Famous Quotes at Understand Famous Quotes dot com

The administration is doing what they always do, blaming the fire on the person who called 9-1-1.
~~ Charles Schumer ~~

After IndyMac bank failed a few days ago, some bank regulators tried to blame U.S. Senator Charles Schumer because before the run on the bank he had released a letter about the possibility that IndyMac might fail. In response to that accusation, the senator made the above statement.

I agree with the the senator. The bank failed because, like many other banks some of which have already failed, it indulged in high risk loans such as Alt-A loans where a borrower doesn’t have to document his or her income. Some people refer to such loans as “liars’ loans”. In other words, IndyMac acted more like a gambler rather than a bank. And the bank regulators woefully failed to reign it in. The release of the letter by the senator might have hastened the bank’s demise a bit but it certainly didn’t cause it.

And blaming him is certainly like ‘blaming the fire on the person who called 9-1-1′.

It’s going to be very, very expensive, but it will be worth every penny.
~~ John Cleese ~~

John Cleese made the above remark about his impending divorce from his third wife. She wants two houses, half his earnings since the time that they married (1992) and £900,000 maintenance a year.

Now I am not sure if he thinks it’s worth every penny because she has given him so much love during all these years and so she deserves every penny she is asking for or because she has sucked so much blood out of him that he thinks it’s worth it to get rid of her at any price! LOL

He is also an incorrigible optimist; this is his third divorce. Come on man, give your head a shake. How many times are you going to try to make Hope Triumph Over Experience?

What is a man if he is not a thief who openly charges as much as he can for the goods he sells?
~~ Mahatma Gandhi ~~ (1869 - 1948)

Now that is a good question to ponder.

Just because you can charge for something as much as you want and people will pay for it because they don’t have a choice, doesn’t make it a smart business. Rather, it displays a pickpocket mentality; steal as much as you can while you can!

A classic example happening right now is in the crude oil business. It costs approximately $2 to produce a barrel of crude oil in Saudi Arabia and $15 in Alberta, Canada; yet, at the moment, oil is trading over $120 a barrel! How come?

Now everybody will agree that to survive and prosper, a business has to make a reasonable profit - the keyword being ‘reasonable’. To charge $120 for something that costs $2 or $15 to produce cannot be called reasonable by any stretch of the imagination! Of course the price of oil is not determined solely by the producers; there are many other players like the oil companies, traders, speculators etc. etc. - just fancy names for pickpockets! And they would have us believe that it’s all a question of supply and demand! Or which has become even more fashionable now-a-days: Blame everything on the emerging economies of India or China or both. :-)

If all these players in the oil industry were to limit their profits to a reasonable level, the price of oil will certainly not be what it is today. Gandhi would call it theft, not business. I agree.

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
~~ Woody Allen ~~

Absolutely. Money is far better than poverty and not just for financial reasons. It also opens the door to power and privileges that the poor can not even dream of.

Whether we like it or not, the fact remains that the world has evolved in such a fashion that money has become all important and it exerts great influence on our individual lives. It is inconceivable and impossible to live without money though having lots of money will not necessarily make you happy or even content in life.

Money is only loaned to a man. He comes into the world with nothing and he leaves with nothing.
~~ William Crapo Durant ~~

Not exactly true. While it’s true that one comes into the world with nothing and leaves with nothing, the money is only loaned to you if you are born to rich parents, marry a rich person or win a lottery! Since you don’t have much choice in who you are born to, you may want to try your hand at the other two options. LOL. If nothing works for you, then you just have to go out and grab some money to survive.

As would be expected, some are able to grab more money than others. Some even manage to create money (wealth) through their ingenuity and hard work. Some grab it through tricks and treachery. And most of us work our butts off and live from pay cheque to pay cheque. And when it comes time to leave this earth, we wonder: where did the time go? :-)

I think it’s a good thing that we can’t take our money with us (actually I think we don’t go anywhere, it’s just dust to dust but that is a different topic). There is so much turmoil in the world over money in spite of the fact that we can’t take it with us; can you imagine what a hell hole this world would be if we could actually take our money with us?

When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I am old, I know it is.
~~ Oscar Wilde ~~ (1854 - 1900)

Young or old, everybody must learn quickly that money is the most important thing in life; nay, money is life! LOL

So now that you have been made aware as to how important the money is, from now on you should only dream of money and more money! And I mean gather lots of money like being a multi-billionaire - don’t even think of being a millionaire because millionaires now-a-days are dime a dozen. :-)

Money will help you a lot in attaining power and prestige. However, don’t delude yourself that if you gather a lot of money you’ll have a happy life or even a satisfied life because money is not capable of buying that. Heck, the money can’t even buy you love but it does give you the option of doing stupid things, if you are so inclined, such as the hiring of a high priced call girl just like the former governor of New York, Mr. Eliot Spitzer did! LOL

Now if you were a mere mortal, like most of us, struggling to pay your bills; you wouldn’t even dream of paying, in cash, in the neighborhood of $4500 per hour for tryst with a call girl, would you? But when you have tons of dough then…
To be fair to Mr. Spitzer, he is not the only one indulging in such an exciting activity; a lot of folks with tons of dough and the power that goes along with it, do the same and enjoy life! After all, he was just a client number 9. :-)

They are essentially creating a $300-billion bank out of nothing.
~~ Lou Crandall ~~

Lou Crandall, an economist at a financial research firm, was reacting on the U.S. Federal Reserve’s efforts to expand credit to ease the credit crisis; a crisis caused mainly by the sub-prime mortgage lending.

