Commerce
"[The ability to transfer debts to another person is] what determines money's value–and why money, even though it is nothing but credit, cannot just be created at will by anyone. For sellers to accept buyers' IOUs in payment, they must be convinced of two things.
Commerce
"Precisely because chivalric ideals had little relevance for modern pike-and-artillery warfare, they became all the more cherished by those who dreamed of far-off lands. Places in that vast unknown territory called the 'Indies' that were either uninhabited or occupied by pagans rightfully belonged to
Politics
"[Latin America] must pass from nationalism to interdependence, but interdependence is senseless without a basis in independence. Only independent nations can become interdependent partners. If not, they become protectorates, neo-colonies, subject states." -- Carlos Fuentes, Foreword, Ariel by José Enrique Rodó (Austin, TX : University of Texas Press, 1988)
Philosophy
"To propose to a man that he be someone else, that he become someone else, is to propose that he cease to be himself. Every man defends his own personality, and will agree to a change in his way of thinking or of feeling only in so far as
Life
"Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation
Commerce
"Wasting seven seams of coal meant the mine would have a shorter life, about forty years rather than 140 years if the coal from all ten seams was recovered. Dave questioned the logic of mining only three seams. The mine's financial officer provided an explanation: 'We
History
-- Walter Russell Mead, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World (New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), pg. 309.
History
"Today we reel at the speed of globalization and long for the placid, pastoral times of, say, Edwardian Britain in the years before World War I. Yet people living in those times did not think their lives were placid or that the pace of change was slow. As suffragettes
History
"Conversely and significantly, the vast majority of the joke tellers who were denounced and brought before special Nazi courts received a mild punishment, if any. Usually they were let off with a warning. 'Whispered jokes' were a surrogate for, and not a manifestation of, social conscience and
Chapbook
begin -- John Tabak, The History of Mathematics: Numbers, Revised Edition (New York : Facts on File, 2011), pgs. 160-61.
Communication
[U]nderlying each connection are the core beliefs that the parties about to communicate hold about each other. These colour the whole relationship. If you think a person is incompetent then no matter how much you try to mask that belief it percolates as a subtle energy through the relationship,
Chapbook
He wanted to teach us to despise the soppy mush of feeling, the false generosity that for an instant, and in all good faith, promises the sun, moon and stars, convinced of its own generous impulse, but that for all sorts of sound, valid reasons draws back when it comes