-Caveat Lector- ---------- Forwarded message ------- Attitudes of the Rich and Famous... The American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it Capitalism, call it what you like, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it. Al Capone The point is that you can't be too greedy. Donald Trump, Trump: The Art of the Deal (written with Tony Schwartz, 1987). Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell. Walter Bagehot, 19th Century English economist Greed is all right, by the way . . . I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself. Ivan F. Boesky, U.S. financier. Commencement Address, 18 May 1986, School of Business Administration, University of California, Berkeley. Boesky's words were later picked up in Oliver Stone's film, Wall Street (1987), spoken by Gordon Gecko. Boesky himself was later convicted of conspiring to file false documents with the federal government, involving insider trading violations, and agreed to pay $100 million in fines and illicit profits. The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for not by our labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in his infinite wisdom has given control of property interests of the country, and upon the successful management of which so much remains. George F. Baer (Railroad Industrialist) They don't suffer. They can't even speak English. Baer, answering a reporters' question about the suffering of starving miners Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all. Economist John Maynard Keynes I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), French general, emperor. Quoted in: Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life (1923). Respectable means rich, and decent means poor. I should die if I heard my family called decent. Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), English author. Lady Clarinda, in Crotchet Castle, 1831 Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that to-day is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity. William Howard Taft, U.S. Republican president, Popular Government, 1913. I wasn't satisfied just to earn a good living. I was looking to make a statement. Donald Trump, Trump: The Art of the Deal, (1987; written with Tony Schwartz). We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet. E. M. Forster, British novelist, essayist. Howards End, 1910. A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise. Niccol� Machiavelli, The Prince, 1514. The F�hrer is always quite cheerful, cheerful with all his heart, when he is having tea with his friends during the night, or when he is training his dogs! Martin Bormann, German Nazi leader. Annotations to letter, Dec. 25, 1943, from his wife Gerda (published in The Bormann Letters, ed. by Hugh Trevor-Roper, 1954). Today, almost forty years later, I grow dizzy when I recall that the number of manufactured tanks seems to have been more important to me than the vanished victims of racism. Albert Speer, German architect, Nazi official. The Slave State, (1981). I tell you, sir, the only safeguard of order and discipline in the modern world is a standardized worker with interchangeable parts. That would solve the entire problem of management. Jean Giraudoux, French writer, diplomat Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell. Walter Bagehot, 19th Century English economist Any man who pays more for labor than the lowest sum he can get men for is robbing his stockholders. If he can secure men for $6 and pays more, he is stealing from the company. Stockholder of American Wollen (Lawrence, Massachusetts) 1911 Told to the Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick We'll drive the goddamned sons-of-bitches into the river and drown them. We'll starve them. We'll kill every damned man of them or drive them, together with the Socialists, from the city! Judge Davis, Minot, North Dakota, 1912, Referring to striking Wobblies. I don't believe that it's true that the poor will always be with us. I think that kind of pious fatalism is just an excuse for keeping things the way they are. Margaret Culkin Banning, The quality of Mercy, 1963 The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied . . . but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing. John Berger, British author, critic. The Soul and the Operator, in Expressen (Stockholm; 19 March 1990; reprinted in Keeping a Rendezvous, 1992). I can identify with steelworkers. I can identify with workers that have had a difficult time. Vice President Dan Quayle addressing workers at an Ohio steel plant,1988 I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes, I had one thousand and sixty. Imelda Marcos, 1987 I wanted to see whether or not the great Louis XIV style, which I consider the most beautiful style, could work in a modern building. I didn't want to buy old columns, because they're cracked and broken. I waited to have brand-new minted marble columns... I've used all onyx. Onyx is a precious stone, many times more beautiful. I don't believe there is an apartment like this anywhere in the world. The view, the solid bronze window frames, the fountain all brand new and carved. Did you see the way the window shades go up and down, all remote? And they're bulletproof... I don't care about material needs. I could be happy in a studio apartment with a television and a telephone. Donald Trump, Zen Buddhist, showing off his Trump Tower digs, in "InStyle" magazine (as excerpted by Leah Garchik in the San Francisco Chronicle, December 5, 1995). There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down. David Ricardo, On Protection in Agriculture, 1820 >> -- DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! 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