Quotes about arrangement (707 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“We are just waves in time and space, changing continuously, and the illusion of individuality is produced through the concatenation of the rapidly succeeding phases of existence. What we define as likeness is merely the result of the symmetrical arrangement of molecules which compose our body.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Change , Time

“If a theory of justice is to guide reasoned choice of policies, strategies or institutions, then the identification of fully just social arrangements is neither necessary nor sufficient.”

Amartya Sen book The Idea of Justice

Source: The Idea of Justice

Justice

“Most adults have some childlike fascination for making and arranging larger structures out of smaller ones.”

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)

“Arrange whatever pieces come your way.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Way

“In consequence of my ill luck my life was again made a misery to me, so that I again ran away and went hawking on my own account, but my deformity had grown to such an extent, so that I could not move about the town without having a crowd of people gather around me. I then went into the infirmary at Leicester, where I remained for two or three years, when I had to undergo an operation on my face, having three or four ounces of flesh cut away; so thought I, I'll get my living by being exhibited about the country. Knowing Mr. Sam Torr, Gladstone Vaults, Wharf Street, Leicester, went in for Novelties, I wrote to him, he came to see me, and soon arranged matters, recommending me to Mr. Ellis, Bee-hive Inn, Nottingham, from whom I received the greatest kindness and attention. In making my first appearance before the public, who have treated me well — in fact I may say I am as comfortable now as I was uncomfortable before. I must now bid my kind readers adieu.”

Joseph Merrick (1862–1890) English man with severe deformities

Autobiographical sideshow pamphlet

Life , People , Appearance , Bee

“I'm not gonna be in this room when that jury walks in. I'm not going through this and you knew that, your honor. You know how far you can push me….. You wanna make a circus? You got a circus. [points to prosecutor] I'll rain on your parade Jack. You'll see a thunderstorm. This will not be the pat little drama you've arranged.”

Ted Bundy (1946–1989) American serial killer

During an angry outburst after he learns of the judge's choices for the jury for the Kimberly Leach trial. (1980) video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3OJO90ol3k

“The first statement of the two principles reads as follows. First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both(a)reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter II, Section 11, pg. 60

Reading , Personality

“The Second World War supplied the occasion for the spending, and Keynesian economics supplied the rationale. But Keynesian fiscal policy had political appeal even before the war demonstrated its economic success. For unlike the various proposals for structural reform, such as vigorous antitrust action or national economic planning, Keynesian economics offered a way for the government to control the economy without having to choose among controversial views of the good society. Where earlier reformers had sought economic arrangements that would cultivate, citizens of a certain kind, Keynesians undertook no formative mission; they proposed simply to accept existing consumer preferences and to regulate the economy by manipulating aggregate demand.”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

1. America's Search for a Public Philosophy
Public Philosophy (2005)

War , World , Way , Success

“The peoples' revolution …. will arrange its revolutionary organisation from the bottom up and from the periphery to the centre, in keeping with the principle of liberty.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Program and Object of the Secret Revolutionary Organisation of the International Brotherhood (1868)
Context: The peoples' revolution.... will arrange its revolutionary organisation from the bottom up and from the periphery to the centre, in keeping with the principle of liberty.

People

“We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God….. We must not….. assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

God

“Technology [is] the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it.”

Max Frisch book Homo Faber

Source: Homo Faber (1957)

World

“If per capita was a problem, decapita could be arranged”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

Problem

“Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.”

Virginia Woolf The Common Reader

"Modern Fiction"
The Common Reader (1925)
Context: Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it.

Life

“There’s lots of people will help you with alcohol business, but there’s no one out there arranging little meetings where you can stand up and say, ‘My name is Sam Vimes and I’m a really suspicious bastard.”

Terry Pratchett book Feet of Clay

Source: Feet of Clay

People , Alcohol , Business , Help

“If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself.”

Diane Arbus (1923–1971) American photographer and author

“A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

Life , Books , Beauty , Way

“The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

Source: Philosophical Investigations

Problem

“Accidents did not just happen. From time to time they were carefully plotted, calculated, and arranged to one’s advantage-all, of course, under the cloak of happenstance.”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Source: The Pact

Time

“All political arrangements, in that they have to bring a variety of widely-discordant interests into unity and harmony, necessarily occasion manifold collisions. From these collisions spring misproportions between men’s desires and their powers; and from these, transgressions. The more active the State is, the greater is the number of these.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 8

Men , Spring

“As in poetry, so in prayer, the whole subject matter should be furnished by the heart, and the understanding should be allowed only to shape and arrange the effusions of the heart in the manner best adapted to answer the end designed. From the fullness of a heart overflowing with holy affections, as from a copious fountain, we should pour forth a torrent of pious, humble, and ardently affectionate feelings; while our understandings only shape the channel and teach the gushing streams of devotion where to flow, and when to stop.”

