Quotes about deviation (129 quotes, page 2)

“Reconstruction is merely a special case of economic progress. If we are to understand its problems thoroughly, we must examine what is meant by economic progress and try to discover how it comes about… Economic progress is not altogether easy to define and is even more difficult to measure. Nevertheless, the phrase clearly corresponds to a meaningful idea. We have only to contrast a savage society with our own. In a savage society, the same customs, the same techniques, the same ways of doing everything, from ploughing to praying, are maintained generation after generation, son following exactly in the footsteps of his father and daughter in the footsteps of her mother, without deviating an inch from the well-trodden way. In modern civilized society, on the other hand, there is constant change and flux; we are constantly improving on the methods of our ancestors, and indeed one of the surest ways to discredit anything is to call it "old-fashioned!"”

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

Source: 1940s, The Economics of Peace, 1945, p. 73

Way , Idea , Fashion , Understanding

“Lucas and Sargent’s main argument was that Keynesian economics had ignored the full implications of the effect of expectations on behavior. The way to proceed, they argued, was to assume that people formed expectations as rationally as they could, based on the information they had. Thinking of people as having rational expectations had three major implications, all highly damaging to Keynesian macroeconomics. …
The first implication was that existing macroeconomic models could not be used to help design policy. … The second implication was that when rational expectations were introduced in Keynesian models, these models actually delivered very un-Keynesian conclusions. … The third implication was that if people and firms had rational expectations, it was wrong to think of policy as the control of a complicated but passive system. Rather, the right way was to think of policy as a game between policy makers and the economy. …
To summarize: When rational expectations were introduced, Keynesian models could not be used to determine policy; Keynesian models could not explain long-lasting deviations of output from the natural level of output; the theory of policy had to be redesigned, using the tools of game theory.”

Olivier Blanchard (1948) French economist

Source: Macroeconomics (7th Edition, 2017), Ch. 24 : Epilogue: The Story of Macroeconomics

People , Way , Behavior , Game

“I suppose that corruption by definition is a deviation, a perversion from the intended path.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

“Since I have talked with many self-styled * atheists, I have come to believe that the true species does not exist, and that atheism, so-called, is either an emotional deviation in the same category as neurotic illness and with a similar causation, or else the denial of the existence of a mythical figure who certainly does not exist.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Preface, p. 15, sentence 4.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

“In the heavens, then, there is no chance, irregularity, deviation, or falsity, but on the other hand the utmost order, reality, method, and consistency. The things which are without these qualities, phantasmal, unreal, and erratic, move in and around the earth below the moon, which is the lowest of all the heavenly bodies. Any one, therefore, who thinks that there is no intelligence in the marvellous order of the stars and in their extraordinary regularity, from which the preservation and the entire well-being of all things proceed, ought to be considered destitute of intelligence himself.”
Nulla igitur in caelo nec fortuna nec temeritas nec erratio nec vanitas inest contraque omnis ordo veritas ratio constantia, quaeque his vacant ementita et falsa plenaque erroris, ea circum terras infra lunam, quae omnium ultima est, in terrisque versantur. caelestem ergo admirabilem ordinem incredibilemque constantiam, ex qua conservatio et salus omnium omnis oritur, qui vacare mente putat is ipse mentis expers habendus est.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book II, section 21
De Natura Deorum – On the Nature of the Gods (45 BC)

Star , Intelligence , Thinking , Reality

“Nowadays, when an artist discovers 'the sky,' it's like a bride who has never done any housework raving about her first vacuum cleaner. It's just not news." (Yet she confessed that the experience prompted her to deviate from a more controlled linear style and work freely with lively, confrontational colors directly influenced by the Southwest)”

Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) American painter

as quoted on Portrait of the Art world - A Century of art News, Photographs http://www.npg.si.edu/cexh/artnews/edekooning.htm], referring to the photo of w:Rudolph Burckhardt's Gelatin silver print, 1960 (printed 2002), Published December 1960; Estate of Rudolph Burckhardt; courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York City
Quote, after Elaine de Kooning was returned to New York from her teaching at the University of New Mexico [her studio was full of energetic paintings of bullfights in Juárez, Mexico, and of the expansive western landscape when Burckhardt portrayed her there.]
1972 - 1989

Color

“The point of one of [Rawls’] main constructions—the introduction of the “veil of ignorance”—is precisely to exclude from consideration empirical information that might prejudice the overriding normative force of the outcome. It is, then, extremely striking, not to say astounding, to the lay reader that the complex theoretical apparatus of Theory of Justice, operating through over 500 pages of densely argued text, eventuates in a constitutional structure that is a virtual replica (with some extremely minor deviations) of the arrangements that exist in the United States.”

