Quotes from Rich Cohen

The god of the Hebrews is wrath. The god of the Christians is forgiveness. The god of rock 'n' roll is energy. The enemy of that god is arena rock, which looks and feels like real rock but is in truth an abomination.

Zemurray was not old and was still angry, easy to insult, easy to incense, driven, and restless. Show me a happy man and I will show you a man who is getting nothing accomplished in this world.

There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to.

The greatness of Zemurray lies in the fact that he never lost faith in his ability to salvage a situation. Bad things happened to him as bad things happen to everyone, but unlike so many he was never tempted by failure. He never felt powerless or trapped. He was, as I said, an optimist. He stood in constant defiance.

Bonilla and Christmas, working with Zemurray, were able to frame the war as an insurgency, the people rising up against a government selling the nation to gringos and Yankee bankers, whereas what you really had was more sinister and interesting—a battle waged by a private American citizen, a corporate chief, against a debt-ridden but sovereign nation.

Because the plant is an herb, not a tree, the banana is properly classed as a berry. The plant grows from a rhizome, which, in the way of a potato, has no roots. It's

It was Plank who gave the defense its name: the 46. Many fans assume it came from the on-field alignment of players, as with the 3-4 defense and the Cover 2. In fact, 46 means nothing more than we're coming hard, in the way of the man who wears that number, Doug Plank.

I ran into Chris Pratt a few months later. He was surrounded by reporters and focused on selling a movie, but he shouted when he saw me: Hey, dude! The Cubs! The Cubs! Our prayer worked!

I now know my children will live in a world far different from own. In their world, the Cubs are the best team in baseball.

This is where Mr. Zemurray made the calls," she told me. "He sat in a chair right here, calling every leader in Central and South America, talking and explaining until he got enough of them to change their vote to make modern Israel a reality.

This man in Guatemala, he's your manager, isn't he?" Zemurray asked. Yes. "Then listen to what the man is telling you. You're here, he's there," said Zemurray. "If you trust him, trust him. If you don't trust him, fire him and get a man you do trust in the job.

But a man focused on the near horizon of cost can lose sight of the far horizon of potential windfall. -p139

No matter how long he lived in the South, Zemurray could never rise above street Spanish overlaid by his American accent, overlaid by his Russian accent. He was all overlay—identity stacked on identity, life stacked on

No matter how long he lived in the South, Zemurray could never rise above street Spanish overlaid by his American accent, overlaid by his Russian accent. He was all overlay—identity stacked on identity, life stacked on life.

The best tycoons are like magicians: they know when to share information and when to withhold. - p141

A corporation ages like a person. As the years go by and the founders die off, making way for the bureaucrats of the second and third generations, the ecstatic, risk-taking, just-for-the-hell-of-it spirit that built the company gives way to a comfortable middle age.

Bernays approached the age of mass media like a scientist in search of general principles, which he recorded in articles and books: Crystallizing Public Opinion, Propaganda, The Engineering of Consent.

But when I asked if she was behind 'You Can't Always Get What You Want,' she said, 'Absolutely. That's my song. Every time I hear it, I'm right back with Mick in the flat. Music can't tell time.

Second: the people can be made to behave as you want them to behave via the subconscious of the public mind—no one else believed such a thing existed—which can be directed with symbols and signs. "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind," asked Bernays, "is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?

For every move, there is a countermove. For every disaster, there is a recovery. He never lost faith in his own agency. With his fortune fast diminishing, it was time to act.

The best tycoons are like magicians; they know when to share information and when to withhold.

I laid down what might be called a constitution for the company. This constitution provided for a maximum of home rule in the field. It was established as a fixed policy that if [a plantation manager] could not handle his difficulties reasonably satisfactorily, we would appoint some man who could.

Others, having started by extending credit to customers, evolved into America's first investment banks. Lehman Brothers, founded by Henry Lehman, a Jewish immigrant from Bavaria, began as a dry goods store in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1844. Lazard Frères, founded by three Jewish brothers from France, began as a wholesale business in New Orleans in 1848.

The Cubs story is early excellence followed by Biblical drought, an endless trek across the wilderness.