Edward Payson (1783–1827) American religious leader

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 464.

Feeling , Understanding , Heart

“I respect personality; it is an abstract entitity. A certain number of lines and colors constituting a harmony, can be arranged infinite ways. The literary side in painting is a second element of personality; it may exist – it must exist – but only as a pretext; if it dominates, one fall into the realm of illustration. You see that I do not wish to legislate personality.”

Paul Sérusier (1864–1927) French painter

Source: from: 'A letter to Maurice Denis, p. 237

Color , Way , Painting , Personality

“Clearly, if it is possible to have a self-regulating system that implicitly arranges its own stability, then this is of the keenest management interest.”

Anthony Stafford Beer (1926–2002) British theorist, consultant, and professor

Source: Management Science (1968), Chapter 6, The Viable Governor, p. 154.

“Put the date in full. It is another aggravating thing, when you wish, years afterwards, to arrange a series of letters, to find them dated "Feb. 17", "Aug. 2", without any year to guide you as to which comes first. And never, never, dear Madam (N. B. this remark is addressed to ladies only: no man would ever do such a thing), put "Wednesday", simply, as the date!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing (1890)

“Painting is something that takes place among the colors, and … one has to leave them alone completely, so that they can settle the matter among themselves. Their intercourse: this is the whole of painting. Whoever meddles, arranges, injects his human deliberation, his wit, his advocacy, his intellectual agility in any way, is already disturbing and clouding their activity.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Letter to his wife, reprinted in Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne (1952, trans. 1985). (October 21, 1907)
Rilke's Letters

Color , Way , Painting

“The Jew has his other side. He has some discreditable ways, though he has not a monopoly of them… He has a reputation for various small forms of cheating, and for practising oppressive usury, and for burning himself out to get the insurance, and for arranging cunning contracts which leave him an exit but lock the other man in, and for smart evasions which find him safe and comfortable just within the strict letter of the law, when court and jury know very well that he has violated the spirit of it.”

Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)

Law , Way , Cheating

“The Jews represent the Semitic principle; all that is spiritual in our nature. They are the trustees of tradition, and the conservators of the religious element. They are a living and the most striking evidence of the falsity of that pernicious doctrine of modern times, the natural equality of man. The political equality of a particular race is a matter of municipal arrangement and depends entirely on political considerations and circumstances; but the natural equality of man now in vogue, and taking the form of cosmopolitan fraternity, is a principle which, were it possible to act on it, would deteriorate the great races and destroy all the genius of the world. What would be the consequence on the great Anglo-Saxon republic, for example, were its citizens to secede from their sound principle of reserve, and mingle with their negro and coloured populations? In the course of time they would become so deteriorated that their states would probably be reconquered and regained by the aborigines whom they have expelled and who would then be their superiors.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography (1852), p. 496.
1850s

World , Nature , Time , Dependency

“Russia will in due time become a power almost as great as the old Roman Empire. She can become mistress of all Asia, except British India, whenever she chooses to take it; and when enlightened arrangements shall have made her revenue proportioned to her territory, and railways shall have abridged distances her command of men will become enormous, her pecuniary means gigantic, and her power of transporting armies over great distances most formidable. Germany ought to be strong in order to resist Russian aggression, and a strong Prussia is essential to German strength.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to Lord John Russell (13 September 1865), quoted in E. Ashley (ed.), The Life of Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston 1846-1865 (London, 1876), pp. 270-1
1860s

Men , Strong , Time

“I tell you that if natural bodies have it from Nature to be moved by any movement, this can only be circular motion, nor is it possible that Nature has given to any of its integral bodies a propensity to be moved by straight motion. I have many confirmations of this proposition, but for the present one alone suffices, which is this. I suppose the parts of the universe to be in the best arrangement, so that none is out of its place, which is to say that Nature and God have perfectly arranged their structure. This being so, it is impossible for those parts to have it from Nature to be moved in straight, or in other than circular motion, because what moves straight changes place, and if it changes place naturally, then it was at first in a place preternatural to it, which goes against the supposition. Therefore, if the parts of the world are well ordered, straight motion is superfluous and not natural, and they can only have it when some body is forcibly removed from its natural place, to which it would then return by a straight line, for thus it appears that a part of the earth does [move] when separated from its whole. I said "it appears to us," because I am not against thinking that not even for such an effect does Nature make use of straight line motion.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

A note on this statement is included by Stillman Drake in his Galileo at Work, His Scientific Biography (1981): Galileo adhered to this position in his Dialogue at least as to the "integral bodies of the universe." by which he meant stars and planets, here called "parts of the universe." But he did not attempt to explain the planetary motions on any mechanical basis, nor does this argument from "best arrangement" have any bearing on inertial motion, which to Galileo was indifference to motion and rest and not a tendency to move, either circularly or straight.
Letter to Francesco Ingoli (1624)

God , World , Nature , Thinking

“But since, if the usefulness of the legislation, and the sequence and beauty of the history, were universally evident of itself, we should not believe that any other thing could be understood in the Scriptures save what was obvious, the word of God has arranged that certain stumbling-blocks, as it were, and offences, and impossibilities, should be introduced into the midst of the law and the history, in order that we may not, through being drawn away in all directions by the merely attractive nature of the language, either altogether fall away from the (true) doctrines, as learning nothing worthy of God, or, by not departing from the letter, come to the knowledge of nothing more divine.”

