Salomon Quotes & Sayings

Donnie Green himself had been a trader at Salomon Brothers in the dark ages, when traders had more hair on their chests than on their heads. — Michael Lewis

the most important street smart in a city of strangers is simply good manners. — Eugene Salomon

How could anyone be so stupid as to trust a trader? The best thing I could do was pretend to others at Salomon that I had meant to screw the customer. People would respect that. That was called jamming. I had just jammed bonds, albeit unknowingly, for the first time. I had lost my innocence. — Michael Lewis

Learning is the discovery that something is possible — Frederick Salomon Perls

Certain directors and actors were constantly preoccupied by one problem, and apparently, one only. This was connected with the so-called German greeting, which was the method of hailing a friend by raising the right arm straight out with the hand extended at, or slightly above, the level of the shoulder. This greeting had very definite political implications; it was employed daily by millions; and the directors and actors saw no reason why it should not be one on the films in a simple and life-like fashion. They failed. Even when shown in the rushes the effect on the select and professional audience was simply to produce uncontrollable hilarity. The cinema can do a great deal. It can entrance, t can tell fairy tales, it can be realistic or surrealistic -- but it cannot portray a gesture that is false without underlining the most brutal way its basic falseness. The German cinema could not reproduce the German greeting; it was the greeting that was to blame, not the cinema. — Ernst Von Salomon

From the literary point of view, the Koran has little merit. Declamation, repetition, puerility, a lack of logic and coherence strike the unprepared reader at every turn. It is humiliating to the human intellect to think that this mediocre literature has been the subject of innumerable commentaries, and that millions of men are still wasting time in absorbing it." (Orpheus, Salmon Reinach, 1932. See page 175 of the book here) — Salomon Reinach

If you are bored, you are not paying attention. — Frederick Salomon Perls

You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful. If not, it can't be helped. — Frederick Salomon Perls

I have one aim only: to impart a fraction of the meaning of the word now. — Frederick Salomon Perls

Mathematics is a form of poetry which transcends poetry in that it proclaims a truth; a form of reasoning which transcends reasoning in that it wants to bring about the truth it proclaims; a form of action, of ritual behavior, which does not find fulfilment in the act but must proclaim and elaborate a poetic form of truth. — Salomon Bochner

Who do you work for? That question haunted salesmen. Whenever a trader screwed a customer and the salesman became upset, the trader would ask the salesman, "Who do you work for anyway?" The message was clear: You work for Salomon Brothers. You work for me. I pay your bonus at the end of the year. So just shut up, you geek. — Michael Lewis

No longer were the prices of ordinary mortgage bonds allowed to roam inefficiently, for they were now linked to the CMO market, in much the same way that flour is linked to the market for bread. Fair value for CMOs (the finished product) implied a fair value for conventional mortgage bonds (the raw materials). — Michael Lewis

Those that fight don't listen, those that listen don't fight. — Frederick Salomon Perls

What Gutfreund said has become a legend at Salomon Brothers and a visceral part of its corporate identity. He said: One hand, one million dollars, no tears. — Michael Lewis

The moment Salomon Brothers demonstrated the potential gains to be had from turning an investment bank into a public corporation and leveraging its balance sheet with exotic risks, the psychological foundations of Wall Street shifted, from trust to blind faith. No investment bank owned by its employees would have leveraged itself 35:1, or bought and held $50 billion in mezzanine CDOs. — Michael Lewis

There's always a possibility of richer maturation - of taking more and more responsibility for yourself and for your life ... And this is what I hope ... to make you understand how much you gain by taking re-sponsibility for every emotion, every movement you make, every thought you have ... We touch each other by honestly being what we are, not intentionally making contact. — Frederick Salomon Perls

A thousand plastic flowers don't make a desert bloom. A thousand empty faces don't fill an empty room. — Frederick Salomon Perls

Awareness in itself is healing. — Frederick Salomon Perls

For that purpose, partly as the result of Ranieri's persistent lobbying, two new facilities had sprung up in the federal government alongside Ginnie Mae. They guaranteed the mortgages that did not qualify for the Ginnie Mae stamp. The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (called Freddie Mac) and the Federal National Mortgage Association (called Fannie Mae) between them, by giving their guarantees, were able to transform most home mortgages into government-backed bonds. — Michael Lewis

I'd stumbled into a job at Salomon Brothers in 1985, and stumbled out, richer, in 1988, and even though I wrote a book about the experience, the whole thing still strikes me me as totally preposterous-which is one reason the money was so easy to walk away from. — Michael Lewis

To mature means to take responsibility for your life, to be on your own. Psychoanalysis fosters the infantile state by considering that the past is responsible for the illness. — Frederick Salomon Perls

