Famous quotes containing the words snake, oil and/or salesman:
“People can be as greedy as a snake trying to swallow an elephant.”
—Chinese proverb.
“Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“Nobody dast blame this man.... For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)