Origen (185–254) Christian scholar in Alexandria

On First Principles, Bk. 4, ch. 2, par. 15
On First Principles

God , Law , Beauty , History

“Now, what is 'unrighteousness' in practice? It is in practice behavior of a kind disliked by the herd. By calling it unrighteousness, and by arranging an elaborate system of ethics around this conception, the herd justifies itself in wreaking punishment upon the objects of its own dislike, while at the same time, since the herd is righteous by definition, it enhances its own self-esteem at the very moment when it lets loose its impulse to cruelty. This is the psychology of lynching, and of the other ways in which criminals are punished. The essence of the conception of righteousness, therefore, is to afford an outlet for sadism by cloaking cruelty as justice.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"The Idea of Righteousness"
1930s, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

Justice , Way , Behavior , Time

“[Ibn Battuta’s eyewitness account of the Sultan’s arranging the enslaved girls’ marriages with Muslims on a large scale on the occasion of the two Ids, confirms the statement of Abbas:] “First of all, daughters of Kafir (Hindu) Rajas captured during the course of the year, come and sing and dance. Thereafter they are bestowed upon Amirs and important foreigners. After this daughters of other Kafirs dance and sing… the Sultan gives them to his brothers, relatives, sons of Maliks etc. On the second day the durbar is held in a similar fashion after Asr. Female singers are brought out… the Sultan distributes them among the Mameluke Amirs. On the third day relatives of the Sultan are married and they are given rewards. On the sixth day male and female slaves are married. On the seventh day he (the Sultan) gives charities with great liberality.””

Ibn Battuta (1304–1377) Moroccan explorer

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they.
Travels in Asia and Africa (Rehalã of Ibn Battûta)

Marriage , Girl , Fashion , Singing

“I am presently at work on a dissertation dealing with the theory of international trade and foreign exchange rates. In dealing with this, studies of the intervention of recent years in the area of trade and exchange rates of different countries is of the greatest importance. I therefore hope to be able to begin a six month study tour to Switzerland, France and England at the end of May this year. After having collected the necessary material I intend — if the economic side can be arranged — during a stay of 6–12 months in England (probably Cambridge) or possibly the United States (in that case probably Harvard University) — to work out the above mentioned dissertation as a specimen for the doctoral degree in philosophy and pursue studies in general. I have not yet any detailed study plan. That should appropriately be set up after the arrival.”

Bertil Ohlin (1899–1979) Swedish economist and politician

Ohlin’s application to the Royal Academy of Sciences, January 30, 1922; Translation by Rolf G. H. Henriksson in "Eureka unter den Linden" in: Bertil Ohlin: A Centennial Celebration, 1899-1999, p. 129.
1920s

Hope , Study , Universe , Country

“Medieval corporations owned property, and they often engaged in complex financial arrangements, but in no case were they profit-seeking enterprises in the modern sense.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Ten, "The Middle Ages", p. 305

Sense

“Wounded and fleeing, heroes passed you by, while your face remained bright and your lips, smiling.
You surpassed the bounds of courage and understanding, until people claimed that you knew the unseen.
To you belongs the praise for these pearls I pronounce; you are the giver, I the arranger.
Oh, Sword never sheathed, whom none can doubt and from whom there is no refuge.
Blessed are warfare, glory and eminence; blessed are your subjects and all of Islam, for you are safe!”

Al-Mutanabbi (915–965) Arabic poet from the Abbasid era

From the poem "To Sayf Al-Dawla"
Here 'Sword never sheathed' refers to 'Sayf Al-Dawla', whose name is a laqab meaning 'Sword of the Dynasty'. http://samarmedia.tv/en/video/295/al-mutanabi-arabic-poem-with-english/

People , Smile , Courage , Understanding

“The analysis of variance is not a mathematical theorem, but rather a convenient method of arranging the arithmetic.”

Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist

Discussion to ‘Statistics in agricultural research’ by J.Wishart, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Supplement, 1, 26-61, 1934.
1930s

Mathematics

“It has always seemed to me that the social order was implicit in the very nature of things, and required nothing more from the human spirit than care in arranging the various elements; that a people could be governed without being made thralls or libertines or victims thereby; that man was born for peace and liberty, and became miserable and cruel only through the action of insidious and oppressive laws. And I believe therefore that if man be given laws which harmonize with the dictates of nature and of his heart he will cease to be unhappy and corrupt.”

