His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it. You appear to be astonished, he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it. To forget it! You see, he explained, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. But the Solar System! I protested. What the deuce is it to me? he interrupted impatiently: you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.
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I was lucky enough to see with my own eyes the recent stock-market crash, where they lost several million dollars, a rabble of dead money that went sliding off into the sea. Never as then, amid suicides, hysteria, and groups of fainting people, have I felt the sensation of real death, death without hope, death that is nothing but rottenness, for the spectacle was terrifying but devoid of greatness... I felt something like a divine urge to bombard that whole canyon of shadow, where ambulances collected suicides whose hands were full of rings.
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Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.
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Judge Smails It's easy to grin When your ship comes in And you've got the stock market beat. But the man worthwhile, Is the man who can smile, When his shorts are too tight in the seat.
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Most Americans don't have any idea how well the Department of Agriculture protects the grower at the expense of the consumer. When a chemical is banned from use, a farmer or livestock operator who has the chemical in stock has a choice: either to lose money by disposing of the product, or to use it and take the risk of getting caught breaking the law. How severe is that risk? Well, if you use a banned product in your cattle feed, you have to face the prospect that the government is going to inspect one out of every 250,000 carcasses. They will test this carcass not for all banned substances, but just for a small fraction of them. And even if they detect some residue of a banned substance, and even if they're able to trace the carcass to the ranch that produced it, the guilty rancher is likely at most to receive a stern letter with a strongly worded warning. I never met a rancher who suffered in any way from breaking any regulation meant to protect the safety of our meat. The whole procedure is, in short, a charade.
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We've seen a very volatile stock market since February. Different styles and sectors, like technology or financials, coming in and out of favor with no clear direction. There's nothing really wrong with techs. They are certainly somewhat highly valued by any historic measure, but probably not as highly valued as they were in February. We think, actually, come the fall, we could see a big tech rally, and that would probably be related to the fact that the IPO calendars are really building at the big underwriting firms, the big broker dealers.
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Building castles in the air, and making yourself a laughing-stock.
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Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than on all other days of the year put together. This proves, by the numbers left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so.
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The experience to be gathered from books, Though often valuable, is but of the nature of learning Whereas the experience gained from actual life, Is of the nature of wisdom And a small store of the latter Is worth vastly more than a stock of the former.
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Excluded by my birth and tastes from the social order, I was not aware of its diversity. Nothing in the world was irrelevant: the stars on a general's sleeve, the stock-market quotations, the olive harvest, the style of the judiciary, the wheat exchange, flower-beds. Nothing. This order, fearful and feared, whose details were all inter-related, had a meaning: my exile.
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Everyone has the brainpower to follow the stock market. If you made it through fifth-grade math, you can do it.
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I think what we had today was a disconnect between the stock market and the economy. The U.S. economy looks great...corporate profits [are] good...inflation and interest rates will be friendly for longer.
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We have unprecedented conditions to deal with and novel adjustments to make -- there can be no doubt of that. We also have a great stock of scientific knowledge unknown to our grandfathers with which to operate. So novel are the conditions, so copious the knowledge, that we must undertake the arduous task of reconsidering a great part of the opinions about man and his relations to his fellow men which have been handed down to us by previous generations who lived in far other conditions and possessed far less information about the world and themselves. We have, however, first to create an unprecedented attitude of mind to cope with unprecedented conditions, and to utilize unprecedented knowledge.
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I met a Californian who would/ Talk California --a state so blessed/ He said, in climate, none had ever died there/ A natural death, and Vigilance Committees/ Had had to organize to stock the graveyards/ And vindicate the state's humanity.
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It is with a rush of home-sickness that the thought of death presents itself.... Such sentiment is the eternal stock of all religions, modifie...
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The same state of the passions which fits the multitude, who have not sufficient stock of reason and knowledge to guide them, for opposition to tyranny and oppression, very naturally leads them to a contempt and disregard of all authority.
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Open your mouth and purse cautiously, and your stock of wealth and reputation shall, at least in repute, be great.
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Soap: 'Also, knives are good. You see, knives are quiet, and the quieter they are, the more likely that we're gonna use 'em. Shit 'em right up. Make us look like we're serious. Guns for Show, Knives for a Pro.'
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Great investment opportunities come around when excellent companies are surrounded by unusual circumstances that cause the stock to be misappraised.
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It's a drop in the bucket. It's helping the stock price today, but gastric cancer is not one of the biggest markets for cancer.
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90 of the people in the stock market, professionals and amateurs alike, simply haven't done enough homework.
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Alas, in 1929 came the Stock Market crash and everything changed and became worrisome. People started practicing conservatism because of financial losses, myself included.
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The recent gain in the stock market is like climbing half-way up a ditch, which is great, but you're still in the ditch
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If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying stock, not selling advice.
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If the milk turns out to be sour Nick, i ain't the kind of pussy to drink it.
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The strong industrial numbers that we've been seeing on the manufacturing side [are] playing into the market momentum -- as well as the strong stock market.
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I refuse to believe that trading recipes is silly. Tunafish casserole is at least as real as corporate stock.
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I have, thanks to my travels, added to my stock all the superstitions of other countries. I know them all now, and in any critical moment of my life, they all rise up in armed legions for or against me.
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I feel an earnest and humble desire, and shall till I die, to increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness.
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Death and life were not Till man made up the whole, Made lock, stock and barrel Out of his bitter soul,
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