Quotes about advantage
page 5

James Hamilton photo
Buckminster Fuller photo
Nathanael Greene photo
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
Garry Kasparov photo

“Putin hasn’t come out of the blue, you know? It’s not just Putin. That’s why again in my book Winter is Coming, I emphasize why Vladimir Putin and enemies of the free world must be stopped. Because Putin, you may call him bosses of bosses, Capo dei Capi, he’s like a spider in the center of this web. Because Putin helps other bad guys, other thugs, dictators, and terrorists to sort of feel free to attack the free world. Because they all know that unless they attack the free world, unless they attack the United States as the leader of the free world, they will have no credibility with their own people because neither Putin nor Iranian mullahs, nor Al Qaeda, Islamic State or other dictators around the globe, they have nothing to offer but confrontation. They have to present themselves of the protectors of their own people against the world evil. And of course, they have to attack the free world that produces everything that, by the way, they use quite effectively against us. They cannot compete in innovations, they cannot compete in ideas, in productivity. But they can compete in something quite different because for us, each human life is unique. *For them, killing a thousand people, hundreds of thousands of people, a million is a demonstration of strengths. So we should realize that they have no allergy for blood. And they will keep pressing their advantage, and it’s not that we have grown – that our enemies have grown stronger. It’s our resolve that has grown weaker.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

Donald J. Trump photo

“We have to be tough. It's time we're going to be a little bit tough, folks. We're taken advantage by every nation in the world, virtually. It's not going to happen any more.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

White House suggests US may still accept Australia refugees despite clash https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/02/donald-trump-australia-refugees-malcolm-turnbull-phone-call (2 February 2017)
2010s, 2017, February

Brian Leiter photo
Joshua Reynolds photo
Margaret Sanger photo
Leonard Nimoy photo
Anatole France photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV photo
Harry Browne photo
John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan photo

“Until Roy Hattersley said he would shoot himself if I became prime minister, I had not been able to see any possible advantage in standing.”

John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan (1947) British politician

Speech to the Labour Party conference in Manchester, 28 September 2006. BBC News 28 September 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5388112.stm

Calvin Coolidge photo

“No more important development has taken place in the last year than the beginning of a restoration of agriculture to a prosperous condition. We must permit no division of classes in this country, with one occupation striving to secure advantage over another. Each must proceed under open opportunities and with a fair prospect of economic equality. The Government can not successfully insure prosperity or fix prices by legislative fiat. Every business has its risk and its times of depression. It is well known that in the long run there will be a more even prosperity and a more satisfactory range of prices under the natural working out of economic laws than when the Government undertakes the artificial support of markets and industries. Still we can so order our affairs, so protect our own people from foreign competition, so arrange our national finances, so administer our monetary system, so provide for the extension of credits, so improve methods of distribution, as to provide a better working machinery for the transaction of the business of the Nation with the least possible friction and loss. The Government has been constantly increasing its efforts in these directions for the relief and permanent establishment of agriculture on a sound and equal basis with other business.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Carlos Slim Helú photo
Merrick Garland photo

“The great joy of being a prosecutor is that you don’t take whatever case walks in the door. You evaluate the case, you make your best judgement, you only go forward if you believe that the defendant is guilty. You may well be wrong, but you have done your best to ensure that as far as the evidence that you are able to attain, the person is guilty. It is the kind of even-handed balancing that a judge should undertake although of course a judge has the advantage of having somebody speak for the other side.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[Merrick Garland, Confirmation hearing on nomination of Merrick Garland to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, United States Senate, December 1, 1995]; quote excerpted in:
[March 18, 2016, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2016/03/16/judge-merrick-garland-in-his-own-words/, Judge Merrick Garland, In His Own Words, Joe Palazzolo, March 16, 2016, The Wall Street Journal]
Confirmation hearing on nomination to United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1995)

Michele Simon photo

“It is obviously an advantage in the sixteenth century Bengal to be a Moor, in as much as the Hindus daily become Moors to gain the favour of their rulers.”

Duarte Barbosa (1480–1545) Portuguese explorer and writer

Barbosa, The Book of Duarte Barbosa, II, p.148. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they.

Francis Quarles photo
Baltasar Gracián photo

“Politeness and a sense of honor have this advantage: we bestow them on others without losing a thing.”

La galantería y la honra tienen esta ventaja, que se quedan: aquélla en quien la usa, ésta en quien la haze.
Maxim 118: (p. 66)
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

Vernon L. Smith photo
Joan Robinson photo
Nicholas Barr photo

“A society is a cooperative venture for the mutual advantage of its members.”

