Quotes about evaluator
page 2

“People just have no criterion left to evaluate the importance of things. I think the only thing that would really affect people would be the announcement that the world was going to be blown up by the hydrogen bomb. I think that would really affect people. I think they would react to that. But outside of that, I don't think they would react to anything. "Peking has been wiped out by an earthquake, and the RTD — the bus strike is still on."”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

And some guy says, "Damnit! I'll have to walk to work!" Quoted in Daniel DePerez, "An Interview with Philip K. Dick," http://www.philipkdickfans.com/frank/sfrinter.htm Science Fiction Review, No. 19, Vol. 5, no. 3 (August 1976)

People, World, Guy, Thinking

“The focus of all life is its economy, the mode through which every living creature produces its material existence. I know no other criterion for the evaluation of social life except that of social economy. In society, just like anywhere else, the mode of production is the focus around which revolve all the modes of life: in the historical life of conscious beings, it is also the focus of all modes of consciousness.”

Moses Hess (1812–1875) German philosopher

Hess to Herzen, March 1850, Briefwechsel p. 253
Hess' Diary

Life

“The life force that pulsates in the trees, plants, and animals is the same life force that pulsates within us. The same life energy that gives us the power to speak and to sing, is the power behind the song of the bird and the roar of the lion. The same consciousness that flows in and through every human being, lends its power to the movement of the wind, to the flow of the river, and to the light of the sun. How can there be any sense of difference once this subtle principle is understood? When we evaluate our growth and development in the light of this great Truth, we may wonder whether we human beings have really developed or grown at all. The progress that we see today is divided growth. Only some parts are growing—the world as a whole remains unhealthy. We cannot call this real progress.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Unity is Peace (1995)

Life, Truth, World, Bird

“(Piet Mondrian's) comment was: 'You have a very strong inner rhythm. You must never lose it'. Then we moved on. Piet Mondrian had said something quiet beautiful to me. Hofmann was also excited and enthusiastic about what I was doing at this time [c. 1938] but his comment was: 'This is so good that you would not know it was done by a woman'. His was a double-edged compliment. But Mondrian’s evaluation rides through beautifully.”

Lee Krasner (1908–1984) American artist

Source: Art Talk, Conversations with 15 woman artists 1975, p. 73.

Beauty, Strong, Time

“An analysis of social relations in 2 parts: the properties of 2-person relations, and an extension of the chief concepts to the complex relations of larger groups. Beginning with the assumption that most social interactions must be reinforced to be repeated, the authors analyze 2-person matrices designed to express all the possible interactions and their outcomes in terms of rewards and costs to the participants. Also investigated are: the exogenous and endogenous determinants of rewards and costs, interactive interference and facilitation, formation and evaluation of the 2-person relation, power and dependence, norms and roles, tasks, and nonvoluntary relations. The chapters on larger groups take up interdependence, status, conformity, and group goals. 300-item bibliog”

John Thibaut (1917–1986) American social psychologist

Abstract
The social psychology of groups. 1959

Parting, Dependency, Personality

“To a large extent textual evaluation cannot be bound by any fixed rules. It is an art in the full sense of the word, a faculty which can be developed, guided by intuition based on wide experience.”

Emanuel Tov (1941) Israeli biblical scholar and linguist

The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint, 2nd ed. (1997), p.232

Art, Sense

“Designed as a companion volume to the acclaimed Object-Oriented Analysis, this book focuses on the middle part of the software lifecycle: the activity of design. It shows readers how to apply object-oriented design, and how to tailor and expand the method to suit specific organization and project needs. Readers will explore the major issues in OOD; the role of OOD in the systems lifecycle; how to use graphical notation; strategies for creating design; and hints for evaluating the efficiency of a design created with OOD. For software engineers and other users undertaking real-world systems development projects and designing overall software architecture for systems will find this reference approach to improving systems design indispensable.”

Ed Yourdon (1944–2016) American software engineer and pioneer in the software engineering methodology

Abstract.
Object-oriented design (1991)

Books, World, Parting

“Rosen would still demand, no doubt, an explanation of why the ruling class is so good at identifying and promoting its interests, while the majority is not. But, again, there is an obvious answer: for isn’t it generally quite easy to identify your short-term interests when the status quo is to your benefit? In such circumstances, you favor the status quo! In other words, if the status quo provides tangible benefits to the few—lots of money, prestige, and power—is it any surprise that the few are well-disposed to the status quo, and are particularly good at thinking of ways to tinker with the status quo (e. g., repeal the already minimal estate tax) to increase their money, prestige, and power? (The few can then promote their interests for exactly the reasons Marx identifies: they own the means of mental production.) By contrast, it is far trickier for the many to assess what is in their interest, precisely because it requires a counterfactual thought experiment, in addition to evaluating complex questions of socio-economic causation. More precisely, the many have to ascertain that (1) the status quo—the whole complex socio-economic order in which they find themselves--is not in their interests (this may be the easiest part); (2) there are alternatives to the status quo which would be more in their interest; and (3) it is worth the costs to make the transition to the alternatives—to give up on the bad situation one knows in order to make the leap in to a (theoretically) better unknown. Obstacles to the already difficult task of making determinations (1) and (2)—let alone (3)—will be especially plentiful, precisely because the few are strongly, and effectively (given their control of the means of mental production), committed to the denial of (1) and”

Brian Leiter (1963) American philosopher and legal scholar

2
"The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Recovering Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud"

Money, Way, Question, Thinking

“Critical evaluation was transformed into understanding, and criticism became not an act of judgment but of comprehension.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 1 : The Frontiers of Nonsense

Understanding

“He was reminded of a Dutch book whose moral he often returned to: De Schoonheid van hoogspanningslijnen in het Hollandse landschap, written by a couple of academics in Rotterdam University, Anne Kieke Backer and Arij de Boode. The Beauty of Electricity Pylons in the Dutch Landscape was a defence of the contribution of transmission engineering to the visual appeal of Holland, referencing the often ignored grandeur of the towers on their march from power stations to cities. Its particular interest for Ian, however, lay in its thesis about the history of the Dutch relationship to windmills, for it emphasised that these early industrial objects had originally been felt to have all the pylons’ threateningly alien qualities, rather than the air of enchantment and playfulness now routinely associated with them. They had been denounced from pulpits and occasionally burnt to the ground by suspicious villagers. The re-evaluation of the windmills had in large part been the work of the great painters of the Dutch Golden Age, who, moved by their country’s dependence on the rotating utilitarian objects, gave them pride of place in their canvases, taking care to throw their finest aspect into relief, like their resilience during storms and the glint of their sails in the late afternoon sun. … It would perhaps be left to artists of our own day to teach us to discern the virtues of the furniture of contemporary technology.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 212.