Nobody can stand truth if it is told to him. Truth can be tolerated only if you discover it yourself because then, the pride of discovery makes the truth palatable. — Frederick Salomon Perls

If you take responsibility for what you are doing to yourself, how you produce your symptoms, how you produce your illness, how you produce your existence-the very moment you get in touch with yourself-growth begins, integration begins. — Frederick Salomon Perls

As Albert Einstein once said to me: "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity." But what is much more widespread than the actual stupidity is the playing stupid, turning off your ear, not listening, not seeing ... playing helpless. — Frederick Salomon Perls

So if you find out how you prevent yourself from growing, from using your potential, you have away of increasing this, making life richer, making you more and more capable of mobilizing yourself. And our potential is based upon a very peculiar attitude: to live and review every fresh second — Frederick Salomon Perls

Gestalt Prayer
I do my thing and you do yours.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
And if by chance we find each other, then it is beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped. — Frederick Salomon Perls

Children are not born using media. Indeed, as much as children are socialized by media, they are socialized to use media in particular ways. Social psychologist Gavriel Salomon systematically explored how children's preconceptions about a medium - for example, that print is "hard" and television is "easy" - shape the amount of mental effort they will invest in processing the medium. — Victor C. Strasburger

Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion. — Francis Bacon

The Piranha didn't talk like a person. He said things like "If you fuckin' buy this bond in a fuckin' trade, you're fuckin' fucked." And "If you don't pay fuckin' attention to the fuckin' two-year, you get your fuckin' face ripped off." Noun, verb, adjective: fucker, fuck, fucking. No part of speech was spared. His world was filled with copulating inanimate objects and people getting their faces ripped off. — Michael Lewis

Pam Anderson and Rick Salomon just got themselves a marriage license. I think before she gets married again Pam needs to slow down and think about whether this is really the man she wants to spend three or four months of her life with. — Chelsea Handler

Teaching means to show a person that something is possible. — Frederick Salomon Perls

And with dream-awakened eyes, she saw all the beauty around her, saw the sea, felt the sun, and knew she had to vanish for a while from the human plane and make every sacrifice in order to create her world anew out of the depths. — Charlotte Salomon

We live in a house of mirrors and think we are looking out the windows. — Frederick Salomon Perls

People may be understood through the art they produce or by descriptions from friends and family, by observation, or through their dreams. — Salomon Grimberg

It's hard to know exactly how many empty houses there are...the census placed the figure, in the United States, in 2000, at about 10.5 million housing units (including apartments, counting duplexes as two, and so forth). For comparison: less than a quarter million people lived in homeless shelters in 2000. — Shay Salomon

Anxiety is the gap between now and later. — Frederick Salomon Perls

The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftener quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life. — Blaise Pascal

What Is Mathematics? This question, if asked in earnest, has no answer. — Salomon Bochner

I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine. — Frederick Salomon Perls

A man must be a Salomon before his magical ring will work — Idries Shah

Hulk Hogan's wife has filed for divorce. This is the most devastating breakup since Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee. And then Pam Anderson and Kid Rock. And soon, Pam Anderson and Rick Salomon. — Chelsea Handler

Lose your mind and come to your senses. — Frederick Salomon Perls

It feels much nobler to feel guilty than resentful, and it takes more courage to express resentment than guilt. With expressing guilt you expect to pacify your opponent; with expressing resentment you might stir up hostility in him. — Frederick Salomon Perls

From senior management that my customer would not get scalped, then everyone could win. Salomon would make a lot of money. My customer would make a little money (which, for a customer, was grand). And I would be a hero. If there was a single lesson I took away from Salomon Brothers, it is that rarely do all parties win. The nature of the game is zero sum. A dollar out of my customer's pocket was a dollar — Michael Lewis

[Who are the artists you admire, Surrealist or otherwise?]
Remedios Varo, Max Ernst, Charlotte Salomon, Goya, Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley is not so much about the impossible as he is about freaks and deformities, but those are interesting to me too. — Audrey Niffenegger

I've always wanted to invest. That's why I started working on Wall Street in the first place, back in 1986 when I went through the Salomon Brothers training program. — Mary Meeker

Nothing changes until it becomes what it is. — Frederick Salomon Perls

In the two decades after I left, I waited for the end of Wall Street as I had known it. The outrageous bonuses, the endless parade of rogue traders, the scandal that sank Drexel Burnham, the scandal that destroyed John Gutfreund and finished off Salomon Brothers, the crisis following the collapse of my old boss John Meriwether's Long-Term Capital Management, the Internet bubble: Over and over again, the financial system was, in some narrow way, discredited. Yet the big Wall Street banks at the center of it just kept on growing, along with the sums of money that they doled out to twenty-six-year-olds to perform tasks of no obvious social utility. The rebellion by American youth against the money culture never happened. Why bother to overturn your parents' world when you can buy it and sell off the pieces? — Michael Lewis

