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21 " Today it [high fructose corn syrup] is the most valuable food product refined from corn, accounting for 530 million bushels every year. (A bushel of corn yields 33 pounds of fructose) "
― Michael Pollan , The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
22 " I smelled silt on the wind, turkey, laundry, leaves . . . my God what a world. There is no accounting for one second of it (267). "
― Annie Dillard , Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
23 " In the USA, the “corporament” exists as the: military (defense/offense) + industrial + academic (schooling – at all levels – as prison) + “corporament” entertainment (Hollywood, media, advertising/consumerism/commercialization, propaganda/psychological warfare) + judicial (defense and prosecutorial lawyers, judges, law enforcement/police, prisons) + financial (banks, accounting firms) + religion + petrochemical/pharmaceutical (drugs, antibiotics, antibacterials, vaccines, pesticides – toxins to kill or put you at “dis-ease” and drugs to “treat” you) + imperial commu-soci-capitofasdemocracism system/society/economy/Western thinking = Military-industrial-academic-“corporament” entertainment-judicial-financial-religion-petrochemical/pharmaceutical complex. "
― Irucka Ajani Embry , Balancing the Rift: Reconnectualizing the Pasenture
24 " What is a price? It is a proposed point of agreement between a buyer and seller. The proposal is the key. It is not a marching order. Past prices represent deals done in history. Current prices represent possible deals in the future. Prices embed vast information about perceived realities: resource availability, consumer demand, cultural biases and habits, speculations about the future. The price is also an amazing tool. It provides an objective basis for accounting and the assessment of profit and loss. Without prices, real prices rooted in real market experience, we’d been lost. "
― Jeffrey Tucker
25 " It’s been my experience that most folk who ride trains could care less where they’re going. For them it’s the journey itself and the people they meet along the way. You see, at every stop this train makes, a little bit of America, a little bit of your country, gets on and says hello. That’s why trains are so popular at Christmas. People get on to meet their country over the holidays. They’re looking for some friendship, a warm body to talk to. People don’t rush on a train, because that’s not what trains are for. How do you put a dollar value on that? What accounting line does that go on? "
― David Baldacci , The Christmas Train
26 " It is always easier to find your sense of value by demeaning another’s value. It is easier to define yourself as ‘not that,’ rather than do an actual accounting of your own qualities and put them on the scale. "
― Jessa Crispin , Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto
27 " Science has marched forward. But civilization’s values remain rooted in philosophies, religious traditions, and ethical frameworks devised many centuries ago. Even our economic system, capitalism, is half a millennium old. The first stock exchange opened in 1602 in Amsterdam. By 1637, tulip mania had caused the first speculation bubble and crash. And not a lot has changed. Virtually every business stills uses the double-entry bookkeeping and accounting adopted in thirteenth –century Venice. So our daily dealings are still heavily influenced by ideas that were firmly set before anyone knew the world was round. In many ways, they reflect how we understood the world when we didn’t understand the world at all. "
― Carl Safina , The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World
28 " It was in Cleveland that Magic Slim became the most successful pornographic film producer in America. His training center was a key link in a human trafficking supply chain stretching from the former Soviet Republics in Eastern Europe to the United States. Trafficking accounts for an estimated $32 billion in annual trade with sex slavery and pornographic film production accounting for the greatest percentage.The girls arrived at Slim’s building young and naive, they left older and wiser. This was a classic value chain with each link making a contribution. Slim’s trainers were the best, and it showed in the final product. Each class of girls was judged on the merits. The fast learners went on to advanced training. They learned proper etiquette, social skills and party games. They learned how to dress, apply makeup and discuss world events. Best in-class were advertised in international style magazines with code words. These codes were known only to select clients and certain intermediaries approved by Slim. This elaborate distribution system was part of Slim’s business model, his clients paid an annual subscription fee for the on-line dictionary. The code words and descriptions were revised monthly. An interested client would pay an access fee for further information that included a set of professional photographs, a video and voice recordings of the model addressing the client by name. Should the client accept, a detailed travel itinerary was submitted calling for first class travel and accommodation. Slim required a letter of understanding spelling out terms and conditions and a 50% deposit. He didn’t like contracts, his word was his bond, everyone along the chain knew that.Slim's business was booming. "
― Nick Hahn
29 " I don't really remember making a decision. I don't remember thinking to myself, " Yes, I will do this," or, " No, I will not do that." They tell you what to do, and you do it. You don't reflect on it. You don't ponder its meaning. You don't explore its ambiguities or consider its consequences. These burdens are removed from you. In theory. But you are still human. Eventually, you do reflect on it. The consequences make themselves known. The results of your actions persist. Eventually, you are struck by their meaning. At some point, an accounting is made. Eventually, if you are human, and sane, you examine what you have done. "
