- Respect and honor, these words goes all the through out
the book. Most important stone-like features of personality within the society.
Don treated everyone equally, rich and poor, smart and stupid. He kept all his
promises, never forgot about any service (even wrote everything down in his
private notebook, which Sonny took from safe, when Don was in the hospital
shot, in order to find a man who can do a service for the family – to check the
phone calls of the traitor).
- Service for a service. Corleone leaders take it the whole
way to even demanding friendship from the person who they help and requesting
for a payback someday in the future.
- “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.”, said
Michael Corleone to the stubborn Las Vegas hotel owner Moe Greene who never
accepted the offer and got killed. Motifs of Green’s refusal were not revealed
in the book, whether that was money, the job he liked or personal distaste of
Corleone family. When Green refuses the offer, Michael brings up Freddie issue,
which was slapped to face in public by Moe. Doing such a thing for a most
powerful gangster’s son (Freddie), even though he is not the brightest son, one
means one thing – disrespect for the whole Corleone’s family. Therefore, Moe
has got his “offer he can’t refuse” – either money or death.
- Things people do in life ARE PERSONAL. “… it was business,
not personal”, Tom said to Michael to calm him for jaw injury capitain
McCluskey did to him in front of the hospital. “… It’s all personal, every bit
of business. Every piece of shit every man has to eat every day of his life is
personal. … You know where I learned that from? The Don. … The Great Don. He
takes everything personal. Like God. … “, said Michael in return.
- Persuasive power of Corleone leaders comes from careful
and thoughtful speach and abilities to convince the opponent using reasoning.
Never threaten, never raise the voice. In order to convince somebody, always be
ready for a discussions, have all reasons though of well. Dialogues between
consigliori Thomas Hagen and rich Holywood producer Jack Woltz.
- Always be calm in any situation in life. Wise decisions or
actions can only be made with a cold mind.
Sonny gets killed just because he did things first and then thought, not
wise versa…
- Cruel business lesson. “Like any good salesman he came to
understand the benefits of undercutting his rivals in price, barring them from
distribution outlets by persuading store owners to stock less of their brands.
Like any good businessman he aimed at holding a monopoly by forcing his rivals
to abandon the field or by merging with his own company.”
- Sono cose nostre. “… And who are they then to meddle when
we look after our own interests? Sonna cosa nostra,” Don Corleone said, “these
are our own affairs. We will manage our world for ourselves because it is our
world, cosa nostra. And so we have to stick together to guard against outside
meddlers. …”
- You can not say “no” to a family members, at least not
often. If if you really need to say “no” sometimes, it has to sound like you
said “yes”. To my opinion, this is generally true for all the cases, whenever
there has to be a negative answer, the recipient will be much happier to accept
a negative answer if it is announced politely, with reasoning and sounds like
“yes”.
- In order to achieve the goals in life, one has to think in
advance as further as possible, plan all the moves carefully. Having a superior
strategic advantage, just like in a chess game and seeing through the
opponent’s traps brings you closer to success. In the book it is well
demonstrated by Sollozzo’s trick, second, almost successful attempt to kill the
Godfather. By making a deal with police captain McCluskey and imprisoning all
the security guards and removing all legal security from the hospital when Don
Vito is still lies powerless in bed after an attempt to his life.
So I started playing chess, my old beloved game during my
young days.
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