Nicholas Barr (1943) British economist

Source: Economics Of The Welfare State (Fourth Edition), Chapter 3, Political Theory: Social Justice And The State, p. 42

Marlon Brando photo

“Acting serves as the quintessential social lubricant and a device for protecting our interests and gaining advantage in every aspect of life.”

Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American screen and stage actor

Introduction to The Technique of Acting by Stella Adler (1988)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“The advantage of meditating upon life and death is being able to say anything at all about them.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

Pliny the Younger photo

“A man must rate public and permanent, above private and fleeting advantages and study how to render his benefaction most useful, rather than how he may bestow it with least expense.”
Oportet privatis utilitatibus publicas, mortalibus aeternas anteferre, multoque diligentius muneri suo consulere quam facultatibus.

Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer

Letter 18, 5.
Letters, Book VII

David Hume photo
Vitruvius photo
Edward Carpenter photo

“To keep a man (slave or servant) for your own advantage merely, to keep an animal that you may eat it, is a lie. You cannot look that man or animal in the face.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

England's Ideal and Other Papers on Social Subjects (1887), Routledge, 2016, p. https://books.google.it/books?id=53uPCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT71

Nathanael Greene photo
André Maurois photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Charles Darwin photo
René Descartes photo
Bernard Lewis photo

“There are other difficulties in the way of accepting imperialism as an explanation of Muslim hostility, even if we define imperialism narrowly and specifically, as the invasion and domination of Muslim countries by non-Muslims. If the hostility is directed against imperialism in that sense, why has it been so much stronger against Western Europe, which has relinquished all its Muslim possessions and dependencies, than against Russia, which still rules, with no light hand, over many millions of reluctant Muslim subjects and over ancient Muslim cities and countries? And why should it include the United States, which, apart from a brief interlude in the Muslim-minority area of the Philippines, has never ruled any Muslim population? The last surviving European empire with Muslim subjects, that of the Soviet Union, far from being the target of criticism and attack, has been almost exempt. Even the most recent repressions of Muslim revolts in the southern and central Asian republics of the USSR incurred no more than relatively mild words of expostulation, coupled with a disclaimer of any desire to interfere in what are quaintly called the "internal affairs" of the USSR and a request for the preservation of order and tranquillity on the frontier.
One reason for this somewhat surprising restraint is to be found in the nature of events in Soviet Azerbaijan. Islam is obviously an important and potentially a growing element in the Azerbaijani sense of identity, but it is not at present a dominant element, and the Azerbaijani movement has more in common with the liberal patriotism of Europe than with Islamic fundamentalism. Such a movement would not arouse the sympathy of the rulers of the Islamic Republic. It might even alarm them, since a genuinely democratic national state run by the people of Soviet Azerbaijan would exercise a powerful attraction on their kinsmen immediately to the south, in Iranian Azerbaijan.
Another reason for this relative lack of concern for the 50 million or more Muslims under Soviet rule may be a calculation of risk and advantage. The Soviet Union is near, along the northern frontiers of Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan; America and even Western Europe are far away. More to the point, it has not hitherto been the practice of the Soviets to quell disturbances with water cannon and rubber bullets, with TV cameras in attendance, or to release arrested persons on bail and allow them access to domestic and foreign media. The Soviets do not interview their harshest critics on prime time, or tempt them with teaching, lecturing, and writing engagements. On the contrary, their ways of indicating displeasure with criticism can often be quite disagreeable.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990)

Yanis Varoufakis photo
James Nasmyth photo
Nicholas Barr photo

“A reduction in the liberty of the least well off cannot be justified even if it is to their economic advantage.”

Nicholas Barr (1943) British economist

Source: Economics Of The Welfare State (Fourth Edition), Chapter 3, Political Theory: Social Justice And The State, p. 49

Miyamoto Musashi photo
Benjamin Spock photo
Sophia Loren photo

“I was born wise. Street-wise, people-wise, self-wise. This wisdom was my birthright. I was also born old. And illegitimate. But the two big advantages I had at birth were to have been born wise and to have been born in poverty.”

Sophia Loren (1934) Italian actress

Quoted by A. E. Hotchner in Sophia, Living and Loving: Her Own Story (1979), p. 9 http://books.google.com/books?id=IBBbPUCmiNUC&q=%22I+was+born+wise+Street-wise+people-wise+self-wise+This+wisdom+was+my+birthright+I+was+also+born+old+And+illegitimate+But+the+two+big+advantages+I+had+at+birth+were+to+have+been+born+wise+and+to+have+been+born+in+poverty%22&pg=PA9#v=onepage

