Lessons from The GodFather by Mario Puzo

Disclaimer: These are collected by me, and it should be taken with a pinch of salt. My interpretation and application of the following lines will vary from your's in business and real life.

• Behind every great fortune, there is a crime [ Balzac ].
• Don't let anybody kid you, it's all personal, every bit of business. Like God, take everything personal.
  
• Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult.
• Every man has but one destiny!
• "I'll reason with him".
• Great men are not born great, they grow great!
• Get everyone on it even if they can not help us right now. I believe in friendship and I am willing to show my friendship first.
• Unleashing of anger without forethought is the most dangerous indulgence.
• No greater natural advantage in life than having an enemy overestimate your faults, unless it was to have a friend underestimate your virtues.
• "Only your voice could have brought me here!"
• I would trust you with my life and the welfare of my children. I would trust you with my whole fortune.
  
• I want to thank you all for coming....I consider it a service done to me personally and I am in debt of each and every one of you. And so I will say at the beginning that I am not here to quarrel or convince, but only to reason and as a reasonable man do everything possible for us all to part friends here too. I give my word on that and some of you who know me well know I do not give my word lightly. We are all honorable man here, we don't have to give each other assurances as if we were lawyers.
• "What matter of men are we then, if we do not have our reason" .. " we are all no better than beasts in a jungle, if that were the case. But we have reason, we can reason with each other and we can reason with ourselves".
• Now, any man should be allowed one foolishness in his life. I have had mine!
• I want all precautions taken. Now don't take this amiss. I'm not preparing anything. I'm being prudent, I have always been a prudent man, there is nothing I find so little to my taste as carelessness in life. Women and children can afford to be careless, men cannot.
• I made the peace, remember, I can't go back on my word.
• Sun was more important than water, water also was important; but the two, imprudently mixed, could cause great misfortune.
• "Life is so beautiful!"
• You cannot say "no" to the people, you love, not often. That's the secret. And then when you do, it has to sound like a 'yes', or you have to make them say 'no'. You have to take time and trouble.
• Revenge is a dish that tastes best, when it is served cold.
• I have done my share in life, I have not got the heart anymore. And there are some duties the best of men can't assume. That's it then.
• Let's wait and see what happens! Let them break the peace first.
• Just sit tight. Don't react to any provocation. Give me a few weeks to straighten things out to see which way the wind is going to blow. Then I'll make the best deal I can for everybody here.
• He's the most intelligent and he did what seems to him to be the smart thing.
• He could never turn back.
• There are people who wander through the world shouting 'kill me, kill me'. The trick is that since he does not fear death and indeed looks for it, then the trick is to make yourself the only person in the world that he truly desires not to kill him. He has only that one fear, not of death, but that you may be the one to kill him. He is yours then!
• Treachery can't be forgiven. People never forgive themselves and so they would always be dangerous.