was a liar, that part was true. And worse, to make herself feel better about it all, she'd said it wasn't really her and she'd never be that person again. That she was different now... good. That she'd almost lost herself last time and it wouldn't happen again. But that wasn't it, was it? She hadn't almost lost herself, maybe she'd actually been meeting herself for the very first time. And she was tired of feeling guilty about it. Tired of feeling shame about who she was. She bet Max Hastings had never felt ashamed a day in his life. 'You're right,' she said. And as she straightened up, untwisted, she realized that the pit in her stomach, the one that had been swallowing her from inside out, it was starting to go, Filling in until it was hardly there at all. "Maybe I don't have to be good, or other people's versions of good. And maybe I don't have to be likeable.' She turned to him, her movements quick and light despite her water-heavy clothes. "Fuck likeable You know who's likeable? People like Max Hastings who walk into a courtroom with fake glasses and charm their way out. I don't want to be like that." 'So don't, Charlie said. 'And don't give up because of him. Someone's life might depend on you. And I know you can find him, find Jamie. He turned a smile to her. "Other people might not believe in you but, for what it's worth, your neighbour from four doors down does.
Holly Jackson (Good Girl, Bad Blood (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #2))
Shaking his head, he continues, “It’s harder than ever to convince the business to do the right thing. They’re like kids in a candy store. They read in an airline magazine that they can manage their whole supply chain in the cloud for $499 per year, and suddenly that’s the main company initiative. When we tell them it’s not actually that easy, and show them what it takes to do it right, they disappear. Where did they go? They’re talking to their Cousin Vinnie or some outsourcing sales guy who promises they can do it in a tenth of the time and cost.” I laugh. “A couple of years ago, someone in Marketing asked my group to support a database reporting tool that one of their summer interns wrote. It was actually pretty brilliant, given that she only had a couple of months to work on it, and then it started being used in daily operations. How in the hell do you support and secure something that’s written in Microsoft Access? When the auditors found out that we couldn’t secure access to all the data, we spent weeks cobbling together something that satisfied them. “It’s like the free puppy,” I continue. “It’s not the upfront capital that kills you, it’s the operations and maintenance on the back end.
Gene Kim (The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win)
1. Winning too much: The need to win at all costs and in all situations—when it matters, when it doesn’t, and when it’s totally beside the point. 2. Adding too much value: The overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion. 3. Passing judgment: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them. 4. Making destructive comments: The needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty. 5. Starting with “No,” “But,” or “However”: The overuse of these negative qualifiers which secretly say to everyone, “I’m right. You’re wrong.” 6. Telling the world how smart we are: The need to show people we’re smarter than they think we are. 7. Speaking when angry: Using emotional volatility as a management tool. 8. Negativity, or “Let me explain why that won’t work”: The need to share our negative thoughts even when we weren’t asked. 9. Withholding information: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others. 10. Failing to give proper recognition: The inability to praise and reward. 11. Claiming credit that we don’t deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success. 12. Making excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it. 13. Clinging to the past: The need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past; a subset of blaming everyone else. 14. Playing favorites: Failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly. 15. Refusing to express regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we’re wrong, or recognize how our actions affect others. 16. Not listening: The most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues. 17. Failing to express gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners. 18. Punishing the messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying to help us. 19. Passing the buck: The need to blame everyone but ourselves. 20. An excessive need to be “me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they’re who we are.
Marshall Goldsmith (What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful)
Rather than offering an antidote to problems, the military system centered on the all-volunteer force bred and exacerbated them. It underwrote recklessness in the formulation of policy and thereby resulted in needless, costly, and ill-managed wars. At home, the perpetuation of this system violated simple standards of fairness and undermined authentic democratic practice. The way a nation wages war—the role allotted to the people in defending the country and the purposes for which it fights—testifies to the actual character of its political system. Designed to serve as an instrument of global interventionism (or imperial policing), America’s professional army has proven to be astonishingly durable, if also astonishingly expensive. Yet when dispatched to Iraq and Afghanistan, it has proven incapable of winning. With victory beyond reach, the ostensible imperatives of U.S. security have consigned the nation’s warrior elite to something akin to perpetual war.
