Susan Cain quote: “I look back on my years as a Wall Street lawyer as time spent in a foreign country.”

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

Smedley D. Butler book War Is a Racket

War is a racket (1935)

“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

Smedley D. Butler (1881–1940) United States Marine Corps General, 2 time Medal of Honor recipient and activist

From a speech (1933)

“I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

On why he decided against writing proprietary software; quoted in Free as in Freedom : Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software' (2002) by Sam Williams http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/index.html
2000s

“All these Wall Street lawyers are running the system according to Buckminster Fuller. After World War II they took most of the money out of the United States, they drained the blood out of the United States and put it abroad, overseas capital…. Fuller calls it Lawyer Capitalism, the lawyers run the show. Tax laws are the key. In the postwar years, tax law allowed US capital to go abroad…. It all fled the country and stayed abroad and America changed tremendously…. We became a world power, yet a rapacious one, with capitalists really doing a major theft of our money…. Nixon took us off the Gold standard in 1972 because America went bankrupt…. All these recessions in the 70’s, 80’s…. My father got wiped out on Wall Street.”

Oliver Stone (1946) American film director, screenwriter, and producer

Wall Street DVD Director’s Commentary (2000)

“It felt uncomfortably foreign, I would say. Obviously, it was the first time I had been in a country where everybody looked like me. But obviously, culturally, it was completely alien. And I found people in the street in St. Kitts actually were calling me "English"..”

Caryl Phillips (1958) Kittian-British writer

On returning to St. Kitts during his 20s after emigrating to England with her parents during childhood in “'Lost Child' Author Caryl Phillips: 'I Needed To Know Where I Came From'” https://www.npr.org/2015/03/21/394127475/lost-child-author-caryl-phillips-i-needed-to-know-where-i-came-from in NPR (2015 Mar 21)

“I say this about everything: when I was on Neighbours I said, 'These are the best years of my life!' When I was filming 'The Wolf of Wall Street,' I said, 'These are the best months of my life!'”

Margot Robbie (1990) Australian actress

I always think I'm having the best time ever, and that I'll never have so much fun again.

Nojan Aminosharei, “There's something about Margot” https://www.elle.com.au/culture/theres-something-about-margot-7683, Elle, (Mar 25, 2014).

“History repeats itself all the time on Wall Street.”

Edwin Lefèvre book Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

Source: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923), Chapter XVIII, p. 217

“I spent the first fourteen years of my life convinced that my looks were hideous. Adolescence is painful for everyone, I know, but mine was plain weird.”

Uma Thurman (1970) American actress and model

Interview with Laura Yorke. Reader's Digest. July 2006

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

Smedley D. Butler (1881–1940) United States Marine Corps General, 2 time Medal of Honor recipient and activist

War is a racket (1935)
Source: Common Sense, Vol. 4, No. 11 (November, 1935), p. 8. Quoted in 'I Might Have Given Al Capone a Few Hints' https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/10/opinion/l-i-might-have-given-al-capone-a-few-hints-023587.html, The New York Times, September 10, 1987.

“Well they're breaking down doors in foreign countries,
Everybody thinks somebody's hiding something.
There's talk on the street and the nation is worried.
But you can't talk back when you're dead, when you're dead and buried.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Restless
Song lyrics, Breaking Hearts (1984)

“I look back on my years as a Wall Street lawyer as time spent in a foreign country.”

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