Raymond Geuss (1946) British philosopher

“Liberalism and its Discontents,” p. 22.
Outside Ethics (2005)

Justice

“It should be obvious that the criticism of this opinion serves not to present counter-arguments, but to discredit and attack me because I've deviated from the prescribed path. In his intriguing and thoughtful essay on My Race Problem and Ours, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy, a self-described social Democrat, correctly observes that 'If racial loyalty is deemed essentially and morally virtuous, then a black person's adoption of positions that are deemed racially disloyal will be seen by racial loyalists as a supremely threatening sin, one warranting the harsh punishments that have historically been visited upon alleged traitors.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Perhaps this is the defensive solidarity to which Richard Wright refers. If so, it is a reaction I understand, but resolutely decline to follow.
1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Law , Understanding , Problem , Personality

“Islam's jihad is a struggle against idolatry, sexual deviations, plunder, repression, and cruelty. The war waged by [non-Muslim] conquerors, however, aims at promoting lust and animal pleasures. They care not if whole countries are wiped out and many families left homeless. But those who study jihad will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. All the countries conquered by Islam or to be conquered in the future will be marked for everlasting salvation. For they shall live under”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

God's law
As quoted in Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle East (2002) by Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin, pp. 29, 32-36
Disputed

God , War , Pleasure , World

“In the Vietnam War, the leaders of the White House claimed at the time that it was a necessary and crucial war, and during it, Donald Rumsfeld and his aides murdered two million villagers. And when Kennedy took over the presidency and deviated from the general line of policy drawn up for the White House and wanted to stop this unjust war, that angered the owners of the major corporations who were benefiting from its continuation. And so Kennedy was killed, and al-Qaida wasn't present at that time, but rather, those corporations were the primary beneficiary from his killing. And the war continued after that for approximately one decade. But after it became clear to you that it was an unjust and unnecessary war, you made one of your greatest mistakes, in that you neither brought to account nor punished those who waged this war, not even the most violent of its murderers, Rumsfeld.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

As quoted in The Washington Post http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/09/bin_laden_rumsfeld_responsible.html, Osama bin Laden, video, September 2007.

War , Time , Housing , Anger

“Positive feedbacks, when unchecked, can produce runaways until the deviation from equilibrium is so large that other effects can be abruptly triggered and lead to ruptures and crashes.”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 4, Positive Feedbacks, p. 82.

“The chicken that we eat is chock-full of feminine hormones. So, when men eat these chickens, they deviate from themselves as men.”

Evo Morales (1959) Bolivian politician

Speech at the inauguration of conference on climate change held near Cochabamba, Bolivia. April 20, 2010. http://www.eurasiareview.com/2010/04/bolivias-president-links-homosexuality.html

Men

“In literature, science, art, philosophy, religion, in individual and above all in social and political life, we can observe how the line of the development of forces deviates from its original direction and goes, after a certain time, in a diametrically opposite direction, still preserving its former name.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

In Search of the Miraculous (1949)

Life , Religion , Art , Literature

“Digressions are part of harmony, deviations too.”

Dejan Stojanovic book The Sign and Its Children

"The Eye of a Sign," p. 43
The Sign and Its Children (2000), Sequence: “A Word and a Sign”

Parting

“I vow to call a priest, in other words, charlatans, impostors, all those whom I shall see deviate from the line of the rights of men.”

François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period

Je fais vœu de d'appeler prêtre c'est-à-dire charlatans, imposteurs tous ceux que je verrai dévier de la ligne des droits de l'homme.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 71, 27082 2892-7]
On religion

Men

“Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Introduction: What is Literature?, p. 2
1980s, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)
Context: Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur "Thou still unravished bride of quietness," then I am instantly aware that I am in the presence of the literary.

Literature

“My curiosity was in no way cruel. Deviations from the commonplace attracted me strongly, as they still do”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

I Remember Creatore (1948).
Context: My curiosity was in no way cruel. Deviations from the commonplace attracted me strongly, as they still do; and to me the hermaphrodite and the living skeleton were interesting for the same reason as was Creatore, or the resplendent Guardsmen of the bands — because such people did not often come my way, and I hoped that they might impart some great revelation to me, some insight which would help me to a clearer understanding of the world about me.

