Lets Do It Again Don Corleone

24 Important Life Lessons From Don Vito Corleone

The first time I read The Godfather past Mario Puzo I was 13 years one-time. Reading it over again, vi years after, I realized how profoundly the story had directed me. Surpassing a broad range of literature, The Godfather continues to be the book that has influenced me the most. It was the turning indicate that helped me define my terminate goals in life, and the responsibilities I agree every bit a human being. Ane character in the novel became the instance I strove for, and that I continue to strive toward. All I have to exercise is ask: 'what would the Don do'?

On Family:

"I didn't tell yous to get married again. Do what you want. It's expert yous wish to be a male parent to your children. A man who is non a father to his children tin never exist a real homo. But then, you must make their mother accept you lot. Who says you can't encounter them every mean solar day? Who says you can't live your life exactly equally y'all want to alive it?"

On Friends:

"Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than than talent. It is more than regime. It is almost equal of family. Never forget that. If yous had built up a wall of friendships you wouldn't have to ask me to aid."

On Humility:

Don Corleone himself was non angry. He had long ago learned that club imposes insults that must exist borne, comforted by the knowledge that in this world there comes a time when the most humble of men, if he keeps his eyes open, can take his revenge on the most powerful. It was this noesis that prevented the Don from losing the humility all his friends admired in him.

On Duty:

He fabricated no empty promises, nor the craven excuse that his hands were tied past more powerful forces in the world than himself.

On Business:

"Tom, don't let anybody kid you. It's all personal, every bit of business. Every piece of shit every man has to eat everyday of his life is personal. They call it business. OK. Only it'southward personal as hell… That'due south what makes him not bad. The Great Don. He takes everything personal. Like God. He knows every feather that falls from the tail of a sparrow or however the hell it goes."

On Drugs:

"It's truthful I have many, many friends in politics, but they would non be and so friendly if my business were narcotics instead of gambling. They think gambling is something like liquor, a harmless vice, and they think narcotics is a muddied concern. No, don't protest. I'1000 telling you their thoughts, non mine. How a man makes his living is non my concern. And what I am telling yous is that this business of yours is also risky. All the members of my family have lived well the terminal 10 years, without danger, without harm. I tin't endanger them or their livelihoods out of greed."

On Disrespect:

He had asked Hagen ane final question. "Does this homo have existent balls?"…Finally Hagen translated the question properly in his heed. Did Jack Woltz take the balls to take chances everything, to run the risk of losing all on a matter of principle, on a thing of award; for revenge? Hagen smiled. He did it rarely merely now he could non resist jesting with the Don. "You're request if he is a Sicilian." The Don nodded his head pleasantly, acknowledging the flattering witticism and its truth. "No," Hagen said.

On Psychology:

He gave the bakery a Di Nobili cigar and a glass of yellow Strega and put his hand on the homo'due south shoulder to urge him on. That was the mark of the Don's humanity. He knew from bitter experience what courage information technology took to ask a favour from a boyfriend man.

On Generosity:

The Don always taught that when a man was generous, he must show the generosity as personal. How flattering to Anthony Coppola that a human being similar the Don would borrow to loan him coin.

On Respect:

"Tom wasn't adopted. He merely lived with us." "Oh," Kay said, then asked curiously, "Why didn't you adopt him?" Michael laughed. "Because my begetter said it would be disrespectful for Tom to modify his proper name. Disrespectful to his own parents."

On Trust:

"I trust these ii men with my life. They are my ii correct arms. I cannot insult them by sending them away."

On Women:

In Hagen'due south globe, the Corleone'south world, the concrete beauty, the sexual power of women, carried not the slightest weight in worldly matters. It was a individual affair, except, of form, in matters of marriage and family disgrace.

On Sex:

This was perhaps the real reason the Don was displeased well-nigh Freddie. The Don was straitlaced most sex. He would consider such cavorting by his son Freddie, two girls at a time, as degeneracy.

On Anger:

The Don considered a use of threats the most foolish kind of exposure; the unleashing of anger without forethought as the most dangerous indulgence. No 1 had ever heard the Don utter a naked threat, no one had e'er seen him in an uncontrollable rage. It was unthinkable. And so he tried to teach Sonny his own disciplines. He claimed that at that place was no greater natural advantage in life than having an enemy overestimate your faults, unless it was to accept a friend underestimate your virtues.