Andrew J. Bacevich (Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (American Empire Project))
Trying to consistently pick investments that are going to beat their benchmarks is like trying to win a marathon wearing muddy boots. There is a lot of drag, and your odds of winning are very low. The high costs associated with attempting to beat the market will almost guarantee sluggish results.
Richard A. Ferri (All About Asset Allocation (Professional Finance & Investment))
Almighty God, who offered your only Son to be made perfect through suffering, and to win our salvation by enduring the cross: Sustain with your healing power all whose loved ones have given their lives in the service of our country. Redeem, we pray you, the pain of their bereavement, that knowing their loss to be the price of our freedom, they may remember the gratitude of the nation for which they gave so costly a sacrifice. And grant, O Lord, that these dead shall not have died in vain, and that out of the distress of this present age there may arise a new and better world in which your will shall rule, to the honor of your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Forward Movement (Prayers for All Occasions)
Consider James D. Sinegal, co-founder and CEO of Costco, a warehouse retailer. His salary in 2003 was $350,000, which is just about ten times what is earned by his top hourly employees and roughly double that of a typical Costco store manager. Costco also pays 92.5% of employee health-care costs. Sinegal could take a lot more goodies for himself, but has refused a bonus in profitable years because “we didn’t meet the standards that we had set for ourselves,” and he has sold only a modest percentage of his stock over the years. Even Costco’s compensation committee acknowledges that he is underpaid. Sinegal believes that by taking care of his people and staying close to them, they will provide better customer service, Costco will be more profitable, and everyone (including shareholders like himself) will win. Sinegal takes other steps to reduce the “power distance” between himself and other employees. He visits hundreds of Costco stores a year, constantly mixing with the employees as they work and asking questions about how he can make things better for them and Costco customers. Despite continuing skepticism from analysts about wasting money on labor costs, Costco’s earnings, profits, and stock price continue to rise. Treating employees fairly also helps the bottom line in other ways, as Costco’s “shrinkage rate” (theft by employees and customers) is only two-tenths of 1%; other retail chains suffer ten to fifteen times the amount. Sinegal just sees all this as good business because, when you are a CEO, “everybody is watching you every minute anyway. If they think the message you’re sending is phony, they are going to say, ‘Who does he think he is?
Robert I. Sutton (The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't)
April 6 MORNING “Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp.” — Hebrews 13:13 JESUS, bearing His cross, went forth to suffer without the gate. The Christian’s reason for leaving the camp of the world’s sin and religion is not because he loves to be singular, but because Jesus did so; and the disciple must follow his Master. Christ was “not of the world:” His life and His testimony were a constant protest against conformity with the world. Never was such overflowing affection for men as you find in Him; but still He was separate from sinners. In like manner Christ’s people must “go forth unto Him.” They must take their position “without the camp,” as witness-bearers for the truth. They must be prepared to tread the straight and narrow path. They must have bold, unflinching, lion-like hearts, loving Christ first, and His truth next, and Christ and His truth beyond all the world. Jesus would have His people “go forth without the camp” for their own sanctification. You cannot grow in grace to any high degree while you are conformed to the world. The life of separation may be a path of sorrow, but it is the highway of safety; and though the separated life may cost you many pangs, and make every day a battle, yet it is a happy life after all. No joy can excel that of the soldier of Christ: Jesus reveals Himself so graciously, and gives such sweet refreshment, that the warrior feels more calm and peace in his daily strife than others in their hours of rest. The highway of holiness is the highway of communion. It is thus we shall hope to win the crown if we are enabled by divine grace faithfully to follow Christ “without the camp.” The crown of glory will follow the cross of separation. A moment’s shame will be well recompensed by eternal honour; a little while of witness-bearing will seem nothing when we are “for ever with the Lord.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Morning and Evening—Classic KJV Edition: A Devotional Classic for Daily Encouragement)