Books, Age, Beauty, History

“Upon finding his quarry, he would learn what he could, make an evaluation, and act accordingly. Then he would tell his superiors whatever they wanted to hear, just as he always had.”

Bradley Denton (1958) American science fiction author

Source: Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede (1991), p. 63

Learning

“I don't understand quite a good deal of what is said by Art-Language, but I admire the investigatory energies, the tireless spade-work (not calling one one), the full commitment to the reestablishment of a valid language by which to discuss art and the occasional humour in their writings. The chaos in their reasons fascinates me, but it is also irritating to be unequipped to evaluate their work. I don't know how it is or if it is evaluated by adepts in philosophy as philosophy, but I find it infuriating to have to take them on faith.”

Lucy R. Lippard (1937) American art curator

Source: Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (1973), p.151.

Faith, Art, Understanding

“I did not call him "Fritz." To me he remained always "Professor Hayek," despite his own graciousness in treating me as a peer. I shall not attempt to evaluate Professor Hayek's monumental contribution to our understanding of the events of this turbulent century, to the influence of his ideas on these events themselves or even to the development of economic theory in a strictly scientific sense.”

James M. Buchanan (1919–2013) American economist

"I did not call him “Fritz”: Personal recollections of Professor F. A. v. Hayek." Constitutional Political Economy 3.2 (1992): 129-135.

Idea, Understanding, Sense

“It will be seen that what I desire of a poem is a clear understanding of motive, and a just evaluation of feeling; the justice of the evaluation persisting even into the sound of the least important syllable. Such a poem is a perfect and complete act of the spirit; it calls upon the full life of the spirit; it is difficult of attainment, but I am aware of no good reason to be contented with less.”

Yvor Winters (1900–1968) American poet and literary critic

The Influence of Meter on Poetic Convention : Section III : The Scansion of Free Verse
Primitivism and Decadence : A Study of American Experimental Poetry (1937)

Life, Justice, Feeling, Motivation

“Mr. Hoover's presidency was drawing to a close and Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of the most dynamic grave diggers of the Western world, succeeded on a platform not dissimilar to that of his predecessor. Though Mr. Roosevelt belonged to the Democratic party, his social background indisposed him for a time to leftist policies, both national and international. But his wife (from another branch of the Roosevelt family) was more in tune with leftist ideas, undoubtedly the aftereffect of higher feminine education in the United States. Whereas Mr. Roosevelt played his politics by ear, his wife, who wielded considerable influence, was ideologically far more consistent. Mr. Roosevelt, moreover, had but the scantiest education for his task; he hardly knew Europe, and his knowledge of foreign languages was as modest as his acquaintance with the mentality of other nations. Largely ignorant himself, and profoundly anti-intellectual, he had no way of judging, evaluating, and coordinating expert opinion. Even worse, perhaps, his sense of objective truth was gravely impaired. His handicap was by no means primarily of a physical nature.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Source: Leftism Revisited (1990), pp. 230-231

Truth, World, Education, Family

“Proper evaluations of words and letters in their phonetic and associated sense can bring the people of earth to the clear light of pure cosmic wisdom.”

Sun Ra (1914–1993) American jazz composer and bandleader

Liner notes for Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy (1966)

Wisdom, People, Sense, Light

“There comes a time when one must stop suggesting and evaluating new solutions, and get on with the job of analyzing and implementing one pretty good solution.”

Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer

Cited in: " Joke, Anecdotes, etc http://www.moshe-online.com/worms/jokes/jokes.html" by Moshe Sniedovich, 2013 Principles of Operations Research (1975)

Time

“Every religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according to friend and enemy. The political does not reside in the battle itself, which. possesses its own technical, psychological, and military laws, but in the mode of behavior which is determined by this possibility, by clearly evaluating the concrete situation and thereby being able to distinguish correctly the real friend and the real enemy.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

Law, Behavior, Strong

“Within image theory (e. g., Beach, 1990; Mitchell & Beach, 1990), it is suggested that important components of decision-making processes are the different “images” that a person may use to evaluate choice options. Images may represent a person's principles, goals, or plans. Decision options may then match or not match these images and be adopted, rejected, considered further, depending on circumstances.”

Michael Hogg (1954) Australian psychologist

Deborah J. Terry, Michael A. Hogg. Attitudes, Behavior, and Social Context: The Role of Norms and Group Membership. 1999

Decision, Dependency, Personality

“In our online descriptions and program literature we describe the cloisters as a public sphere for networked interaction, the gathering place for students, professors, and librarians engaged in planning, evaluating, or reviewing the efforts of research and study utilizing the whole range of technologies of literacy. We go further and describe the task of the cloisters as to "channel flows of research, learning and teaching between the increasingly networked world of the library and the intimacy and engagement of our classrooms and other campus spaces". There we continue to explore the "collectible object", which I tentatively described in Othermindedness in terms of maintaining an archive of "the successive choices, the errors and losses, of our own human community" and suggesting that what constitutes the collectible object is the value which suffuses our choices. It seemed to me then that electronic media are especially suited to tracking such "changing change".
I think it still seems so to me now but I do fear we have lost track of the beauty and nimbleness of new media in representing and preserving the meaning-making quotidian, the ordinary mindfulness which makes human life possible and valuable.
It is interesting, I think, that recounting and rehearsing this notion leaves this interview layered and speckled with (self) quotations, documentations, implicit genealogies, images, and traditions of continuity, change, and difference. Perhaps the most quoted line of afternoon over the years has been the sentence "There is no simple way to say this."”

