Quotes about gear

A collection of quotes on the topic of gear, likeness, time, timing.

Quotes about gear

Ville Valo photo
Nikola Tesla photo
Douglas MacArthur photo

“It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

Speech to the Michigan legislature, in Lansing, Michigan (15 May 1952), published in General MacArthur Speeches and Reports 1908-1964 (2000) by Edward T. Imparato, p. 206, much of this was used in speeches of 1951, as quoted in The Twenty-year Revolution from Roosevelt to Eisenhower (1954) by Chesly Manly, p. 3, and Total Insecurity : The Myth Of American Omnipotence (2004) by Carol Brightman, p. 182<!--
Context: It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. While such an economy may produce a sense of seeming prosperity for the moment, it rests on an illusionary foundation of complete unreliability and renders among our political leaders almost a greater fear of peace than is their fear of war.

Terry Pratchett photo
Steve Biko photo
Barack Obama photo
Fernando Pessoa photo

“By the painful light of the factory’s huge electric lamps
I write in a fever.
I write gnashing my teeth, rabid for the beauty of all this,
For this beauty completely unknown to the ancients.

O wheels, O gears, eternal r-r-r-r-r-r-r!
Bridled convulsiveness of raging mechanisms!
Raging in me and outside me,
Through all my dissected nerves,
Through all the papillae of everything I feel with!
My lips are parched, O great modern noises,
From hearing you at too close a range,
And my head burns with the desire to proclaim you
In an explosive song telling my every sensation,
An explosiveness contemporaneous with you, O machines!”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

<p>À dolorosa luz das grandes lâmpadas eléctricas da fábrica
Tenho febre e escrevo.
Escrevo rangendo os dentes, fera para a beleza disto,
Para a beleza disto totalmente desconhecida dos antigos.</p><p>Ó rodas, ó engrenagens, r-r-r-r-r-r-r eterno!
Forte espasmo retido dos maquinismos em fúria!
Em fúria fora e dentro de mim,
Por todos os meus nervos dissecados fora,
Por todas as papilas fora de tudo com que eu sinto!
Tenho os lábios secos, ó grandes ruídos modernos,
De vos ouvir demasiadamente de perto,
E arde-me a cabeça de vos querer cantar com um excesso
De expressão de todas as minhas sensações,
Com um excesso contemporâneo de vós, ó máquinas!</p>
Álvaro de Campos (heteronym), Ode Triunfal ["Triumphal Ode"] (1914), in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe, trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin, 2006)

Rick Riordan photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Helen Fielding photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Stephen King photo
Mindy Kaling photo
Scott Westerfeld photo

“Reality had no gears, and you never knew what surprises would come spinning out of its chaos.”

Variant: ... that was what kept the world interesting... reality had no gears, and you never knew what surprises would come spinning out of its chaos.
Source: Goliath

Max Brooks photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Lewis Mumford photo
Jeremy Clarkson photo

“Change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That's a lot of effort in a day.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

Top Gear, 2 November 2008; as quoted in "Clarkson joke sparks complaints" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7707641.stm, BBC News, 4 November 2008
Top Gear