Way

“In one dim scene he saw himself lying charred and dead; he had tried to run through the line, out the exit.
But that scene was vague. One wavering, indistinct still out of many. The inflexible path along which he moved would not deviate in that direction. It would not turn him that way.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

The Golden Man (1954)
Context: In one dim scene he saw himself lying charred and dead; he had tried to run through the line, out the exit.
But that scene was vague. One wavering, indistinct still out of many. The inflexible path along which he moved would not deviate in that direction. It would not turn him that way. The golden figure in that scene, the miniature doll in that room, was only distantly related to him. It was himself, but a far-away self. A self he would never meet. He forgot it and went on to examine the other tableau.
The myriad of tableaux that surrounded him were an elaborate maze, a web which he now considered bit by bit. He was looking down into a doll's house of infinite rooms, rooms without number, each with its furniture, its dolls, all rigid and unmoving. <!-- The same dolls and furniture were repeated in many. He, himself, appeared often. The two men on the platform. The woman. Again and again the same combinations turned up; the play was redone frequently, the same actors and props moved around in all possible ways.
Before it was time to leave the supply closet, Cris Johnson had examined each of the rooms tangent to the one he now occupied. He had consulted each, considered its contents thoroughly.
He pushed the door open and stepped calmly out into the hall. He knew exactly where he was going. And what he had to do. Crouched in the stuffy closet, he had quietly and expertly examined each miniature of himself, observed which clearly-etched configuration lay along his inflexible path, the one room of the doll house, the one set out of legions, toward which he was moving.

Way , Lying , Dead

“This new fraud is just like the old ones: its essence lies in substituting something external for the use of our own reason and conscience and that of our predecessors: in the Church teaching this external thing was revelation, in the scientific teaching it is observation. The trick played by this science is to destroy man's faith in reason and conscience by directing attention to the grossest deviations from the use of human reason and conscience, and having clothed the deception in a scientific theory, to assure them that by acquiring knowledge of external phenomena they will get to know indubitable facts which will reveal to them the law of man's life. And the mental demoralization consists in this, that coming to believe that things which should be decided by conscience and reason are decided by observation, these people lose their consciousness of good and evil and become incapable of understanding the expression and definitions of good and evil that have been formed by the whole preceding life of humanity. All this, in their jargon, is conditional and subjective. It must all be abandoned - they say - the truth cannot be understood by one's reason, for one may err, but there is another path which is infallible and almost mechanical: one must study facts. And facts must be studied on the basis of the scientists' science, that is, on the basis of two unfounded propositions: positivism and evolution which are put forward as indubitable truths.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What then must we do? (1886)
Context: This new fraud is just like the old ones: its essence lies in substituting something external for the use of our own reason and conscience and that of our predecessors: in the Church teaching this external thing was revelation, in the scientific teaching it is observation. The trick played by this science is to destroy man's faith in reason and conscience by directing attention to the grossest deviations from the use of human reason and conscience, and having clothed the deception in a scientific theory, to assure them that by acquiring knowledge of external phenomena they will get to know indubitable facts which will reveal to them the law of man's life. And the mental demoralization consists in this, that coming to believe that things which should be decided by conscience and reason are decided by observation, these people lose their consciousness of good and evil and become incapable of understanding the expression and definitions of good and evil that have been formed by the whole preceding life of humanity. All this, in their jargon, is conditional and subjective. It must all be abandoned - they say - the truth cannot be understood by one's reason, for one may err, but there is another path which is infallible and almost mechanical: one must study facts. And facts must be studied on the basis of the scientists' science, that is, on the basis of two unfounded propositions: positivism and evolution which are put forward as indubitable truths. And the reigning science, with not less misleading solemnity than the Church, announces that the solution of all questions of life is only possible by the study of the facts of nature, and especially of organisms. A frivolous crowd of youths mastered by the novelty of this authority, which is as yet not merely not destroyed but not even touched by criticism, throws itself into the study of these facts of natural science as the sole path which, according to the assertions of the prevailing doctrine, can lead to the elucidation of the questions of life. But the further these disciples advance in this study the further and further are they removed not only from the possibility but even from the very thought of solving life's problems, and the more they become accustomed not so much to observe as to take on trust what they are told of the observations of others (to believe in cells, in protoplasm, in the fourth state of matter,1 &c.), the more and more does the form hide the contents from them; the more and more do they lose consciousness of good and evil and capacity to understand the expressions and definitions of good and evil worked out by the whole preceding life of humanity; the more and more do they adopt the specialized scientific jargon of conventional expressions which have no general human significance; the farther and farther do they wander among the debris of quite unilluminated observations; the more and more do they lose capacity not only to think independently but even to under-stand another man's fresh human thought lying outside their Talmud; and, what is most important, they pass their best years in growing unaccustomed to life, that is, to labour, and grow accustomed to consider their condition justified, while they become physically good-for-nothing parasites. And just like the theologians and the Talmudists they completely castrate their brains and become eunuchs of thought. And just like them, to the degree to which they become stupefied, they acquire a self-confidence which deprives them for ever of the possibility of returning to a simple clear and human way of thinking.

