Quotes about facility (203 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“To achieve this, we have to distinctively promote continuing and lifelong education, the form of education which is responsive to individual needs and preferences. With educational facilities and a variety of educational programs available, people can make use of the learning centre as a place to acquire technical skills or knowledge adaptive to their work and daily life activities.”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001221/122102Eo.pdf Page53-56
Education for All People and Education for Life

Life , People , Education , Knowledge

“Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity.”

Alan Turing Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals

"Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals," section 11: The purpose of ordinal logics (1938), published in Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, series 2, vol. 45 (1939)
In a footnote to the first sentence, Turing added: "We are leaving out of account that most important faculty which distinguishes topics of interest from others; in fact, we are regarding the function of the mathematician as simply to determine the truth or falsity of propositions."
Context: Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity. The activity of the intuition consists in making spontaneous judgements which are not the result of conscious trains of reasoning... The exercise of ingenuity in mathematics consists in aiding the intuition through suitable arrangements of propositions, and perhaps geometrical figures or drawings.

Exercises , Mathematics

“The failure of a free press in most countries is usually blamed on the readers. Every nation gets the government—and the press—it deserves. This is too facile a remark. The people deserve better in most governments and press. Readers, in millions of cases, have no way of finding out whether their newspapers are fair or not, honest or distorted, truthful or colored….”

George Seldes (1890–1995) American journalist

Lords of the Press (1938)
Incorporates the famous observation of Joseph de Maistre that "every nation gets the government it deserves."

People , Truth , Color , Way

“The fatal facility of the octosyllabic verse.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Dedication.
The Corsair (1814)

“What India has been, the whole world is now. The whole world is becoming one country through scientific facility. And the moment is arriving when you also must find a basis of unity which is not political. If India can offer to the world her solution, it will be a contribution to humanity. There is only one history — the history of Man. All national histories are merely chapters in the larger one.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

"Nationalism in the West", 1917. Reprinted in Rabindranath Tagore and Mohit K. Ray, Essays (2007, p. 492).

World , History , Country

“I find poetic links, the logic of poetry in cinema, extraordinarily pleasing. They seem to me perfectly appropriate to the potential of cinema as the most truthful and poetic of art forms. Certainly I am more at home with them than with traditional theatrical writing which links images through the linear rigid logical development of plot. That sort of fussily correct way of linking events usually involves arbitrarily forcing them into sequence in obedience to some abstract notion of order. And even when this is not so, even when the plot is governed by the characters, one finds that the links which hold it together rest on a facile interpretation of life's complexities.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Sculpting in Time (1986)

Life , Truth , Art , Way

“A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones.”

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

1850s, Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society (1859)

Problem , Reading

“Chemical signs ought to be letters, for the greater facility of writing, and not to disfigure a printed book … I shall take therefore for the chemical sign, the initial letter of the Latin name of each elementary substance: but as several have the same initial letter, I shall distinguish them in the following manner:— 1. In the class which I shall call metalloids, I shall employ the initial letter only, even when this letter is common to the metalloid and to some metal. 2. In the class of metals, I shall distinguish those that have the same initials with another metal, or a metalloid, by writing the first two letters of the word. 3. If the first two letters be common to two metals, I shall, in that case, add to the initial letter the first consonant which they have not in common: for example, S = sulphur, Si = silicium, St = stibium (antimony), Sn = stannum (tin), C = carbonicum, Co = colbaltum (colbalt), Cu = cuprum (copper), O = oxygen, Os = osmium, &c.”

Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779–1848) Swedish chemist

Jöns Jacob Berzelius, Essay on the Cause of Chemical Proportions, and on some circumstances relating to them: together with a short and easy method of expressing them', Annals of Philosophy, 1814, 3,51-2.

Books

“The present age has witnessed an extraordinary increase of a thinking public, by the facilities afforded to the diffusion of reading; the former happy resignation to ignorance begins to make way for a state of half-enlightenment, and few persons are willing to remain in the condition in which their birth has placed then.”

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

Prefatory Remarks
The Philosophical Letters

Age , Way , Birth , Thinking

“Activities that improve human capabilities [can be divided into] five major categories: (1) health facilities and services, broadly conceived to include all expenditures that affect the life expectancy, strength and stamina, and the vigor and vitality of a people; (2) On-the job training, including old-style apprenticeship organized by firms; (3) formally organized education at elementary, secondary and higher levels; (4) study programs for adults that are not organized by firms, including extension programs in agriculture; (5) Migration of individuals and families to adjust to changing job opportunities.”

Theodore Schultz (1902–1998) American economist

Source: "Investment in human capital," 1961, p. 9

Life , People , Health , Education

“In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle which it must never outstep, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars, with the same facility, rapidity, and certainty as we now make the voyage from Liverpool to New York!”

Jules Verne book From the Earth to the Moon

À en croire certains esprits bornés, — c'est le qualificatif qui leur convient, — l'humanité serait renfermée dans un cercle de Popilius qu'elle ne saurait franchir, et condamnée à végéter sur ce globe sans jamais pouvoir s'élancer dans les espaces planétaires! Il n'en est rien! On va aller à la Lune, on ira aux planètes, on ira aux étoiles, comme on va aujourd'hui de Liverpool à New York, facilement, rapidement, sûrement, et l'océan atmosphérique sera bientôt traversé comme les océans de la Lune!
Tr. Walter James Miller (1978)
Variant: If we are to believe certain narrow minded people — and what else can we call them? — humanity is confined within a circle of Popilius from which there is no escape, condemned to vegetate upon this globe, never able to venture into interplanetary space! That's not so! We are going to the moon, we shall go to the planets, we shall travel to the stars just as today we go from Liverpool to New York, easily, rapidly, surely, and the oceans of space will be crossed like the seas of the moon.
Source: From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Ch. XIX: A Monster Meeting (Charles Scribner's Sons "Uniform Edition", 1890, p. 93)

People , Travel , Star

“José Martí once said, “Liberty is the right of every man to be honest.” Today, I am being honest with you. We can never erase the history between us, but we believe that you should be empowered to live with dignity and self-determination. Cubans have a saying about daily life: “No es facil” –- it’s not easy. Today, the United States wants to be a partner in making the lives of ordinary Cubans a little bit easier, more free, more prosperous.”

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

2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)
Context: To the Cuban people, America extends a hand of friendship. Some of you have looked to us as a source of hope, and we will continue to shine a light of freedom. Others have seen us as a former colonizer intent on controlling your future. José Martí once said, “Liberty is the right of every man to be honest.” Today, I am being honest with you. We can never erase the history between us, but we believe that you should be empowered to live with dignity and self-determination. Cubans have a saying about daily life: “No es facil” –- it’s not easy. Today, the United States wants to be a partner in making the lives of ordinary Cubans a little bit easier, more free, more prosperous.
To those who have supported these measures, I thank you for being partners in our efforts. In particular, I want to thank His Holiness Pope Francis, whose moral example shows us the importance of pursuing the world as it should be, rather than simply settling for the world as it is; the government of Canada, which hosted our discussions with the Cuban government; and a bipartisan group of congressmen who have worked tirelessly for Alan Gross’s release, and for a new approach to advancing our interests and values in Cuba.