I think Mr. Crandall is quite mistaken. They are not creating a $300-billion bank out of nothing; they are creating it out of the tax payers money!

Now is the moment when the reality has hit home. And the reality is trashing all the follies, such as the sub-prime mortgages, committed by the so called ‘whiz kids’ with their ‘creative ideas’. Where are these whiz kids now? Why don’t they step up to the plate with their creative ideas to stop the bleeding? Looks like they have run out of their creative ideas. LOL. That’s what happens when reality meets fantasy. Many so called big financial players will hit the dust; just like Beer Sterns did.

This $300-billion of tax payers money being thrown in by Federal Reserve may postpone the reality for a little while but ultimately the reality will prevail. And that means more financial upheavals until the fantasy world of lousy financing is crushed down to reality. Unfortunately, a lot of ordinary folks are going to be left holding the bag.

There is no amount of money in the world that will make you comfortable if you are not comfortable with yourself.
~~ Stuart Wilde ~~

While extreme lack of money will definitely make you unhappy and uncomfortable, having lots of money will not necessarily result in your being content and tranquil in life. The reason why money is important is because one needs a certain amount of money (income) to make a living and beyond that we are just chasing our wants and fuzzy dreams. Most of us have only a vague idea as to why we need more money but we continue to chase money just out of habit. Some people may say they need more money because they want to buy a fancy car or a bigger house etc. or perhaps a lot of people would express the desire to quit their distressingly boring jobs if they had lots of money.

But that is only an illusion as one doesn’t need a fancy car or a big house and a job is only one facet of life; there are a lot of other factors that affect us. Also, we know a lot of people who have a lot of money (though they may not think so! LOL), several fancy cars, several big houses (mansions) and have achieved great success in their profession, and we idolize and imitate them, but they still lead very troubled lives. These people are prime examples of the fact that just money and material possessions can’t bring one tranquility. Tranquility is something one can only find from within oneself.

Of all God’s creatures, Man alone is poor.
~~ Thomas Carlyle ~~ (1795 – 1881)

This is a great thoughtful quote. Of all the creatures that we know of, humans have more material possessions per capita than any other species. Yet most of the time most of us feel we are poor or very poor. Material possessions or the lack thereof is not the only thing that makes us feel poor, we feel poor in more than one way. That’s why many of those who have unfathomable material possessions, also feel they are poor.

I think the reason for this is our insatiable, uncontrolled greed. We are so engrossed in wanting more and more material possessions that we tend to forget what we already possess. Greed to an extent is not necessarily a bad thing but uncontrolled, insatiable greed is definitely a curse. You only have to look at how many wealthy people including CEOs, law makers etc. end up in jail usually on charges such as stealing from their company, defrauding the public or shareholders and indulging in bribery etc. Obviously, it was their greed and not the lack of material possessions that drove them to indulge in such unlawful activity. We only learn about a few of these wealthy (or should I say poor?) people who have been caught; there have to be many others who have not been caught and probably will never be caught. How poor these people must be in spite of being rich!

In Hollywood a girl’s virtue is much less important than her hairdo. You’re judged by how you look, not by what you are. Hollywood’s a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty.
~~ Marilyn Monroe ~~ (1926 - 1962)

Now that is quite sad and true commentary about people in Hollywood and their money. I believe it’s not just the people in Hollywood but humans in general; lust, money and power seems to be the be all and end all. Hollywood gets under the microscope more often because the people there tend to show off more often the gazillions of dollars they seem to possess. Generally speaking, soul and virtue are of no consequence; these qualities just get a lip service.

Why are we as a species so much after lust, money and power? The obvious answer is our inherent desire to dominate. What is soul? Do humans have souls? I doubt it; I think there is nothing known as soul, it’s just a concept, a feeling. All normal humans are capable of knowing wrong from right and we feel guilty when we do something wrong. Then we start rationalizing our behavior to get over the feeling of guilt; some of us doing it more effectively than others. Soul is just a convenient concept we throw in for our rationalizations.

If people really had souls then when they become rich and powerful, they will still have souls and wouldn’t offer a thousand dollars for good looks and a kiss and fifty cents for the soul; would they? Or is it that one gets ‘Free’ of the soul as soon as one becomes rich and powerful?

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
~~ Thomas Jefferson ~~

This is even more true today than at the times of Thomas Jefferson. It appears that many rich people take delight in ripping off the working class poor. It may be because the poor are an easy target and rich feel secure in the knowledge that

1. Most of the working class poor people don’t know their legal rights.
2. Most poor people, even if they knew their rights, don’t have the economic wherewithal to seek a redress in the Courts.
3. Even if a poor person were to seek a redress in the Courts, the rich can lengthen the process to many years or even decades through legal maneuvering and appeals.

