People From Michigan

"Kit chuckled. “You, Bull Morgan, are a wicked judge of human character.” “Hell, Kit, thought you’d figured it out by now: all human character is wicked. Just varies in degree is all.”"

"Playing God was a sweetly addictive game."

"The more chaotic the world, the greater the need for ritual."

"Skeeter just couldn’t figure out what was so horrible about taking a good, long, clear-eyed look at one’s past and facing whatever one found in it. Making up the past to fit whatever idea some politically correct group wanted to pass off as reality this week seemed a lot more dangerous to him than facing brutal facts."

"All the years he’d spent fooling himself into thinking that what he did was correct was simply time wasted from his life, on delusions and fantasies that kept him from seeing what he was and where he was inevitably headed with genuine clarity."

"Small towns were terrible places to grow up with world-sized dreams—especially when those dreams were the only things you had left to hold onto."

"The death of the wildebeest herd didn’t change the bloody savagery she’d witnessed in the Roman Circus, but it put life and death in much clearer perspective. Nature wasn’t any nobler or gentler than human beings. It was just as deadly and just as cruel and just as savagely “unfair” to the weak... Maybe more so."

"Once again, Caddrick had failed to use the few brains God had given him."

"Skeeter thought dark, vile thoughts at bureaus and the bureauc-rats that ran ’em."

"“She’s young, Kit.” “That’s no excuse. The universe doesn’t give a damn when it squashes you.”"

"Malcolm had forgotten how very young eighteen was, with its mixture of invincible assuredness, fragile emotions, and the desperate need to be taken seriously—even when caught in complete ignorance."

"But—as Kit and Sven had been so fond of saying—the Universe didn’t give beans for “fair.” It simply was. You got it right or paid the price."

"“Education,” he smiled, “is never a waste of time.”"

"“Oh. I was beginning to worry.” “You do that,” Kit laughed. “I like it better when you’re worried. Proves you’re thinking.” She put out a pink tongue. “You’re mean and horrible. Why does everybody else like you?” Kit scratched his head. “Search me. Guess it’s my good looks and charm.”"

"“Uncle Sven and I are about to start your first lesson in survival theory.” She gave them both a dubious glance. “That being?” Sven guffawed. “When the fight starts, be someplace else. And always remember, nobody watches your butt for you when it’s You versus the Universe—and Margo, the universe just don’t give a damn.”"

"Are you out of your mind? No, you have to be in possession of a mind, first, to be out of it."

"“How much did that ridiculous maintenance job of yours pay?” Skeeter blinked. “Five bucks an hour, why?” “Five bucks? That’s not a salary, that’s slavery!”"

"“Hi, Sven.” “Hi, yourself. The answer’s no.”"

"Careless is stupid, he snarled at himself, and stupid can be fatal."

"“You know,” Malcolm remarked to no one in particular, “I’d say that chap doesn’t enjoy time travel.”"

"When it comes to scouts, heroes are just people who confuse cowardice with common sense."

"“What?” Jenna came out of her chair so fast, it crashed over. “Are you insane?” “No,” Skeeter said mildly, “although I know a few people who might argue the point.”"

"In empire, you believe in that which you preserve, you preserve that which you are entitled to, and you are entitled to that which you have accumulated. ... That is the religion, the animating spirit, of empire."

"Imagine my surprise one day in February 1951 to read in the newspaper that John J. McCloy, the high commissioner to Germany, had restored all the Krupp properties that had been ordered confiscated."

"Prophets do not help responsible Christian persons who seek to gain political and economic power as a means to serve the public good within the constraints of political, economic, medical, or other institutions."

"Prophets tend to be impatient with detailed analyses of particular choices made in the past—choices that determined how, month by month, we got to where we are from where we were. They tend to be equally impatient with how we can practically get from where we are today to some modest increments of improvement a month from now. To the prophet such preoccupation seems to be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic."

"The legitimacy of prophetic moral discourse, I believe, is without question. It is not, however, sufficient as moral discourse. It undercuts preoccupation with meager thinking about means to short-range ends. ... It does not concern itself with incremental choices that have to be made by persons and institutions in which good and evil are intricately intermingled."

"Many years ago I heard a paper read by a colleague who was very philosophically astute and informed. The paper was on ethics, and it was rigorously argued, proper distinctions were made, and the critique of other points of view was cogent. ... When my colleague finished his paper the man chairing the meeting said, "That's not ethics. Ethics has to do with prophecy. I learned that from Rabbi Abraham Heschel.""

"One who shows signs of mental aberration is, inevitably, perhaps, but cruelly, shut off from familiar, thoughtless intercourse, partly excommunicated; his isolation is unwittingly proclaimed to him on every countenance by curiosity, indifference, aversion, or pity, and in so far as he is human enough to need free and equal communication and feel the lack of it, he suffers pain and loss of a kind and degree which others can only faintly imagine, and for the most part ignore."