Michael Joyce (1945) American academic and writer

The same is true of any attempt to describe the way in which the collectible object participates in (I use this word as a felicitous shorthand for the complex of ideas involved in what I called "representing and preserving the meaning-making quotidian" above) the library as living archive. An interview with Michael Joyce and review of Liam’s Going at Trace Online Writing Centre Archive (2 December 2002) http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk/review/index.cfm?article=33

Life, World, Fear, Beauty

“The possibility for compassionate concern for others, which is present in all humans, is usually mixed with the sense of ego and so becomes confused with the need to satisfy one's own cravings for recognition and self-evaluation. The spontaneous compassion that arises when one is not caught in the habitual patterns - when one is not perfoming volitional actions out of karmic cause and effect - is not done with a sense of need for feedback from its recipient. It is the anxiety about feedback - the response of the other - that causes us tension and inhibition in our action. When action is done withouth the business-deal mentality, there can be relaxation. This is called supreme (or transcendental) generosity.”

Francisco Varela (1946–2001) Chilean biologist

Source: The Embodied Mind (1991), p. 249

Business, Sense

“In recognizing that words have the power to define and to compel, the semanticists are actually testifying to the philosophic quality of language which is the source of their vexation. In an attempt to get rid of that quality, they are looking for some neutral means which will be a nonconductor of the current called “emotion” and its concomitant evaluation.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“The Power of the Word,” p. 37.
Language is Sermonic (1970)
Variant: In recognizing that words have the power to define and to compel, the semanticists are actually testifying to the philosophic quality of language which is the source of their vexation. In an attempt to get rid of that quality, they are looking for some neutral means which will be a nonconductor of the current called “emotion” and its concomitant evaluation.

“Knowing English is important, but for us Venezuelans I think it would also be important to know Portuguese. For that reason, we should evaluate the possibility of it being taught in our schools.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Hugo Chávez during his television/radio show ¡Aló Presidente! on October 2, 2005.
2005

School, Thinking

“…I established the rule that once we hire an employee, his school records are a matter of the past and are no longer used to evaluate his work or decide on his promotion.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 145.

School, Past

“When we are rejected in the world, we will recover only as we begin to realize that we must hold on to our sense of who we are and not be defeated by outside evaluations.”

Rose Marie Toussaint

Dr. Rose Marie Toussaint http://haiti.org/dt_team/dr-rose-marie-toussaint/, Pearls of Excellence Exhibit, Haitian Embassy

World, Sense

“For one thing, Christian doctrine is from first to last a historical construct. Its content rests on the historical revelation of God in the historical figure of Jesus Christ and on the precise evaluation, by historical interpretation alone, of the testimony that early Christian proclamation gives to this figure.”

Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928–2014) German theologian

Foreword
Systematic Theology

God, Christ

“The idea of objectivity in the evaluation of pictures introduces the concept of rational and scientific assessment. There are some sciences involved in the making and in the study of pictures, but the art itself is finally not a science and will not submit to scientific regimentation because its life depends on the degree to which it is inhabited by mystery, speaks to us of the unknown. It is simply an avoidance of the interesting difficulty to subject the inexplicable to the process of rational explanation. For since the real pleasures of painting and the reality of its meaning exist in the part of its structure which cannot be explained, all suggestions and pretensions at explanation must lead us away from the area of greatest interest. This is to say that such analysis as purports to lay bare the machinery which makes a painting work — makes it a good painting — not only leaves out the most important factor, the element of mystery, but actively denies the reality which is the justification for the art at all.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

X magazine (1959-62)

Life, Pleasure, Art, Idea

“We spent a lot of time discussing cosmology first. I think that was your father’s unique way of evaluating people. You can tell a lot about a person, he once said, by the way they look at the stars.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Axis

Source: Axis (2007), Chapter 19 (p. 235)

People, Way, Star, Thinking

“The problem of anachronism is a serious one when it comes to evaluating materials in the Bible because there is a widespread assumption in the conservative Christian community, ever since the Reformation, that God's Word requires only a good, clear mind, an open heart, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit to be understood.”

Ben Witherington III (1951) American religion academic

Prolegomenon
New Testament History : A Narrative Account (2001)

God, Communication, Problem, Heart

“Roughly speaking, rationality is concerned with the selection of preferred behavior alternatives in terms of some system of values, whereby the consequences of behavior can be evaluated.”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 84.

Behavior

“Systems analysis, conceived in a policy sciences framework, is the macro instrument of the systems manager for understanding, evaluating and improving human systems — which are defined as goal oriented interdependent units incorporating people, organization and some form of technology for control, administration or output.”

Richard F. Ericson (1919–1993) American academic

Richard F. Ericson (1979) Improving the human condition: quality and stability in social systems : proceedings of the Silver Anniversary International Meeting, London, England, August 20-24, 1979. Society for General Systems Research. p. 621

People, Understanding, Science

“Evaluations, in essence, are… ways of being, modes of existence of those who judge and evaluate.”

Gilles Deleuze book Nietzsche and Philosophy

Source: Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962), p. 1

Way

“Many formal organizational structures arise as reflections of rationalized institutional rules. The elaboration of such rules in modern states and societies accounts in part for the expansion and increased complexity of formal organizational structures. Institutional rules function as myths which organizations incorporate, gaining legitimacy, resources, stability, and enhanced survival prospects. Organizations whose structures become isomorphic with the myths of the institutional environment-in contrast with those primarily structured by the demands of technical production and exchange-decrease internal coordination and control in order to maintain legitimacy. Structures are decoupled from each other and from ongoing activities. In place of coordination, inspection, and evaluation, a logic of confidence and good faith is employed.”

John W. Meyer (1935) Sociologist and professor at Stanford University

Meyer, John W., and Brian Rowan. " Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony http://www.sasse.se/akademiska/310/meyer%20rowan.pdf." American journal of sociology (1977): 340-363.