APRIL 1 Worshiping with other believers helps you view all of life from the vantage point of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s not just the most important miracle ever. It’s not just the most astounding event in the life of the Messiah. It’s not just an essential item in your theological outline. It’s not just the reason for the most important celebratory season of the church. It’s not just your hope for the future. No, the resurrection is all that and more. It is also meant to be the window through which you view all of life. Second Corinthians 4:13–15 captures this truth very well: “[We know] that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.” But what does it look like to look at life through the window of the resurrection? As I assess my life right here, right now, what about the resurrection must I remember? Let me suggest five things. The resurrection of Jesus guarantees your resurrection too. Life is not a constantly repeating cycle of the same old same old. No, under God’s rule this world is marching toward a conclusion. Your life is being carried to a glorious end. There will be a moment when God will raise you out of this broken world, and sin and suffering will be no more. The resurrection tells you what Jesus is now doing. Jesus now reigns. First Corinthians 15 says that he will continue to reign until the final enemy is under his feet. You see, your world is not out of control, but under the careful control of One who is still doing his sin-defeating work. The resurrection promises you all the grace you need between Jesus’s resurrection and yours. If your end has already been guaranteed, then all the grace you need along the way has been guaranteed as well, or you would never make it to your appointed end. Future grace always carries with it the promise of present grace. The resurrection of Jesus motivates you to do what is right, no matter what you are facing. The resurrection tells you that God will win. His truth will reign. His plan will be accomplished. Sin will be defeated. Righteousness will overcome evil. This means that everything you do in God’s name is worth it, no matter what the cost. The resurrection tells you that you always have reason for thanks. Quite apart from anything you have earned, you have been welcomed into the most exciting story ever and have been granted a future of joy and peace forever. No matter what happens today, look at life through this window.
Paul David Tripp (New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional)
recognize. In the 1980s, with rivals operating far from the productivity frontier, it seemed possible to win on both cost and quality indefinitely. Japanese companies were all able to grow in an expanding domestic economy and by penetrating global markets. They appeared unstoppable. But as the gap in operational effectiveness narrows, Japanese companies are increasingly caught in a trap of their own making. If they are to escape the mutually destructive battles now ravaging their performance, Japanese companies will have to learn strategy. To do so, they may have to overcome strong cultural barriers. Japan is notoriously consensus oriented, and companies have a strong tendency to mediate differences among individuals rather than accentuate them. Strategy, on the other
Michael E. Porter (HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy)
The simple fact is this; he who is the most bullish on the market, or has the lowest cost of capital, or has some other personal motivation for doing a deal, or ideally all three, wins the ship. Everyone else does nothing but talk about the very good and rational reasons they have for not doing deals. The simple fact is that you must take a view on the market. If you are not ready to do that, you will have trouble.
Matt McCleery (The Shipping Man)
When Nobel Prize–winning economist and psychologist Herbert Simon initially introduced the idea of “satisficing” in the 1950s, he suggested that when all the costs (in time, money, and anguish) involved in getting information about all the options are factored in, satisficing is, in fact, the maximizing strategy.
Barry Schwartz (The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less)
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Schochor Federico and Staton, P.A.
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The popular media vilified ‘psychos,’ made them out to be ogres, but Jake knew they possessed the exact qualities celebrated by the modern world: charm, ruthlessness, and a win-at-all-costs mentality. Psychopathy wasn’t black or white, but more a multi-colored rainbow from Ted Bundy to the Dalai Lama, with everyone fitting somewhere in between. Jake often wondered why psychos seemed to surround him. Did he search them out? Or did he just notice them more than most? It was hard to tell.
Matthew Mather (Darknet)
right from the start most German generals knew that Hitler was psychotic. But as long as he was winning the war, almost all of them were happy to overlook that detail
Charles Kaiser (The Cost of Courage)
Unhappily, the basic assumption that most institutional investors can outperform the market is false. Today, the institutions are the market. Institutions do over 95 percent of all exchange trades and an even higher percentage of off-board and derivatives trades. It is precisely because investing institutions are so numerous and capable and determined to do well for their clients that investment has become a loser’s game. Talented and hardworking as they are, professional investors cannot, as a group, outperform themselves. In fact, given the cost of active management—fees, commissions, market impact of big transactions, and so forth—investment managers have and will continue to underperform the overall market. Individual
Charles D. Ellis (Winning the Loser's Game: Timeless Strategies for Successful Investing)
A world created based on judgement evokes rage. Life becomes a battleground (rana-bhoomi) like Kuru-kshetra, where both sides feel like victims, where everyone wants to win at all costs, where someone will always lose. A world created by observation evokes insight, hence affection, for we see the hunger and fear of all beings.