"The group self or "we" is simply an "I" which includes other persons. One identifies himself with a group and speaks of the common will, opinion, service, or the like in terms of "we" and "us." The sense of it is stimulated by co-operation within and opposition without."

"Our life is all one human whole, and if we are to have any real knowledge of it we must see it as such. If we cut it up it dies in the process: and so I conceive that the various branches of research that deal with this whole are properly distinguished by change in the point of sight rather than by any division in the thing that is seen. Accordingly, in a former book (Human Nature and Social Order), I tried to see society as it exists in the social nature of man and to display that in its main outlines. In this one the eye is focussed on the enlargement and diversification of intercourse which I have called Social Organization, the individual, though visible, remaining slightly in the background."

"BY primary groups I mean those characterized by intimate face-to-face association and cooperation. They are primary in several senses, but chiefly in that they are fundamental in forming the social nature and ideals of the individual. The result of intimate association, psychologically, is a certain fusion of individualities in a common whole, so that one's very self, for many purposes at least, is the common life and purpose of the group. Perhaps the simplest way of describing this wholeness is by saying that it is a "we"; it involves the sort of sympathy and mutual identification for which "we" is the natural expression. One lives in the feeling of the whole and finds the chief aims of his will in that feeling."

"If failure or disgrace arrives, if one suddenly finds that the faces of men show coldness or contempt instead of the kindliness and deference that he is used to, he will perceive from the shock, the fear, the sense of being outcast and helpless, that he was living in the minds of others without knowing it, just as we daily walk the solid ground without thinking how it bears us up."

"The distinctive thing in the idea for which the pronouns of the first person are names is apparently a characteristic kind of feeliing which may be called the my-feeling or sense of appropriation. Almost any sort of ideas may be associated with this feeling, and so come to be named "I" or "mine," but the feeling, and that alone it would seem, is the determining factor in the matter. As Professor James says in his admirable discussion of the self, the words "me" and "self" designate "all the things which have the power to produce in a stream of consciousness excitement of a certain peculiar sort.""

"Strong joy and grief depend upon the treatment this rudimentary social self receives."

"As we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass, and are interested in them because they are ours, and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we should like them to be; so in imagination we perceive in another's mind some thought of our appearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it."

"Sociologists such as George Herbert Mead and Charles Horton Cooley thought of society as a human laboratory where they could observe and understand human behavior to be better able to address human needs, and they used the city in which they lived as a living laboratory."

"We are ashamed to seem evasive in the presence of a straightforward man, cowardly in the presence of a brave one, gross in the eyes of a refined one, and so on. We always imagine, and in imagining share, the judgments of the other mind. A man will boast to one person of an action — say some sharp transaction in trade-^which he would be ashamed to own to another."

"A separate individual is an abstraction unknown to experience, and so likewise is society when regarded as something apart from individuals."

"The social self is simply any idea, or system of ideas, drawn from the communicative life, that the mind cherishes as its own."

"How is a man to find where he belongs in life? The more original he is, the less likely is he to find his place prepared for him. He must not expect to see from the beginning what mould his life will take... The power to work on faith is what distinguishes great men."

"As social beings we live with our eyes upon our reflection, but have no assurance of the tranquillity of the waters in which we see it."

""SOCIETY and the Individual" is really the subject of this whole book, and not merely of Chapter One. It is my general aim to set forth, from various points of view, what the individual is, considered as a member of a social whole ; while the special purpose of this chapter is only to offer a preliminary statement of the matter, as I conceive it, afterward to be unfolded at some length and variously illustrated."

"To get away from one's working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one's self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change."

"A self-idea of this sort seems to have three principal elements: the imagination of our appearance to the other person; the imagination of his judgment of that appearance, and some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification."

"Society is an interweaving and interworking of mental selves. I imagine your mind and especially what your mind thinks about my mind and what my mind thinks about what your mind thinks about my mind. I dress my mind before you and expect that you will dress yours before mine. Whoever cannot or will not perform these feats is not properly in the game."

"The essential complement to the path-breaking book Competitive Strategy, Michael E. Porter’s Competitive Advantage explores the underpinnings of competitive advantage in the individual firm. Competitive Advantage introduces a whole new way of understanding what a firm does. Porter’s groundbreaking concept of the value chain disaggregates a company into “activities,” or the discrete functions or processes that represent the elemental building blocks of competitive advantage."

"The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do."

"The firm achieving focus may also potentially earn above-average returns for its industry. Its focus means that the firm either has a low cost position with its strategic target, high differentiation, or both."

"Low cost relative to competitors becomes the theme running through the entire strategy, though quality, service and other areas cannot be ignored."