Life , People , Truth , Faith

“To attain the Way of strategy as a warrior you must study fully other martial arts and not deviate even a little from the Way of the warrior.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Book No-Thing-ness
Context: To attain the Way of strategy as a warrior you must study fully other martial arts and not deviate even a little from the Way of the warrior. With your spirit settled, accumulate practice day by day, and hour by hour. Polish the twofold spirit heart and mind, and sharpen the twofold gaze perception and sight. When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true void.

Art , Way , Study

“Lenin was a right-wing deviation of the socialist movement”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Speech on “Lenin, Trotsky and Socialism and the Soviet Union”, (March 15, 1989) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQsceZ9skQI
Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s
Context: Lenin was a right-wing deviation of the socialist movement and he was so regarded…by the mainstream Marxists… Bolshevism was a right-wing deviation.

“The way the enemies of the proletariat take advantage of every deviation from a thoroughly consistent communist line was perhaps most strikingly shown in the case of the Kronstadt mutiny, when the bourgeois counter-revolutionaries and whiteguards in all countries of the world immediately expressed their readiness to accept the slogans of the Soviet system, if only they might thereby secure the overthrow of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia, and when the Socialist revolutionaries and the bourgeois counter-revolutionaries in general resorted in Kronstadt to slogans calling for an insurrection against the Soviet Government of Russia ostensibly in the interest of the Soviet power.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"Resolution on Party Unity" (May, 1921)
1920s

World , Way , Country

“The worst reproach that Engels could make against the first English Marxists was that they were applying Marxism in a sectarian spirit. What would he have said, had he lived to see it, about a school of Marxists who after succeeding in capturing the state power proceeded to make a state religion of Marxism, a religion whose articles of faith and their interpretation are watched over by the government, a religion, the criticism of which, nay, the slightest deviation from which, is sternly punished by the State; a Marxism ruling by the methods of the Spanish Inquisition, propagated with fire and sword, practicing a theatrical ritual, as illustrated by the embalmed body of Lenin: a Marxism reduced to the status not only of a state religion but of a medieval or oriental faith? Such a Marxism may indeed be called a doctrinaire fanaticism.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

Chap. I, The Beginnings of Marxism
“Marxism and Bolshevism: Democracy and Dictatorship,” (1934) http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1934/bolshevism/index.htm

School , Faith , Religion , Making love

“He never deviated even in adverse situations, instead he accepted that to err or to forget something in order to learn something is not an offense.”

Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) (1919-1971), Indian physicist

About, Pride Of The Nation: Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Forgetting , Learning

“Deviation from either truth or duty is a downward path, and none can say where the descent will end.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

'He that despiseth small things shall fall by little and little.'
Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 115.

Truth

“Madness frequently discovers itself merely by unnecessary deviation from the usual modes of the world. My poor friend Smart showed the disturbance of his mind, by falling upon his knees, and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual place. Now although, rationally speaking, it is greater madness not to pray at all, than to pray as Smart did, I am afraid there are so many who do not pray, that their understanding is not called in question.”

Christopher Smart (1722–1771) English poet

Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell, Life of Dr. Johnson http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/smart.html

World , Madness , Understanding , Question

“Radicals and Conservatives are not at all unlike, temperamentally. They want order, organization, efficiency, perfection. The Conservative or Reactionary thinks these can be best obtained by putting and keeping the power in the hands of a small class. He is afraid that an extension of democracy will destroy form and tradition, which he believes are essential to holding any society together. The Radical is so obsessed by the obvious faults of society that he wants to pull everything up by the roots and start all over again, and build a perfect society according to a blueprint. It is interesting that when the extreme Radicals triumph—in a revolution, for instance, as in Russia—they immediately become rigidly conservative, and punish all deviation rigorously. The worst fundamentalists in the world today are the Russian communists.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Source: Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938), p. 86

Perfection , Thinking , World , Democracy

“You don’t tear up the room because there’s a sweet spot for the microphones, and you can’t deviate very far from that or else the engineer gets mad. You have to act with your whole body, but keep it right in the zone.”

Dee Bradley Baker (1962) American voice actor

Denver’s “Clone Wars,” “Phineas and Ferb” voice actor on working (from home) through a pandemic https://theknow.denverpost.com/2020/08/21/dee-bradley-baker-interview/243747/ (August 21, 2020)

Madness , Tear

“Thou mayest foresee... the things which will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the order of things now: accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations (c. AD 121–180), Book VII, 49

Life

Quotes about deviation page 2

Quotes about deviation
page 2