“The way to get things done is to have a good assistant.”
The Business of Life (1949)
Source: Adverbs (2006), Truly
Context: If you follow the diamond in my mother's ring from Africa to Germany to California to Arizona to Wisconsin, in the heel of a grandmother, in the beak of a magpie, in the gravel of the path, in someone else's novel, in the center of the earth where the volcanoes are from, you would forget the miracle, the reason diamonds end up in people's fingers in the first place. it is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes, it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.
“The way to get things done is to have a good assistant.”
The Business of Life (1949)
Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear closing speech (2010)
“More evil gets done in the name of righteousness than any other way.”
Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 23 (p. 310)
Context: “What do you want, Blade. Why are you doing this?”
He shrugged, an uncharacteristic action. “There are many evils in the world. I guess I’ve chosen one for my personal crusade.”
“Why such a hatred for priests?”
He didn’t shrug. He didn’t give me a straight answer, either. “If each man picks an evil and attacks it relentlessly, how long can evil persist?”
That was an easy one. Forever. More evil gets done in the name of righteousness than any other way. Few villains think they are villains. But I left him his illusion. If he had one. I doubted he did. No more than a sword’s blade does.
Random Thoughts http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell101705.asp, Oct. 17, 2005
2000s
“Most governments lie to each other. That’s the way business gets done.”
CNN interview, 2011-06-19. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-19/taliban-u-s-talks-very-preliminary-defense-chief-gates-says.html
“The way you can tell there’s democracy going on is that nothing gets done.”
Part 2, Chapter 8 (p. 172)
A Million Open Doors (1992)
“It's been agony but I couldn't have done it any other way.”