A Quote by Smedley Butler
I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long... Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.
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I had a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions. l might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three city districts. The Marines operated on three continents.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
I spent thirty-three years in the Marines, most of my time being a hlgh class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.
'Cause a musician, you can't tell me, "I've got this message I want share with the public," and it's three-and-a-half minutes long. That's not it. If your message is only three-and-a-half minutes long, then we got nothing else to talk about. Because life is more complex than three-and-a-half minutes.
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
When I was twelve, Uncle Randall looked up long enough to see that I was a reader as well, so he walked me down his hall to a linen-closet door and opened it up onto a wall of paperbacks. There were books behind books, as deep in as I could reach. He told me to take three, and when I was done, bring them back and take three more.
I'm not performing now. What I do now is listen to music all day long. Listening is very nourishing to me. I might go back to perform, I might make another record. I've got a record half finished.
Our problems stem from our childhood. Ray was, for so long, the only boy. Then I arrive and take all his limelight away from him. That must have quite a profound effect. I sometimes think that Ray was only happy for three-and-a-half years in his life. And those were the three-and-a-half years before I was born.
Bonuses balance my budget in New York City. The bigger the bonuses on Wall Street, the more money I had to spend on poor people. The New York City budget is determined greatly by the bonuses given on Wall Street.
Whether one traces his Americanism back three centuries to the Mayflower, or three years to the steerage, is not half so important as whether his Americanism of today is real and genuine. No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat.
Well, "The Washington post" three weeks ago had this investigation and they said that President Obama has now raised more money from Wall Street and the banks for this election cycle than all - than all eight Republicans combined. I don't want to say that, because if that's the truth, that Wall Street already has their man and his name is Barack Obama, then we've got a much bigger problem.
The City of London and Wall Street are not going to be great places to be in the next two or three decades. It's going to be the people who produce real goods in charge – the farmers and the miners.
I have a novel that I can write. It's about three soldiers from Somalia. Some babies have been disappearing up on 144th Street, and I speculate later on what happened to them and how they might have been got back. These guys are dead, all three, and they have a chance in the afterlife to do something they should have done when they were alive.
Sometimes there's no qualitative difference between two-and-a-half and three-and-a-half hour shows. It's just a matter of how long you do it. It's not like the show must be three hours and 30 minutes to work. That's just not the case.
He slouched back in his seat, looking tired, and leaned his face on his shoulder to look at me while he played with my hair. He started to hum a song, and then, after a few bars, he sang it. Quietly, sort of half-sung, half-spoken, incredibly gentle. I didn’t catch all the words, but it was about his summer girl. Me. Maybe his forever girl. His yellow eyes were half-lidded as he sang, and in that golden moment, hanging taut in the middle of an icecovered landscape like a single bubble of summer nectar, I could see how my life could be stretched out in front of me.
There are three pillars, regardless of your work culture, whether you're in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street: how you look, how you speak, and how you behave. It's all three things, and nailing them makes you a contender.
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