Chinese Quotes - Page 19

The Chinese are quite entrepreneurial. Remember when Lenovo bought IBM's PC division. It was said that China didn't need a brand name, China didn't need to buy Lenovo to get into the PC business, I remember reading a one-liner somewhere which struck me as quite possibly true, it said the one thing that the Chinese had not been able to copy or figure out was the way, in terms of systems, that Americans - it probably would be true for Europeans as well - that Americans install and live by their management systems, while China is still quite half-assed. Perhaps that is a true statement.

I find Chinese debates about their political system domestically, but also about China's claims in the international system, to be among the most original and surprising and exciting of our time. The starting point is a system that none of us had anticipated, which I call Leninist capitalism, but also obviously because it is the most important emerging power. The question of China's relations with the United States in particular, and the rest of the world in general, is the question of war and peace in the 21st century.

Directing, you have to put yourself in a certain state, it’s all about the energy you have and the energy you transmit to people, to the actors, to the crew. It’s peculiar. There’s a Chinese saying: “The first part that rots is the head.” It really does. I’ve seen it.

When I was in government, the South African economy was growing at 4.5% - 5%. But then came the global financial crisis of 2008/2009, and so the global economy shrunk. That hit South Africa very hard, because then the export markets shrunk, and that includes China, which has become one of the main trade partners with South Africa. Also, the slowdown in the Chinese economy affected South Africa. The result was that during that whole period, South Africa lost something like a million jobs because of external factors.

When Cartier-Bresson goes to China, he shows that there are people in China, and that they are Chinese.

The Chinese are like a tank through a corn field, they just keep mowing through it. Senators want sanctions against countries supporting cyberattacks.

People do not think in English or Chinese or Apache; they think in a language of thought. This language of thought probably looks a bit like all these languagesBut compared with any given language, mentalese must be richer in some ways and simpler in others.

You can't help but feel that the Chinese people are a subspecies.

We got a Chinese Elvis painted by Norman Rockwell.

The Chinese government is quickly losing its ideological legitimacy, maintain its rule with force, but cannot draw strength from the ideology of Marx and Mao.

Ancient Chinese custom if you were a guest in one of their homes and you admired some particular thing, they would wrap it up and present it to you as a gift. But isn't that what life does.

At first I was laboring under the impression that Chinese lyrics didn't rhyme. That turned out to be untrue - they don't rhyme in translation.

There's no easy way to say this, so I'€™ll just say it: We're no longer No. 1. Today, we're No. 2. Yes, it's official. The Chinese economy just overtook the United States economy to become the largest in the world. For the first time since Ulysses S. Grant was president, America is not the leading economic power on the planet.

I did learn Chinese kung-fu in a school for a short time, but I couldn't afford to pay for long-term learning.

The Chinese do make vast quantities of wine for home consumption, but you wouldn't want to drink it yourself.

I didn't cook for the competition, I cooked for myself, I cooked for my loved ones, I cooked to represent my culture, I cooked to represent Chinese-American immigrants. I was proud of what I was able to accomplish under the conditions.

I was very lucky. I don't know German, or Dutch, or Chinese, or Thai. I don't know them, so I can't judge, so I have to go on the word of the publisher that it's a good translation.

One of the things I love about translation is it obliterates the self. When I'm trying to figure out what Tu Fu has to say, I have to kind of impersonate Tu Fu. I have to take on, if you will, his voice and his skin in English, and I have to try to get as deeply into the poem as possible. I'm not trying to make an equivalent poem in English, which can't be done because our language can't accommodate the kind of metaphors within metaphors the Chinese written language can, and often does, contain.

I'm basically a poetry scholar, and I'm happier here in my studio with my row of Chinese dictionaries than I am, frankly, at Lincoln Center.

Mo Yan is the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet Russian apparatchik writer Mikhail Sholokhov: a patsy of the regime.

I'm a reader of Chinese literature, I like their films, but also: I've had great difficulty getting my work published in China; very little of it has been published there. The first two attempts to have all of my work published, for instance, were refused without any reason ever being given.

The Chinese are good at repression and can be pretty ruthless about it.

The Chinese can devalue their currency, apparently without doing much harm to themselves. They can do this as a strategy to destroy our economy in America.

Have you noticed that every one of these candidates for Presidency say: "Barack Obama's weak, Vladimir Putin's kicking sand in his face. When I talk to Putin, he's gonna straighten out. Just looking at him I'm gonna - he's gonna be - " and then it turns out they can't handle a bunch of CNBC moderators at a debate. I don't think the Chinese and the Russians are gonna be too worried about you.

There is no Croatian dream. There is no European Union dream. There is no Chinese communist dream, except maybe to get out. But there is and always has been an American dream. And the dream is possible. The dream can become real.