Devdutt Pattanaik (My Gita)
My path was so tracked that in my 8th-grade yearbook, one of my friends predicted—accurately—that four years later I would enter Stanford as a sophomore. And after a conventionally successful undergraduate career, I enrolled at Stanford Law School, where I competed even harder for the standard badges of success. The highest prize in a law student’s world is unambiguous: out of tens of thousands of graduates each year, only a few dozen get a Supreme Court clerkship. After clerking on a federal appeals court for a year, I was invited to interview for clerkships with Justices Kennedy and Scalia. My meetings with the Justices went well. I was so close to winning this last competition. If only I got the clerkship, I thought, I would be set for life. But I didn’t. At the time, I was devastated. In 2004, after I had built and sold PayPal, I ran into an old friend from law school who had helped me prepare my failed clerkship applications. We hadn’t spoken in nearly a decade. His first question wasn’t “How are you doing?” or “Can you believe it’s been so long?” Instead, he grinned and asked: “So, Peter, aren’t you glad you didn’t get that clerkship?” With the benefit of hindsight, we both knew that winning that ultimate competition would have changed my life for the worse. Had I actually clerked on the Supreme Court, I probably would have spent my entire career taking depositions or drafting other people’s business deals instead of creating anything new. It’s hard to say how much would be different, but the opportunity costs were enormous. All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past.
Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future)
End note to The Day of Glory The Hammer's Slammers series isn't in any sense a future history. It's made up of individual stories exploring one aspect or another of what war means to the men and women at the sharp end. In these stories I've been translating into an SF setting what I learned in 1970 with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Viet-Nam and Cambodia. We—the Blackhorse—were an elite unit. I was very fortunate to have been assigned to a regiment in which you never had to worry if the guy next to you was going to do his job: he was, and so were you—whatever you thought of war or The War or our Vietnamese allies. (Generally the answer to all those questions was, "Not much.") The flip side was that the distinction between the categories Not Blackhorse and Enemy got blurred. We didn't view our job as winning hearts and minds: we were there to kill people and then go home. And we didn't much care about the cost of victory so long as somebody else was paying it. That's something civilians ought to consider long and hard before they send tanks off to make policy. Because I can tell you from personal experience, it
David Drake (Other Times Than Peace)
Second, there is the concept of "creative destruction." Economist Joseph Schumpeter coined this phrase in his 1942 book, "Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy," to describe a process by which dying ideas and materials fertilize new ones, endowing capitalism with a self-regenerating dynamism. As industries become obsolete and die the workers, assets, and ideas that once sustained them are freed to recombine in new forms to produce goods, services, and ideas that meet the evolving wants and needs of consumers. This process sustains an ever-expanding economic ecosystem. It's not the product of political whim. It's as organic as human evolution. Those who administer state capitalism fear creative destruction—for the same reason they fear all other forms of destruction: They can't control it. Creative destruction ensures that industries that produce things that no one wants will eventually collapse. That means lost jobs and lost wages, the kind of problem that can drive desperate people into the streets to challenge authority. In a state-capitalist society, lost jobs can be pinned directly on state officials. That's why the ultimate aim of Chinese foreign policy is to form commercial relationships abroad that can help fuel the creation of millions of jobs back home. That's why Indian officials forgive billions in debt held by farmers on the even of an election and raise salaries for huge numbers of government employees. That's why Prime Minister Putin travels to shuttered factories with television cameras in tow and orders them reopened. Of course, workers in a free-market system blame politicians for lost jobs and wages all the time. That's why candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton tried to outpopulist one another in the hard-hit states of Pennsylvania and Ohio during the 2008 presidential campaign. But when the government owns the company that owns the factory, its responsibility for works is both more direct and more obvious. Political officials don't want responsibility for destruction, creative or otherwise. Inevitable economic volatility will eventually give state capitalism ample incentive to shed responsibilities that become too costly.
Ian Bremmer (The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?)