Life , History

“The years since the mid-1970s have been the most frustrating in the history of particle physics. We are paying the price of our own success: theory has advanced so far that further progress will require the study of processes at energies far beyond the reach of existing facilities. In order to break our of this impasse, physicists began in 1982 to develop plans for a scientific project of unprecedented size and cost, known as the Superconducting Super Collider.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

page 4, 2nd edition https://books.google.com/books?id=Qd0MEtsBr7oC&pg=PA4
Dreams of a Final Theory (1992; 2nd edition 1994)

Study , History , Success

“If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA’s state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts…That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused. That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it. That loneliness is not a function of solitude. That logical validity is not a guarantee of truth. That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds. That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them. That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness. That it is possible to fall asleep during an anxiety attack. That concentrating intently on anything is very hard work. That 99% of compulsive thinkers’ thinking is about themselves; that 99% of this self-directed thinking consists of imagining and then getting ready for things that are going to happen to them; and then, weirdly, that if they stop to think about it, that 100% of the things they spend 99% of their time and energy imagining and trying to prepare for all the contingencies and consequences of are never good. In short that 99% of the head’s thinking activity consists of trying to scare the everliving shit out of itself. That it is possible to make rather tasty poached eggs in a microwave oven. That some people’s moms never taught them to cover up or turn away when they sneeze. That the people to be the most frightened of are the people who are the most frightened. That it takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak. That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable. That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid. That having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear. That trying to dance sober is a whole different kettle of fish. That different people have radically different ideas of basic personal hygiene. That, perversely, it is often more fun to want something than to have it. That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it’s almost its own form of intoxicating buzz. That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused. That it is permissible to want. That everybody is identical in their unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else. That this isn’t necessarily perverse. That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Infinite Jest (1996)

Hurt , Imagination , Housing , Personality

“So likewise, a passionate attachment of one Nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite Nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest, in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite Nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the Nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained; and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, (who devote themselves to the favorite nation,) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.”

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

1790s, Farewell Address (1796)

Country , War , Appearance , Evil

“But listen: If anyone here should wind up on a gurney in a lethal-injection facility, maybe the one at Terre Haute, here is what your last words should be: "This will certainly teach me a lesson."”

Kurt Vonnegut book Armageddon in Retrospect

"At Clowes Hall, Indianapolis, April 27 2007" - p.22 [Page numbers per the 2008 Jonathan Cape hardback edition.]
(From a speech written by Kurt Vonnegut before his death but delivered posthumously on his behalf by son Mark Vonnegut.)
Armageddon in Retrospect (2008)

“Nature herself, indeed, seems to have given music to us as a benefit, to enable us to endure labors with greater facility, for musical sounds cheer even the rower; and it is not only in those works in which the efforts of many, while some pleasing voice leads them, conspire together that music is of avail, but the toil even of people at work by themselves finds itself soothed by song, however rude.”

Quintilian (35–96) ancient Roman rhetor

H. E. Butler's translation:
Indeed nature itself seems to have given music as a boon to men to lighten the strain of labour: even the rower in the galleys is cheered to effort by song. Nor is this function of music confined to cases where the efforts of a number are given union by the sound of some sweet voice that sets the tune, but even solitary workers find solace at their toil in artless song.
Book I, Chapter X, 16
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)
Original: (la) Atque eam natura ipsa videtur ad tolerandos facilius labores velut muneri nobis dedisse, si quidem et remigem cantus hortatur; nec solum in iis operibus in quibus plurium conatus praeeunte aliqua iucunda voce conspirat, sed etiam singulorum fatigatio quamlibet se rudi modulatione solatur.

People , Nature , Music , Effort

“Really, I scolded myself, you should have known that you'd end up in a stone dungeon with no facilities. That's how these things always end up, isn't it?”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Working for the Devil

“I wanted to be a psychological engineer, but we lacked the facilities, so I did the next best thing - I went into politics. It's practically the same thing.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation

Source: Foundation

“It turns out Dimitri had a friend, who had a friend, and despite the best security in the Moroi world, we managed to get into the Court's prison facilities.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

World

“Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

“It is perhaps beside the point to remark that bowling alleys and supermarkets have nursery facilities, while schools and colleges and scientific laboratories and government offices do not.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique

School

“By 1954, when Brown came up for decision, it had been apparent for some time that segregation rarely if ever produced equality. Quite aside from any question of psychology, the physical facilities provided for blacks were not as good as those provided for whites. That had been demonstrated in a long series of cases... The Court's realistic choice, therefore, was either to abandon the quest for equality by allowing segregation or to forbid segregation in order to achieve equality. There was no third choice. Either choice would violate one aspect of the original understanding, but there was no possibility of avoiding that. Since equality and segregation were mutually inconsistent, though the ratifiers did not understand that, both could not be honored. When that is seen, it is obvious the Court must choose equality and prohibit state-imposed segregation. The purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was written into the law.”

Robert Bork (1927–2012) American legal scholar

The Tempting of America (1990), page 82; on Brown v. Board of Education.

Law , Understanding , Question , Decision

“The first commercial licensing of where CP/M was used to monitor programs in the Octopus network. Little attention was paid to CP/M for about a year. In my spare time, I worked to improve overall facilities… By this time, CP/M had been adapted for four different controllers….
In 1976”

Gary Kildall (1942–1994) Computer scientist and entrepreneur

Gary Kildall (1980) " The History of CP/M, The Evolution of an Industry: One Person's Viewpoint http://www.retrotechnology.com/dri/CPM_history_kildall.txt." Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia Vol. 5 (1) (41). p. 6-7

Time

“[Describing her visit to a slaughter facility in Pennsylvania] The floor was very slippery and the walls and everything else were covered with blood. Dried blood had formed a crust on the chains. I surely didn't want to fall down in all that blood and guts. The workers wore non-slip boots, yellow aprons, and helmets. It was a scene of controlled, mechanized chaos.”

Sue Coe (1951) British artist

Dead Meat, as quoted in A Plea for the Animals by Matthieu Ricard (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2016), p. 78 https://books.google.it/books?id=bTLuDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA78.

