“While many brilliant writers and speech makers have been battling passionately about communism, fascism, socialism, and democracy, our studies of how governmental organizations actually function have forced us to the conclusion that there is little significance to these terms. Indeed, it has been our general observation that not only in different countries, but from generation to generation men go on organizing their governments and earning their living in much the same manner. Notable changes and improvements can be credited from time to time to the scientists and engineers, and in general to improved technology, but throughout history economic laws and the processes of production and distribution display an utter contempt for changes in the political complexion of government. In appraising the many experiments in governmental organization that are being tried currently throughout the world, it is important that we should not be thrown off the track by the circumstance that the various revolutionary movements or changes in government have adopted different symbols around which to rally supporters. The vital point is the plain fact that, once the controlling group gets into power, the practical circumstances of the situation force the new leaders to organize the government according to principles of organization that are as old as the hills.”

— James D. Mooney

Source: The Principles of Organization, 1947, p. 14-15; as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 251-252 ; Parts published earlier in: News and Views. General Motors Acceptance Corporation, General Exchange Insurance Corporation, Motors Insurance Corporation, 1938. p. 8

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James D. Mooney 36

American businessman 1884–1957

Paul R. Lawrence (1922–2011) American business theorist

Source: "Differentiation and integration in complex organizations," 1967, p. 2

“The word 'cybernetics' is still new to many people, even though it has now been an accepted word of our language for some ten or fifteen years. Speaking generally, cybernetics is the scientific study of control and communication. It is an attempt to give an integrated account of both physical and biological systems in terms of their capacity to communicate between different points of the system, and in terms of their control.
There has been considerable research into general methods of communication in recent years, and this has been primarily the work of communication engineers, who are trying to discover in general terms what they themselves are doing.”

Frank Honywill George (1921–1997) British psychologist

George (1958) "Cybernetics and biology" in: M.L. Johnson Ed. New biology. Ns 26-31. p.106

“This is organized crime and there is a network all over the country. It's been going on for centuries and is passed down from generation to generation. The mothers teach their daughters… The psychics you see in the storefront who are dressed kind of shabby and don't have that much money actually are the same people who when they drive away go live in a million dollar house on the Intracoastal and they're driving around in a Maserati… It leaves the victims penniless and emotionally broken.”

Bob Nygaard private detective specializing in psychic fraud

Bob Nygaard: Boca Raton private investigator says south Florida is a hotbed for fake fortune tellers https://web.archive.org/web/20160414094952/https://www.wptv.com/news/region-s-palm-beach-county/boca-raton/a-boca-raton-private-investigator-says-south-florida-is-a-hotbed-for-fake-fortune-tellers, WPTV West Palm Beach (14 April 2016)

“Organizations play a leading role in our modern world. Their presence affects - some would insist that the proper term us infects - virtually every sector of contemporary social life. This book is about organizations – what they are and what they do, how they have changed, and how people have thought about them and studied them.”

W. Richard Scott (1932) American sociologist

Source: Organizations and organizing, 2007, p. 1

“You who represent the more recent accretions to our population, know how generously you have been received. You know how free and unquestioned has been your access to the opportunities of this land. You have been expected to do your honest share of the day's work in a community which ranked productive toil as a distinction rather than a degradation. We have all taken our chance on that condition. Because we have been willing to do so, we have been prospered in material things and, what is ever more worth while, in the things of the spirit. Generation after generation, from the beginnings of permanent settlement here, the country has been able to receive and absorb a great number of newcomers from the older countries. That was possible so long as there was cheap land for settlement, and the assurance that industry could put value into it.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Genius of America (1924)

“In general terms institutions have lost their credibility, not because they don't operate but rather because they operate behind closed doors; they have not been opened to the Chilean people. The national congress has been a closed space for many years, the binomial system has contained it within two political forces and it does not represent ideas calling for transformations, which have been present in our country for many years.”

Karol Cariola (1987) Chilean politician

Cariola, Mujer, Matrona, Dirigente Social y Política: Abrir el Congreso Nacional a la Ciudadanía, DiarioDigital, 2013-08-25 http://www.diarioreddigital.cl/index.php/politica/36-politica/443-karol-cariola-mujer-matrona-dirigente-social-y-politica-abrir-el-congreso-nacional-a-la-ciudadania-,
Original: "Las instituciones en general han perdido credibilidad, no porque no funcionen sino porque funcionan a puertas cerradas, porque no se han abierto a que el pueblo chileno pueda entrar a ellas. El congreso nacional ha sido un espacio cerrado durante muchos años, el binominal lo ha mantenido contenido en dos fuerzas políticas y no representa otras ideas que son de transformación y que han estado presentes durante muchos años en nuestro país".

“Our lives are guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Duty of Inquiry
Context: Our lives are guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes. Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought, are common property, fashioned and perfected from age to age; an heirloom which every succeeding generation inherits as a precious deposit and a sacred trust to be handled on to the next one, not unchanged but enlarged and purified, with some clear marks of its proper handiwork. Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live.

“Terms like "liberty" and "individual freedom" invoked by generations of Americans who battled to widen the 1787 promise to "promote the general welfare" have been perverted to create a government primarily dedicated to the state and the political class that runs it.”

Bill Moyers (1934) American journalist

Moyers on Democracy (2008), Introduction, p. 2
Context: Terms like "liberty" and "individual freedom" invoked by generations of Americans who battled to widen the 1787 promise to "promote the general welfare" have been perverted to create a government primarily dedicated to the state and the political class that runs it. Yes, Virginia, there is a class war and ordinary people are losing it.

“I seem to have come to much of the same conclusion as you have reached, though approaching it from the direction of economics and the social sciences rather than from biology - that there is a body of what have been calling "general empirical theory," or "general system theory" in your excellent terminology, which is of wide applicability in many different disciplines. I am sure there are many people all over the world who have come to essentially the same position that we have, but we are widely scattered and do not know each other, so difficult is it to cross the boundaries of the disciplines.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding (1953) in letter to Bertalanffy, cited in: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968) General System Theory. p. 14
1950s

“But let the word go forth from this time and place that the torch has been passed on to a new generation. A generation that is acutely aware of its unique destiny as the hope of our long-suffering people. A generation that is desperately challenged by the rapid developments taking place all over the world, a generation that is encouraged by all the possibilities of technology, a generation that is determined to earn its place in history; a generation of hope.”

Bukola Saraki (1962) Nigerian politician

Inaugural Address (2003)

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James D. Mooney 36

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