0099554771
Tom Wolfe
Notes
With that he reared back in his chair again, mighty pleased with himself, and Wismer Stroock and the rest of the financial types and lawyers and division heads and Banking Relations preppies and Peaches and the other model-girl reared back also, looking mighty pleased with Himself, too.
They had nice wide shoulders and nice narrow hips and nice lean legs and fine definition in the muscles of their arms and backs. They were built like boys, boys with breasts and hurricane manes.
But Croker had something that Monsieur Raymond Peepgrass did not possess – or, rather, something he had never been willing to let off the leash… a certain red dog… It had a chain around its neck, but the chain was broken… It was a red bull terrier with its forehead in a dreadful frown and its lower incisors bared and thrust forward… Every man had that red dog inside him, but only real men dared let him lose.
One of the rules Charlie knew all leaders should follow was: Never engage in a fight in the presence of your followers that you can’t possibly win.
“…charisma consists of being like everybody else.”
“You’re not afraid of starving, you’re afraid of losing face. He says, ‘You don’t have to have some high position before you can be a great man. One of the great Stoic philosophers, Cleanthes, hauled water to make a living. He was a day laborer, Mr. Croker. But nobody thought of him as someone who didn’t have a respectable job. Why? Because he radiated the power of the spark of Zeus.”
“One of the few freedoms that we have as human beings that cannot be taken away from us is the freedom to assent to what is true and to deny what is false. Nothing you can give me is worth surrendering that freedom for. At this moment I’m a man with complete tranquility. After all, what is tranquility? Tranquility is a mind in accord with nature… a mind in accord with nature. I’ve been a real estate developer for most of my life, and I can tell you that a developer lives with the opposite of tranquility, which is perturbation. You’re perturbed about something all the time….What is it you’re looking for in this endless quest? Tranquility. You think if only you can acquire enough worldly goods, enough recognition, enough eminence, you will be free, there’ll be nothing more to worry about, and instead you become a bigger and bigger slave to how you think others are judging you…I’m older than mosta you,” Croker continued, “and I can tell you that the only real possession you’ll ever have is your character, that and your ‘scheme of life,’ you might say.”