“Culture has become a system of defense against technics. This defense appears as a defense of man based on the assumption that technical objects contain no human reality. We should like to show that culture fails to take into account that there is a human reality in technical reality and that, if it is to fully play its role, culture must come to incorporate technical entities into its body of knowledge and its sense of values. Recognition of the modes of existence of technical objects should be the result of philosophical thought, which in this respect has to achieve what is analogous to the role it played in the abolition of slavery and in the affirmation of the value of the human person. The opposition established between culture and technology, between man and machine, is false and is not well-founded; what underlies it is mere ignorance or resentment. Behind the mask of a facile humanism it hides a reality that is rich in human efforts and natural forces, a reality that constitutes the world of technical objects, mediators between nature and man.”

Gilbert Simondon (1924–1989) 20th century French philosopher

Source: Du mode d'existence des object technique (1958), p. 1 (http://www.academia.edu/4184556)

World , Nature , Knowledge , Reality

“[T]he rooms which had been placed at my disposal by the American Museum of New York became temporarily unavailable. …[W]e determined to rent a house in New Haven, Conn., and thither the laboratory was removed in November, 1882. …[T]he city offered excellent library and other facilities for scientific work, such as can be met only in the immediate vicinity of a large university [Yale College]. …The work in New Haven was not satisfactorily completed. In July, 1883, with the appointment of Prof. F. W. Clarke as chief chemist of the Geological Survey, our laboratory was officially connected with the chemical laboratory. Conformably with the further decision of the Director, by which the divers laboratories of the Geological Survey were united in one central laboratory in Washington, it was again necessary to change our basis of operations, this time… from New Haven to Washington. In the quarters assigned to us in the U. S. National Museum, temperature work on so large a scale… appeared impracticable, and it was therefore abandoned. …In place of the dangerous and cumbersome apparatus of the former laboratory, the endeavor is made to reduce all apparatus to the smallest dimensions compatible with reasonable accuracy of measurement.”

Carl Barus (1856–1935) U.S. physicist

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

Decision , Universe , Appearance , Change

“How to know, oh how to know! All is relative ease and facility in orthodoxy, yet how can it be denied that good is in itself undeniable? Absolutes are the most uncertain of all formulations, while the uncertainties are the most real…”

Jack Vance book The Dragon Masters

Section 7
The Dragon Masters (1962)

“In examining each local authority's performance, instead of penalising those which attempt to provide for the needs of the elderly and single people and the housing problems in inner city areas, the Government should look at the high unmet need in any inner city area…We would like more home helps working for the council, more day centres for the elderly and better facilities for the physically and mentally handicapped, because in all those areas there are waiting lists, not at the wish of the council but simply because the Government treat our local authority in the same way as every other…The Secretary of State has created a monster in his rate support grant proposals and his rate-capping proposals. He has created the most enormous opposition to himself and the Government. The Government may well squeeze this nasty little measure through the House tonight, but the opposition that they have created will live for a long time. The unity of that opposition will live for even longer. It will destroy him, his Government and this kind of attack on democracy, and it will lead to the election of a Labour Government committed to the restoration of genuine local democracy that has been so shamelessly destroyed by the Government.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1985/jan/16/rate-support-grant-england in the House of Commons (16 January 1985).
1980s

People , Way , Democracy , Home

“The abstracts are the opposite to work on. That process is more like walking, step by step, without an intention, until you discover where you are going. When I paint a landscape from a photograph or an image like this one, I can see the end point before I start, although in fact it always turns out slightly different than I imagined. What I have is not facility, because this really doesn't take skill. I have an eye. I couldn't make a drawing of you sitting here right now. I would love to have that ability, in the same way that I would love to play the piano. Virtuosity is a precondition for pianists, but in addition you have to be good. These are not the same thing.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Love , Way , Imagination , Drawing

“The modern clergyman has acquired in his study of the science which I believe is called exegesis an astonishing facility for explaining things away.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 1, p. 8

Study , Science

“On this subject any general rule is impossible; love, like the chamelion, is coloured by the air in which it lives — and the finer the air the richer the colour. Some young ladies have a happy facility of falling in and out of love; their heart, like a raspberry tart, is covered with crosses.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Love , Heart , Happiness

“The more advanced the sciences have become, the more they have tended to enter the domain of mathematics, which is a sort of center towards which they converge. We can judge of the perfection to which a science has come by the facility, more or less great, with which it may be approached by calculation.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Edward Mailly, Essai sur la vie et les ouv rages de Quetelet in the Annuaire de Vacadimie royale des sciences des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique (1875) Vol. xli pp. 109-297 found also in "Conclusions" of Instructions populaires sur le calcul des probabilités p. 230

Mathematics , Science , Perfection

“America has shown we are serious about removing the threat of weapons of mass destruction."…"We now know that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction…. We know he had the necessary infrastructure because we found the labs and the dual-use facilities that could be used for these chemical and biological agents. We know that he was developing the delivery systems — ballistic missiles — that had been prohibited by the United Nations.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

Speech at a Fundraising dinner in New Mexico http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-02-16-cheney-new-mexico_x.htm, (February 16, 2004)
2000s, 2004

“"Urban problems" are increasingly becoming a political issue as the socialization of the means of production is accompanied by the increasing socialization of the means of consumption or, if one prefers, from the moment collective facilities begin to play a strategic role in the structure and rhythms of everyday life.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: Urban renewal and social conflict in Paris, 1972, p. 93

Life , Problem

“It is richt facil and eith gait, I the tell,
Forto discend and pas on down to hell:
The blak gettis of Pluto, and that dirk way,
Standis evir oppin and patent nycht and day;
Bot tharfra to return agane on hyght,
And heir abufe recovir this aris licht,
That is difficil wark, thar lawbour lyis.”

Gavin Douglas (1474–1522) Scottish Churchman, Scholar, Poet

Bk. 6, line 265.
Eneados

Way , Hell

“The physicist needs a facility in looking at problems from several points of view. The exact analysis of real physical problems is usually quite complicated, and any particular physical situation may be too complicated to analyze directly by solving the differential equation. But one can still get a very good idea of the behavior of a system if one has some feel for the character of the solution in different circumstances. Ideas such as the field lines, capacitance, resistance, and inductance are, for such purposes, very useful. … On the other hand, none of the heuristic models, such as field lines, is really adequate and accurate for all situations. There is only one precise way of presenting the laws, and that is by means of differential equations. They have the advantage of being fundamental and, so far as we know, precise. If you have learned the differential equations you can always go back to them. There is nothing to unlearn.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

volume II; lecture 2, "Differential Calculus of Vector Fields"; section 2-1, "Understanding physics"; p. 2-1
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

Law , Way , Behavior , Feeling

“Considering mankind's indifference to freedom, their easy gullibility and their facile response to conditioning, one might very plausibly argue that collectivism is the political mode best suited to their disposition and their capacities. Under its regime, the citizen, like the soldier, is relieved of the burden of initiative and is divested of all responsibility, save for doing as he is told.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943), p. 319

Freedom , Indifference

“Implementing a universal health coverage plan without making sure that there are enough facilities and quality health workers means spending a lot of money with little chance of better health results, especially for the most marginalized sectors of society.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

The Manila Times http://www.manilatimes.net/escudero-equip-govt-hospitals-well/211692/
2015

Money , Health , Universe , Chance

“Just because science so far has failed to explain something, such as consciousness, to say it follows that the facile, pathetic explanations which religion has produced somehow by default must win the argument is really quite ridiculous.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Steve Paulson, "The flying spaghetti monster" http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/10/13/dawkins/index3.html (), Salon.com

Religion , Science

“It is only the advent of an automated model storage facility or repository that brings any of this into the realm of feasibility and makes architecture a reality. It does not mean to suggest that all of these ideas will be immediately available in any particular repository product. It only means that they come into the realm of feasibility as repository technology becomes a reality.”

