“It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worthhearing; but as a rule they don't know anything outside their own business.”
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Theodore Roosevelt 445
American politician, 26th president of the United States 1858–1919Related quotes
As quoted in The Liberal Tradition in European Thought (1971) by David Sidorsky, p. 73
Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), Ch. 8
Context: I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed. You would be surprised to know what my great events are. Going to the theatre yesterday, talking to you now — I don't suppose I shall ever meet anything greater. I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there. You are quite right; life to me is just a spectacle, which — thank God, and thank Italy, and thank you — is now more beautiful and heartening than it has ever been before.
“Don't talk to me. I'm tired and grumpy and I'll probably make fun of you.”
Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Comment after a 1977 Polaroid shareholder's meeting, as quoted in The Icarus Paradox : How Exceptional Companies Bring About Their Own Downfall; New Lessons in the Dynamics of Corporate Success, Decline, and Renewal (1990) by Danny Miller, p. 126
Speech to Devonshire Conservatives (January 1892), as quoted in The Marquis of Salisbury (1892), by James J. Ellis, p. 185
Variant: The only true lasting benefit which the statesman can give to the poor man is so to shape matters that the greatest possible liberty for the exercise of his own moral and intellectual qualities should be offered to him by law.
As quoted in Salisbury — Victorian Titan (1999) by Andrew Roberts
1890s
Context: We must learn this rule, which is true alike of rich and poor — that no man and no class of men ever rise to any permanent improvement in their condition of body or of mind except by relying upon their own personal efforts. The wealth with which the rich man is surrounded is constantly tempting him to forget the truth, ad you see in family after family men degenerating from the position of their fathers because they live sluggishly and enjoy what has been placed before them without appealing to their own exertions. The poor man, especially in these days, may have a similar temptation offered to him by legislation, but this same inexorable rule will work. The only true lasting benefit which the statesman can give to the poor man is so to shape matters that the greatest possible opportunity for the exercise of his own moral and intellectual qualities shall be offered to him by the law; and therefore it is that in my opinion nothing that we can do this year, and nothing that we did before, will equal in the benefit that it will confer upon the physical condition, and with the physical will follow the moral too, of the labouring classes in the rural districts, that measure for free education which we passed last year. It will have the effect of bringing education home to many a family which hitherto has not been able to enjoy it, and in that way, by developing the faculties which nature has given to them, it will be a far surer and a far more valuable aid to extricate them from any of the sufferings or hardships to which they may be exposed than the most lavish gifts of mere sustenance that the State could offer.
As quoted in "The Man in the Pirate Uniform: Clemente is Spectacular" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=zcxRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=NGwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7274%2C5131234 by Myron Cope, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Tuesday, August 23, 1960), p. 29
Other, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1960</big>