A classic example of the rich preying on the poor, at least in Canada, is happening right now. Many businesses, some of them fairly large businesses reporting millions of dollars in annual profits, whenever they need to hire new employees, do not advertise for the job openings they have in their organization. Instead they team up with an Employment Agency to do the hiring for them. Now there would be nothing wrong if a business or employer were to hire an Employment Agency to do the screening and hiring for them and pay the Agency for its services. But that is not what they do!

Instead, the Employment Agency holds itself out as the “Employer”, recruits employees and sends them to work for the “Real Employer” - the business which teamed up with the Employment Agency, at the Real Employer’s place of business as a “Temporary Employee”. What is wrong with this arrangement, you may ask? Let me explain.

Suppose the Real Employer’s normal rate for the job is $12 per hour (This is the usual rate of semi-skilled type of factory jobs in Canada right now). So if the Real Employer were to hire you directly for this job, you’ll be paid $12 per hour plus, after 3 months of employment, you become eligible for other benefits like health insurance etc, if any. Since you are the employee of the Employment Agency and legally not the employee of the Real Employer even though in reality you work for the Real Employer, the Agency will pay you anywhere between 20% to 30% less than the going rate of the Real Employer. That is, your rate of pay will be somewhere between $8.50 to $10 per hour. The difference between what the Agency charges the Real Employer (e.g. $12 per hour) and what it pays you (e.g. $8.50 an hour) is how the Agency makes its money.

By this legal acrobatics, the Real Employer has downloaded its recruiting costs on to the working poor who end up earning 20% to 30% less than the going rate and the Real Employer has made the working poor a de facto economic slave as legally not being an employee of the Real Employer you have virtually no legal rights against the Real Employer.

Even though the above arrangement may be legal, in my view, it’s highly immoral and unethical - a classic case of the rich preying on the poor.

It is difficult but not impossible to conduct strictly honest business. What is true is that honesty is incompatible with the amassing of a large fortune.
~~ Mahatma Gandhi ~~ (1869 - 1948)

Whether we like it or not, the fact is that most, if not all, businesses are conducted dishonestly. It is possible or should be possible to conduct honest business with some reasonable return on investment but that will require hard work, sacrifice and patience. Most businesses concern themselves with producing stinking profits and to heck with honesty and fairness.

A good example right now is the oil companies. They raise the gasoline prices at the pump as soon as the price of crude oil goes up but when the price of crude oil falls they take their time to lower the gas prices at the pump. They justify the delay in lowering prices by saying that they cannot immediately lower the prices at the pump because they have inventories which they bought at the higher price. That seems logical but then they should not immediately raise gasoline prices when the price of crude oil goes up because they must have inventories which they bought at the lower price. This practice of theirs may be legal but it is certainly not honest, fair or moral.

Oil industry is not the only industry that indulges in such practices; most industries do. The motto seems to be to devise creative ways to rip off the consumer and maximize profits to line the pockets of a few. Shameful but true!

Lack of money is the root of all evil.
~~ George Bernard Shaw ~~ (1856-1950)

I don’t agree with this quote. It’s not just the people who lack money that engage in unlawful, stupid or evil activities; many rich people indulge themselves in unlawful, stupid or evil activities and some of them end up in jail.

Obviously, for the rich, it’s not the lack of money rather it’s their insatiable greed that leads them to engage in such activities. While a certain amount of greed may be necessary and even desirable for progress, unbridled greed is definitely a curse.

Also, there are people who neither lack money nor are rich but still engage in evil activities. Examples of such people would be rapists, pedophiles, mass-murderers etc., many of whom have been known to belong to the middle class. Why do these middle class people indulge in such evil activities? No body has a definitive answer.

So the causes of evil are complex and not simple like just the lack of money; people from all segments of society have been known to indulge in evil activities.

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
~~ Confucius ~~ (551 BC - 479 BC)

The quote is true but not very practical. Choosing a job you love is easier said than done. The reality of life is that most of us do not get to choose the job we love; the practicality of paying one’s bills starts hitting home pretty quick. Even if you find a job, which at the hiring stage you thought will be ideal for you, may, in reality, turn out to be quite different than you thought it would be. Once you get a job, the tendency is to stick with it even though you may not like it.

If you are one of those brave souls and quit 4 or 5 jobs after working for short periods of time because you didn’t love them and put these in your resume; you’ll probably not get any job let alone the job you love. That’s because most employers will look at your resume and won’t even call you for an interview as they think of you as a “quitter”.

So the idea of getting a job that you love is mostly a pipe dream; it very rarely happens in real life. I think most of the studies peg the percentage of people who love their jobs at around 1% to 2%. As a matter of fact, in a recent survey conducted by Ipsos Reid for the Royal Bank of Canada, 30% of Canadians said they are stuck in dead-end jobs. That is almost 1 in 3 Canadians! And Canada is one of the best countries to live in. If so many people in Canada can’t find a job they love, one can safely assume the situation in the rest of the world is far worse than in Canada.