John Zachman (1934) American computer scientist

Source: Extending and Formalizing the Framework for Information Systems Architecture, 1992, p. 615

Idea , Reality

“During this period I was able to carry out only one project of real interest to me. Pure Oil was a fully integrated oil company in the sense that they engaged in exploration for oil, construction of oil wells, production of crude oil, transportation to refineries, distribution of refinery products to company owned storage facilities and to gas stations. We developed a linear programming model of the whole network hoping to discover the optimum allocation to and from connected nodes in order to meet required deliveries at minimum cost. Then we collected all the data needed by our model and ran the model. The computations took several days and the results were disappointing: The optimum allocations were not significantly different from their current practices. Is it possible that we had discovered a system of human beings in which everyone knew the payoff functions and constraints, and, over time, had evolved behavior patterns that enabled them to achieve near optimum performance? Or was it possible that our model was not detailed enough as it was based so closely on current practice that no new behavior could emerge? Or was our data incorrect? This was disappointing but great experience.”

A. Wayne Wymore (1927–2011) American mathematician

Systems Movement: Autobiographical Retrospectives (2004)

Hope , Disappointment , Behavior , Sense

“In order to be able to meet a general combination of the banks against us in a critical emergency, could we not make a beginning towards an independent use of our own money, towards holding our own bank in all the deposits where it is received, and letting the treasurer give his draft or note for payment at any particular place, which, in a well-conducted government, ought to have as much credit as any private draft or bank note or bill, and would give us the same facilities which we derive from the banks?”

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

Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1803. http://www.yamaguchy.netfirms.com/7897401/jefferson/gallatin.html ME 10:439
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

Money

“In a world in which training and functions of individuals and groups are growing more and more specialized the number of ways to accomplish any particular result increasing. Different design, different facilities, different equipment, different methods, and different organizational means are available to meet the needs of man. It is highly desirable that we have trained persons look at these varied possibilities to compare their effectiveness, and to point the way to sound engineering decisions. Systems Engineering Methods is directed towards the development of a broad systems engineering approach to help such people improve their decision-making capability. Although the emphasis is on engineering, the systems approach can also has validity for many other areas in which emphasis may be social, economic, or political.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), Systems Engineering Methods (1967), p. vii

People , World , Way , Decision

“.. I think the thing that hit me most of all [at the Pollock-show, 1951] was that while I knew it was a fact, it became a physical necessity to get pictures off the easel, and therefore for me not even on a wall but the reach or fluidity of working from above down into a field [so: on the floor].... But it really registered [later] when I saw his [Pollock's] studio and he unrolled his paintings on the floor that he had painted them on. Now I was never drawn to the idea of a stick dipped in a huge can. One thing I have never liked is a drip, I mean.. it's a kind of boring accident to me, a drip. There are many accidents that are very rich that you use, but if you exploit a drip it's very boring and familiar to begin with. Drips are drips. Whereas blocks have never been drips, and haven't been, but, people don't know blocks the way they know drips. And blocks can become lines, and drips become lines in a very facile, easy way.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about Pollock's drip-painting, 1951
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

People , Way , Idea , Thinking

“I didn't get at first put into a rehab facility; I got put in a adolescent psychiatric unit for my detox.”

Jack Osbourne (1985) Son of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne

MTV.com Jack Talks About His Addiction and Recovery

“The slavery debate has been really a death-struggle from that moment. Mr. Clay thought not. Mr. Clay was a shrewd politician, but the difference between him and Calhoun was the difference between principle and expediency. Calhoun's sharp, incisive genius has engraved his name, narrow but deep, upon our annals. The fluent and facile talents of Clay in a bold, large hand wrote his name in honey upon many pages. But time is already licking it away. Henry Clay was our great compromiser. That was known, and that was the reason why Mr. Buchanan's story of a bargain with J. Q. Adams always clung to Mr. Clay. He had compromised political policies so long that he had forgotten there is such a thing as political principle, which is simply a name for the moral instincts applied to government. He did not see that when Mr. Calhoun said he should return to the Constitution he took the question with him, and shifted the battle-ground from the low, poisonous marsh of compromise, where the soldiers never know whether they are standing on land or water, to the clear, hard height of principle. Mr. Clay had his omnibus at the door to roll us out of the mire. The Whig party was all right and ready to jump in. The Democratic party was all right. The great slavery question was going to be settled forever. The bushel-basket of national peace and plenty and prosperity was to be heaped up and run over. Mr. Pierce came all the way from the granite hills of New Hampshire, where people are supposed to tell the truth, to an- nounce to a happy country that it was at peace — that its bushel-basket was never so overflowingly full before. And then what? Then the bottom fell out. Then the gentlemen in the national rope -walk at Washington found they had been busily twining a rope of sand to hold the country together. They had been trying to compromise the principles of human justice, not the percentage of a tariff; the instincts of human nature and consequently of all permanent government, and the conscience of the country saw it. Compromises are the sheet-anchor of the Union — are they? As the English said of the battle of Bunker Hill, that two such victories would ruin their army, so two such sheet- anchors as the Compromise of 1850 would drag the Union down out of sight forever.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Death , People , Truth , Peace

“I have been advised that you have decided to move forward with your story without my interview. This, despite the fact confirmed more than three weeks ago that I would make myself available on a date certain (6 July), after you spoke to other relevant Church personnel and toured Church facilities, and that I would provide information annihilating the credibility of your sources including the fundamental crimes against the Scientology religion that were the reasons for their removal from post.”

David Miscavige (1960) leader of the Church of Scientology

June 2009 letter by Miscavige to journalists Thomas C. Tobin and Joe Childs, regarding investigation of accounts of abuse of Scientology staff members by Miscavige for "The Truth Rundown" series in the St. Petersburg Times —[Thomas C. Tobin, Joe Childs, A letter from David Miscavige, http://www.tampabay.com/news/article1012140.ece, St Petersburg Times, June 23, 2009, 2010-07-03].

