Quotes about effect
page 23

Arthur Schopenhauer photo
René Guénon photo
Margaret Mead photo
George Borrow photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
William Hazlitt photo

“Indeed some degree of affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body; we must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

" On Cant and Hypocrisy http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Hazlitt/CantHypocrisy.htm", London Weekly Review, (6 December 1828)
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)

Sam Harris photo
Kanō Jigorō photo
Jason Blum photo
Gulzarilal Nanda photo
Ron Paul photo

“Most often, our messing around and meddling in the affairs of other countries have unintended consequences. Sometimes just over in those countries that we mess with. We might support one faction, and it doesn't work, and it's used against us. But there's the blowback effect, that the CIA talks about, that it comes back to haunt us later on. For instance, a good example of this is what happened in 1953 when our government overthrew the Mossadegh government and we installed the Shah, in Iran. And for 25 years we had an authoritarian friend over there, and the people hated him, they finally overthrew him, and they've resented us ever since. That had a lot to do with the taking of the hostages in 1979, and for us to ignore that is to ignore history… Also we've antagonized the Iranians by supporting Saddam Hussein, encouraging him to invade Iran. Why wouldn't they be angry at us? But the on again off again thing is what bothers me the most. First we're an ally with Osama bin Laden, then he's our archenemy. Our CIA set up the madrasah schools, and paid money, to train radical Islamists, in Saudi Arabia, to fight communism… But now they've turned on us… Muslims and Arabs have long memories, Americans, unfortunately, have very short memories, and they don't remember our foreign policy that may have antagonized… The founders were absolutely right: stay out of the internal affairs of foreign nations, mind our own business, bring our troops home, and have a strong defense. I think our defense is weaker now than ever.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Laura Knoy on NHPR, June 5, 2007 http://info.nhpr.org/node/13016
2000s, 2006-2009

Igor Ansoff photo

“By searching out opportunities which match its strengths the firm can optimize the synergistic effects.”

Igor Ansoff (1918–2001) American mathematician

Source: Corporate Strategy, 1965, p. 91

Ben Bernanke photo
Jerzy Vetulani photo
Mariah Carey photo
Edward Teller photo

“We must learn to live with contradictions, because they lead to deeper and more effective understanding.”

Edward Teller (1908–2003) Hungarian-American nuclear physicist

"Science and Morality" in Science (1998), Vol. 280, p. 1200

Jack McDevitt photo

“Talking with most people usually involves a search for truth. Talking with congressmen is strictly special effects.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 10 (p. 85)

Thomas Robert Malthus photo
Oliver Lodge photo

“Microscopic organisms may have troublesome and destructive effects, but in themselves they can be be studied with interest and avidity.”

Oliver Lodge (1851–1940) British physicist

Raymond, p. 303 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t80k3mq4s;view=1up;seq=345
Raymond, or Life and Death (1916)

Géza Révész photo

“Ebbinghaus: Language is a system of conventional signs that can be voluntarily produced at any time.
Croce: Language is articulated, limited sound organized for the purpose of expression.
Dittrich: Language is the totality of expressive abilities of individual human beings and animals capable of being understood by at least one other individual.
Eisler: Language is any expression of experiences by a creature with a soul.
B. Erdmann: Language is not a kind of communication of ideas but a kind of thinking: stated or formulated thinking. Language is a tool, and in fact a tool or organ of thinking that is unique to us as human beings.
Forbes: Language is an ordered sequence of words by which a speaker expresses his thoughts with the intention of making them known to a hearer.
J. Harris : Words are the symbols of ideas both general and particular: of the general, primarily, essentially and immediately; of the particular, only secondarily, accidentally and mediately.
Hegel: Language is the act of theoretical intelligence in its true sense, for it is its outward expression.
Jespersen: Language is human activity which has the aim of communicating ideas and emotions.
Jodl: Verbal language is the ability of man to fashion, by means of combined tones and sounds based on a limited numbers of elements, the total stock of his perceptions and conceptions in this natural tone material in such a way that this psychological process is clear and comprehensible to others to its least detail.
Kainz : Language is a structure of signs, with the help of which the representation of ideas and facts may be effected, so that things that are not present, even things that are completely imperceptible to the senses, may be represented.
De Laguna: Speech is the great medium through which human co-operation is brought about.
Marty: Language is any intentional utterance of sounds as a sign of a psychic state.
Pillsbury-Meader: Language is a means or instrument for the communication of thought, including ideas and emotions.
De Saussure: Language is a system of signs expressive of ideas.
Schuchardt. The essence of language lies in communication.
Sapir: Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.”

