“Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.”

Epistle I, To Lord Cobham (1734), line 150
Moral Essays (1731–1735)

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Alexander Pope 158
eighteenth century English poet 1688–1744

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“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
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My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.”

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“The twigs will be tied together in a neater and stronger bundle if they are all the same size and length. That’s fascism.”

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De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: The twigs will be tied together in a neater and stronger bundle if they are all the same size and length. That’s fascism. It suggests that you have two contrary organisational principles involved … One is a kind of linear, meccano-like organisation – tie up all the sticks, make sure they are the same length, and you have a brick wall or something. The other one – anarchy – is a more fractal more natural more human organisational system in that it organises society in much the same way that we organise our personalities. Where it is purely the interplay of neurons – we haven’t got a king neuron that tells all the other neurons what to do. It seems to me to be a more emotionally natural way of working with other people.

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