Wisdom

"A man who has power and makes no use of it is a fool. Nobody gives anything away, and if your business fails your creditors give you no quarter. The only thing is to keep your nerve. Grab where and when there is anything to be grabbed. For poetic justice you must look to opera, and to the Easter Service when sermons are preached about the Resurrection of the Savior of mankind. The Church does not go away with empty hands. You cannot make dollars with the cramp of conscience in your throat. It is useless to expect dollars to rain down from the sky. No instances have occurred to justify such a hope. Dollars must be hard-earned. Many hands and brains must be exerted to the utmost before you can get your hundred dollars for a ton of mahagony. And if nobody fells the mahagony in the primeval forests of America and floats it down the forest rivers, there can be no mahagony cupboards and no mahagony cabinets. You cannot have cheap mahagony and at the same time save all those innocent Indians who perish by the thousands in the jungle to get it for you. It must be either one or the other. Either cheap mahagony or respect for the humanity of the Indian. The civilization of the present day cannot run to both, because competition, the idol of our civilization, cannot tolerate it. Pity? Yes--with joyfulness and a Christian heart. But the dollar must not be imperiled." (B. Traven, Government 228-229)