Religion

“Another feature to which I will allude is that the new constitution provides that cabinet ministers and heads of departments may have the privilege of seats upon the floor of the Senate and House of Representatives and may have the right to participate in the debates and discussions upon the various subjects of administration. I should have preferred that this provision should have gone further, and required the President to select his constitutional advisers from the Senate and House of Representatives. That would have conformed entirely to the practice in the British Parliament, which, in my judgment, is one of the wisest provisions in the British constitution. It is the only feature that saves that government. It is that which gives it stability in its facility to change its administration. Ours, as it is, is a great approximation to the right principle.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Change , Housing

“Educational facilities will be extended and better standards of morality will be established. Political institutions, too, will be improved. In this way a backward nation can develop into a progressive state.”

Friedrich List (1789–1846) German economist with dual American citizenship

Source: The Natural System of Political Economy (1837), p. 44

Education , Way

“On the water, aboard the Proteus, the crowding, the activities, the tempo, of life in the cities, on the land, are muted, slowed—fictionalized—by the metaphysical distancing a few meters of water can provide. We alter the landscape with great facility, but the ocean has always seemed unchanged, and I suppose by extension we are infected with some feelings of timelessness whenever we set out upon her.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Home is the Hangman (1975)

Life , Feeling , Water

“The Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, perhaps better known by its nickname “Gitmo,” is an affront to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the legacy of our national heritage. It should be closed now, and all the people detained there returned to the place where they were seized. In this I wholeheartedly endorse the view of my friend and fellow veteran R. J. Harris who says that Guantanamo is a stain on the U. S. and the U. S. military. Like R. J., I’m ashamed of our leadership for allowing it. The prison facility at Guantanamo Bay does more than just blur the line between the good guys and the bad guys; it erases the line entirely.”

R. Lee Wrights (1958–2017) American gubernatorial candidate

" Gitmo's Gotta Go http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7236," Liberty For All (4 February 2012, retrieved 25 February 2012).
Republished http://original.antiwar.com/lee-wrights/2012/02/06/gitmos-gotta-go/ by Antiwar.com (7 February 2012).
2012

People , Guy

“• Increase of P108.907 million for Jail Facilities under the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology to be sourced from the cut in Monitoring and Evaluation Cost of PAMANA and the Grassroots Participatory Program of the DILG-OSEC;”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

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

“THE STATE OF AWARENESS is the state in which you see things as they are: the precious facility that life has given man to escape the mastery of the robot. It is the habit of the mind to destroy the state of awareness as quickly as possible. It does this by judging, for judging is thinking.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Life , Thinking

“Well, it’s not like this is anything we are trying to hide. About three times in our 21-year history we have thought it was a good idea — and still do — to defend some very good activists who have done some decent things for animals and who have happened to get into trouble. One of those people is Rodney Coronado, who is a very committed Native American animal rights activist and a decent person. He did something [firebombed a research facility at Michigan State University] that put him in prison for three-and-a-half years and I think that if we hadn’t provided him with a good legal defence he wouldn’t be back out doing productive things in the community again — like the good person that he is. We are very happy to have done that.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

Montreal Mirror http://web.archive.org/20020703023107/www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2002/032102/news3.html.
On animal research and activism against it

People , History , Communication , Idea

“What is a public meeting? It is not an anarchical combination—it is not a mob—it is an assemblage of rational beings to which, if the invitation be general, every man has a right to go, and the Government reporter has a right to go, but only like others and subject to the ordinary law. But if instead of appealing to the promoters of the meeting…to afford the Government reporter facilities, if instead of that the method of violence is resorted to, then I say the law was broken by the agents of the law. It is idle to speak to the Irish people of the duty of obeying the law, or to bring in Coercion Bills to make them obey the law, if the very Government that so speaks and that brings in these Bills has agents who violate the law by violently breaking up orderly public meetings, and who are sustained by the Ministers of the Crown in this illegal action.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Nottingham (18 October 1887) referring to the Mitchelstown Massacre, quoted in The Times (19 October 1887), p. 6.
1880s

People , Law

“I flatter myself, when your Excellency takes a, view of the state things were in when I first engaged, and consider the short time we had to make the preparations for the opening campaign, and reflect with what ease and facility you began your march from Valley Forge, and continued it all through the country r notwithstanding we went great part of the way entirely out of the line of preparations, you will do me the justice to say I have not been negligent or inattentive to my duty.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (July 1778)

Justice , Way , Time , Parting

“The national Democratic Party and its southern affiliates labored mightily to re-subjugate the newly free blacks, eventually succeeding by implementing Jim Crow laws, motivating the birth of the Klan and then protecting it, establishing separate-but-equal schools and public facilities, and enacting codes of lawful segregation, all of which Democrats defended in a fight to the death until the 1960s. In U. S. history, from the ratification of the Constitution to the economic devastation wrought by Obama on contemporary black Americans, the men and women who run Democratic Party, from Jefferson and Jackson forward, have been the ferocious enemy of black Americans entering the mainstream of American life, to this day bending every tool of political power to keep them angry, unemployed, mired in poverty, and politically and economically dependent in a manner that approaches quite near to re-enslavement.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention https://archive.is/QBuxT (22 June 2015), by M. Scheuer.
2010s

Life , Death , Women , Men

“Male privilege' is assuming one has the right to occupy any space or person by whatever means, with or without permission. It's a sense of entitlement that's unique to those who have been raised male in most cultures - it's notably absent in most girls and women. Male privilege is not something that's given to men in this culture; it's something that men take. It's not that women don't have the ability to have and wield this privilege; some do. It's that in most cases, this privilege is withheld from them culturally and emotionally. Male privilege is woven into all levels of the culture, from unearned higher wages to more opportunities in the workplace, from higher quality, less expensive clothing to better bathroom facilities. Male privilege extends into sexual harassment, rape, and war. Combine male privilege with capitalism (which rewards greed and acquisition) and the mass media (which, owned by capitalists, highlights only the reward of acquisition and makes invisible its penalties), and you have a juggernaut that needs stopping by any means. Male privilege is not the exclusive province of men; there are some few women who have a degree of this horrifying personality trait. Male privilege is, in a word, violence.”