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader

J’ai pensé que l’ordre social était dans la nature même des choses, et n’empruntait de l’esprit humain que le soin d’en mettre à leur place les éléments divers; qu’un peuple pouvait être gouverné sans être assujetti, sans être licencieux, et sans être opprimé; que l’homme naissait pour la paix et pour la liberté, et n’était malheureux et corrompu que par les lois insidieuses de la domination. Alors j’imaginai que si l’on donnait à l’homme des lois selon la nature et son cœur, il cesserait d’être malheureux et corrompu.
Discours sur la Constitution à donner à la France http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/discours/stjust_constitution_24_04_93.htm, speech to the National Convention (April 24, 1793).

People , Peace , Law , Nature

“The three military arts. First - Apprehension, how to arrange things in camp, how to march, how to attack, pursue, and strike; for taking up position, final judgement of the enemy's strength, for estimating his intentions. Second - Quickness… This quickness doesn't weary the men. The enemy doesn't expect us, reckons us 100 versts away, and if a long way off to begin with - 200, 300 or more - suddenly we're on him, like snow on the head; his head spins. Attack with what comes up, with what God sends; the cavalry to begin, smash, strike, cut off, don't let slip, hurra! Brothers do miracles! Third - Attack. Leg supports leg. Arm strengthens arm; many men will die in the volley; the enemy has the same weapons, but he doesn't know the Russian bayonet. Extend the line - attack at once with cold steel; extend the line without stopping… the Cossacks to get through everywhere… In two lines is strength; in three, half as much again; the first breaks, the second drives into heaps, the third overthrows.”

Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800) Russian military commander

From "The Science of Victory," 1796.

Men , God , Art , Way

“For this is the true following of the Saviour, when we seek after His sinlessness and perfection, adorning and regulating the soul before Him as before a mirror and arranging it in every detail after His likeness.”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

Source: The Rich Man's Salvation, p. 315.

Soul , Perfection

“When I began the following Work, my only object was to extend and explain more fully the Memoir which I read at the public meeting of the Academy of Sciences in the month of April 1787, on the necessity of reforming and completing the Nomenclature of Chemistry. While engaged in this employment, I perceived, better than I had ever done before, the justice of the following maxims of the Abbé de Condillac, in his System of Logic, and some other of his works. "We think only through the medium of words.—Languages are true analytical methods.—Algebra, which is adapted to its purpose in every species of expression, in the most simple, most exact, and best manner possible, is at the same time a language and an analytical method.—The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged."”

Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) French chemist

Source: Elements of Chemistry (1790), p.xiii

Justice , Art , Thinking , Science

“In arranging the bodies in order of their electrical nature, there is formed an electro-chemical system which, in my opinion, is more fit than any other to give an idea of chemistry.”

Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779–1848) Swedish chemist

Jöns Jacob Berzelius, Essai sur le théorie des proportions chimiques (1819). Translated in Henry M. Leicester and Herbert S. Klickstein, A Source Book in Chemistry 1400-1900 (1952), 260.

Idea , Nature

“…it seems to be a law of the human constitution that those that deserve shall not have, and those that do not deserve shall get everything that is worth having. It is a sufficiently crazy arrangement, it seems to me.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 245

Law

“Your values have to be hierarchically organized with something absolute at the top, because otherwise they do nothing but war. You have to organize your values hierarchically or else you stay confused. This is true if you're an individual and it's true if you're a state. If you don't know what the next thing you should do is, then there are fifty things you should do. Then, how are you doing to do any of them. You can't. You have to prioritize. Something has to be above something else. It has to be arranged in a hierarchy for it not to be chaotic. So there is some principle at the top of the hierarchy.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

War

“The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which the mind’s eye must turn so that we can discover some truth.”

René Descartes book Rules for the Direction of the Mind

Rules for the Direction of the Mind: X.379
As quoted in [Clarke, Desmond M., 2006, Descartes : a Biography, Cambridge Press, 67, ISBN 978-0-521-82301-2]

Truth

“Persisting in their original resolve to destroy me and everything mine by any means they can think of, these men are aware of my views in astronomy and philosophy. They know that as to the arrangement of the parts of the universe, I hold the sun to be situated motionless in the center of the revolution of the celestial orbs while the earth revolves about the sun. They know also that I support this position not only by refuting the arguments of Ptolemy and Aristotle, but by producing many counter-arguments; in particular, some which relate to physical effects whose causes can perhaps be assigned in no other way. In addition there are astronomical arguments derived from many things in my new celestial discoveries that plainly confute the Ptolemaic system while admirably agreeing with and confirming the contrary hypothesis.”

