Commodity Quotes - Page 14

• I maintain that the biggest challenge in the new millennium could be a change of habit. We could change from a dominating commodity culture into one of true exchange in which we learn from each other in humility and respect. I do think it's possible. But it's up to us.

  Luisah Teish

  Respect, Future, Humility

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• We're hopeful it won't climb much more than that (10 percent). The reality is we're all looking at the price per gallon of gasoline and heating oil, and even cord wood, and we're seeing prices that are volatile and I don't think anybody can accurately predict what we'll be paying for these commodities in two weeks, let alone two months.

  Martin Murray

  Reality, Thinking, Two

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• The disorganisers are those who want to level everything: property, comforts, the price of commodities, the various services rendered to the State... who want the workmen in the camp to receive the salary of the legislator... who want to level even talents, knowledge, the virtues, because they themselves have none of these things.

  Jacques Pierre Brissot

  Knowledge, Equality, Political

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• My client loved risk. Risk, I had learned, was a commodity in itself. Risk could be canned and sold like tomatoes.

  Michael Lewis

  Risk, Tomatoes, Clients

  Michael Lewis (2010). “Liar's Poker”, p.232, W. W. Norton & Company

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• As mankind grew obsessed with its hours, the sorrow of lost time became a permanent hole in the human heart. People fretted over missed chances, over inefficient days; they worried constantly about how long they would live, because counting life’s moments had led, inevitably, to counting them down. Soon, in every nation and in every language, time became the most precious commodity.

  Mitch Albom

  Heart, Long, People

  Mitch Albom (2012). “The Time Keeper”, p.40, Hachette UK

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• A society that has made 'nostalgia' a marketable commodity on the cultural exchange quickly repudiates the suggestion that life in the past was in any important way better than life today.

  Christopher Lasch

  Past, Important, Suggestions

  Christopher Lasch (1991). “The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations”, p.17, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.

  Rene Descartes

  Humorous, Men, Common Sense

  Attributed to Rene Descartes in Ian Glynn "An Anatomy of Thought: The Origin and Machinery of the Mind" (p. 7), 2003.

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• One of the cheapest commodities in the world is unfulfilled genius. All of us want to be known as a unique individual, the one who broke out of the pack. So, you offer yourself up as a sacrifice and what you’re afraid of is losing and being thrown back into the pack. One question taunts you. Do you want to have, or do you want to be?

  Leon Uris

  Sacrifice, Unique, Genius

  Leon Uris (1989). “Mitla Pass”, Bantam

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• A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life, and as such it must surely be a necessary commodity.

  Penelope Fitzgerald

  Book, Blood, Purpose

  Penelope Fitzgerald (1978). “The Bookshop”, p.87, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Prayer that craves a particular commodity—anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Prayer, Mean, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.81, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his skills, knowledge, and of himself, his "personality package" with others who are equally intent on a fair and profitable exchange. Life has no goal except the one to move, no principle except the one of fair exchange, no satisfaction except the one to consume.p97.

  Erich Fromm

  Moving, Men, Skills

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.107, Open Road Media

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• I don't look at myself as a commodity, but I'm sure a lot of people have.

  Marilyn Monroe

  Inspiring, Real, People

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• Truth is life's most precious commodity.

  Edwin Louis Cole

  Literature, Truth Is

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• I don't think coolness used to be such a commodity among adults. And now it is.

  Diablo Cody

  Thinking, Adults, Used

  "‘Young Adult’ Writer Diablo Cody: We Never Really Grow Up" by Margaret Bristol, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 09, 2011.

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• A health system that lacks commodities for managing high-mortality infectious diseases and the main killers of mothers and young children will not have an adequate impact. By the same token, even the best-stocked delivery system will have an inadequate impact if it fails to reach the poor.

  Margaret Chan

  Mother, Children, Impact

  "WHO director general Margaret Chan says fight for global health on all fronts" by Sarah Boseley, www.theguardian.com. May 9, 2011.

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• Very early on, you figure out that you put your self esteem in the hands of strangers. There's a different commodity. There's the Helena Bonham Carter that everyone thinks they know, who really has nothing to do with me. But you just have to let that go.

  Helena Bonham Carter

  Self Esteem, Thinking, Hands

  "Helena Bonham Carter on Channeling Elizabeth Taylor for 'Burton and Taylor': 'I did feel something spiritual'". Interview with Nigel M. Smith, www.indiewire.com. October 15, 2013.

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• When you're cooking with food as alive as this -- these gorgeous and semigorgeous fruits and leaves and flesh -- you're in no danger of mistaking it for a commodity, or a fuel, or a collection of chemical nutrients. No, in the eye of the cook or the gardener ... this food reveals itself for what it is: no mere thing but a web of relationships among a great many living beings, some of them human, some not, but each of them dependent on each other, and all of them ultimately rooted in soil and nourished by sunlight.

  Michael Pollan

  Eye, Cooking, Alive

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• A novel is a commodity that fulfills a certain need; people need to buy daydreams like they need to buy ice cream or aspirin or gin. They even need to buy a pinch of intellectual catnip now and then to liven up their thoughts.

  John Dos Passos

  Ice Cream, People, Intellectual

  John Dos Passos (1964). “Occasions and protests”

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• The universe danced towards life. Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time.

  Terry Pratchett

  Cutting, Space, Woven

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• The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Men, Ties, People

  Herbert Marcuse (1969). “An Essay on Liberation”, Boston : Beacon Press

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• New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  New Beginnings, Earth, Breakfast Of Champions

  Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Cat's Cradle: A Novel”, p.41, Dial Press

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• Even the reporting of news has to be understood not as propaganda for any particular ideology, liberal or conservative, but as propaganda for commodities — for the replacement of things by commodities, use values by exchange values, and events by images.

  Christopher Lasch

  Events, News, Propaganda

  "The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics".

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• The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Home, People, Soul

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.11, Routledge

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• Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

  Karl Marx

  Money, Eggs, Golden

  "Capital, Volume I". Book by Karl Marx, Vol. I, Ch. 4, pp. 171 - 172, 1867.

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• The American public believes that health care is a right and not a commodity.

  Michael Moore

  Believe, Care, Health Care

  "Why I'm Not Now and Have Never Been the Democrats' 'Rush Limbaugh'" by Michael Moore, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 5, 2009.

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