Customer Quote by Sam Quinones
““Excess contaminated the best of America. Caltech churned out brilliant students, yet too many of them now went not to science but to Wall Street to create financial gimmicks that paid off handsomely and produced nothing. Exorbitant salaries, meanwhile, were paid to Wall Street and corporate executives, no matter how poorly they did. Banks packaged rolls of bad mortgages and we believed Standard & Poor's when they called them AAA. Well-off parents no longer asked their children to work when they became teenagers.””
About This Quote
Source Book: "The Lost Children of Hamelin", 2015
The quote critiques the shift of top talent from science to finance, highlighting excess, moral compromise, and the erosion of societal values.
In simple terms: Bright minds leave science for profit, harming society.
Key Takeaway
Encourage talent to stay in science.
Themes
talent drain
ethics
economic excess
Mood
critical
concerned
Type
social
economic
When to use this quote
- university recruitment
- policy reform
- career counseling
- financial regulation
Key Concepts
human capital
financial incentives
corporate greed
Questions to Reflect On
- How can we realign incentives for scientists?
- What policies could curb financial excess?
A Different Perspective
Financial rewards can outweigh ethical considerations.
![“What I think is bugging this guy [Steven Lerner] is the belief that debt - forced debt upon middle-class people, students (i.e., student loans and so forth) - has made Wall Street bankers and financial people excessively, unfairly, out-of-proportionally rich.” quote by Rush Limbaugh](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/f15/rush-limbaugh-28_bankers_what-i-think-is-bugging-this-guy-steven_28590.jpg)
![“I wrote an article about the marine landing [in Haiti] right away, but barely mentioned the oil, because my article would come out two months later and I assumed by then, "of course, everybody knows." Nobody knew. There was a news report in the Wall Street Journal, in the petroleum journals, and…” quote by Noam Chomsky](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/dc5/noam-chomsky-42_articles_i-wrote-an-article-about-the-marine-land_13341.jpg)