Géza Révész (1878–1955) Hungarian psychologist and musicologist

Footnote at pp. 126-127; As cited in: Adam Schaff (1962). Introduction to semantics, p. 313-314
The Origins and Prehistory of Language, 1956

Mahatma Gandhi photo
John Buchan photo
Russell L. Ackoff photo
Benjamin Franklin photo

“Here you would know and enjoy what posterity will say of Washington. For a thousand leagues have nearly the same effect with a thousand years.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Letter to Washington (5 March 1780); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Epistles

Koenraad Elst photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“It is not by the consolidation or concentration, of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Memoirs, Correspondence and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1829) edited by Thomas Jefferson Randolph, p. 70
Posthumous publications

Augustus De Morgan photo
Herbert Marcuse photo
Dashiell Hammett photo

“I don't like eloquence. If it isn't effective enough to pierce your hide, it's tiresome, and if it is effective enough, it muddles your thoughts.”

Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961) American writer

"Zigzags of Treachery" (published in Black Mask, 1 March 1924)
Short Stories

Frank Stella photo
Friedrich Engels photo

“How do you think the transition from the present situation to community of Property is to be effected?
The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of community of property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a democratic constitution.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/06/09.htm (1847)

John of St. Samson photo
Roger Manganelli photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Raymond Poincaré photo
Thomas Aquinas photo

“Whether God can make the past not to have been?
Objection 1: It seems that God can make the past not to have been. For what is impossible in itself is much more impossible than that which is only impossible accidentally. But God can do what is impossible in itself, as to give sight to the blind, or to raise the dead. Therefore, and much more can He do what is only impossible accidentally. Now for the past not to have been is impossible accidentally: thus for Socrates not to be running is accidentally impossible, from the fact that his running is a thing of the past. Therefore God can make the past not to have been.
Objection 2: Further, what God could do, He can do now, since His power is not lessened. But God could have effected, before Socrates ran, that he should not run. Therefore, when he has run, God could effect that he did not run.
Objection 3: Further, charity is a more excellent virtue than virginity. But God can supply charity that is lost; therefore also lost virginity. Therefore He can so effect that what was corrupt should not have been corrupt. On the contrary, Jerome says (Ep. 22 ad Eustoch.): "Although God can do all things, He cannot make a thing that is corrupt not to have been corrupted." Therefore, for the same reason, He cannot effect that anything else which is past should not have been.
I answer that, As was said above (Q[7], A[2]), there does not fall under the scope of God's omnipotence anything that implies a contradiction. Now that the past should not have been implies a contradiction. For as it implies a contradiction to say that Socrates is sitting, and is not sitting, so does it to say that he sat, and did not sit. But to say that he did sit is to say that it happened in the past. To say that he did not sit, is to say that it did not happen. Whence, that the past should not have been, does not come under the scope of divine power. This is what Augustine means when he says (Contra Faust. xxix, 5): "Whosoever says, If God is almighty, let Him make what is done as if it were not done, does not see that this is to say: If God is almighty let Him effect that what is true, by the very fact that it is true, be false": and the Philosopher says (Ethic. vi, 2): "Of this one thing alone is God deprived---namely, to make undone the things that have been done."
Reply to Objection 1: Although it is impossible accidentally for the past not to have been, if one considers the past thing itself, as, for instance, the running of Socrates; nevertheless, if the past thing is considered as past, that it should not have been is impossible, not only in itself, but absolutely since it implies a contradiction. Thus, it is more impossible than the raising of the dead; in which there is nothing contradictory, because this is reckoned impossible in reference to some power, that is to say, some natural power; for such impossible things do come beneath the scope of divine power.
Reply to Objection 2: As God, in accordance with the perfection of the divine power, can do all things, and yet some things are not subject to His power, because they fall short of being possible; so, also, if we regard the immutability of the divine power, whatever God could do, He can do now. Some things, however, at one time were in the nature of possibility, whilst they were yet to be done, which now fall short of the nature of possibility, when they have been done. So is God said not to be able to do them, because they themselves cannot be done.
Reply to Objection 3: God can remove all corruption of the mind and body from a woman who has fallen; but the fact that she had been corrupt cannot be removed from her; as also is it impossible that the fact of having sinned or having lost charity thereby can be removed from the sinner.”

Summa Theologica Question 25 Article 6 http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.FP_Q25_A4.html
Summa Theologica (1265–1274), Unplaced by chapter

Theodore Kaczynski photo
Frances Kellor photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Charles Krauthammer photo
James Bovard photo

“The surest effect of exalting government is to make it easier for some people to drag others down.”

