Charlie Chaplin Quotes
I'd sooner be called a successful crook than a destitute monarch.
Chaplin, Charlie. A King in New York. Archway Film Distributors, 1957.
There were few if any consumer protection laws in those days and many wealthy aristocrats made their money by taking advantage of the poor. They were the landowners, bankers, financiers and often the industrialists. Shaw was a sarcastic social critic and this is a typical line he gave his upper class characters. Today, we have more controls on business and finance, and many wealthy business people have gotten that way by providing great value to the consumers and being honest. However, we still have large numbers of wealthy members of society who do make their money from the poor and middle class by unethical and often illegal means. In the aftermath of the Meltdown of 2008. hundreds of thousands of the homes of the working poor and middle class were foreclosed by the major banks forging the legal documentation for the foreclusures. Millions of consumer contracts are issued that even a PhD cannot understand the terms of without special legal and financial training. There is even a legal definition of a salesperson lying to make a sale which is so commonplace that our law excuses it and calls it "puffing". However, there has been over time, improvement over Shaw's era.
Adams was asked about a rumor that he had dispatched Charles Pinckney to England to obtain four young women of "easy virtue"—two for each of them:
Tyre revolted and gained independence from Islamic Fatamid Egypt with the help of the Christian Byzantines.
This is a common rejoinder of third world country leaders to accusations of Western democracies about corruption. And doubtless it is true. However temptation has never been a good defense of improper behavior.
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin KBE was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, The Tramp, and is considered one of the most important figures in the history of the film industry. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, and encompassed both adulation and controversy.
