Douglas Coupland Quotes
The only way to the top is killing and greed. Okay, I’m kidding. But killing helps.
Quotes to Explore
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Occupy Wall Street means making Wall Street and the corporate power elite understand that the people affected by the binge of unregulated greed are not going away, and they are not going to give up.
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Greed is the lack of confidence of one's own ability to create.
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The major international appeal for 'House of Cards' was kind of a surprise because it's a very American show. What we learned is that American politics is very American, but greed and corruption and all of that is very global.
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Con men look for human frailty to exploit. This is most often greed. Trump found a different vice: anger. The emotional are always the most susceptible to manipulation.
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If you talk to most businessmen, they'll say that what they do is for the public good, but you know they're just greedy, and consumers are just consuming for the sake of their own greed.
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The most satisfying thrillers send ordinary people into battle against the forces of evil - otherwise known as greed, ego, rage, fear and laziness - and bring them out bloodied but whole.
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We didn't become the most prosperous country in the world just by rewarding greed and recklessness. We didn't come this far by letting the special interests run wild. We didn't do it just by gambling and chasing paper profits on Wall Street. We built this country by making things, by producing goods we could sell.
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'Dallas' hit a chord back in the late Seventies and Eighties because it was the age of greed: here you have this unapologetic character who is mean and nasty and ruthless and does it all with an evil grin. I think people related to JR back then because we all have someone we know exactly like him. Everyone in the world knows a JR.
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Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.
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A glimpse heavenward at a constellation or even at a single star only suggests infinity; actually our vision is limited. We cannot perceive unlimited space; it is immeasurable. The universe, as we know it through our visual experience, is limited. It first came into existence with the formation of matter, and will end with the complete dissolution of matter.
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When you stopped to think about it, he reflected, there weren’t many things in life one truly needed. To want too much was worse than greed: it was stupidity-a waste of precious time and effort.
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They had clearly feared turn-of-the-century irrationality-religious overzealousness on one side, destructive hedonism on the other, with both heated by ideological intolerance and corporate greed.
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What does labor want? We want more school houses and less jails. More books and less guns. More learning and less vice. More leisure and less greed. More justice and less revenge. We want more … opportunities to cultivate our better natures.
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Human history is not the product of the wise direction of human reason, but is shaped by the forces of emotion-our dreams, our pride, our greed, our fears, and our desire for revenge.
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The ignorant mind, with its infinite afflictions, passions, and evils, is rooted in the three poisons. Greed, anger, and delusion.
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In my shows, I always try to incorporate music because it's the most natural way to set a tone. So if I want to do a show about depression, I use the opera. If I want to do a show about greed, I use spoken word. If I want to do a show about the injustice that's taking place in the world, I might play Sam Cooke.
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I think war is based in greed and there are huge karmic retributions that will follow. I think war is never the answer to solving any problems. The best way to solve problems is to not have enemies.
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By the 1980s, businesses had realized that environmental issues had a price tag. Increasingly, they balked. Reflexively, the anticorporate Left pivoted; Earth Day, erstwhile snow job, became an opportunity to denounce capitalist greed.
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I think Bond the character is distinct: He's British, he has a certain code that he lives by, he's incorruptible... he's a classical hero, but he's also fallible. He has inner demons, inner conflicts, and he's a romantic.
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I think people ragging on me is kind of a form of flattery.
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But even with no money you could still go to places like the Scotch Club and, you know, John Lennon might be sitting right over there, but I was certainly not a part of any of that circle. I was truly peripheral.
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The Function of Reason (1929), Beacon Books, 1958, p. 16
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The arts tend to be more liberal. There tends to be more social relevance in the arts.
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The only way to the top is killing and greed. Okay, I’m kidding. But killing helps.
