Launching a turnaround takes courage. I cannot measure that and so it is not going to be included in my analysis, but behind the moments of change there are always a few people within these societies who have decided to try to make a difference.
Between the Great Depression and the 1970s, private business was viewed with suspicion even in most capitalist economies. Businesses were, so the story goes, seen as anti-social agents whose profit-seeking needed to be restrained for other, supposedl...
Since the 1980s, we have given the rich a bigger slice of our pie in the belief that they would create more wealth, making the pie bigger than otherwise possible in the long run. The rich got the bigger slice of the pie all right, but they have actua...
My biggest life influences are people of the future, people yet to be born. Two people, in particular: Zax Xaz and Xaz Zax, who were both named after their father, John Smith—though they don’t share the same father, mother, or taste in food.
Will any of those men under you ever really understand all this? They're professional cynics, and it's too late for them. Why do you want to go back with them? So you can keep up with the Joneses? To buy a gyro just like the Smith has? To listen to m...
The division in human religion has always been between those who see the fall of man as a fall into freedom and those who see it as an act of defiance against the tyranny of an all-powerful father. But Adam and Eve were never in heaven; they were in ...
The standard cosmological theory--an expanding universe--does not really solve the problem of God. It simply makes it more problematical. Once the creator-creation model is discarded as primitive mythology, we still have not touched the ancient conun...
When God grabs you by the scruff of the neck then although theoretically you have a freedom to say 'no', in another sense, actually, you can't say no because it's like Jeremiah. 'God, you have cheated me. You called me to be a prophet against the peo...
A person is a person through other persons. None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order t...
Bob Roland: Message from the front, sir. Rufus T. Firefly: Oh, I'm sick of messages from the front. Don't we ever get a message from the side? - What is it? Bob Roland: General Smith reports a gas attack. He wants to know what to do. Rufus T. Firefly...
Rob: I get by because of the people who make a special effort to shop here - mostly young men - who spend all their time looking for deleted Smith singles and original, not rereleased - underlined - Frank Zappa albums. Fetish properties are not unlik...
Quiz Kid Donnie Smith: I know I did a stupid thing. So stupid! Getting braces. I thought... I thought he would love me. Getting... braces! And for what? For something I don't even... I don't know where to put things, you know? I really do have love t...
McConnely: There's Man's Law and there's God's Law in this neighborhood. Harvey Milk: Uh huh. McConnely: And in this city. Scott Smith: You know, we pay taxes! McConnely: The San Francisco Police Force is happy to enforce either. Have a good day. [le...
Mary Poppins: [watching Bert, Albert, Jane, and Michael laugh together on the ceiling] Why, it's the most disgraceful sight I've ever seen, or my name isn't Mary Poppins. Bert: Speakin' o' names, I know a man with a wooden leg named Smith. Uncle Albe...
Agent Smith: We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start. All that we're asking in return is your cooperation in bringing a known terrorist to justice. Neo: Yeah. Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. But I think I may have a b...
Ned Pepper: Now, what are you doin' here? Mattie Ross: Tom Chaney shot my father to death in Fort Smith. I was told that Rooster Cogburn has grit. I hired him to go after the murderer. I found him myself and I shot him. If I killed him I would not be...
Let me just try to give you sort of the intuitive one here on the stimulus funds. If you have a two-person economy - let's imagine we have two farms, and that's the whole world, just two farms. If one of those farmers gets unemployment benefits, who ...
I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art. When you read some books they are fantastic, the writer touches something in you that you know you would not have brought out of yourself. He makes you discov...
Price controls almost invariably produce black markets, where prices are not only higher than the legally permitted prices, but also higher than they would be in a free market, since the legal risks must also be compensated. While small-scale black m...
No matter what you are dealing with in life, be it resentment or regret, bitterness or sadness, anger or apathy, hatred or hesitation, depression or disempowerment, disappointment or other destructive anxieties, painful envy or emotional turmoil, fea...
Cause nobody's the slightest idea who we are, or who we were, not even we ourselves - except, that is, in the glimmer of a moment of fair business between strangers, or the nod of knowing and agreement between friends. Other than these, we go out ano...