James Bovard (1956) American journalist

From Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen (St. Martin's Press, 1999) http://www.jimbovard.com/Epigram%20page%20Freedom%20in%20Chains.htm

Leszek Kolakowski photo

“To prevent the starving peasants from fleeing to the towns an internal passport system was introduced and unauthorized change of residence was made punishable with imprisonment. Peasants were not allowed passports at all, and were therefore tied to the soil as in the worst days of feudal serfdom: this state of things was not altered until the 1970s. The concentration camps filled with new hordes of prisoners sentenced to hard labour. The object of destroying the peasants’ independence and herding them into collective farms was to create a population of slaves, the benefit of whose labour would accrue to industry. The immediate effect was to reduce Soviet agriculture to a state of decline from which it has not yet recovered, despite innumerable measures of reorganization and reform. At the time of Stalin’ s death, almost a quarter of a century after mass collectivization was initiated, the output of grain per head of population was still below the 1913 level; yet throughout this period, despite misery and starvation, large quantities of farm produce were exported all over the world for the sake of Soviet industry. The terror and oppression of those years cannot be expressed merely by the figures for loss of human life, enormous as these are; perhaps the most vivid picture of what collectivization meant is in Vasily Grossman’ s posthumous novel Forever Flowing.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

pg. 39
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume III: The Breakdown

Norman Angell photo
Horace photo

“What the discordant harmony of circumstances would and could effect.”
Quid velit et possit rerum concordia discors

Book I, epistle xii, line 19
Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo
Sonia Sotomayor photo

“No matter how liberal I am, I'm still outraged by crimes of violence. Regardless of whether I can sympathize with the causes that lead these individuals to do these crimes, the effects are outrageous.”

Sonia Sotomayor (1954) U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Reported in Sheryl Gay Stolberg, " Woman in the News: Sotomayor, a Trailblazer and a Dreamer http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/us/politics/27websotomayor.html?pagewanted=all", The New York Times (26 May 2009).

Philip Plait photo

“What I have discovered in 20 years of studying the universe, from here to there to everywhere, is that the universe is complicated, and when things happen, it is almost never like ‘A happened and therefore B’. No, A happened and therefore B, C, D and E, but then there is this thing F, and that had a 10% effect, and that prompted G to go back and tip over A, and it is always like this – everything is interconnected. And so a lot of these far-right fundamentalist religion people, and a lot of these people who are anti-global warming, anti-evolution, anti-science, what they do is they take advantage of the fact that things are complicated, and their lives are based on things being simple – if we do this, then this will happen – if we invade Iraq, we will be treated as liberators, if we pray, then good things will happen, and this stuff is wrong. But we have a culture where people are brought up to believe in simplicity, and if A then B. And so when you point out that scientists say the earth is warming, but we had a really devastating winter this year, then these people will say “oh, obviously global warming is wrong.””

Philip Plait (1964) astronomer, skeptic

No, global warming can cause worse winters locally. It’s complicated. But people don’t want to hear “it’s complicated”, and boy, the conspiracy theorists and anti-scientists take full advantage of that.
Skepticality http://www.skepticality.com/index.php ep. 52 http://www.skepticality.com/notes/sn_Ep52.php (15 May 2007) 23:11 - 24:46
Interviews

Alfred North Whitehead photo

“By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: 1910s, An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), ch. 5.

James Randi photo
Frederick Soddy photo

“It is time to employ fractal geometry and its associated subjects of chaos and nonlinear dynamics to study systems engineering methodology (SEM). Systematic codification of the former is barely 15 years old, while codification of the latter began 45 years ago… Fractal geometry and chaos theory can convey a new level of understanding to systems engineering and make it more effective”

Arthur D. Hall (1925–2006) American electrical engineer

A.D. Hall III (1989) "The fractal architecture of the systems engineering method", in: Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part C: Applications and Reviews, IEEE Transactions on Volume 28, Issue 4, Nov 1998 Page(s):565 - 572

Horace photo

“Often a purple patch or two is tacked on to a serious work of high promise, to give an effect of colour.”
Inceptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter adsuitur pannus.

Inceptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis
purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter
adsuitur pannus.
Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 14

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw photo
Mike Tyson photo
Shona Brown photo
Iain Banks photo
Brian Leiter photo
Thich Nhat Hanh photo
Hans Reichenbach photo

“Whereas the conception of space and time as a four-dimensional manifold has been very fruitful for mathematical physicists, its effect in the field of epistemology has been only to confuse the issue. Calling time the fourth dimension gives it an air of mystery. One might think that time can now be conceived as a kind of space and try in vain to add visually a fourth dimension to the three dimensions of space. It is essential to guard against such a misunderstanding of mathematical concepts. If we add time to space as a fourth dimension it does not lose any of its peculiar character as time. …Musical tones can be ordered according to volume and pitch and are thus brought into a two dimensional manifold. Similarly colors can be determined by the three basic colors red, green and blue… Such an ordering does not change either tones or colors; it is merely a mathematical expression of something that we have known and visualized for a long time. Our schematization of time as a fourth dimension therefore does not imply any changes in the conception of time. …the space of visualization is only one of many possible forms that add content to the conceptual frame. We would therefore not call the representation of the tone manifold by a plane the visual representation of the two dimensional tone manifold.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Marianne Moore photo

