#v

He had been taught as a child that Urras was a festering mass of inequity, iniquity, and waste. But all the people he met, and all the people he saw, in the smallest country village, were well dressed, well fed, and contrary to his expectations, industrious. They did not stand about sullenly waiting to be ordered to do things. Just like Anaresti, they were simply busy getting things done. It puzzled him. He had assumed that if you removed a human being's natural incentive to work -- his initiative, his spontaneous creative energy -- and replaced it with external motivation and coercion, he would become a lazy and careless worker. But no careless workers kept those lovely farmlands, or made the superb cars and comfortable trains. The lure and compulsion of profit was evidently a much more effective replacement of the natural initiative than he had been led to believe. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#inequity #iniquity #initiative #profit #business

All I had done was to improve on their strategy, and it was the beginning of a very important lesson in life - that anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business - you know they're doing something that you aren't. ↗

— Malcolm X

#business-advice #strategy #business

Make sure your business is creating a service experience so good that it demands loyalty. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#creating #experience #loyalty #service #business

Look for the positive qualities in your client's negative behavior. ↗

— Marilyn Suttle

#consulting #cusotmer-service #relationships #business

Stupidity always accompanies evil. Or evil, stupidity. ↗

— Louise Bogan

#always #evil #stupidity

Even when you don't see Him working, He's busy working on your behalf. Forever grateful for God's grace! ↗

— Yvonne Pierre

#god #grace #grateful #inspirational #business

Sasha: Men don't understand a lot of things. Every young girl is going to be drawn more to a failure than to a successful man, because they're all attracted by the notion of active love... Do you understand? Active. Men are busy with their work, and therefore for them love is something right in the background. A conversation with the wife, a stroll with her in the garden, a nice time, a cry on her grave - that's all. But for us love is life. I love you, that means that I dream of how I'll cure you of your depression, of how I'll go with you to the ends of the earth... When you're up, so am I; when you're down, so am I. ... The more work there is, the better love is ... ↗

— Anton Chekhov

#business

Invest in the future because that is where you are going to spend the rest of your life. ↗

— Habeeb Akande

#future #invest #money #planning #time

He had to keep busy; he had to keep moving so that the sinews connected behind his eyes did not slip loose and spin his eyes to the interior of his skull where the scenes waited for him. ↗

— Leslie Marmon Silko

#move #sinews #skullduggery-pleasant #business

His name was Theo. ↗

— Cinda Williams Chima

#han #loss #magret #name #ragger