Faith, Confidence, Parting

“A healthy and humanitarian system of education would have placed all these facts before our young men and women coming from the Muslim community, and put to them the following proposition: These are the words and deeds credited to Muslim kings, saints, and theologians by the historians of Islam in medieval India;…. we do not want you to evaluate these words and deeds and tenets in terms of any non-Islamic religion or culture; our only appeal to you is to evaluate them in terms of natural human reason, man's natural moral sense, and elementary principles of human brotherhood without resort to the casuistry marshalled by the mullahs and sufis, or the apologetics propped up by the Aligarh and Stalinist schools of historians…”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Women, Men, Education, School

“The actual effect of Rawls’s theory is to undercut theoretically any straightforward appeal to egalitarianism. Egalitarianism has the advantage that gross failure to comply with its basic principles is not difficult to monitor, There are, to be sure, well-known and unsettled issues about comparability of resources and about whether resources are really the proper objects for egalitarians to be concerned with, but there can be little doubt that if person A in a fully monetarized society has ten thousand times the monetary resources of person B, then under normal circumstances the two are not for most politically relevant purposes “equal.” Rawls’s theory effectively shifts discussion away from the utilitarian discussion of the consequences of a certain distribution of resources, and also away from an evaluation of distributions from the point of view of strict equality; instead, he focuses attention on a complex counterfactual judgment. The question is not “Does A have grossly more than B?”—a judgment to which within limits it might not be impossible to get a straightforward answer—but rather the virtually unanswerable “Would B have even less if A had less?” One cannot even begin to think about assessing any such claim without making an enormous number of assumptions about scarcity of various resources, the form the particular economy in question had, the preferences, and in particular the incentive structure, of the people who lived in it and unless one had a rather robust and detailed economic theory of a kind that few people will believe any economist today has. In a situation of uncertainty like this, the actual political onus probandi in fact tacitly shifts to the have-nots; the “haves” lack an obvious systematic motivation to argue for redistribution of the excess wealth they own, or indeed to find arguments to that conclusion plausible. They don't in the same way need to prove anything; they, ex hypothesi, “have” the resources in question: “Beati possidentes.””

Raymond Geuss (1946) British philosopher

“Liberalism and its Discontents,” pp. 22-23.
Outside Ethics (2005)

People, Way, Motivation, Failure

“[E]conomists are evaluated on how intelligent they sound, not on a scientific measure of their knowledge of reality.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Fooled by Randomness

page 85
Fooled by Randomness (2001)

Intelligence, Knowledge, Reality

“There is much to indicate that modern publication wishes to minimize discussion. … For one thing, there is the technique of display, with its implied evaluations. This does more of the average man’s thinking for him than he suspects. For another, there is the stereotyping of whole phrases. These are carefully chosen not to stimulate reflection, but to evoke stock responses of approbation or disapprobation. Headlines and advertising teem with them, and we seem to approach a point at which failure to make the stock response is regarded as faintly treasonable. … Journalism becomes a monstrous discourse of Protagoras, which charms by hypnotizing and thwarts that participation without which one is not a thinking man.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), pp. 96-97.

Failure, Thinking

“• New General Provision stipulating that the Monitoring and Evaluation Expenses of the agencies mandated to implement or oversee the implementation of programs and projects shall not exceed three percent (3%) of the project or program cost.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

“Poetry merely descriptive of nature, however vivid, no longer seems enough for me, there has to be added to it, the human judgement, the human evaluation.”

John Gould Fletcher (1886–1950) American writer

Life is My Song, John Gould Fletcher, Autobiography, 1937

Nature

“Well, what does “good” mean anyway…? As Wittgenstein suggested, “good,” like “game,” has a family of meanings. Prominent among them is this one: “meets the criteria or standards of assessment or evaluation.””

John Rogers Searle Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language

Source: Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (1969), P. 152.

Family, Game

“This caravan loaded with synthetic merchandise has, however, continued to move forward. Eight years later (1982), it was reported that “History and Language textbooks for schools all over India will soon be revised radically. In collaboration with various state governments the Ministry of Education has begun a phased programme to weed out undesirable textbooks and remove matter which is prejudicial to national integration and unity and which does not promote social cohesion. The Ministry of Education’s decision to re-evaluate textbooks was taken in the light of the recommendations of the National Integration Council of which the Prime Minister [Indira Gandhi] is Chairman. The Ministry’s view was that history had often been used to serve narrow, sectarian and chauvinistic ends.””

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

Education, School, History, Decision

“The art of concluding from experience and observation consists in evaluating probabilities, in estimating if they are high or numerous enough to constitute proof. This type of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than one might think. It demands a great sagacity generally above the power of common people. The success of charlatans, sorcerors, and alchemists—and all those who abuse public credulity—is founded on errors in this type of calculation.”

Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) French chemist

Antoine Lavoisier and Benjamin Franklin, Rapport des commissaires chargés par le roi de l'examen du magnétisme animal (Imprimerie royale, 1784), trans. Stephen Jay Gould, "The Chain of Reason versus the Chain of Thumbs", Bully for Brontosaurus (W.W. Norton, 1991), p. 195

People, Art, Error, Thinking

“One can even go beyond know-what into know-whether. This involves the evaluative structure of the human mind which enables us to make decisions and choices among different images of the future. Human behavior cannot be explained without this further development in the hierarchy that starts with simple information. This actually goes back a long way in evolution. Even the amoeba knows whether to absorb a piece of grit or a piece of food.”