Kate Bornstein (1948) American author, playwright, performance artist, and gender theorist

Source: Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us (1995), p. 108

Women , Men , War , Penalty

“Are you proud o' yourself, Jeff? I could have been seriously injured last week. And you got a lot of nerve faking an eye injury and leaving me to fend for myself, especially considering you're the one who injured my eye in the first place. As far as what you said earlier about me making the whole thing up, coming out here with your cute eye patch mocking me: I wanna show you something, Jeff." (takes out a little plastic jar of some sort of liquid eye medicine)
"This, is polymoxin bisulfate. I have to apply this to my eye three times a day. The only way you obtain this is with a prescription, from a doctor. Now, I know, you know a thing or two about prescription medication, but I don't think you realize is that you have to go to a doctor to legally obtain some. Unlike you, Jeff, this is the only foreign substance I will allow in my body. So if you wanna imitate me, why don't you try living a clean lifestyle? Why don't you try living, a straightedge lifestyle? "Jeff… you've got two strikes. You know how many I have? Zero. Jeff, you know how many times I've been suspended? Zero. You know how many times I've been to a rehab facility? That's right- zero. And do you know what your chances are of beating me at Night of Champions?”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

(long pause)
"Zero."
Addressing Jeff Hardy before his match with the Great Khali, both to prove that his eye injury is real (in storyline) and to drive home a point about the drug-related mistakes of Jeff's past as recently as 16 months ago. July 10, 2009.
Friday Night SmackDown

Way , Thinking , Chance , Time

“In the preface to the reissue of Risk, Uncertainty and Proﬁt, Frank Knight makes the penetrating observation that under the conditions envisaged above the velocity of circulation would become inﬁnite and so would the price level. This is perhaps an over-dramatic way of saying that nobody would hold money, and it would become a free good to go into the category of shell and other things which once served as money. We should expect too that it would not only pass out of circulation, but it would cease to be used as a conventional numeraire in terms of which prices are expressed. Interest bearing money would emerge. Of course, the above does not happen in real life, precisely because uncertainty, contingency needs, non-synchronization of revenues and outlay, transaction frictions, etc., etc., all are with us. But the abstract special case analyzed above should warn us against the facile assumption that the average levels of the structure of interest rates are determined solely or primarily by these differential factors. At times they are primary, and at other times, such as the twenties in this country, they may not be. As a generalization I should hazard the hypothesis that they are likely to be of great importance in an economy in which there is a “quasi-zero" rate of interest. I think by this hypothesis one can explain many of the anomalies of the United States money market in the thirties.”

Paul A. Samuelson book Foundations of Economic Analysis

Source: 1940s, Foundations of Economic Analysis, 1947, Ch. 5 : Theory of Consumer’s Behavior

Life , Money , Way , Thinking

“What mathematics, therefore are expected to do for the advanced student at the university, Arithmetic, if taught demonstratively, is capable of doing for the children even of the humblest school. It furnishes training in reasoning, and particularly in deductive reasoning. It is a discipline in closeness and continuity of thought. It reveals the nature of fallacies, and refuses to avail itself of unverified assumptions. It is the one department of school-study in which the sceptical and inquisitive spirit has the most legitimate scope; in which authority goes for nothing. In other departments of instruction you have a right to ask for the scholar’s confidence, and to expect many things to be received on your testimony with the understanding that they will be explained and verified afterwards. But here you are justified in saying to your pupil “Believe nothing which you cannot understand. Take nothing for granted.” In short, the proper office of arithmetic is to serve as elementary 268 training in logic. All through your work as teachers you will bear in mind the fundamental difference between knowing and thinking; and will feel how much more important relatively to the health of the intellectual life the habit of thinking is than the power of knowing, or even facility of achieving visible results. But here this principle has special significance. It is by Arithmetic more than by any other subject in the school course that the art of thinking—consecutively, closely, logically—can be effectually taught.”

Joshua Girling Fitch (1824–1903) British educationalist

Source: Lectures on Teaching, (1906), pp. 292-293.

Life , Children , Health , School

“The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them. And yet, though this truth would seem so clear, and the importance of a well regulated militia would seem so undeniable, it cannot be disguised, that among the American people there is a growing indifference to any system of militia discipline, and a strong disposition, from a sense of its burthens, to be rid of all regulations. How it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization, it is difficult to see. There is certainly no small danger, that indifference may lead to disgust, and disgust to contempt; and thus gradually undermine all the protection intended by this clause of our national bill of rights.”

Joseph Story book Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States

Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833), p. 708 http://books.google.com/books?id=Ennw5lvHmcoC&pg=PA708&dq=%22The+right+of+the+citizens+to+keep%22.

People , Truth , Peace , Nature

“The artist and the poet have the facility for mistaking pure languor for meditative peace and strength. True meditation "rests" in swiftness.”

Vilhelm Ekelund (1880–1949) Swedish poet

Source: The Second Light (1986), p. 23

Peace

“Philosophy is a concentrated deployment of the transgressing facilities of the mind.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound

Source: The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007), p. 30

“Again, the subject of internal improvements, under the power of Congress to regulate commerce, is put at rest under our system. The power, claimed by construction under the old constitution, was at least a doubtful one; it rested solely upon construction. We of the South, generally apart from considerations of constitutional principles, opposed its exercise upon grounds of its inexpediency and injustice. Notwithstanding this opposition, millions of money, from the common treasury had been drawn for such purposes. Our opposition sprang from no hostility to commerce, or to all necessary aids for facilitating it. With us it was simply a question upon whom the burden should fall. In Georgia, for instance, we have done as much for the cause of internal improvements as any other portion of the country, according to population and means. We have stretched out lines of railroads from the seaboard to the mountains; dug down the hills, and filled up the valleys at a cost of not less than $25,000,000. All this was done to open an outlet for our products of the interior, and those to the west of us, to reach the marts of the world. No State was in greater need of such facilities than Georgia, but we did not ask that these works should be made by appropriations out of the common treasury. The cost of the grading, the superstructure, and the equipment of our roads was borne by those who had entered into the enterprise. Nay, more not only the cost of the iron no small item in the aggregate cost was borne in the same way, but we were compelled to pay into the common treasury several millions of dollars for the privilege of importing the iron, after the price was paid for it abroad. What justice was there in taking this money, which our people paid into the common treasury on the importation of our iron, and applying it to the improvement of rivers and harbors elsewhere? The true principle is to subject the commerce of every locality, to whatever burdens may be necessary to facilitate it. If Charleston harbor needs improvement, let the commerce of Charleston bear the burden. If the mouth of the Savannah river has to be cleared out, let the sea-going navigation which is benefited by it, bear the burden. So with the mouths of the Alabama and Mississippi river. Just as the products of the interior, our cotton, wheat, corn, and other articles, have to bear the necessary rates of freight over our railroads to reach the seas. This is again the broad principle of perfect equality and justice, and it is especially set forth and established in our new constitution.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Money , Hostility , People , World

