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Meditations
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it is very possible to be a divine man and to be recognised as such by no one.
“Labor turnover is one of the most significant causes of declining productivity and sagging morale in both the public and private sectors.”
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“I looked at the slum children dancing like a movie chorus and capering like temple monkeys. I was teaching some of those children to speak, read, and write English. Already, with just the little they'd learned in three months, a few of them were winning work from foreign tourists. Were those children, I wondered, the mice that fed from my hand? Would their trusting innocence be seized by a fate that wouldn't and couldn't have been theirs without me, without my intervention in their lives? What wounds and torments awaited Tariq simply because I'd befriended and taught him?”
― Shantaram
― Shantaram
“You know,' she said slowly, 'I like you, Lin.'
She stared that green fire into me. I felt myself reddening slightly, not from embarrassment, but from shame, that she'd said so easily the very words, I like you, that I wouldn't let myself say to her.
'You do?' I asked, trying to make the question sound more casual than it was. I watched her lips close in a thin smile.
'Yes. You're a good listener. That's dangerous, because it's so hard to resist. Being listened to - really listened to - is the second-best thing in the world.'
'What's the first best thing?'
'Everybody knows that. The best thing in the world is power.'
'Oh, is it?' I asked, laughing. 'What about sex?'
'No. Apart from biology, sex is all about power.”
― Shantaram
She stared that green fire into me. I felt myself reddening slightly, not from embarrassment, but from shame, that she'd said so easily the very words, I like you, that I wouldn't let myself say to her.
'You do?' I asked, trying to make the question sound more casual than it was. I watched her lips close in a thin smile.
'Yes. You're a good listener. That's dangerous, because it's so hard to resist. Being listened to - really listened to - is the second-best thing in the world.'
'What's the first best thing?'
'Everybody knows that. The best thing in the world is power.'
'Oh, is it?' I asked, laughing. 'What about sex?'
'No. Apart from biology, sex is all about power.”
― Shantaram
“The days when engineers had exclusive authority over engineering decisions are long gone.”
― Degrees of Belief: Subjective Probability and Engineering Judgment
― Degrees of Belief: Subjective Probability and Engineering Judgment
“It was a moment of casual cruelty. She knew Bassett would interpret it correctly. She was tired. She had loved him once, but their relationship had been too fraught with misunderstandings and conflicting imperatives. Where there had been love, as Martha later put it, there were now only "embers," and these were not enough.”
― In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
― In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
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