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

Kenneth Boulding (1984) In: Meheroo Jussawalla, Helene Ebenfield eds. Communication and information economics: new perspectives. p. vii
1980s

Food, Way, Behavior, Decision

“Language, intelligence, and humor, along with art, generosity, and musical ability, are often described as human equivalents of the peacock’s tail. However, peacocks afford a poor analogy for the role of courtship displays in humans. Other animal models offer a better fit. In a number of nonhuman species — species as diverse as sea dragons and grebes — males and females engage in a mutual courtship “dance,” in which the two partners mirror one another’s movements. In Clark’s grebes and Western grebes, for instance, the pair bond ritual culminates in the famous courtship rush: The male and female swim side by side along the top of the water, with their wings back and their heads and necks in a stereotyped posture. If we want a nonhuman analogue for the role of creative intelligence or humor in human courtship, we should think not of ornamented peacocks displaying while drab females evaluate them. We should think instead of grebes engaged in their mating rush or sea dragons engaged in their synchronized mirror dance. Once we have one of these alternative images fixed in our minds, we can then add the proviso that there is a slight skew such that, in the early stages of courtship, men tend to display more vigorously and women tend to be choosier. However, this should be seen as a qualification to the primary message that intelligence, humor, and other forms of sexual display are part of the mutual courtship process in our species.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 160

Women, Men, Art, Music

“Assessing the value of information technology (IT) has never been easy. Delayed benefits, unintended uses, business changes, and hidden support costs inhibit meaningful evaluation of individual TT investments. This was true when most investments were focused on the support of a single business process or functional area. It is even more true as business executives ponder implementations of shared technologies like data warehouses and networks, replacement of large legacy systems, and reskilling of the IT staff. Although firms introduce some systems to reduce costs and can evaluate them in terms of their success in doing so, they want many IT initiatives to support a firm's objectives. The value of these initiatives rest in their contributions to a firm's competitiveness, which is often non quantifiable and uncertain.”

Jeanne W. Ross (1958) American computer scientist

Jeanne W. Ross, Cynthia Mathis Beath, and Dale L. Goodhue (1996). " Develop long-term competitiveness through IT assets http://layoftheland.net/archive/web/mis-575/course_docs/topic_4/ross.beath.goodhue.ITassets.pdf." Sloan management review Vol 38 (1). p. 31.

Business, Support, Change, Success

“John Cage said that music is the moral evaluation of sound. We might generalize his remark: when we speak of art, we make a moral evaluation of the relative worth of the various contributions to a work. It is no surprise that many of the participants differ with more conventional evaluations and rank their own contributions as more important than that of the artist as conventionally defined.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Art Worlds (1982)

Art, Music

“If we look at Somalia, Ethiopia and Lybia, to how they're reduced now, and to how they were before, with Italy, I think that this page of history will be rewritten and there will be a positive evaluation of the role of Italy”

Gianfranco Fini (1952) Italian politician

October 2006; cited in Alberto Piccinini, Lezioni di storia, il manifesto, 9 settembre 2008, p. 12.

History, Thinking

“[P]robability as a measurable degree of certainty; necessity and chance; moral versus mathematical expectation; a priori an a posteriori probability; expectation of winning when players are divided according to dexterity; regard of all available arguments, their valuation, and their calculable evaluation; law of large numbers…”

Jacob Bernoulli book Ars Conjectandi

Ars Conjectandi (1713)

Law, Mathematics, Chance

“Not only were the minds of artists formed by the university; in the same mold were formed those of the art historians, the critics, the curators, and the collectors by whom their work was evaluated. With the rise of Conceptual art, the classroom announced its final triumph over the studio.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art & Other Serious Matters, (1985), pp. 247-248, "American Drawing"

Art, Universe

“Our debt to Hayek is very substantial. He helped to establish a freedom-based approach of evaluation through which economic systems can be judged (no matter what substantive judgments we arrive at). He pointed to the importance of identifying those services that the state can perform well and has a social duty to undertake. Finally, he showed why administrative psychology and propensities to corruptibility have to be considered in determining how states can, or cannot, work and how the world can, or cannot, be run.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

"An insight into the purpose of prosperity", Financial Times (September 20, 2004)
2000s, "An insight into the purpose of prosperity," 2004

World, Freedom, Help

“It is the fact of life that a truth emerges out of a conflict between two wrongs. The development of society is through contradictions. Thus the Roopa Bhadrata argument which arose out of our conflict was wrong, in another sense it was correct too. Evaluating the worth of literature we should never confine ourselves to content alone. Mundassery was correct in insisting that form too is to be evaluated. In his own words it is not enough to have perfect content, it must also have perfect form. That is Roopa Bhadrata. Is that not correct? Yes, it is. We accept that we were wrong on that count. Those of us who founded the Jeevat Sahitya Sanghom were political workers. We looked at literature too through political eyes. So we did not pay sufficient attention to the artistic structure of literature. That was our mistake.”

E. M. S. Namboodiripad (1909–1998) Indian politician

EMS As A Literary Critic And Cultural Activist

Life, Truth, Literature, Sense

“The ethos of science involves the functionally necessary demand that theories or generalizations be evaluated in [terms of] their logical consistency and consonance with facts.”

Robert K. Merton (1910–2003) American sociologist

Merton (1938) "Science and the Social Order". In: Philosophy of Science Vol 5, nr 3, p. 326

Science

“I find odd the view that a Government institution is better placed to evaluate "the technical and financial viability" of a project than a commercial bank. It may well be that our banks are deficient in the kind of expertize required for assessing projects but then what we should be doing is encouraging banks to acquire such expertize or to make use of outside, commercial, expertize. I do not believe in any case that a Government machine can provide a reliable judgement on such matters, an opinion the banking members of the committee appear to have shared, for they have prudently refused to commit themselves to accepting its advice. I myself tend to mistrust the judgement of anyone not involved in the actual process of risktaking.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

October 9, 1970, page 117.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Appearance

“Campbell (1979) has shown how the learning theory developed in the tight research group surrounding Kenneth Spence was less powerful than the learning theory developed within the much looser group surrounding Edward Tolman. These differences are explained in part by the relative ease people in Tolman's group had evaluating and changing ideas without regard for the effect of these changes on their reputations and the relative difficulty people in Spence's group had when they tried to do the same thing.”

Karl E. Weick (1936) Organisational psychologist

Karl E. Weick, " Drop your tools : An allegory for organizational studies http://www19.homepage.villanova.edu/gregory.gull/MBA8510.html/DropTools_Weick.htm." Administrative Science Quarterly. v41 n2. Jun 1996. p. 301-31 1980s-1990s

People, Idea, Learning, Change

“It is confirmed that the Armenians should be transferred to the indicated region as communicated in the February 13th telegram. As the situation has been evaluated by the state, the probability of rebellion and protest indicates the need to take action. The increasing possibility of Armenian uprisings requires that every effective means of suppression needs to be applied.”