“Painting has a nature which is not entirely translatable into verbal language. I think painting is a language, actually. It's linguistic in a sense, but not in a verbal sense. I think that one wants from painting a sense of life. And I think that is true. One wants to be able to use all of one’s facilities in all aspects of one’s life... You may have to choose how to respond and you may respond in a limited way, but you have been aware that you are alive. The final suggestion, the final statement, has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

interview with Johns conducted in 1975 at Johns’ studio by Yoshiaki Tono, as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 89
1970s

Life , Way , Nature , Thinking

“Sloan [American colleague artist who started his art by making etchings, c. 1920] not having been abroad [in contrary to Hopper himself], has seen these things with a truer and fresher eye than most... The hard early training has given to Sloan a facility and a power of invention that the pure painter seldom achieves.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

posthumous
Source: 'Joan Sloan' Hopper', p. 172; as quoted in Edward Hopper, Gail Levin, Bonfini Press, Switzerland 1984, p. 39

Art , Training

“Thus the facilities (of the Advocates' Library), which in England were provided at the taxpayers' expense in the British Museum, were in Scotland afforded entirely at the cost of the Scottish Bar… Much the greater part of their annual income was expended in maintaining it.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 234

Parting

“Milk is a highly perishable commodity, which is in short supply in summer and in excess supply in winter. The market can not contract and expand according to supply, therefore, you need balancing facilities. And once you have these balancing facilities, which you enable to carry forward the winter production and capture the market, procurement falls into your laps. This was the objective and methodology of Operation Flood.”

Verghese Kurien (1921–2012) Indian founder of dairy-cooperative Amul

In p. 85
Quote, Our Leaders

Winter , Summer

“For four thousand years the strong had been rushing on in the road of privilege and power, seeking greatness. Christ stood in the path, and said, " Ye seek greatness. Ye are not even in the way to it. Ye are going up, but the way to greatness is down. Let him who would be great be the love-servant of all." Greatness consists in the facility and power of going down, and not in the facility of going up.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Source: Life Thoughts (1858), p. 26

Love , Way , Strong , Christ

“The great investors are almost entirely clueless as to what their supposed “employees,” the corporation managers are doing. The CEOs are almost entirely clueless as to what the branch and facility managers are doing. And the management of each facility are almost entirely clueless as to what is going on within the black box of the actual production process. In the light of this reality, Mises’ “entrepreneur”—so carefully and closely involved in the minutiae of choosing between technical possibilities of production, a brooding omnipresence guiding the efforts of every employee—is largely a construction of fantasy. It’s quite ironic, in fact, considering that Mises starts out the block quote above with the announcement that the entrepreneur is not omnipresent.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective (2008), Chapter 7
Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective (2008)

Quotes , Reality , Effort , Light

“Mankind in the technological world is prepared to give up his independence in exchange for all kinds of facilities and in exchange for consumer products and a certain security. In short, in exchange for a package of welfare provisions offered to him by society. As I was thinking about that I couldn't help recalling the story in the Bible about Esau and the lentil broth. Esau, who is hungry, is prepared to give up the blessings and promise of God in exchange for some lentil broth. In the same way, modern people are prepared to give up their independence in exchange for some technological lentils.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

The Betrayal by Technology (1993 film)

God , People , World , Way

“Everything has altered its dimensions, except the world we live in. The more we know of that, the smaller it seems. Time and distance have been abridged, remote countries have become accessible, and the antipodes are upon visiting terms. There is a reunion of the human race; and the family resemblance now that we begin to think alike, dress alike, and live alike, is very striking. The South Sea Islanders, and the inhabitants of China, import their fashions from Paris, and their fabrics from Manchester, while Rome and London supply missionaries to the ‘ends of the earth,’ to bring its inhabitants into ‘one fold, under one Shepherd.’ Who shall write a book of travels now? Livingstone has exhausted the subject. What field is there left for a future Munchausen? The far West and the far East have shaken hands and pirouetted together, and it is a matter of indifference whether you go to the moors in Scotland to shoot grouse, to South America to ride and alligator, or to Indian jungles to shoot tigers-there are the same facilities for reaching all, and steam will take you to either with the equal ease and rapidity. We have already talked with New York; and as soon as our speaking-trumpet is mended shall converse again. ‘To waft a sigh from Indus to the pole,’ is no longer a poetic phrase, but a plain matter of fact of daily occurrence. Men breakfast at home, and go fifty miles to their counting-houses, and when their work is done, return to dinner. They don’t go from London to the seaside, by way of change, once a year; but they live on the coast, and go to the city daily. The grand tour of our forefathers consisted in visiting the principle cities of Europe. It was a great effort, occupied a vast deal of time, cost a large sum of money, and was oftener attended with danger than advantage. It comprised what was then called, the world: whoever had performed it was said to have ‘seen the world,’ and all that it contained. The Grand Tour now means a voyage round the globe, and he who has not made it has seen nothing.”

Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) Canadian-British politician, judge, and author

The Season-Ticket, An Evening at Cork 1860 p. 1-2.

Men , Money , Books , World

“To speak of joy and to sing of it, borne on
The shoulders of joyous men, to feel the heart
That is the common, the bravest fundament, This is a facile exercise”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Give Pleasure

Men , Feeling , Exercises , Singing

“War is destructive. The idea that you can do something constructive with war is becoming this facile, dangerous, intellectually lax political interpretation of military counter-insurgency theory. I want to hear [President Barack Obama] say that doesn't work. That war is never constructive.”

Rachel Maddow (1973) American journalist

San Francisco Chronicle (27 March 2009) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=37501

War , Idea

“I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised the problems of the Kurdish people in Iraq, and I am sure that they will be grateful for that. Although the Government may not allow the export of military hardware to Iraq, is it not just as beneficial to the Iraqi Government to be given banking facilities, credits and increased trade? They have exactly the same effect of propping up the Iraqi economy, which is used to finance the war machine that is practising genocide against the Kurdish people.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Question http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/jul/14/foreign-affairs in the House of Commons (14 July 1989).
1980s

War , People , Problem

“It is the thesis of this book that society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever-increasing part”

Norbert Wiener book The Human Use of Human Beings

Source: The Human Use of Human Beings (1950), p. 16

Books , Communication , Study , Future

“He is the first of our writers whose style is cloathed with that perspicuity, in which the English phraseology appears at this day to an English reader…Whether his subject be the life of a hermit or a hero, of saint Austin or Guy earl of Warwick, ludicrous or legendary, religious or romantic, a history or an allegory, he writes with facility.”

