Phani Krishna > Phani's Quotes

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play

“The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.”
― Wendell Berry

“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”
― Murray N. Rothbard

“It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
― Warren Buffett

“Look, America is no more a democracy than Russia is a Communist state. The governments of the U.S. and Russia are practically the same. There's only a difference of degree. We both have the same basic form of government: economic totalitarianism. In other words, the settlement to all questions, the solutions to all issues are determined not by what will make the people most healthy and happy in the bodies and their minds but by economics. Dollars or rubles. Economy uber alles. Let nothing interfere with economic growth, even though that growth is castrating truth, poisoning beauty, turning a continent into a shit-heap and riving an entire civilization insane. Don't spill the Coca-Cola, boys, and keep those monthly payments coming.”
― Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

“Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.”
― Thomas Sowell

“The United States spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitations services and basic education to every person on the planet. And we wonder why terrorists attack us.”
― John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

“If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.”
― John Maynard Keynes

“1 billion people in the world are chronically hungry. 1 billion people are overweight.”
― Mark Bittman, Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes

“Economics was like psychology, a pseudoscience trying to hide that fact with intense theoretical hyperelaboration. And gross domestic product was one of those unfortunate measurement concepts, like inches or the British thermal unit, that ought to have been retired long before.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Blue Mars

“To reverse the effects of civilization would destroy the dreams of a lot of people. There's no way around it. We can talk all we want about sustainability, but there's a sense in which it doesn't matter that these people's dreams are based on, embedded in, intertwined with, and formed by an inherently destructive economic and social system. Their dreams are still their dreams. What right do I -- or does anyone else -- have to destroy them.

At the same time, what right do they have to destroy the world?”
― Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization

“An economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.”
― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

“We have not noticed how fast the rest has risen. Most of the industrialized world--and a good part of the nonindustrialized world as well--has better cell phone service than the United States. Broadband is faster and cheaper across the industrial world, from Canada to France to Japan, and the United States now stands sixteenth in the world in broadband penetration per capita. Americans are constantly told by their politicians that the only thing we have to learn from other countries' health care systems is to be thankful for ours. Most Americans ignore the fact that a third of the country's public schools are totally dysfunctional (because their children go to the other two-thirds). The American litigation system is now routinely referred to as a huge cost to doing business, but no one dares propose any reform of it. Our mortgage deduction for housing costs a staggering $80 billion a year, and we are told it is crucial to support home ownership, except that Margaret Thatcher eliminated it in Britain, and yet that country has the same rate of home ownership as the United States. We rarely look around and notice other options and alternatives, convinced that "we're number one.”
― Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World

“If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody and no unemployment -- assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much leisure. In America men often work long hours even when they are well off; such men, naturally, are indignant at the idea of leisure for wage-earners, except as the grim punishment of unemployment; in fact, they dislike leisure even for their sons.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
― Kenneth Boulding

“Most of us try to do too much because we are secretly afraid we will not be able to do anything at all.”
― Rick Aster, Fear of Nothing

“The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve.
Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity. An
important attribute in successful people is their impatience with negative
thinking and negative acting people. As you grow, your associates will
change. Some of your friends will not want you to go on. They will want you
to stay where they are. Friends that don't help you climb will want you to
crawl. Your friends will stretch your vision or choke your dream. Those that
don't increase you will eventually decrease you.

Consider this:
Never receive counsel from unproductive people. Never discuss your problems
with someone incapable of contributing to the solution, because those who
never succeed themselves are always first to tell you how. Not everyone has
a right to speak into your life. You are certain to get the worst of the
bargain when you exchange ideas with the wrong person. Don't follow anyone
who's not going anywhere.

With some people you spend an evening: with others you invest it. Be careful
where you stop to inquire for directions along the road of life. Wise is the
person who fortifies his life with the right friendships. If you run with
wolves, you will learn how to howl. But, if you associate with eagles, you
will learn how to soar to great heights.
"A mirror reflects a man's face, but what he is really like is shown by the
kind of friends he chooses."

The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom you
closely associate - for the good and the bad.

Note: Be not mistaken. This is applicable to family as well as friends.
Yes...do love, appreciate and be thankful for your family, for they will
always be your family no matter what. Just know that they are human first
and though they are family to you, they may be a friend to someone else and
will fit somewhere in the criteria above.

"In Prosperity Our Friends Know Us. In Adversity We Know Our friends."

"Never make someone a priority when you are only an option for them."
"If you are going to achieve excellence in big things,you develop the habit in little matters.
Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.."..”
― Colin Powell