David Lloyd George photo

“Companies are in the midst of a revolutionary transformation. Industrial age competition is shifting to information age competition. During the industrial age, from 1850 to about 1975, companies succeeded by how well they could capture the benefits from economies of scale and scope. Technology mattered, but, ultimately, success accrued to companies that could embed the new technology into physical assets that offered efficient, mass production of standard products.
During the industrial age, financial control systems were developed in companies, such as General Motors, DuPont, Matsushita, and General Electric, to facilitate and monitor efficient allocations of financial and physical capital. A summary financial measure such as return-on-capital employed (ROCE) could both direct a company’s internal capital to its most productive use and monitor the efficiency by which operating divisions used financial and physical capital to create value for shareholders.
The emergence of the information era, however, in the last decades of the twentieth century, made obsolete many of the fundamental assumptions of industrial age competition. No longer could companies gain sustainable competitive advantage by merely deploying new technology into physical assets rapidly, and by excellent management of financial assets and liabilities.”

David P. Norton (1941) American business theorist, business executive and management consultant

Source: The Balanced Scorecard, 1996, p. 2-3

Edmund Burke photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Owen Lovejoy photo

“The principle of enslaving human beings because they are inferior, is this. If a man is a cripple, trip him up. If he is old and weak, and bowed with the weight of years, strike him, for he cannot strike back. If idiotic, take advantage of him, and if a child, deceive him. This, sir, this is the doctrine of Democrats and the doctrine of devils as well, and there is no place in the universe outside the five points of hell and |the Democratic Party where the practice and prevalence of such doctrines would not be a disgrace.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=%22The+principle+of+enslaving+human+beings+because+they+are+inferior%22&source=bl&ots=YA6W9JoaPr&sig=aO15r4OJEVD8bQUIjM34u42GjXg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiM9vuXwsrLAhWJeD4KHWvpAUcQ6AEIHjAB#v=onepage&q=%22The%20principle%20of%20enslaving%20human%20beings%20because%20they%20are%20inferior%22&f=false (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 193
1860s, Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives (April 1860)

Charles Erwin Wilson photo
Michael Lewis photo

“Listen, then. I say justice is nothing other than what is advantageous for the stronger.”

Thrasymachus (-459–-399 BC) Ancient Greek sophist

Plato, Republic, 338c

Octavia E. Butler photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
John Herschel photo
James P. Cannon photo
Sarah Grimké photo
Henry Clay photo
Josiah Gilbert Holland photo

“In justice as fairness society is interpreted as a cooperative venture for mutual advantage.”

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter II, Section 14, pg. 84

William Hazlitt photo

“A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one — they shew one another off to the best advantage.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

No. 376
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

Ulysses S. Grant photo
Adam Smith photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Joni Madraiwiwi photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“Metaphorically speaking, free African-American politicians and activists are boiling the bones of their enslaved ancestors to make soup. The suffering of slaves is being exploited posthumously to shape discourse in politically advantageous ways.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"What Cultural Marxist Would Say About Looting, http://www.wnd.com/2017/09/what-cultural-marxists-would-say-about-looting/" WND.COM, September 14, 2017
2010s, 2017

Kenneth Griffin photo

“Size is a double-edged sword with great advantages and disadvantages..”

Kenneth Griffin (1968) American hedge fund manager

Interview with Harvard Investment Magazine (Winter 2005) http://www.harvardinvestmentmagazine.org/current/griffin.htm
Response to question about managing a large hedge fund.

Donald J. Trump photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
George W. Bush photo

“Ultimately, each transnational firm strives for its own advantage, and is supported in that effort by the state power wherein it resides, or at least where its main shareholders are domiciled.”

Herbert Schiller (1919–2000) American media critic

Source: Living In The Number One Country (2000), Chapter Two, Visions Of Global Electronic Mastery, p. 78

Subh-i-Azal photo
John Gray photo
Peter Kropotkin photo

“The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

"Words of a Rebel"; as quoted in The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations: Cutting Comments on Burning Issues (1992) by Charles Bufe, p. 26

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Alexandre Dumas photo

“Sleeping on a plank has one advantage — it encourages early rising.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Adventures in Czarist Russia.

Warren Farrell photo
Charles James Fox photo

“[Napoleon has now] surpassed…Alexander & Caesar, not to mention the great advantage he has over them in the Cause he fights in.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Letter to Denis O'Bryen (16 July 1800), quoted in L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (London: Penguin, 1997), p. 167.
1800s

Calvin Coolidge photo
Benjamin Graham photo
William Hazlitt photo
Jonah Goldberg photo

“I bet you anything I could destroy Milton Friedman in a debate about economics — so long as the audience was comprised of five year olds. He may have a Nobel Prize, but I can make offensive sounds with my armpit. Advantage: Goldberg!”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

July 19, 2004 http://web.archive.org/web/20040421/www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200407190837.asp
2000s, 2004

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey photo