Galileo Galilei Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina

Variant translation: I hold that the Sun is located at the centre of the revolutions of the heavenly orbs and does not change place, and that the Earth rotates on itself and moves around it. Moreover … I confirm this view not only by refuting Ptolemy's and Aristotle's arguments, but also by producing many for the other side, especially some pertaining to physical effects whose causes perhaps cannot be determined in any other way, and other astronomical discoveries; these discoveries clearly confute the Ptolemaic system, and they agree admirably with this other position and confirm it.
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)

Men , Way , Support , Thinking

“I squander untold effort making an arrangement of my thoughts that may have no value whatever.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 33e

Effort

“Marriage as a community of interests unfailingly means the degradation of the interested parties, and it is the perfidy of the world's arrangements that no one, even if aware of it, can escape such degradation. The idea might therefore be entertained that marriage without ignominy is a possibility reserved for those spared the pursuit of interests, for the rich. But the possibility is purely formal, for the privileged are precisely those in whom the pursuit of interests has become second-nature—they would not otherwise uphold privilege.”

Theodor W. Adorno book Minima Moralia

E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 10
Minima Moralia (1951)

Marriage , World , Communication , Idea

“Monica Swinton, twenty-nine, of graceful shape and lambent eye, went and sat in her living room, arranging her limbs with taste. She began by sitting and thinking; soon she was just sitting. Time waited on her shoulder with the maniac slowth it reserves for children, the insane, and wives whose husbands are away improving the world.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Super-Toys Last All Summer Long

Super-Toys Last All Summer Long (1969)

Children , World , Thinking , Time

“The provision of a whole new system of electric generation emancipated industry from the leather belt and line shaft, for it eventually became possible to provide each tool with its own electric motor. This may seem only a detail of minor importance. In fact, modern industry could not be carried out with the belt and line shaft for a number of reasons. The motor enabled machinery to be arranged in the order of the work, and that alone has probably doubled the efficiency of industry, for it has cut out a tremendous amount of useless handling and hauling. The belt and line shaft were also tremendously wasteful – so wasteful indeed that no factory could be really large, for even the longest line shaft was small according to modern requirements. Also high speed tools were impossible under the old conditions – neither the pulleys nor the belts could stand modern speeds. Without high speed tools and the finer steels which they brought about, there could be nothing of what we call modern industry.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Henry Ford and Samuel Crowther (1930). Edison as I Know Him. Cosmopolitan Book Company. p. 15

Speed

“Economic growth occurs if output grows faster than population. Given the described assumptions about the way people behave, economic growth will occur if property rights make it worthwhile to undertake socially productive activity. The creating, specifying and enacting of such property rights are costly… As the potential grows for private gains to exceed transaction costs, efforts will be made to establish such property rights. Governments take over the protection and enforcement of property rights because they can do it at a lower cost than private volunteer groups. However, the fiscal needs of government may induce the protection of certain property rights which hinder rather than promote growth; therefore we have no guarantee that productive institutional arrangements will emerge.”

Douglass C. North (1920–2015) American Economist

Source: The rise of the western world, 1973, p. 8

People , Way , Effort

“If only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Eight (12 August 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Life , Faith

“Does the painter imitate the body correctly if he guides his brush without any method, and if his hand is moved at random and the lines are not drawn with art? In the same way you will not put the sentiment of your mind in front of the others’ eyes unless you use appropriate and distinct words, a fitting arrangement of words and the right order of sentences. For, just as we represent bodies by colours, we represent the sentiment of our mind by speech.”

Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) German reformer

Source: Praise of Eloquence (1523), p. 63

Art , Way

“Impressed with a conviction that the due administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good Government, I have considered the first arrangement of the Judicial department as essential to the happiness of our Country, and to the stability of its political system; hence the selection of the fittest characters to expound the law, and dispense justice, has been an invariable object of my anxious concern.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to U.S. Attorney General http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mgw:@field(DOCID+@lit(gw300376)) Edmund Randolph (28 September 1789), as published in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799 edited by John C. Fitzpatrick

The inscription on the facade of the New York Supreme Court court house in New York County is a misquotation from the above letter: "The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government." See "George Denied His Due" by Bruce Golding, in The New York Post (16 February 2009) http://www.nypost.com/seven/02162009/news/regionalnews/george_denied_his_due_155401.htm
1780s

Justice , Law , Country , Happiness

“Men have their virtues and their vices, their heroisms and their perversities; men are neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but possess and practice all that there is of good and bad here below. Such is the general rule. Temperament, education, the accidents of life, are modifying factors. Outside of this, everything is ordered arrangement, everything is chance. Such has been my rule of expectation and it has usually brought me success.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Life , Men , Education , Chance

“The 'Union' arrangements are all a humbug. They reverse the scriptural order, calling the righteous and not sinners to repentance. Let us not be slandered or intimidated to turn from our duty. Eternal right makes might. As we understand our duty, let us do it!”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Understanding

