Quotes from Shantaram (Novel)

Author : Gregory David Roberts

These days i am reading the novel "Shantaram". Wonderfully written so far. I have found some interesting conversation pieces from the characters of this novel, which have given me immense pleasure as a reader. I am quoting them here. My commentary is in italics after each quote

1. Being listened to -- really listened to -- is the second best thing in the world. (Interpretations are open about the first best thing.)
2. The only force more ruthless and cynical than the business of big politics is the politics of big business. (Not any personal experience so far but i guess it is true)
3. Civilization, after all, is defined by what we forbid, more than what we permit. (In Egyptian civilization it was norm for brother to marry sister in royal family)
4. Friendship is something that gets harder to understand, every damn year of my life. Friendship is like a kind of algebra test that nobody passes. In my worst moods, I think the best you can say is that a friend is anyone you don't despise. (Ah there goes my friend list)
5. The facts of life are very simple. In the beginning we feared everything -- animals, the weather, the trees, the night sky -- everything except each other. Now we fear each other, and almost nothing else.
6. It's good to know what's wrong with the world. But it's just as important to know that sometimes, no matter how wrong it is, you can't change it. A lot of bad stuff in the world wasn't really that bad until someone tried to change it.
7. I think wisdom is very over-rated. Wisdom is just cleverness, with all the guts kicked out of it. I'd rather be clever than wise, any day.
8. Poverty and pride are devoted blood brothers until one, always and inevitably, kills the other.
9. 
   
10. The people showed thanks, rather than saying it, and I'd come to accept that.
11. I take everything personally -- that's what being a person is all about.
12. I can't stand politicians. A politician is someone who promises you a bridge, even when there is no river.

Reading: Wise & Otherwise (Sudha Murty)

Here are some of the good lines from this book.

Conversation
I have a theory about conversation. You can call it an empirical formula. Quantitatively speaking, 'conversation' is inversely proportional to economic standing. If you are travelling by bus, your fellow passengers will get into conversation with you very quickly and without any reservation. If you are travelling by first class on a train, people will be more reserved. If you are travelling by air, then the likelihood of entering into conversation is quite small. If you are on first class in an international flight, then you may travel twenty four hours without exchanging a single word with the person sitting next to you.

Quotes From Book: The little book that beats the market

• Saving : It takes a great amount of discipline to save any money. After all, no matter how much money you earn or recieve from others, it's simply much easier and more immediately rewarding to find something to spend it on.
  


• On Academic theories behind irrational behavior of stock market: In fact it is such a good question that professors have developed whole fields of economic, mathematical, and social study to try to explain it. Even more incredible, most of this academic work has involved coming up with theories as to why something that cleary makes no sense, actually makes sense. You have to be really smart to do that.


• Individual stock picking: Choosing individual stocks without any idea of what you are looking for is like running through a dynamite factory with a burning match. You may live, but you're still an idiot.

On importance of doing

This is a quote from a speech that President Theodre Roosevelt delivered at the Sorbonne in April 1910 entitled "Citizenship in a Republic". This was also lately quoted in book "Too Big to Fail"

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails with daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.