“Companies aren’t families. They’re battlefields in a civil war.”

“Most economists are accustomed to treating companies as idyllic places where everyone is devoted to a common goal: making as much money as possible. In the real world, that’s not how things work at all. Companies aren’t big happy families where everyone plays together nicely. Rather, most workplaces are made up of fiefdoms where executives compete for power and credit, often in hidden skirmishes that make their own performances appear superior and their rivals’ seem worse. Divisions compete for resources and sabotage each other to steal glory. Bosses pit their subordinates against one another so that no one can mount a coup.Companies aren’t families. They’re battlefields in a civil war.Yet despite this capacity for internecine warfare, most companies roll along relatively peacefully, year after year, because they have routines – habits – that create truces that allow everyone to set aside their rivalries long enough to get a day’s work done.”

“The human race is a family. Men are brothers. All wars are civil wars. ”

“Let the war turn off the families. Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge.”

“My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They’re made of me as surely as my brain and my heart are made of me. It is a civil war with a predetermined winner”

“People aren’t broken. They’re just interestingly wired.”