#thin

All I mean is that a board of directors is one or two ambitious men--and a lot of ballast. I mean that groups of men are vacuums. Great big empty nothings. They say we can't visualize a total nothing. Hell, sit at any committee meeting. The point is only who chooses to fill that nothing. It's a tough battle. The toughest. It's simple enough to fight any enemy, so long as he's there to be fought. But when he isn't. . . ↗

— Ayn Rand

#collectives #committees #incompetency #nothingness #men

The bubbly play of wit, the chesty laughs, the resonant voices of men when glass in hand they shut the grey world outside and prod their brains with the fun and folly of an accelerated pulse. ↗

— Jack London

#thinking #men

The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular figure which this generation requires to-day. The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season the latter becomes the most fashionable. Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#clothing #conspicuous-consumption #fashion #fashion-industry #tattoo

But I still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years of transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were going, and went on, in blindness and cowardice ↗

— Ayn Rand

#groupthink #masses #men

Look, we are getting to be old men, and we've spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another's systems... Don't you think it's time to recognise that there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine? ↗

— John le Carré

#logical-thinking #men

It feels good to have something to bring to the table,” Ren said. “I will agree with that. But don't mistake having money or stuff as being the same as being worthy. ↗

— Cameron Dane

#worthiness #money

Mr. Worthington, I understand that you do not control Chuck and Jasper. But you see, I am in a similar situation. I do not control the little devil sitting on my left shoulder. The devil is saying, "PRINT THE PICTURE PRINT THE PICTURE TAPE IT UP ALL OVER SCHOOL DO IT DO IT DO IT." And then on my right shoulder, there is a little tiny white angel. And the angel is saying, "Man, I sure as shit hope all those freshmen get their money bright and early on Monday morning." So do I, little angel. So do I. Best Wishes, Your friendly Neighboorhood Nemesis. ↗

— John Green

#replied-email-to-mr-worthington #money

What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through the sale of some astonishingly small and only distantly meaningful things, a civilisation torn and unable sensibly to adjudicate between the worthwhile ends to which money might be put and the often morally trivial and destructive mechanisms of its generation. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#material-goods #meaning #money #things #triviality

To procrastinate obedience is to disobey God. ↗

— Randy Alcorn

#discipline #obedience #procrastination #stewardship #tithing

When money can do everything you don’t have it, and when you have it, it cannot do anything. ↗

— M.F. Moonzajer

#everything #money #money