Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher
Source: Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
“Spinoza formulated the problem of the socially patterned defect very clearly.”
Erich Fromm, in The Sane Society (1955), Ch. 2: Can A Society be Sick?—The Pathology of Normalcy
Context: Spinoza formulated the problem of the socially patterned defect very clearly. He says: "Many people are seized by one and the same affect with great consistency. All his senses are so strongly affected by one object that he believes this object to be present even if it is not. If this happens while the person is awake, the person is believed to be insane. … But if the greedy person thinks only of money and possessions, the ambitious one only of fame, one does not think of them as being insane, but only as annoying; generally one has contempt for them. But factually greediness, ambition, and so forth are forms of insanity, although usually one does not think of them as 'illness.'" These words were written a few hundred years ago; they still hold true, although the defects have been culturally patterned to such an extent now that they are not even generally thought any more to be annoying or contemptible.
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Baruch Spinoza210
Dutch philosopher 1632–1677Related quotes
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist
Source: 1960s - 1970s, Guest editorial: Wicked problems (1967), p. 141 cited in: John Mingers (2011) "Introduction to the Special Issue: Teaching Soft O.R., Problem Structuring Methods, and Multimethodology" in Informs, Vol. 12, No. 1, September 2011, pp. 1–3
Philip Selznick (1919–2010) American sociologist
Source: "An Approach to a Theory of Bureaucracy," 1943, p. 50
Martin Fowler (1963) British programmer
Source: Analysis Patterns: Reusable Object Models, 1997, p. 6
Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior
Variant: The principle of bounded rationality [is] the capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world — or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality.
Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 198.
“We're not acting clearly, we're not talking clearly, we've got problems.”
Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America
2010s, 2016, June, Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)
Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer
Source: Information and Decision Processes (1960), p. xi
Wendy Kaminer (1949) American lawyer
"6/24/95 Wendy Kaminer on Crime" (24 June 1995)
Context: I'm better at criticism than social engineering, so I always have a hard time answering good practical questions like "what can the average person do?" Of course, there are obvious answers, like the average person can get involved in local politics, the average person can get involved in violence prevention programs in his or her own neighborhood, the average person can engage with local radio and TV talk shows on crime. I'm afraid, though, that's not a very good answer. I'm best at knowing what I can do personally, which is write and think about issues like these, point out problems, and hope that people like you can do a better job than I can of figuring out where to go next. I've always seen the formulation of public policy — and solutions to social problems — as a collaborative effort. I've always felt that my part of the job was to analyze and criticize in the hope that other people might use my work to forge solutions.