Reggie Fils-Aimé photo
Enoch Powell photo

“To tell the indigenous inhabitants of Brixton or Southall or Leicester or Bradford or Birmingham or Wolverhampton, to tell the pensioners ending their days in streets of nightly terror unrecognisable as their former neighbourhoods, to tell the people of towns and cities where whole districts have been transformed into enclaves of foreign lands, that "the man with a coloured face could be an enrichment to my life and that of my neighbours" is to drive them beyond the limits of endurance. It is not so much that it is obvious twaddle. It is that it makes cruel mockery of the experience and fears of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ordinary, decent men and women…In understanding this matter, the beginning of wisdom is to grasp the law that in human societies power is never left unclaimed and unused. It does not blow about, like wastepaper on the streets, ownerless and inert. Men's nature is not only, as Thucydides long ago asserted, to exert power where they have it: men cannot help themselves from exerting power where they have it, whether they want to or not…It is the business of the leaders of distinct and separate populations to see that the power which they possess is used to benefit those for whom they speak. Leaders who fail to do so, or to do so fast enough, find themselves outflanked and superseded by those who are less squeamish. The Gresham's Law of extremism, that the more extreme drives out the less extreme, is one of the basic rules of political mechanics which operate in this field: it is a corollary of the general principle that no political power exist without being used. Both the general law and its Gresham's corollary point, in contemporary circumstances, towards the resort to physical violence, in the form of firearms or high explosive, as being so probable as to be predicted with virtual certainty. The experience of the last decade and more, all round the world, shows that acts of violence, however apparently irrational or inappropriate their targets, precipitate a frenzied search on the part of the society attacked to discover and remedy more and more grievances, real or imaginary, among those from whom the violence is supposed to emanate or on whose behalf it is supposed to be exercised. Those commanding a position of political leverage would then be superhuman if they could refrain from pointing to the acts of terrorism and, while condemning them, declaring that further and faster concessions and grants of privilege are the only means to avoid such acts being repeated on a rising scale. This is what produces the gearing effect of terrorism in the contemporary world, yielding huge results from acts of violence perpetrated by minimal numbers. It is not, I repeat again and again, that the mass of a particular population are violently or criminally disposed. Far from it; that population soon becomes itself the prisoner of the violence and machinations of an infinitely small minority among it. Just a few thugs, a few shots, a few bombs at the right place and time – and that is enough for disproportionate consequences to follow.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Stretford Young Conservatives (21 January 1977), from A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics (Elliot Right Way Books, 1977), pp. 168-171
1970s

Pete Doherty photo
Thomas Merton photo
Pete Doherty photo

“The whirling gears of progress have put the gear makers out of work.”

Brian Hayes (scientist) (1900) American scientist, columnist and author

Source: Group Theory in the Bedroom (2008), Chapter 7, On The Teeth Of Wheels, p. 139

Elon Musk photo

“Never saw this British expat guy who lives in Thailand (sus) at any point when we were in the caves. Only people in sight were the Thai navy/army guys, who were great. Thai navy seals escorted us in — total opposite of wanting us to leave. Water level was actually very low & still (not flowing) — you could literally have swum to Cave 5 with no gear, which is obv how the kids got in. If not true, then I challenge this dude to show final rescue video. You know what, don’t bother showing the video. We will make one of the mini-sub/pod going all the way to Cave 5 no problemo. Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Refering to British diver Vern Unsworth, who participated in the Tham Luang cave rescue. As quoted in Elon Musk calls British diver who helped rescue Thai schoolboys 'pedo guy' in Twitter outburst https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/thai-cave-rescue-elon-musk-british-diver-vern-unsworth-twitter-pedo-a8448366.html (15 July 2018) by Eleanor Busby, The Independent.

Robert Erskine Childers photo

“I leapt into my boots, trousers and jacket, tumbled all my gear, lying ready laid out, into my bag, donned helmet and goggles, seized charts and rushed to the upper deck…. the sea was calm under a heaving swell. Engadine towered above my cockle-shell.”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

"Written aboard HMS Engadine in 1916, cited in " The Riddle Of Erskine Childers " By Andrew Boyle , Hutchinson, London, (1977), pg. 205.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918)

John le Carré photo
Harriet Harman photo

“this vision cannot be of a single mind – a single concept, it is a small tooth in the gear of man..
.. which to each man, one at a time, offers a marvel of close communion”

David Smith (1906–1965) American visual artist (1906-1965)

1940s, The Question – What is your Hope' (c. 1940s)

Jacques Maritain photo

“Depersonalization is a concept difficult to delineate. It can be regarded as a symptom or as a loosely associated group of symptoms that occurs in psychiatric patients. It can be induced experimentally and also occurs spontaneously in normal subjects. A major obstacle to clearer definition of this concept lies in the fact that it refers to exceedingly private events in the individual's experience. These prove very difficult to describe by a language geared to the description of public (consensually validated) events or private events, such as pain, that occur usually in clearly defined social settings. When it comes to describing and conveying something as ineffable as depersonalization or derealization, the subject resorts to metaphors, "as if" expressions, and figures of speech. The result is semantic confusion. Different authors mean different things when they use the term depersonalization.
The concept of depersonalization merges by imperceptible degrees with the concept derealization, the concept of altered body image and self, deja vu, jamais vu, altered time and space perception and so on - the whole gamut of phenomenological description of the experiences of mental patients. Therefore, it is rather difficult to evaluate and to review objectively the psychiatric literature on the phenomena of depersonalization.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

Source: Depersonalization, (1970), p. 171

Brian Clevinger photo
Mo Yan photo

“My boss told me to get my butt in gear. I told him I was shiftless.”

