"Better to say nothing and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it beyond a doubt"
Mark Twain
Category: Quotes
Quotes of the Week: Stopped Acting Like a Pussy and Charge Forward!
"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me."
Erma Bombeck
"There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing."
Aristotle
Quote of the Week: “The Blacklist” of Reasons to Go On
"Raymond 'Red' Reddington:The concept of a Last Stand sounds so heroically romantic, doesn't it, Donald? But there is a good reason why we didn't see what happened to Butch and Sundance – being riddled by bullets and left to rot under the scorching Columbian sun. It's not a sequel maker, and if you surmise nothing about me by now, know this: I am going be around for the sequel.
Agent Donald Ressler: You really going to do a field transfusion?
Reddington: Oh, come now, Donald! Just think how much smarter you'll be afterwards.
Ressler:Why the hell are you doing this? It's pretty obvious I hate your guts. I can't imagine you hold a lot of love for me… why save me?
Reddington: Because that's what you do when someone is dying in front of you. Allies today, enemies tomorrow – the world is a complex place, further complicated by men's fickle nature…
…Donald! Donald!! Feeling any wittier yet? Any strange cravings for beluga caviar or Marcel Proust?
Ressler: I know you don't think much of me, but you don't get to be assigned to the case like yours unless you pass muster…
…We are not going to live through this.
Reddington: I think we will.
Ressler: How?
Reddington:Have you ever sailed accross an ocean, Donald?
Ressler: No.
Reddington: On a sailboat, surrounded by sea with no land in sight, without even a possibility of sighting land for days to come. To stand at the helm of your destiny – I want that one more time. I want to be in Piazza del Campo in Siena and feel the surge as ten race horses go thundering by. I want another meal in Paris… I want another bottle of wine, and then another. I want the warmth of a woman in a cool set of sheets; one more night of jazz at the Vanguard. I want to stand on summits and smoke cubans and feel the sun on my face for as long as I can. Walk on the Wall again, climb the Tower, ride the River, stare at the frescos. I want to seat in the garden and read one more good book… That's why I won't allow that punk out there to get the best of me, let alone the last of me."
"The Blacklist", episode 1.9
Written by Joe Carnahan
Quote of the Week: More on the Notion of Irreplaceability
"One of these types of executives is represented by people who rendered certain services in the past… These are the people who do not consider it their duty to fulfill the decisions of the Party and of the Government, and who thus destroy the foundations of Party and state discipline… They Presume that the Soviet Government will not have the courage to touch them, because of their past services. These over-conceited aristocrats think that they are irreplaceable… What is to be done with executives of this kind? They must unhesitatingly be removed from their leading posts, irrespective of past services."
Joseph Stalin (January 1934)
The Frustrated CFO's commentary:
Usually all my posts are accompanied by pictures, but not this one – I don't put up photos of mass murderers. Yet, I think that this quote tragically confirms my observation that entities, organizations, and systems can survive even after the most valuable, irreplaceable individuals are removed. In this speech, delivered during the 17th Congress of the Bolsheviks Party, Stalin has laid the grounds for the Great Purge that was about to exterminate millions of the best and the brightest Russian citizens – political, economic, scientific, military, industrial, and cultural elite. In fact, the eliminations started with the members of the said Congress, nicknamed by historians the Congress of the Condemned because two thirds of the people present during the oration were executed within the next three years. Without them and without the continuously murdered and imprisoned in camps workers, agrarians, engineers, doctors, scientists, poets, writers, musicians, etc. the country was getting darker, poorer, more corrupt, and less educated. But it's still there, on the map. Even after the break up of the Soviet Union it's still the largest damn country in the world.
Quote of the Week: It’s “Elementary,” My Dear Readers!
Holmes to Watson:
"Televisions are idiot boxes. DVRs are idiots' helpers. We are the idiots. We're quite willingly giving them a part of ourselves: we teach them our tastes, our preferences, just so that they would know which program to record; never once stopping to consider the fact that our selections can be used to profile us."
Elementary, episode 2.8, "Blood is Thicker"
Created by Robert Doherty
The Frustrated CFO 