Mehmed Talat (1874–1921) Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire and Minister of the Interior

March 2. Quoted in "A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility" - by Taner Akçam, Paul Bessemer - History - 2006 - Page 159

Communication

“… acting on Hacker's wishes, the editor of his collected works excluded the author's polemical Christian writings from the compilation…. Many such polemical writings also appeared in fringe religious pamphlets and propaganda literature which are unknown to most scholars…. Hacker's suppression of this material compromised his integrity as an objective scholar, as it misled readers into thinking his writings on Hinduism were objective evaluations when in fact they were, in Andrew Nicholson's words, the work of a 'Christian polemicist'. In his posthumously published wrigings, Hacker is as explicit in his support for Christianity as he is in his attack on contemporary Hinduism.”

Rajiv Malhotra book Indra's Net

Indra's Net (2014)

Literature, Support, Thinking, Appearance

“Modern man, seeking a middle position in the evaluation of sense impression and thought, can, following Plato, interpret the process of understanding nature as a correspondence, that is, a coming into congruence of pre-existing images of the human psyche with external objects and their behaviour. Modern man, of course, unlike Plato, looks on the pre-existent original images also as not invariable, but as relative to the development of a conscious point of view, so that the word "dialectic" which Plato is fond of using may be applied to the process of development of human knowledge.”

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) Austrian physicist, Nobel prize winner

Writings on Physics and Philosophy http://books.google.com/books?id=ueTd4g7pc5MC (1994) 16. "Science and Western Thought" p. 142

Understanding, Nature, Knowledge, Sense

“[Progress in psychology depends] upon keeping in mind that general validity of the law and concreteness of the individual case are not antitheses, and that reference to the totality of the concrete whole situation must take the place of reference to the largest possible historical collection of frequent repetitions. This means methodologically that the importance of a case, and its validity as proof, cannot be evaluated by the frequency of its occurrence. Finally, it means for psychology, as it did for physics, a transition from an abstract classificatory procedure to an essentially concrete constructive method.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, A Dynamic Theory of Personality, 1935, p. 42 as cited in: Anthony C. Westerhof (1938) Representative psychologists. p. 48.

Law, Dependency

“If Christ's followers aren't growing, it is because they are not making a habit of evaluating their lives. They don't step back and ask, "What's working and what's not working?"”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Christ

“I develop a method for the direct and expeditious comparison of the thermo-couple with the air thermometer. A comparison of the data… gives me a criterion of the accuracy with which the data in the region of high temperature are known. This indirect method… is not apparently as rigorous as their direct evaluation by means of the air thermometer; but the indirect method requires much smaller quantities of substance and may be conveniently extended to much higher temperatures. Taking all liabilities to error into consideration, its inferior accuracy is only apparent.”

Carl Barus (1856–1935) U.S. physicist

"On the Thermo-Electric Measurement of High Temperatures" (April 8, 1889)

Error

“The presidential debates should offer the American people an opportunity to evaluate the candidates for president and make an informed choice about the future direction of the nation. The debate commission should respect the two-party system, but should not be used as a vehicle for stifling dissent and silencing voices when many voters conclude the two-party system makes them choose the "lesser of two evils."”

Brent Budowsky (1952) American journalist

Why Libertarian Gary Johnson must be included in debates (August 11, 2016)

People, Silence, Evil, Future

“Steve Jencks: The computer doesn't have any ideas. It only evaluates mine…”

Michael Crichton book Odds On

Odds On (1966)

Idea

“The art of concluding from experience and observation consists in evaluating probabilities, in estimating if they are high or numerous enough to constitute proof. This type of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than one might think. It demands a great sagacity generally above the power of common people. The success of charlatans, sorcerors, and alchemists — and all those who abuse public credulity — is founded on errors in this type of calculation.”

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

Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier, Rapport des commissaires chargés par le roi de l'examen du magnétisme animal (1784), as translated in "The Chain of Reason versus the Chain of Thumbs", Bully for Brontosaurus (1991) by Stephen Jay Gould,. p. 195.
Decade unclear

People, Art, Error, Thinking

“There is an instinctive understanding that the cultural, social and political development of a nation is a dynamic process which has to be given purpose and direction by drawing on tradition as well as by experiment, innovation and a willingness to evaluate both old and new ideas objectively.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

In Quest of Democracy (1991)

Idea, Understanding, Drawing

“People ridiculously overvalue aesthetics and beauty when evaluating products. It's one of the reasons iPods, and, for that matter, Keanu Reeves, are so successful.”

Joel Spolsky (1965) American blogger

"The Road to FogBugz 4.0: Part IV" http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogBugzIV.html

People, Beauty, Success

“I spent a couple of years between eleven and thirteen analysing the social evaluations that were taken for granted, also acquiring a thorough scepticism about processes regarded as causal, and the consistency of the physical world, as well as the reliability of my own mental processes. By the time I was thirteen I was running out of things to think about, so starting on a run of exam-taking seemed all the more appropriate, as I was finding it difficult to make use of spare time.”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

Letters from Exile (2004)

World, Thinking, Time

“The idea of African brotherhood is often just a cover-up for laziness. We must see what is achievable in our circumstances and evaluate all decisions. In terms of regional economic integration, sentimentality is not enough. We really have to be frank and honest.”

Benjamin Mkapa (1938) Tanzanian politician and former president

September 1999 http://ospiti.peacelink.it/npeople/sep99/Pag1sept.html 1999

Idea, Decision

“Its purpose is moral, that is, the evaluation of experience; in the deepest sense, the development of taste.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

Some Notes on Caravaggio (1956)

Sense

“Early in 1943 I got full time war research work… My first project was to evaluate long term weather forecast. Longe range, in that time, meant three to four days.”

Theodore Wilbur Anderson (1918–2016) American statistician

Source: "The ET interview: Professor TW Anderson," 1986, p. 525

War, Time, Weather

“You will not find a surgeon operating you quite likable. You find a doctor trying to convince you that you are in a great shape, that you do not need an operation that you will get better by drinking teas, much more amiable. I want people to respect my work, not to like me. My goal is to have the Serbian government evaluated for what it benefited for this country using existing chances and own efforts and potentials, rather than by its smooth talk, paying court to the people and talking about its good intentions.”