Jay London (1966) American comedian

One-liners

Benjamin Graham photo

“The modern world is not geared properly to the storage of goods.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: World Commodities and World Currencies (1944), Chapter III, The Paradox of the Stockpile, p. 23

George Carlin photo
Paul Weller (singer) photo
Yoji Shinkawa photo

“No conception of democracy as geared toward reducing domination can ignore the relations between the political system and the distribution of income and wealth.”

Ian Shapiro (1956) American political theorist

The State of Democratic Theory (2003), Chapter 5. Democracy and Distribution.

Adolf Eichmann photo
Northrop Frye photo

“We have revolutionary thought whenever the feeling "life is a dream" becomes geared to an impulse to awaken from it.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982), Chapter Four, p. 83

“In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents, but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not DNA.”

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

Source: Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, 1979, p. 49

Abby Sunderland photo
Alison Bechdel photo
Robert M. Pirsig photo
Joshua Jackson photo
David D. Levine photo
Sri Aurobindo photo
Abby Sunderland photo

“All the ingenuity, all the high-tech gear, all the jury-rigging—sometimes the sea would rip it all away until there was only you, the Creator, and His mercy.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 17

Rand Paul photo
Edsger W. Dijkstra photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Indro Montanelli photo
Herbert Marcuse photo

“It's all done with gears. Also pinions, snails, arbors; pawls and ratchets; and cam followers; cables, levers, bell cranks, and pivots.”

Brian Hayes (scientist) (1900) American scientist, columnist and author

Source: Group Theory in the Bedroom (2008), Chapter 1, Clock Of Ages, p. 7

Cormac McCarthy photo
Derren Brown photo
Jane Roberts photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“Hidden or in plain sight, The State is geared toward increasing or maintaining its sphere of influence, never reducing it. Voters are paid lip service, provided their wishes coincide with the aims of this unelected, entrenched apparatus. But when the popular will defies Deep State, that monster breathes fire.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Elon Musk, Et al.: The Corporate Arm Of The Deep State," https://townhall.com/columnists/ilanamercer/2017/06/03/elon-musk-et-al-the-corporate-arm-of-the-deepstate-n2335618 Townhall.com, June 3, 2017
2010s, 2017

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin photo

“Mankind is now caught up, as though in a train of gears, at the heart of a continually accelerating vortex of self-totalisation”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Man's Place in Nature https://archive.org/stream/MansPlaceInNature/Mans_Place_in_Nature#page/n101/mode/2up (1966), p. 100

Frederik Pohl photo
John Lanchester photo
Robert Frost photo
Dan Mathews photo
Dylan Moran photo
Charlie Sheen photo
Roger Ebert photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be made like this?”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

In a letter to his wife Clemmie, during the build up to World War I.
Early career years (1898–1929)

“Scott London: How did you begin to explore the connection between management and science?
Meg Wheatley: I didn't have an interest in the new science. I had a realization that in my profession — which was vaguely labeled "organizational change," "organizational development," or "management consulting" in general — none of us knew how organizations change. When I talked to other consultants, I noticed that if we had an organizational change effort that was successful, it felt like a miracle to us.
I realized with a great start one day that we weren't even geared up for success. It didn't matter that we didn't know how to change organizations. We were all professionals who didn't hope to achieve what we were selling or suggesting to clients. The field was really moribund.
At the same time — and this is the serendipity of life — I had a friend and educator whom I had worked with for many years who said casually one day "Meg, if you're interested in systems thinking, you should be reading quantum physics." He didn't know where I was in my despair over my professional failings. But I said, "Okay, give me a book list."”