“What a pity and what a poverty of spirit, to assert that beasts are machines deprived of knowledge and sentiment, which affect all their operations in the same manner, which learn nothing, never improve, &c. […] Some barbarians seize this dog, who so prodigiously excels man in friendship, they nail him to a table, and dissect him living, to show the mezarian veins. You discover in him all the same organs of sentiment which are in yourself. Answer me, machinist, has nature arranged all the springs of sentiment in this animal that he should not feel? Has he nerves to be incapable of suffering? Do not suppose this impertinent contradiction in nature. […] The animal has received those of sentiment, memory, and a certain number of ideas. Who has bestowed these gifts, who has given these faculties? He who has made the herb of the field to grow, and who makes the earth gravitate towards the sun.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

" Beasts https://books.google.it/books?id=WQpJAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA8", in A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 2, J. and H. L. Hunt, 1824, p. 9
Citas, Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)

Friendship , Dogs , Feeling , Spring

“However far the phenomena transcend the scope of classical physical explanation, the account of all evidence must be expressed in classical terms. The argument is that simply by the word "experiment" we refer to a situation where we can tell others what we have done and what we have learned and that, therefore, the account of the experimental arrangement and of the results of the observations must be expressed in unambiguous language with suitable application of the terminology of classical physics.”

Niels Bohr (1885–1962) Danish physicist

Niels Bohr, "Discussions with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics," in Paul Arthur Schilpp, Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist (1949) pp. 199-241.

Learning

“I follow the old chess, I follow all the pre-arranged matches, like the last Kramnik-Kasparov match. At the highest level it is all pre-arranged, move by move. You have very interesting, beautiful pre-arranged games being created by very intelligent players, working with computers, working in teams. I have no objections to people creating such games, but they must say these are pre-arranged games, but they must not claim that they are finding the moves over the board.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Radio Interview, January 27 2002 http://en.chessbase.com/post/i-m-finished-with-the-old-che-it-s-rotten-to-the-core-
2000s

People , Beauty , Game , Intelligence

“When at first thought we think of a creator our ideas appear to us undefined and confused; but if we reason philosophically, those ideas can be easily arranged and simplified. It is a Being, whose power is equal to his will.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)

Idea , Thinking , Appearance

“In this way, the mansions arranged along either bank of the canal made one think of objects of nature, but of a nature which seemed to have created its works with a human imagination.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Aussi, les demeures disposées des deux côtés du chenal faisaient penser à des sites de la nature, mais d'une nature qui aurait créé ses œvres avec une imagination humaine.
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. VI: The Sweet Cheat Gone (1925), Ch. III: Venise

Way , Imagination , Nature , Thinking

“Literature is idiosyncratic arrangements in horizontal lines in only twenty-six symbols, ten arabic numbers, and about eight punctuation marks.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Public conversation with Lee Stringer, in Like Shaking Hands With God (1999)
Various interviews

Literature

“A word in conclusion about the relations between the whites and blacks. What must be the general character of the intercourse between them? Am I to treat the black man as my equal or my inferior? I must show him that I can respect the dignity of human personality in every one, and this attitude in me he must be able to see for himself; but the essential thing is that there shall be a real feeling of brotherliness. How far this is to find complete expression in the sayings and doings of daily life must be settled by circumstances. The negro is a child, and with children nothing can be done without the use of authority. We must, therefore, so arrange the circumstances of daily life that my natural authority can find expression. With regard to the negroes, then, I have coined the formula: "I am your brother, it is true, but your elder brother."”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Ch. VII, Social Problems in the Forest, p. 130 https://archive.org/stream/ontheedgeofthepr007259mbp#page/n163/mode/2up (1924 translation by Ch. Th. Campion); Schweitzer later repudiated such statements, saying "The time for speaking of older and younger brothers has passed.", as quoted in [Forrow, Lachlan, Foreword, Russell, C.E.B., African Notebook, Syracuse University Press, Albert Schweitzer library, 2002, 978-0-8156-0743-4, http://books.google.com/books?id=qa-TVXEkY3sC&pg=PR13, 23 June 2017, xiii]
Variant:
The African is my brother — but he is my younger brother by several centuries.
As quoted in The Observer (23 October 1955)
On the Edge of the Primeval Forest (1922)

Life , Children , Feeling , Nature

“The objective of all human arrangements is through distracting one’s thoughts to cease to be aware of life.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

trans. Hollingdale (1983), “Schopenhauer as educator,” p. 154
Untimely Meditations (1876)

Life

“That society is badly arranged which forces nearly all women to be servants.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face
Context: That society is badly arranged which forces nearly all women to be servants. Marie, who is as good as I am, will have spent her life in cleaning, in stooping amid dust and hot fumes, over head and ears in the great artificial darkness of the house. I used to find it all natural. Now I think it is all anti-natural.