John Lydgate (1370–1450) monk and poet

Thomas Warton The History of English Poetry (1774-81) vol. 2, pp. 52-3.
Criticism

Life , Guy , History , Appearance

“In western society, there is a problem similar to India that the income of a research scientist is less than that of a management person. But perhaps the facilities and the infrastructure being much advanced in the western universities, they are able to attract and retain the people. In our case this can happen but not to the extent we would like. A corrective measure to some extent has been taken by the establishment of the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs). They are doing for pure sciences what IIT’s do for applied sciences. Since they are attracting good talent it may happen that you will have more input in research in the next ten years.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

On the decline of interest in science education among students
An Exclusive Interview with Prof. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar

People , Education , Problem , Universe

“(on cockroaches living without a head for a week) Why, when it was invented, has it got that facility?”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Xfm 18 January 2003
On Nature

“To describe this film [Fahrenheit 9/11] as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2004-06-21
Unfairenheit 9/11
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/06/unfairenheit_911.html: On Michael Moore.
2000s, 2004

Exercises

“To an atheist […], there is no all-seeing all-loving god to keep us free from harm. But atheism is not a recipe for despair. I think the opposite. By disclaiming the idea of the next life, we can take more excitement in this one. The here and now is not something to be endured before eternal bliss or damnation. The here and now is all we have, an inspiration to make the most of it. So atheism is life-affirming, in a way religion can never be. Look around you. Nature demands our attention, begs us to explore, to question. Religion can provide only facile, ultimately unsatisfying answers. Science, in constantly seeking real explanations, reveals the true majesty of our world in all its complexity. People sometimes say "There must be more than just this world, than just this life". But how much more do you want? We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they’re never going to be born. The number of people who could be here, in my place, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here, the number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist. We are privileged to be alive and we should make the most of our time on this world.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

End of the part 2: "The Virus of Faith" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMUG6qd98wc
The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)

Love , Life , God , People

“I am desirous that the case should be brought under the consideration of a higher tribunal, without any unnecessary delay, and to afford every facility in my power for the correction of any error into which I may have fallen.”

Henry Bickersteth, 1st Baron Langdale (1783–1851) British lawyer

Tullett v. Armstrong (1838), 1 Beav. 31.
Quote

Error

“The essence of good House of Commons speaking is the conversational style, the facility for quick, informal interruptions and interchanges. Harangues from a rostrum would be a bad substitute for the conversational style in which so much of our business is done. But the conversational style requires a fairly small space, and there should be on great occasions a sense of crowd and urgency. There should be a sense of the importance of much that is said and a sense that great matters are being decided, there and then, by the House. … It has a collective personality which enjoys the regard of the public, and which imposes itself upon the conduct not only of individual Members but of parties.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech in the House of Commons, October 28, 1943 "House of Commons Rebuilding" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1943/oct/28/house-of-commons-rebuilding#column_403.
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Business , Sense , Housing , Personality

“It’s not about where you were born, or where you come from that makes you a good scientist. What you need are good teachers, co-students, facilities, [he said]. I honestly don’t think my roots have much to do with it. I’m sure this won’t make me popular, but this is what I think.”

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (1952) Nobel prize winning American and British structural biologist

On his childhood roots in Tamil Nadu.
Appreciate science for what it is: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

Thinking , Teachers

“We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

Writing for the court, Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
1950s

Education

“It is easier to talk about such things like democracy, human rights and freedom. Democracy is just a phrase to be talked about in idle gossip. Democracy means food for the people's stomach, shelter, education, medical facilities and basic amenities and the freedom to move freely. Discipline is more essential in our society than democracy, though they have a need of both.”

Norodom Ranariddh (1944) Cambodian politician

As quoted in July 1994, from [Intervention & Change in Cambodia: Towards Democracy?, Peou, Sorpong, 2000, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 9813055391], pp. 195-6.

People , Education , Food , Democracy

“You won’t find solutions to rural India’s health issues in modern facilities that are far removed. Effective strategies will emerge only when you work with the people.”

Abhay Bang

Abhay Bang (2010) " Dr. Abhay Bang: Research with the People http://forbesindia.com/article/ideas-to-change-the-world/dr-abhay-bang-research-with-the-people/13742/1" on forbesindia.com, June 2, 2010.

People , Health

“The facilities at that point in India were not up to international standards and the lack of tennis culture did make things more difficult.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

When she started learning to play tennis
India's most wanted

“Americanization today is little more than an impulse, and its context, as popularly conceived, is both narrow and superficial. As French has been the language of diplomacy in the past, so English is to be the language of the reconstruction of the world. English is the language of 90,000,000 people living in America. The English language is a highway of loyalty; it is a medium of exchange; it is the open door to opportunity; it is a means of common defense. It is an implement of Americanization, but it is not necessarily Americanization. The American who thinks that America is united and safe when all men speak one language has only to look at Austria and to study the Jugo-Slav and Czecho-Slovak nationalistic movements. The imposition of a language is not the creation of nationalism. A common language is essential to a common understanding, and by all means let America open such a line of communication. The traffic that goes over this line is, however, the vital thing, and what that shall be and how it is to be prepared are matters to which but little thought has been given. Even those who urge the abolition of all other languages are indefinite about the restriction. Shall a man after he has learned English be allowed to get news in a foreign language paper and to worship in his native tongue; and if not, what becomes of the liberty which he is urged to learn English in order to appreciate? Are foreign languages to be encouraged as an expression of culture and to be denied as a means of economic and political expression? The English language campaigns in America have failed because they have not secured the support of the foreign-born. Men must have reasons for learning new languages, and America has never presented the case conclusively or satisfactorily. Furthermore, wherever the case has been presented, it has not been done with the proper facilities and under favorable conditions. The working day must not be so long that men cannot study.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Men , People , World , Communication

“Alas, because I'm no longer innocent. We're civilized beings. Whether we like it or not, we have the cares and concerns of classical civilization in our bones. I want to express myself clearly when I paint. In people who feign ignorance there is a kind of barbarism even more detestable than the academic kind: it's no longer possible to be ignorant today. One no longer is. We come into the world armed with facility. Facility is the death of art and we must rid ourselves of it.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 155, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif': Cited in: George Pattison. God and Being: An Enquiry, (2011). p. 64

Death , People , World , Art

“There is…a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed that there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings. Then came the build-up in Vietnam. And I watched the program broken as if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube. And you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)

Men , Money , War , People

“What are those lessons? Instead of building more single-family dwellings, we should build multigenerational, multifamily homes in vibrant eco-villages that share facilities, tools, labor and resources. Instead of designing cities for self-driving, single-person cars, design them for walking, biking, and public transportation with lots of places for people to meet and greet, mix and mingle. Instead of growing an economy dependent on global movements of money, people, and goods to maximize profit uncoupled from place, create economies that bring people together to maximize health and well-being in the place where they live.”

David Korten (1937) writer, sustainability advocate

How the Economy Affects Our Mental Health, September 18, 2018 https://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/when-profit-drives-us-community-suffers-20180918

Money , People , Health , Family