Source: Mistborn Trilogy
“Don’t give people what they want, give them what they need.”
“You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want.”
Secrets of Closing the Sale (1984)
Variant: You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.
“If you don’t give education to people, it is easy to manipulate them.”
“If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.”
As quoted in Best New Games (2002) by Dale N. LeFevre, p. 9
Part One, chapter 5, page 27
Why Government Doesn't Work (1995)
Source: Isaiah's Job (1936), III
Context: If a prophet were not too particular about making money out of his mission or getting a dubious sort of notoriety out of it, the foregoing considerations would lead one to say that serving the Remnant looks like a good job. An assignment that you can really put your back into, and do your best without thinking about results, is a real job; whereas serving the masses is at best only half a job, considering the inexorable conditions that the masses impose upon their servants. They ask you to give them what they want, they insist upon it, and will take nothing else; and following their whims, their irrational changes of fancy, their hot and cold fits, is a tedious business, to say nothing of the fact that what they want at any time makes very little call on one’s resources of prophesy. The Remnant, on the other hand, want only the best you have, whatever that may be. Give them that, and they are satisfied; you have nothing more to worry about.