Women

“The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted — you will find out at once how to arrange it all.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), V
Context: A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream? I will say more. Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass (that I understand), yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted — you will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it's an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times — but it has not formed part of our lives! The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness — that is what one must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants it, it can be arranged at once.

Love

“Arrange all these results as described, and you will produce a Table, certainly the most excellent of all Mathematical tables, and prepared for the most important uses.”

John Napier (1550–1617) Scottish mathematician

The Construction of the Wonderful Canon of Logarithms (1889)
Context: From the Radical table completed in this way, you will find with great exactness the logarithms of all sines between radius and the sine 45 degrees; from the arc of 45 degrees doubled, you will find the logarithm of half radius; having obtained all these, you will find the other logarithms. Arrange all these results as described, and you will produce a Table, certainly the most excellent of all Mathematical tables, and prepared for the most important uses.

Mathematics

“On the contrary, our difficulties begin only when we set about the observation and the arrangement — the real depiction — of our historical material, whether of a past epoch or of the present.”

Karl Marx book The German Ideology

Vol. I, Part 1, [The Materialist Conception of History].
The German Ideology (1845/46)
Context: Where speculation ends — in real life — there real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real knowledge has to take place. When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of activity loses its medium of existence. At the best its place can only be taken by a summing-up of the most general results, abstractions which arise from the observation of the historical development of men. Viewed apart from real history, these abstractions have in themselves no value whatsoever. They can only serve to facilitate the arrangement of historical material, to indicate the sequence of its separate strata. But they by no means afford a recipe or schema, as does philosophy, for neatly trimming the epochs of history. On the contrary, our difficulties begin only when we set about the observation and the arrangement — the real depiction — of our historical material, whether of a past epoch or of the present.

Past

“It doesn’t surprise me to learn that there is bias and sexism everywhere, just like there are problems of racism and homophobia stemming from the whole notion that we’re arranged in a hierarchy, that we’re ranked rather than linked.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

The Humanist interview (2012)
Context: It doesn’t surprise me to learn that there is bias and sexism everywhere, just like there are problems of racism and homophobia stemming from the whole notion that we’re arranged in a hierarchy, that we’re ranked rather than linked. I think we’ve learned that we have to contend with these divisions everywhere.

Problem , Learning

“A reason that Presidents can't just solve things right away is because every leader in every country is gathering and expressing a very particular set of interests and history and institutional arrangements. And those interests oftentimes constrain what a leader can do, even if he or she wants to do it. […] And so what happens”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative Town Hall (March 2016)
Context: A reason that Presidents can't just solve things right away is because every leader in every country is gathering and expressing a very particular set of interests and history and institutional arrangements. And those interests oftentimes constrain what a leader can do, even if he or she wants to do it. […] And so what happens is, is that most politicians are constantly making decisions based on what they're hearing from their various constituencies. And their constituencies -- they want what they want. They don't want to compromise sometimes. They don't want to understand the nuances of things. And then it turns out that in politics, sometimes making somebody afraid of somebody else or creating an enemy is more successful in stirring up passion than trying to say let's understand this other person or these other people. So there are leaders who I think do a better job of focusing on the common good, and there are other leaders who are very narrowly focused on just how do I stay in power. And ultimately, if you're lucky enough to live in a democracy, then part of making sure that your leaders can act well is the citizens, the constituency, have to also be well-informed and be willing to give him or her the room to do things that may not be convenient for you right now, but may actually be the right thing to do.

History , Country

“I do further proclaim, declare, and make known that any provision which may be adopted by such State government in relation to the freed people of such State, which shall recognize and declare their permanent freedom, provide for their education, and which may yet be consistent, as a temporary arrangement, with their present condition as a laboring, landless, and homeless class, will not be objected to by the national Executive.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (1863)
Context: And I do further proclaim, declare, and make known that any provision which may be adopted by such State government in relation to the freed people of such State, which shall recognize and declare their permanent freedom, provide for their education, and which may yet be consistent, as a temporary arrangement, with their present condition as a laboring, landless, and homeless class, will not be objected to by the national Executive. And it is suggested as not improper, that, in constructing a loyal State government in any State, the name of the State, the boundary, the subdivisions, the constitution, and the general code of laws, as before the rebellion, be maintained, subject only to the modifications made necessary by the conditions hereinbefore stated, and such others, if any, not contravening said conditions, and which may be deemed expedient by those framing the new State government.

People , Education , Freedom

“A philosopher has remarked that if a man knew that he had thirty years of life before him, it would not be an unwise thing to spend twenty of those years in mapping out a plan of living, and putting himself under rule; for he would do more with the ten well-arranged years than with the whole thirty if he spent them at random. There is much truth in that saying. A man will do little by firing off his gun if he has not learned to take aim.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

A Good Start: A Book for Young Men and Women, (1898)

Truth , Life , Learning

“But the conflict has not ended and the fight between the two rival forces-capitalism and socialism-goes on. There can be no permanent compromise between the two although there have been, and there may be in the future, temporary arrangements and treaties between the two. Russia and communism stand at one pole, and the great capitalist countries of Western Europe and America stand at the other. Between the two, the liberals, the moderates, and the centre parties are disappearing everywhere.”