On Failure:

Nobody fabricated the mistake of assuming that Don Corleone could exist held cheaply considering of his past misfortunes. He was a man who had made merely a few mistakes in his career and had learned from every ane of them.

On Punctuality:

Don Corleone, in a sense the host since he had initiated the peace talks, had been the first to make it; i of his many virtues was punctuality.

On Willpower:

All of these men [US Dons] were good listeners, patient men. They had 1 other affair in common. They were those rarities, men who had refused to accept the rule of organized lodge, men who refused the dominion of other men. There was no forcefulness, no mortal human who could bend them to their volition unless they wished it. They were men who guarded their gratis will with wiles and murder. Their wills could be subverted only by death. Or the utmost reasonableness.

On Prudence:

"I'1000 not preparing annihilation. I'1000 beingness prudent, I've always been a prudent human being, there is nothing I find and so little to my taste as carelessness in life. Women and children can afford to be devil-may-care, men cannot." [1]

On Persistence:

Michael Corleone was very careful, this was after all a man of respect. "Don Tommasino, you lot know my begetter. He's a human being who goes deaf when somebody says the word no to him. And he doesn't get his hearing back until they respond him with a yes. Well, he has heard my no many times. I empathize about the two guards, I don't desire to crusade yous trouble, they can come with me Sunday, but if I desire to marry I'll ally. Surely if I don't permit my ain begetter to interfere with my personal life it would be an insult to him to allow yous to do so."

On Negotiating:

The corruption itself bothered him not at all. Hagen had learned the art of negotiation from the Don himself. "Never get aroused," the Don had instructed. "Never make a threat. Reason with people." The discussion "reason" sounded so much better in Italian, ragione, to rejoin. The art of this was to ignore all insults, all threats; to turn the other cheek.

On Revenge:

"Revenge is a dish that tastes best when it is common cold," he said. "I would not take made that peace merely that I knew you would never come up home alive otherwise."

On Power:

"It looks bad. Simply my father was the simply i who understood that political connections and power are worth ten regimes." [ii]

On Life & Decease:

And his begetter dying had said, "Life is so cute." Michael could never think his father e'er having uttered a word about expiry, equally if the Don respected death also much to philosophize about information technology… Notwithstanding, he thought, if I can dice maxim, "Life is so cute," so nothing else is important. If I can believe in myself that much, nothing else matters. He would follow his father. He would care for his children, his family, his globe.

On Entrepreneurship:

"The trouble is all that damn trash in the movies and the newspapers," Michael said. "Y'all've got the wrong idea, of my father and the Corleone Family. I'll brand a final explanation and this 1 will exist really final. My father is a man of affairs trying to provide for his wife and children and those friends he might demand someday in a mean solar day of trouble. He doesn't accept the rules of the society we live in because those rules would take condemned him to a life not suitable to a man like himself, a human of extraordinary force and graphic symbol. What you have to understand is that he considers himself the equal of all those great men like Presidents and Prime Ministers and Supreme Court Justices and Governors of united states of america. He refuses to live past the rules fix by others, rules which condemn him to a defeated life. But his ultimate aim is to enter that society with a certain power since club doesn't actually protect its members who do not have their own individual power. In the meantime he operates on a lawmaking of ethics he considers far superior to the legal structures of society."

The Godfather, although fictional and dealing with issues natural to the world of crime, even so largely applies to the lives we alive. I practise not condone murder, only the other aspects of Don Vito Corleone'south character are respectable and are of need in a world devoid of a sense of honour and responsibleness.

Set up yourself for the real world by listening to the Don.

Notes:

1. I do concur that the thought of carelessness in men does produce the foulest of tastes by disabling a man'due south ability to provide and protect. Still, we live in a dissimilar fourth dimension now, and women have the ability to achieve financial security for themselves without resorting to finding a man to secure a future for them. Therefore they share in the responsibility of not existence careless every bit they stand side past side with men in the function of provision. But the consequences for abandon in both genders still tend to be unlike, as past roles have been then ingrained through evolution and tradition. If one is to ignore these differences they would only attain the act of deluding themselves.

two. A regime is a department of a mafia family unit that is run by a caporegime who reports to the underboss, who reports to the Don. A regime consists of soldiers that brand the decisions sent from higher up happen on the ground. The mafia is essentially structured similar an regular army.

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