30 " Your people understand the forest: how the animals behave, where to find them, and so on. I want something similar—but instead of the forest as a whole, I want to understand dragons. They are not only here, you know; there are dragons in the savannah—” Mekeesawa nodded. “Well, there are more than that, all over the world. They live in the mountains and on the plains and maybe even in the ocean. I want to know them as you know the creatures of this forest.”“But why?” Mekeesawa asked. His eyes were still merry with laughter, but his question was serious. “You don’t live in all those places.”With the amount of time I have spent traveling in my life, one might make the argument that I do live in all those places, if only temporarily. But Mekeesawa’s point was a good one, and not easily dismissed. The Moulish understood the creatures of the Green Hell because their survival depended on it; my survival did not depend on my traveling the globe to find dragons. (Indeed, it has on more than one occasion nearly been detrimental to my life expectancy.) How could I answer him?Thinking back on the matter now, it is possible my only true answer to that question is now in its second volume, with more to come. These memoirs are not only an accounting of my life; they are an accounting *for* it. "
― Marie Brennan , The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent, #2)
31 " It's not equality that counts, it's reprocity that counts. Love is not like a balance sheet. There's no such thing as double-entry accounting when it comes to love. "
― Debra Ollivier , What French Women Know About Love, Sex and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind
32 " I'm a master at setting people off...' accounting my sexual history and scope of experience "
33 " In those meetings, I learned that even economic diagrams needn’t be linear. Ours was a nest of concentric circles, and an enterprise was measured by its value to each circle, from the individual and family to the community and environment. I realized that Rebecca and her colleagues were trying to do nothing less than transform the System of National Accounts, the statistical framework here and in most countries for measuring economic activity. For instance, the value of a tree depends on its estimated value or sale price, but if it is sold and cut down, there is no accounting on the debit side of the ledger for loss of oxygen, seeding of other trees, or value to the community or the environment. This group was inventing a new way of measuring profit and loss. By the end of our days together, I understood economics in a whole new way. A balance sheet really could be about balance. "
― Gloria Steinem , My Life on the Road
34 " If economics were only about profit maximization, it would be just another name for business administration. It is a social discipline, and society has other means of cost accounting besides market prices. "
― Dani Rodrik , The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy
35 " He has a very nice face and style, really," said Mrs. Kenwigs." He certainly has," added Miss Petowker. " There's something in his appearance quite--dear, dear, what's the word again?" " What word?" inquired Mr. Lillyvick." Why--dear me, how stupid I am!" replied Miss Petowker, hesitating. " What do you call it when lords break off doorknockers, and beat policemen, and play at coaches with other people's money, and all that sort of thing?" " Aristocratic?" suggested the collector." Ah! Aristocratic," replied Miss Petowker; " something very aristocratic about him, isn't there?" The gentlemen held their peace, and smiled at each other, as who should say, " Well! there's no accounting for tastes;" but the ladies resolved unanimously that Nicholas had an aristocratic air, and nobody caring to dispute the position, it was established triumphantly. "
36 " Pick a man, any man. That man there. See him. That man hatless. You know his opinion of the world. You can read it in his face, in his stance. Yet his complaint that a man’s life is no bargain masks the actual case with him. Which is that men will not do as he wishes them to. Have never done, never will do. That’s the way of things with him and his life is so balked about by difficulty and become so altered of its intended architecture that he is little more than a walking hovel hardly fit to house the human spirit at all. Can he say, such a man, that there is no malign thing set against him? That there is no power and no force and no cause? What manner of heretic could doubt agency and claimant alike? Can he believe that the wreckage of his existence is unentailed? No liens, no creditors? That gods of vengeance and of compassion alike lie sleeping in their crypt and whether our cries are for an accounting or for the destruction of the ledgers altogether they must evoke only the same silence and that it is this silence which will prevail? "
― Cormac McCarthy , Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
37 " She knew of a woman who had entered such a bargain at a large automobile manufacturer in 1973 and successfully managed to keep her accounting position for over four decades. "
― , Year Of The Cheetah
38 " I had to be strong, for every man and woman in our fair community was here to witness my beloved being put to rest, some with satisfaction, and some with relief. But all would gather an accounting of the events here today, to be relayed at future balls and parlour teas, as a comeuppance for my marrying an outsider. "
― Cheryl R. Cowtan , Girl Desecrated: Vampires, Asylums and Highlanders 1984
39 " There’s no accounting for the opinions of old ladies. They think everyone is cute. "
― Shannon Wiersbitzky , What Flowers Remember
40 " Managers don't have to cook the books to manipulate earnings they often have all the power they need in the leeway built into accounting rules. "