Bruce Bueno De Mesquita · 352 pages
Rating: (3.8K votes)
“Leaders never hesitate to miscount or destroy ballots. Coming to office and staying in office are the most important things in politics. And candidates who aren’t willing to cheat are typically beaten by those who are. Since”
― Bruce Bueno De Mesquita, quote from The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
“Paying supporters, not good governance or representing the general will, is the essence of ruling. Buying loyalty is particularly difficult”
― Bruce Bueno De Mesquita, quote from The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
“The world of politics is dictated by rules.”
― Bruce Bueno De Mesquita, quote from The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
“There is never a point in showing your hand before you have to; that is just a way to ensure giving the game away.”
― Bruce Bueno De Mesquita, quote from The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
“Every type of politics could be addressed from the point of view of leaders trying to survive.”
― Bruce Bueno De Mesquita, quote from The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
“How do tyrants hold on to power for so long? For that matter, why is the tenure of successful democratic leaders so brief? How can countries with such misguided and corrupt economic policies survive for so long? Why are countries that are prone to natural disasters so often unprepared when they happen? And how can lands rich with natural resources at the same time support populations stricken with poverty? Equally, we may well wonder: Why are Wall Street executives so politically tone-deaf that they dole out billions in bonuses while plunging the global economy into recession? Why is the leadership of a corporation, on whose shoulders so much responsibility rests, decided by so few people? Why are failed CEOs retained and paid handsomely even as their company’s shareholders lose their shirts? In”
― Bruce Bueno De Mesquita, quote from The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
“It’s always better for a ruler to determine who eats than it is to have a larger pie from which the people can feed themselves.”
― Bruce Bueno De Mesquita, quote from The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
“Democracies are not lucky. They do not attract civic-minded leaders by chance. Rather, they attract survival-oriented leaders who understand that, given their dependence on many essentials, they can only come to and stay in power if they figure out the right basket of public goods to provide.”
― Bruce Bueno De Mesquita, quote from The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
“Lee Kuan Yew ruled Singapore from 1959 until 1990, making him, we believe, the longest serving prime minister anywhere. His party, the People’s Action Party (PAP), dominated elections and that dominance was reinforced by the allocation of public housing, upon which most people in Singapore rely. Neighborhoods that fail to deliver PAP votes come election time found the provision and maintenance of housing cut off.18 In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe went one step further. In an operation called Murambatsvina (Operation Drive Out the Rubbish), he used bulldozers to demolish the houses and markets in neighborhoods that failed to support him in the 2005 election.”
― Bruce Bueno De Mesquita, quote from The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
“Companies maintain lively web sites to put their view across but entrepreneur-owners have not stepped forward to do the same to help organize the mass of little owners and to provide a way for them to share views. Sure, there are bloggers writing about anything and everything, but there don’t seem to be shareholder-controlled sites to exchange thoughts and ideas about a company that participants own in common.”
― Bruce Bueno De Mesquita, quote from The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
“Hasta algunas de las obras de caridad más sencillas tienen consecuencias negativas que incrementan el control por parte del gobierno y la irresponsabilidad de este.”
― Bruce Bueno De Mesquita, quote from The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
Bruce Bueno De Mesquita
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“We all know the elementary form of politeness, that of the empty symbolic gesture, a gesture-an offer-which is meant to be rejected. In John Irving's A Prayer for
Owen Meany, after the little boy Owen accidentally kills John's-his best friend's, the narrator's-mother, he is, of course, terribly upset, so, to show how sorry he is, he discreetly delivers to John a gift of the complete collection of color photos of baseball stars, his most precious possession; however, Dan, John's delicate stepfather, tells him that the proper thing to do is to return the gift. What we have here is symbolic exchange at its purest: a gesture made to be rejected; the point, the "magic" of symbolic exchange, is that, although at the end we are where we were at the beginning, the overall result of the operation is not zero but a distinct gain for both parties, the pact of solidarity. And is not something similar part of our everyday mores? When, after being engaged in a fierce competition for a job promotion with my closest friend, I win, the proper thing to do is to offer to withdraw, so that he will get the promotion, and the proper thing for him to do is to reject my offer-in this way, perhaps, our friendship can be saved....
Milly's offer is the very opposite of such an elementary gesture of politeness: although it also is an offer that is meant to be rejected, what makes hers different from the symbolic empty offer is the cruel alternative it imposes on its addressee: I offer you wealth as the supreme proof of my saintly kindness, but if you accept my offer, you will be marked by an indelible stain of guilt and moral corruption; if you do the right thing and reject it, however, you will also not be simply righteous-your very rejection will function as a retroactive admission of your guilt, so whatever Kate and Densher do, the very choice Milly's bequest confronts them with makes them guilty.”
― Slavoj Žižek, quote from The Parallax View
“his face. Fenton was never one to like a slow day. The look was enough to tell Barnaby that something big had just come down. “Hutch?” “Hmmm?” Fenton went on, breathlessly. “The Broadbent place was robbed. I got one of the sons on the phone now.” Hutch Barnaby didn’t move a muscle. “Robbed of what?” “Everything.” Fenton’s black eyes glittered with relish. Barnaby sipped his coffee, sipped again, and then lowered his chair to the floor with a small clunk. Damn. As Barnaby and Fenton drove out the Old Santa Fe Trail, Fenton talked about the robbery. The collection, he’d heard, was worth half a billion. If the truth were anything close to that, Fenton said, it would be front-page-New-York-Times. He, Fenton, on the front page of the Times. Can you imagine”
― Douglas Preston, quote from The Codex
“Strangely fruitful intercourse this, between one body and another mind”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories
“I just want you to know that I love you with everything I am—a million times a million and to the moon and back.”
― Laura Miller, quote from My Butterfly
“love. “In time you’ll know joy again.” Joy? I wanted to argue with him. It didn’t seem likely or even possible. One doesn’t heal from this kind of pain. I remembered how my family and friends had struggled to find the right words to comfort me. But there are no words … there simply are no words.”
― Debbie Macomber, quote from The Inn at Rose Harbor
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