Zoran Đinđić (1952–2003) Serbian politician

Politika, 25.10.2001.

People, Drink, Effort, Chance

“Any empirical evaluation of the relationship between Trump and the white working class would reveal that one adjective in that phrase is doing more work than the other. In 2016, Trump enjoyed majority or plurality support among every economic branch of whites. It is true that his strongest support among whites came from those making $50,000 to $99,999. This would be something more than working-class in many nonwhite neighborhoods, but even if one accepts that branch as the working class, the difference between how various groups in this income bracket voted is revealing. Sixty-one percent of whites in this "working class" supported Trump. Only 24 percent of Hispanics and 11 percent of blacks did. Indeed, the plurality of all voters making less than $100,000 and the majority making less than $50,000 voted for the Democratic candidate. So when Packer laments [in the New Yorker] the fact that "Democrats can no longer really claim to be the party of working people—not white ones, anyway," he commits a kind of category error. The real problem is that Democrats aren't the party of white people—working or otherwise. White workers are not divided by the fact of labor from other white demographics; they are divided from all other laborers by the fact of their whiteness.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975) writer, journalist, and educator

"The First White President" (October 2017)

People, Error, Support, Problem

“The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom. That’s a personal evaluation, of course.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Beyond This Horizon

Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 9, “When we die, do we die all over?”, p. 97

Freedom, Fight, Personality

“I scarcely believe that in psychology data are present which can be mathematically evaluated. But one cannot know this with certainty, without having made the experiment. God alone is in possession of the mathematical bases of psychic phenomena.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

As quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (1955) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 306

God, Mathematics

“Most of the constantly rising burden of paperwork exists to give an illusion of transparency and control to a bureaucracy that is out of touch with the actual production process. Every new layer of paperwork is added to address the perceived problem that stuff still isn’t getting done the way management wants, despite the proliferation of paperwork saying everything has being done exactly according to orders. In a hierarchy, managers are forced to regulate a process which is necessarily opaque to them because they are not directly engaged in it. They’re forced to carry out the impossible task of developing accurate metrics to evaluate the behavior of subordinates, based on the self-reporting of people with whom they have a fundamental conflict of interest. The paperwork burden that management imposes on workers reflects an attempt to render legible a set of social relationships that by its nature must be opaque and closed to them, because they are outside of it. Each new form is intended to remedy the heretofore imperfect self-reporting of subordinates. The need for new paperwork is predicated on the assumption that compliance must be verified because those being monitored have a fundamental conflict of interest with those making the policy, and hence cannot be trusted; but at the same time, the paperwork itself relies on their self-reporting as the main source of information. Every time new evidence is presented that this or that task isn’t being performed to management’s satisfaction, or this or that policy isn’t being followed, despite the existing reams of paperwork, management’s response is to design yet another—and equally useless—form.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

The Desktop Regulatory State (2016), Chapter 2
The Desktop Regulatory State (2016)

People, Way, Behavior, Nature

“In attempting to expose the views of another, one is forced to make one's own view appear infallible and absolute, which is a procedure altogether to be avoided if one is making a specifically non-evaluative investigation. The second possible approach is nevertheless to combine such a non-evaluative analysis with a definite epistemology. Viewed from the angle of this second approach there are two separate and distinct solutions to the problem of what constitutes reliable knowledge — the one solution may be termed relationism, and the other relativism.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)

Knowledge, Problem, Appearance

“To the extent to which the pull that moves me really is irresistible, like an invincibly strong addiction, the normal procedures of evaluation, deliberation, choice, decision, etc. that constitute the substance of our political life are not operating. The same is true of overwhelming aversion. The person being tortured who simply wants it to stop, period, is also not a good model for an agent acting politically.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), Chapter 2.

Life, Decision, Strong, Personality

“We do not wish to “judge” or assess out surrounding merely as a kind of expressive activity carelessly projected onto the world, but we wish to evaluate the world “correctly,” i. e., in according with that it truly is, and the desire to know is directed at determining what the world truly is.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), p. 40.

World

“The trouble is with socialism, which resembles a form of mental illness more than it does a philosophy. Socialists get bees in their bonnets. And because they chronically lack any critical faculty to examine and evaluate their ideas, and because they are pathologically unwilling to consider the opinions of others, and most of all, because socialism is a mindset that regards the individual — and his rights — as insignificant, compared to whatever the socialist believes the group needs, terrible, terrible things happen when socialists acquire power.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Cambodian Road Trip," http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle510-20090315-02.html 15 March 2009.

Idea, Bee

“What can the earth do? There is only self-quantification of teleoplexy or cybernetic intensity, which is what computerized financial markets (in the end) are for. As accelerationism closes upon this circuit of teleoplexic self-evaluation, its theoretical 'position'—or situation relative to its object—becomes increasingly tangled, until it assumes the basic characteristics of a terminal identity crisis.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Teleoplexy: Notes on Acceleration" (2014), in #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, p. 516

“The only thing that makes the modern sciences elevated beyond epistemic procedures seen in other times and other cultures is the fact that there is a mechanism beyond human political manipulation for the elimination of defective theories. Karl Popper is on that level just totally right. If it’s politically negotiable, it’s useless, it’s unscientific by definition. You don’t trust scientists, you don’t trust scientific theories, you don’t trust scientific institutions in so far as they have integrity, what you trust is the disintegrated zone of criticism and the criteria for criticism and evaluation in terms of repeated experiments, in terms of the heuristics that are built up to decide whether a particular theory has been defeated and eliminated by a superior theory. It’s that mechanism of selection that is the only thing that makes science important and makes it a system of reality testing. And this is obviously intrinsically directed against any kind of organic political community aiming to internally determine—through its own processes—the negotiation of the nature of reality. Reality has to be an external disruptive critical factor.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"‘The Only Thing I Would Impose is Fragmentation’ Interview with Nick Land" https://syntheticzero.net/2017/06/19/the-only-thing-i-would-impose-is-fragmentation-an-interview-with-nick-land/ (2017)

