225 Quotes by Mark Kurlansky

On the one side were Confucians, inspired by Mencius, who, when asked how a state should raise profits, replied, “Why must Your Majesty use the word profit? All I am concerned with are the good and the right. If Your Majesty says, ‘How can I profit my state?’ your officials will say, ‘How can I profit my family?’ and officers and common people will say, ‘How can I profit myself?’ Once superiors and inferiors are competing for profit, the state will be in danger.

I did not realize at the time, as I have discovered since, that anyone who attempts any thing original in this world must expect a bit of ridicule. Clarence Birdseye.

Salt is so common, so easy to obtain, and so inexpensive that we have forgotten that from the beginning of civilization until about 100 years ago, salt was one of the most sought-after commodities in human history.

There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even tacitly take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you are free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.

Now, at peace, Jordan has few resources but is full of plans. Mohammed Noufal observed with a smile, “All we need is Israel’s technology, Egypt’s workers, Turkey’s water, and Saudi Arabia’s oil, and I am sure we can build a paradise here.

If all poor people refused to fight, he argued, the rich would have no army and there would be no war.

Since the industrial revolution, Great Britain had been developing an ever-increasing market for groundfish – especially cod, haddock, and plaice – because fried fish, later fish-and-chips, became the favorite dish of the urban working class.

The indigenous people of five continents were facing an intractable enemy from a sixth continent that was convinced that they had the right to steal the land on other.

One of humankind’s most enduring misconceptions is that of nature’s bounty... the belief that nature is such a powerful force that it is indestructible.