“I tend to write in patterned arrangement with rhymes.. I try to secure an effect of flowing continuity and the correspondence between verse and music.”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

Oxford Anthology of American Literature 1938
Prose

Norman Angell photo
William Ellery Channing photo
Vilfredo Pareto photo
Edmund Burke photo
John Marshall photo
Thich Nhat Tu photo

“I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote Search. There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove. I went out and talked to genuinely smart, remarkably interesting, first-rate people. I had an infinite travel budget that allowed me to fly first class and stay at top-notch hotels and a license from McKinsey to talk to as many cool people as I could all around the United States and the world.
I went to see Karl Weick, who had totally influenced my life. I had read his work a thousand times, and I'd never met him. I went to Oslo to talk with Einar Thorsrud, who had studied empowerment on oil tankers. I went to the Tavistock Institute in London, where the leading thinkers on organizational development were looking at why people work together effectively in team configurations under certain circumstances.
Word of the meeting got back to McKinsey USA, and I was invited to give a presentation to the top management of PepsiCo… The time was drawing near for the Pepsi presentation to take place. One morning at about 6, I sat down at my desk overlooking the San Francisco Bay from the 48th floor of the Bank of America Tower, and I closed my eyes. Then I leaned forward, and I wrote down eight things on a pad of paper. Those eight things haven't changed since that moment. They were the eight basic principles of Search.”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

Tom Peters (2001) "Tom Peters's True Confessions" in Fast Company, December 2001 ( online http://www.fastcompany.com/44077/tom-peterss-true-confessions, Nov 31, 2001).

Walter Rauschenbusch photo

“The most important effects of Christianity went out from it without the intention of the Church, or even against its will.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 150

Aron Ra photo
Russell Brand photo
John Howard Yoder photo

“The church will be most effective where it abandons effectiveness and intelligence for the foolish weakness of the cross.”

John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) 20th century American Mennonite theologian

"The Otherness of the Church" (1961) in A Reader in Ecclesiology (2012), p. 202

J.M. Coetzee photo

“This is about a deterrence effect to stop the Syrian regime targeting their own civilians. I think it would be enforceable from the Mediterranean using US French and UK military capability already out there. It would mean the aerial bombardment of Syrian civilians would stop, and it would create space for peace talks.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Speaking on BBC Daily Politics show — UK 'should enforce Syria no-fly zone even if Russia vetoes UN resolution' https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/12/uk-should-be-prepared-enforce-syria-no-fly-zone-russian-veto-un-isis-assad (12 October 2015)

Francis Xavier photo
Fred Shero photo
Anthony Eden photo

“There is now doubt in our minds that Nasser, whether he likes it or not, is now effectively in Russian hands, just as Mussolini was in Hitler's. It would be as ineffective to show weakness to Nasser now in order to placate him as it was to show weakness to Mussolini.”

Anthony Eden (1897–1977) British Conservative politician, prime minister

Eden to President Eisenhower (1 October 1956), quoted in Scott Lucas, Britain and Suez (Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 69

Calvin Coolidge photo

“So there is little cause for the fear that our journalism, merely because it is prosperous, is likely to betray us. But it calls for additional effort to avoid even the appearance of the evil of selfishness. In every worthy profession, of course, there will always be a minority who will appeal to the baser instinct. There always have been, and probably always will be some who will feel that their own temporary interest may be furthered by betraying the interest of others. But these are becoming constantly a less numerous and less potential element in the community. Their influence, whatever it may seem at a particular moment, is always ephemeral. They will not long interfere with the progress of the race which is determined to go its own forward and upward way. They may at times somewhat retard and delay its progress, but in the end their opposition will be overcome. They have no permanent effect. They accomplish no permanent result. The race is not traveling in that direction. The power of the spirit always prevails over the power of the flesh. These furnish us no justification for interfering with the freedom of the press, because all freedom, though it may sometime tend toward excesses, bears within it those remedies which will finally effect a cure for its own disorders.”

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

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)

Käthe Kollwitz photo

“I have received a commission to make a poster against war. That is a task that makes me happy. Some may say a thousand times that this is not pure art…. but as long as I can work, I want to be effective with my art.”

Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945) German artist

Letters of Friendship and Acquaintance [Briefe der Freundschaft und Begegnungen] (1966), edited by Hans Kollwitz, p. 95; cited in Käthe Kollwitz: Woman and Artist (1976) by Martha Kearns, p. 172.
Other Quotes

Margaret Mead photo
Alain Badiou photo
Douglas MacArthur photo
Matthew Arnold photo

“Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive and wisely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

Heinrich Heine, p. 144
Essays in Criticism (1865)

Samuel Beckett photo

“It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet

The End (1946)