Philosophy
Dobbs is often used as a foil for Howard's philosophical comments on the value of gold and one's responsibilities to one's companions. For example, the Marxist exchange in the Oso Negro flophouse:
Howard: Say, answer me this one, will you? Why is gold worth some twenty bucks an ounce?
Dobbs: I don't know. Because it's scarce.
Howard: A thousand men, say, go searchin' for gold. After six months, one of them's lucky: one out of a thousand. His find represents not only his own labor, but that of nine hundred and ninety-nine others to boot. That's six thousand months, five hundred years, scramblin' over a mountain, goin' hungry and thirsty. An ounce of gold, mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that went into the findin' and the gettin' of it.
Dobbs: I never thought of it just like that.
Howard: Well, there's no other explanation, mister. Gold itself ain't good for nothing except making jewelry with and gold teeth.
Read more about this topic: The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (film)
Famous quotes containing the word philosophy:
“The late Président de Montesquieu told me that he knew how to be blind—he had been so for such a long time—but I swear that I do not know how to be deaf: I cannot get used to it, and I am as humiliated and distressed by it today as I was during the first week. No philosophy in the world can palliate deafness.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
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—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“And new Philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out;
The Sun is lost, and th’earth, and no mans wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)