Businesspeople get a little bit of bad press sometimes. There are a lot of normal and ethical people. Matthew Stewart Read Quote
It was 1988, and I was just finishing a D.Phil at Oxford University on the topic of ‘Nietzsche and German Idealism.’ Matthew Stewart Read Quote
I would eventually leave the business in 1999 to work full-time as a writer, but during the previous decade, I would advise French businessmen on how to succeed in Germany; tell Americans what to do in Eastern Europe; show the Spanish how to become more like the Americans. I spent one particularly haunting year advising bankers in Mexico. Matthew Stewart Read Quote
Like ministers of information, consultants condense the message, smooth out the dissonances, unify the rhetoric, and then repeat and amplify it ad nauseam through the client’s rank and file. Matthew Stewart Read Quote
Benjamin Franklin maintained that every star is a sun, and every sun nourishes a ‘chorus of worlds’ just like ours. Matthew Stewart Read Quote
Sir Isaac Newton gave the extraterrestrials their biggest shot in the arm when he embraced the infinite universe as the basis for his hugely influential system of physics. Even so, the aliens of the early modern period remained creatures of philosophy rather than science. Matthew Stewart Read Quote
We are all equal not because we partake in some peculiar nature or because we share in the same credo of unreasoned beliefs, but because we take it that no thinking being is incapable of seeing reason. Matthew Stewart Read Quote
If you’re working for somebody and trying to check on them, it never works. You’re just saying what they want you to say at the end of the day. Matthew Stewart Read Quote
In the ideal scenario, consultants work for a board, and they’re helping the board check on certain aspects of management. Their work is made public and transparent. Matthew Stewart Read Quote
There were about two years when I literally paid no rent anywhere in the world. Everyone’s a contact, but there’s no real human interaction. That’s a very wearying thing. Matthew Stewart Read Quote