The difference between Strauss and Ranieri?" says one trader still at Salomon. "That's easy. Strauss wouldn't stoop to use the men's room on the trading floor. He'd go upstairs. Lewie would piss on your desk. — Michael Lewis

I have this theory," says Andy Stone, seated in his office at Prudential-Bache Securities. "Wall Street makes its best producers into
managers. The reward for being a good producer is to be made a
manager. The best producers are cutthroat, competitive, and often
neurotic and paranoid. You turn those people into managers, and they go
after each other. They no longer have the outlet for their instincts that
producing gave them. They usually aren't well suited to be managers.
Half of them get thrown out because they are bad. Another quarter get
muscled out because of politics. The guys left behind are just the most
ruthless of the bunch. That's why there are cycles on Wall Street - why
Salomon Brothers is getting crunched now - because the ruthless people
are bad for the business but can only be washed out by proven failure. — Michael Lewis

That was how a Salomon bond trader thought: He forgot whatever it was that he wanted to do for a minute and put his finger on the pulse of the market. If the market felt fidgety, if people were scared or desperate, he herded them like sheep into a corner, then made them pay for their uncertainty. He sat on the market until it puked gold coins. Then he worried about what he wanted to do. — Michael Lewis

I wonder why people use only walls for hanging pictures. — Frederick Salomon Perls

I believe that any single dream contains the essential message about our existence. — Frederick Salomon Perls

A big bonus was about as well concealed on the Salomon Brothers trading floor as the results of a hot date in a high school boys' locker room. — Michael Lewis

Have a dialogue between the two opposing parts and you will find that they always start out fighting each other until we come to an appreciation of difference. — Frederick Salomon Perls

The word "mathematics" is a Greek word and, by origin, it means "something that has been learned or understood," or perhaps "acquired knowledge," or perhaps even, somewhat against grammar, "acquirable knowledge," that is, "learnable knowledge," that is, "knowledge acquirable by learning." — Salomon Bochner

By the 1850s enslavers had their eyes on expansion into Cuba in order to expand Southern political power. Here we see an idyllic image of a Cuba tobacco plantation, plus the idea of "Southern rights" being used to sell cigars. "Southerner rights segars. Expressly manufactured for Georgia & Alabama by Salomon Brothers. Fabrica de tabacos, de superior calidad de la vuelta-abajo," Broadside, 1859. — Edward E. Baptist

War had taken hold of them and would never let them go. They would never really belong to their homes again. The war was over ... but the armies were still in being. — Ernst Von Salomon

I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I. And if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful. — Frederick Salomon Perls

Humans don't really improve on our own functioning, we only interfere with it, distort it, and disguise it. — Frederick Salomon Perls

You cannot achieve happiness. Happiness happens and is a transitory stage. Imagine how happy I felt when I got relief from bladder pressure. How long did that happiness last? — Frederick Salomon Perls

If there was a single lesson I took away from Salomon Brothers, it is that rarely do all parties win. The nature of the game is zero sum. A dollar out of my customer's pocket was a dollar in ours, and vice versa. — Michael Lewis

Learning is to discover that something is possible. We are using most of our energies for self-destructiv e games, self-preventing games. We prevent ourselves from growing the very moment something unpleasant, something painful comes up. At that moment we become phobic, we run away, we desensitize ourselves. Neurotic suffering is suffering in imagination, suffering in fantasy. — Frederick Salomon Perls

The person most in control is the person who can give up control. — Frederick Salomon Perls

I'm just a Boche," I thought to myself; "I'm a Boche and I always have been." At that time in France, I did everything that a Boche does, both those actions he performs deliberately, conscious and proud of his Bocheness, and those that he does when he is well-nigh falling over backward in his attempts not to be taken for what he is. When I returned home I wished to write a little book for Rohwohlt entitled: The Adventures of a Little Boche in France It never came to anything because quite quietly the little Boches had turned into big Boches, and from then on it was difficult for the little ones to prove that they weren't the big ones. — Ernst Von Salomon

There are now little brass plaques on the ground outside this address.
These are Stolpersteine.
Tributes to the victims of the Holocaust.
There are many of them in Berlin, especially in Charlottenburg.
They are not easy to spot.
You must walk with your head down, seeking memories between the cobblestones.
In front of 15 Wielandstrasse, three names can be read.
Paula, Albert, and Charlotte.
But on the wall, there is only one commemorative plaque.
The one for Charlotte Salomon. — David Foenkinos