Jawaharlal Nehru book Glimpses of World History

Glimpses of World History (1949)

Fight , Future , Country , Communication

“Where speculation ends — in real life — there real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real knowledge has to take place. When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of activity loses its medium of existence. At the best its place can only be taken by a summing-up of the most general results, abstractions which arise from the observation of the historical development of men. Viewed apart from real history, these abstractions have in themselves no value whatsoever. They can only serve to facilitate the arrangement of historical material, to indicate the sequence of its separate strata. But they by no means afford a recipe or schema, as does philosophy, for neatly trimming the epochs of history. On the contrary, our difficulties begin only when we set about the observation and the arrangement — the real depiction — of our historical material, whether of a past epoch or of the present.”

Karl Marx book The German Ideology

Source: The German Ideology (1845-1846), Vol. I, Part 1, [The Materialist Conception of History].

History , Past , Knowledge , Reality

“The 'Union' arrangements are all a humbug. They reverse the scriptural order, calling the righteous and not sinners to repentance. Let us not be slandered or intimidated to turn from our duty. Eternal right makes might. As we understand our duty, let us do it!”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Understanding

“Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day- like writing a poem or saying a prayer.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Source: Gift from the Sea

Flowers , Sense

“One could describe Design as a plan for arranging elements to accomplish a particular purpose.”

Charles Eames (1907–1978) American designer, half of duo the Eames

In answer of the question: What is your definition of Design?
Design Q & A with Charles Eames, 1972

“Making Room:
When I first met him, I knew in a moment I would have to spend the next few days re-arranging my mind so there'd be room for him to stay.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

“It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

“Weren’t all books ultimately related? After all, the same letters filled them, just arranged in a different order. Which meant that, in a certain way, every book was contained in every other!”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkdeath

Books , Way

“There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and woman to fill our day;
But when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers & Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Men , Dogs , Way , Nature

“The stems stood tall and straight, one series arranged in a single line, the other in a crudely shaped heart, the final one in the shape of the letter U. I love you.”

Lurlene McDaniel (1944) American writer

Source: Don't Die, My Love

Love , Heart

“Someone with an obsession for arranging things in alphabetical order was an abcedist, whereas someone with an obsession for arranging them in reverse alphabetical order was a zyxedist.”

Walter Moers book The City of Dreaming Books

Source: The City of Dreaming Books

“To live your best life now, you must learn to trust God’s timing, you may not think He’s working, but you can be sure that right now, behind the scenes, God is arranging all the pieces to come together to work out His plan for your life.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

Life , God , Thinking , Learning

“What a marvelous cooperative arrangement - plants and animals each inhaling each other's exhalations, a kind of planet-wide mutual mouth-to-stoma resuscitation, the entire elegant cycle powered by a star 150 million kilometers away.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Star , Animals

“We must never forget to pray, and to ask God to remember us when He is arranging things, so that we too may feel safe and have no anxiety about what is going to happen.”

Johanna Spyri book Heidi

Source: Heidi

God , Feeling , Forgetting

“There’s more to honesty than … than an arrangement of words. They say faeries can’t lie, but you lie in your intentions, your attitude, your demeanor”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Lie

“Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else, but only itself.”

Lorrie Moore Birds of America

Source: Birds of America

Life , Sadness

“When Vishous pushed open the door to the exam room, he got a gander at the kind of seating arrangement that made him think fondly of castration.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Unleashed

Thinking

“I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Source: An Autobiography

Children , School , Idea

“If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“every story written is
marks upon a page
The same marks,
repeated, only
differently arranged”

Max Barry (1973) Australian writer

Source: Lexicon

“The main effort of arranging your life should be to progressively reduce the amount of time required to decently maintain yourself so that you can have all the time you want for reading.”

Norman Rush (1933) American writer

Life , Effort , Time , Reading

“The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.”

Christopher Hitchens Mortality

Source: Mortality

God , Thinking

“Well, I would have struck him, but I would have had to get up. You have no notion how difficult it is to arrange skirts when sitting down; it took me five minutes together the first time.”

Naomi Novik book His Majesty's Dragon

Source: His Majesty's Dragon

Time

“Fine. Somebody else can arrange to get the stupid goat knocked up.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Stupidity

“You owe the companies nothing. You especially don't owe them any courtesy. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

taken from 'Brandalism' in the book 'Cut It Out' (inspired from Sean Tejaratchi's piece in Crap Hound No.6, July 1999.) Source http://readingfrenzy.com/ledger/2012/03/taking_the_piss_conclusion
Other sources
Source: Wall and Piece
Context: People are taking the piss out of you every day. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.

World