Advantage Quotes - page 20
If we ask how creatures [bees] that act so elaborately against their private advantage can have evolved, the answer lies in their mode of reproduction. Most workers are sterile. The unit of selection is normally the whole community. Its prosperity depends on the efficiency of the workers. An uncooperative strain would simply revert toward the solitary life these insects started from and in which many would still remain.. So it is natural to understand their evolution, as we would that of a plant, without reference to the plans or wishes of the individual bees.
Mary Midgley
The manufacture of yarn being at length full established, the demand for it became too great for the patentees to supply, and then they sold licenses very extensively, so that at least 60,000 l. has been expended in consequence of such grants. Mr. Arkwright and his partners have expended upwards of 30,000/. in buildings and machinery in Derbyshire, and above 4,000 /. in Manchester; and they have lost not less than 5,000 l. or 6.000 l. by injuries from mobs, and from fire. The saving of labour by this machinery is several hundred thousands per annum, and yet trade is so greatly increased, that many more people are employed, and can earn a comfortable maintenance, than were employed before. The same inventions maybe applied with equal advantage to prepare and spin wool.
Richard Arkwright
My reference points were US companies. We were hugely influenced by large US chemical companies, especially DuPont. It was a very open company and we could take advantage of their learnings. The US is also a very open society. I could to go the US Association of Chemical Engineers and get the standards, data, etc.
Mukesh Ambani
We all know India has a huge competitive advantage -- we have the largest arable land, focused sunshine, sensible utilisation of water in 30% of land. The question is what should we do to make the US market -- the most difficult market in the world -- accept our produce. For that, we need traceability. It is a simple technology, which we are giving the farmers. It needs certification and verification processes -- to us it is like a process plant. You can then get the output, sort it and grade it.
Mukesh Ambani
The aims and ideals of the Soviet revolution inspired the patriotic enthusiasm of millions of people in the 1930s, during World War II, and in the postwar reconstruction period. This explains the Soviet Union's great leap forward, the achievement of a high level of industrial capacity in a very short time, the transformation of the Soviet Union into a major power in terms of science and culture. The historic victory in the Great Patriotic War against Nazism, which was a surprise not only for Hitler but also for the Western democracies is also explained by what we have said above. All this is true. But the historical truth is also that the regime and the system abused the faith of the people in these high ideals, turning them to its own advantage. Rule by the people, equality, justice, and the promise of a happy future - all these ideas were utilized for the sake of maintaining and strengthening totalitarianism.
Mikhail Gorbachev
America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society - in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage.
Thomas Friedman
Only experience or example can rationally determine which way the heart should incline. Now experience is not an advantage that it is open to everyone to acquire, since it depends on the various situations in which, by chance, we find ourselves. For many people, then, this leaves only example that can offer any guidance as to how they should exercise virtue.
Antoine François Prévost
It would seem to follow that the ‘invisible hand' is not much help when it comes to practical legislation. There are too many areas of life where we cannot be relied upon to advance our collective interests merely by doing what we think is best for each of us. Today, when the market and the free play of private interests so obviously do not come together to collective advantage, we need to know when to intervene.
Tony Judt
My concern tonight is the following: Why is it that here in the United States we have such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society from the one whose dysfunctions and inequalities trouble us so? We appear to have lost the capacity to question the present, much less offer alternatives to it. Why is it so beyond us to conceive of a different set of arrangements to our common advantage?
Tony Judt
God knows I can think of enough things that I did wrong both personally and as part of my cohort. But I never abandoned what I thought of as the benefits of the postwar consensus in favour of sectional advantage. Actually, I was always a bit awkward in this as other respects. As you know, I was against root-and-branch school comprehensivization on the grounds that the postwar arrangements combining meritocracy with opportunity, while imperfect and logically indefensible, were better than the radical schemes on offer – which have trashed much of the pedagogical gains of the early postwar decades.
Tony Judt
No greater mistake can be made than to think that our institutions are fixed or may not be changed for the worse. ... Increasing prosperity tends to breed indifference and to corrupt moral soundness. Glaring inequalities in condition create discontent and strain the democratic relation. The vicious are the willing, and the ignorant are unconscious instruments of political artifice. Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses... The peril of this Nation is not in any foreign foe! We, the people, are its power, its peril, and its hope!
Charles Evans Hughes