Margaret J. Wheatley (1941) American writer

He gave me ten titles. I read eight of those and I was off. I always credit him with that casual, helpful comment that changed my life.
Scott London (2008) " The New Science of Leadership: An Interview with Margaret Wheatley http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/wheatley.html" in Quantum21. management journal, Spring 2008.

Jeremy Clarkson photo
Kent Hovind photo
Johann Hari photo
Douglas Coupland photo
John Masefield photo
Stanisław Lem photo
Ricou Browning photo
Gordon Brown photo

“There are as many Scottish roads to Socialism as there are predictions of Britain's economic doom - but most of them demand three things: a coherent plan for an extension of democracy and control in society and industry which sees every reform as a means to creating a socialist society; a harnessing of the forces for industrial and community self-management within a political movement; and a massive programme of education by the Labour Movement as a whole.

Gramsci's relevance to Scotland today is in his emphasis that in a society which is both mature and complex, where the total social and economic processes are geared to maintaining the production of goods and services (and the reproduction of the conditions of production), then the transition to socialism must be made by the majority of the people themselves and a socialist society must be created within the womb of existing society and prefigured in the movements for democracy at the grass roots. Socialists must neither place their faith in an Armageddon or of capitalist collapse nor in nationalisation alone. For the Jacobin notion of a vanguard making revolution on behalf of working people relates to a backward society (and prefigures an authoritarian and bureaucratic state), then the complexity of modern society requires a far reaching movement of people and existing conditions and as a co-ordinator for the assertion of social priorities by people at a community level and control by producers at an industrial level. In such a way political power will become a synthesis of – not a substitute for – community and industrial life.

This requires from the Labour Movement in Scotland today a postive commitment to creating a socialist society, a coherant strategy with rhythm and modality to each reform to cancel the logic of capitalism and a programme of immediate aims which leads out of one social order into another. Such a social reorganisation - a phased extension of public control under workers' sustained and enlarged, would in EP Thompson's words lead to "a crisis not of despair and disintegration but a crisis in which the necessity for a peaceful revolutionary transition to an alternative socialist logic became daily more evident."”

Gordon Brown (1951) British Labour Party politician

Introduction to "The Red Paper On Scotland", 1975.

Mario Savio photo
Erich Fromm photo

“The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Source: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), p. 395
Context: The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society — and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic. In the context of this study the crucial question is whether the hypothesis of a quasi-autistic or of low-grade schizophrenic disturbance would help us to explain some of the violence spreading today.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo
Lewis Mumford photo

“Unfortunately, once an economy is geared to expansion, the means rapidly turn into an end and "the going becomes the goal."”

Myth of Megalopolis <!-- p. 545 -->
The City in History (1961)
Context: Unfortunately, once an economy is geared to expansion, the means rapidly turn into an end and "the going becomes the goal." Even more unfortunately, the industries that are favored by such expansion must, to maintain their output, be devoted to goods that are readily consumable either by their nature, or because they are so shoddily fabricated that they must soon be replaced. By fashion and built-in obsolescence the economies of machine production, instead of producing leisure and durable wealth, are duly cancelled out by the mandatory consumption on an even larger scale.

Haruki Murakami photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Naomi Klein photo
Ernest Mandel photo
Roger Federer photo

“I had a taste of what the best is tonight and I think Roger has that extra gear. He has good volleys and he has this little backhand flick that honestly, I have never seen before… it’s something that I didn’t have. I am happy with my performance tonight. I hung in there right until the end.”

Roger Federer (1981) Swiss tennis player

Pete Sampras, after playing his second exhibition match with Roger Federer, Kuala Lumpur, Nov. 22, 2007. http://www.hindu.com/2007/11/23/stories/2007112362882100.htm

Li He photo

“The desert sands look white as snow;
The crescent moon hangs like a bow.
When would the steed in golden gear
Gallop all night through autumn clear?”

Li He (790–816) Chinese writer

"Twenty-three Horse Poems", 5 (《马诗二十三首(其五)》), in Song of the Immortals: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, trans. Xu Yuanchong (Penguin Books, 1994), p. 91
Original: (zh-CN) 大漠沙如雪,燕山月似钩。
何当金络脑,快走踏清秋。