Nowadays… deals are transactional rather than personal. Instead of placing your faith in a person, you get lawyers to write safeguards into the contract. This is an historic shift from a trust economy to a risk economy. But trust is not a dispensab...
[Two traders are getting their shoes shined] Trader #2: You can't short the stock because Bruce Wayne goes to a party. Trader #1: Wayne coming back is change. Change is either good or bad. I pick bad. Trader #2: On what basis? Trader #1: I flipped a ...
Gary: So who's the gov'? Who we doing this for? Barry the Baptist: You're doing it for me, that's all you need to know. You know because you need to know. Gary: I see. One of them "on a need to know basis" things is it. Like one of them James Bond fi...
Stanley Goodspeed: Hi, darling, it's me. Listen, do not come, I repeat, do not come to San Francisco. Carla: [Answers the phone] Stanley, no. Stanley Goodspeed: Carla... Carla: Like hell I'm not comin'! [Hangs up] Stanley Goodspeed: Wait, Carla... [t...
Tommy: How's it going with Gail? Spud: No joy yet. Tommy: How long is it? Spud: Six weeks. Tommy: Six weeks! Spud: It's a nightmare. She told me she didn't want our relationship to start on a physical basis as that is how it would be principally defi...
Jordan Belfort: On a daily basis I consume enough drugs to sedate Manhattan, Long Island, and Queens for a month. I take Quaaludes 10-15 times a day for my "back pain", Adderall to stay focused, Xanax to take the edge off, pot to mellow me out, cocai...
I am not frightened of my beliefs. If there is a God who is threatening me with damnation because I don't believe in Him, so be it. I've lived my life in conscience, and I will suffer damnation willingly in conscience against a tyrannical God who wou...
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unju...
morality means giving common concerns or the wellbeing of others as much weight as one’s own self-interest. Moral behaviour in this sense can be found in any society, because it is the glue that sticks individuals together and so makes society poss...
All of us have failed to match our dream of perfection. I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. If I could write all my work again, I'm convinced I could do it better. This is the healthiest condition for an artist. That'...
The violence of hierarchy is the violence that the powerful use against the dispossessed to keep them subordinated. As an example, the violence committed for wealth is socially invisible or committed at enough of a distance that its beneficiaries don...
The criminalization of debt, then, was the criminalization of the very basis of human society. It cannot be overemphasized that in a small community, everyone normally was both a lender and borrower. One can only imagine the tensions and temptations ...
Billy Pilgrim had a theory about diaries. Women were more likely than men to think that their lives had sufficient meaning to require recording on a daily basis. It was not for the most part a God-is-leading-me-on-a-wondrous-journey kind of meaning, ...
The truth is that any figure of Africans imported into the Americas which is narrowly based on the surviving records is bound to be low, because there were so many people at the time who had a vested interest in smuggling slaves (and withholding data...
To have a man whose name is on the label showing such interest, commitment, and determination for the best is a wonderful thing. This is someone who will throw money at quality, who believes in being the best. Never knock it. Would you prefer to have...
Next door but one is Quinlan Broddle, a Viceroy with a fear of gardens. So much so that he sold his garden to Virgin Atlantic and his erstwhile front lawn is now a runway where miniature helicopters and packets of crisps undertake sorties to 1940’s...
Christians . . . ought not to be threatened by fantasy and imagination. Great painting is not "photographic": think of the Old Testament art commanded by God. There were blue pomegranates on the robes of the priest who went into the Holy of Holies. I...
The managing editor shared Bernstein's fondness for doping things out on the basis of sketchy information. At the same time, he was cautious about what eventually went into print. On more than one occasion, he told Bernstein and Woodward to consider ...
[I]t seemed to me now that a Catholic church was the right companion for all these horrors. Didn't Catholicism deal with blood and resurrected flesh on a daily basis? Wasn't it expert in superstition? I somehow doubted that the hospitable plain Prote...
As to “facts” as a basis of understanding things in this investigative age: if there is anything greatly preferred to valid, reliable information in our culture, it is the appearance of facts – nice, tidy story lines that seem complete and perf...
The construction of a new body of knowledge always bears direct connection to the ideology in which it operates. Historical insights that diverge from the narrative laid down at the inception of the nation can be accepted only when consternation abou...