Communication, Nature, Reality, Science

“ARTS is a somewhat conservative magazine but it is not uniformly, simply or blindly conservative, and the several conservative writers vary. And I am certainly not a conservative and neither is Miss Harrison. I decidedly disagree with the basic positions of Mr. Kramer, Miss Raynor and Mr. Tillim, though not with some of their evaluations, both of conservative and nonconservative artists. I think Ben Johnson's paintings, for example, are relatively uninteresting and powerless and that the work of some of the dop artists is full of true emotion. uninteresting and powerless and that the work of some of the dop artists is full of true emotion. The conservatism of Mr. Kramer and Mr. Mellow as successive editors lies only in the publication of more articles on conservative artists than on unconservative ones. Neither editors ever suggested to me that the magazine should have a uniform position or attempt to control my reviews, which are often contrary to Mr. Kramer’s opinions.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

1960s
Source: Arts Magazine, Vol. 38, (1963) p. 7

Art, Thinking, Success, Painting

“Intelligence is no human sideshow but an evolutionary main event. The power to foresee, to call upon the past in terms of the future, to evaluate, to imagine solutions, is a power flowing from old time springs. The human mind may be denied the policeman's privilege of arresting this instinct or that. It may sit as no more than a moderator in the eternal instinctual debate. But it is a moderator with unlimited investigative powers.”

Robert Ardrey book African Genesis

African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man (1961)

Imagination, Intelligence, Spring, Time

“In a game, the potentialities and evaluations of alternative outcomes must be taken into account, if the reactions of the opponents to each other's moves are to moves are to be understood or described systematically.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Source: 1960s, Fights, games, and debates, (1960), p. 10

Game

“The assumption that effective cartographic technique and its evaluation is based in part on some subjective artistic or aesthetic sense on the part of the cartographer and map reader is somewhat disconcerting. For example, E. Raisz claims that the “effective use of lines or colors requires artistic judgment,” and J. K. Wright explains that the suitability of a symbol “depends on the map maker's taste and sense of harmony.” Throughout the literature there are numerous similar assertions regarding the assumed subjective aesthetic and artistic content of cartography.”

Arthur H. Robinson (1915–2004) American geographer

Source: The Look of Maps (1952), p. 16; as cited in: Kirk Patrick Goldsberry (2007) Real-time Traffic Maps. p. 23

Color, Literature, Sense, Parting

“More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk.”

Bruce Schneier (1963) American computer scientist

IT Conversations: Bruce Schneier, Schneier, Bruce, Doug Kaye, 2004-04-16 http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail119.html, Human perception of reality, risk and terrorism

People

“Acting in conformity with reason, in the singular, and acting for good reasons, in the plural, are two different things insofar as reason is objective, whereas reasons are subjective. From an external point of view, we can evaluate a policy as being in conformity with reason or not. From an internal point of view, one can evaluate an action as being rational or not. From this difference it follows that only rationality can be used for explanatory ends. It is only insofar as the agent has made the demands of reason his own that the latter may give rise to, and possibly explain, specific behaviors. The assessment of the actor and that of the observer need not coincide.”

Jon Elster (1940) Norwegian academic

Reason and Rationality (2009)

Behavior

“It [the Iraq invasion] was absolutely an error. It's obviously clear the evaluation of weapons of mass destruction proved not to be correct. That's absolutely true and that's why we're not sending anybody to Iraq.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

To Gilles Duceppe during the 2008 English leaders' debate, October 2, 2008: On the Iraq war.
2008

Error

“A divorced man talked about his experiences with women:Everybody is looking for a winner. They're impressed by position and status even if they're not being treated well. They evaluate a man by such things as his dress and his home.If you start saying you want freedom and space, they can't handle it. You can just tell that they wouldn't be there if you didn't have money. … It's really easy to get laid. Just go to a nice place dressed nice—everyone's looking for a well-off guy.Society preaches that you must be this or you must be that. Success has nothing to do with human qualities. I found that it was empty. I couldn't feel a damn thing emotionally. I was numb. Everything was in order, but nothing—no tears, no real happiness, no real sadness either. When you can't find anything to be sad about, that's really sad! I'm getting so I don't want to do anything. I'm emotionally upset by humanity. Not that I'm an angel, but it's discouraging to see that there's only one place you can go. Everyday I almost feel like vomiting.I've always had people crash on me, but I've never been able to crash on them. It scares the hell out of me. There's no one who cares enough. The only reason I'm here is to keep the whole damn thing up. I wonder why I can't sink. It's scary.</blockquote”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

The Liberation Crunch: Getting the Worst of Both Worlds, pp. 146–147
The New Male (1979)

Money, People, Sadness, Angels

“Pure rationality and limited rationality share a common perspective, seeing decisions as based on evaluation of alternatives in terms of their consequences for preferences. This logic of consequences can be contrasted with a logic of appropriateness by which actions are matched to situations by means of rules organized into identities.”

James G. March (1928–2018) American sociologist

James G. March (1994), A Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen, p. 57

Decision

“Learning science means learning to talk science… Talking science means observing, describing, comparing, classifying, analysing, discussing, hypothesizing, theorizing, questioning, challenging, arguing, designing experiments, following procedures, judging, evaluating, deciding, concluding, generalizing, reporting … in and through the language of science.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. 1990, p. 1; as cited in: Bernard Laplante, "Teaching science to language minority students in elementary classrooms." NYSABE Journal 12 (1997): 62-83.

Question, Learning, Science

“Even the widespread resort to shifting cultivation with burning and light hoeing was not as childish as the first European colonialists supposed. That simple form of agriculture was based on a correct evaluation of the soil potential, which was not as great as initially appears from the heavy vegetation; and when the colonialists started upsetting the thin topsoil the result was disastrous. The above remarks show that when an outsider comes into a new ecological system, even if he is more skilled he does not necessarily function as effectively as those who have familiarized themselves with the environment over centuries; and the newcomer is likely to look more ridiculous if he is too arrogant to realize that he has something to learn from the “natives.””

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 63.

Light, Learning, Appearance