Quotes about growth
page 3

“There are times when a company’s know-how, product range, and labor relations are in harmony with the world around it. The business situations are familiar, the company is well organized, and employees are trained and prepared. During those times, managers do not need to develop and implement new ideas. Their job is to allocate resources to promote growth and development, channeling capital and people to the parts of the organization best positioned to benefit from the current state of affairs. Those parts of the organization then become larger, better established, and more powerful.
But just when the company has organized itself, outside circumstances may change. New technologies come on the scene, markets shift, interest rates fluctuate, consumers’ tastes change, and the company must enter a new phase of life. In order to stay in sync with the outside world, it must be able to alter its marketing strategy, its product range, its organizational form, and where and how it does its manufacturing. And once a company has adapted to a new environment, it is no longer the organization it used to be; it has evolved. That is the essence of learning.”

Arie de Geus (1930) Dutch businessman

Cited in: Richard C. Huseman, Jon P. Goodman (1998), Leading with Knowledge: The Nature of Competition in the 21st Century. SAGE Publications, p. 72.
The Living Company, 1997

Life, People, World, Idea

“Wherever we look the dreadful disintegration of the bridges of life, the capillaries and the bodies they have created, is evident, which has been caused by the mechanical and mindless work of man, who has torn away the soul from the Earth's blood - water. The more the engineer endeavors to channel water, of whose spirit and nature he is today still ignorant, by the shortest and straightest route to the sea, the more the flow of water weighs into the bends, the longer its path and the worse the water will become. The spreading of the most terrible disease of all, of cancer, is the necessary consequence of such unnatural regulatory works. These mistaken activities - our work - must legitimately lead to increasingly widespread unemployment, because our present methods of working, which have a purely mechanical basis, are already destroying not only all of wise Nature's formative processes, but first and foremost the growth of the vegetation itself, which is being destroyed even as it grows. The drying up of mountain springs, the change in the whole pattern of motion of the groundwater, and the disturbance in the blood circulation of the organism - Earth - is the direct result of modern forestry practices. The pulse-beat of the Earth was factually arrested by the modern timber production industry. Every economic death of a people is always preceded by the death of its forests. The forest is the habitat of water and as such the habitat of life processes too, whose quality declines as the organic development of the forest is disturbed. Ultimately, due to a law which functions with awesome constancy, it will slowly but surely come around to our turn. Our accustomed way of thinking in many ways, and perhaps even without exception, is opposed to the true workings of Nature. Our work is the embodiment of our will. The spiritual manifestation of this work is its effect. When such work is carried out correctly, it brings happiness, but when carried out incorrectly, it assuredly brings misery.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Viktor Schauberger: Our Senseless Toil (1934)

Life, Death, People, Disease

“Until the age of twelve, then, I only lived on bread, milk-food, vegetables, and fruit. My health was not less robust on this account, nor my growth less rapid, and it was to this diet, perhaps, that I was indebted for that purity of feature, that exquisite sensibility of feeling, and that serene gentleness of humor and character which I had preserved up to that period.”

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) French writer, poet, and politician

Book IV, Note VIII, p. 61
Les confidences (1849)

Health, Age, Food, Feeling

“The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks constitutes a national and race danger which is impossible to exaggerate. I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed before another year has passed.”

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

(Home Secretary) Churchill to Prime Minister Asquith on compulsory sterilization of ‘the feeble-minded and insane’; cited, as follows (excerpted from longer note) : It is worth noting that eugenics was not a fringe movement of obscure scientists but often led and supported, in Britain and America, by some of the most prominent public figures of the day, across the political divide, such as Julian Huxley, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, John Maynard Keynes and Theodore Roosevelt. Indeed, none other than Winston Churchill, whilst Home Secretary in 1910, made the following observation: [text of quote] (quoted in Jones, 1994: 9)., in ‘Race’, sport, and British society (2001), Carrington & McDonald, Routledge, Introduction, Note 4, p. 20 ISBN 0415246296
Early career years (1898–1929)

Feeling, Madness

“In the field of modern business, so rich in opportunity for the exercise of man's finest and most varied mental faculties and moral qualities, mere money-making cannot be regarded as the legitimate end. Neither can mere growth of bulk or power be admitted as a worthy ambition. Nor can a man nobly mindful of his serious responsibilities to society view business as a game; since with the conduct of business human happiness or misery is inextricably interwoven.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

"Business — The New Profession", La Follette's Weekly Magazine, Volume 4, No. 47 (November 23, 1912), p. 7.
Extra-judicial writings

Money, Exercises, Game, Business

“The problem is that sex is the most dangerous way of trying to achieve personal growth, because the life force has mixed it so liberally with a string sense of "magic", which, in the attempt at possession turns out to be an illusion. The attempt to possess a woman through an act of sex is as frustrating as trying to possess the scent of a rose by cooking and eating it.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: The Corpse Garden (1998), p. 250

Life, Sex, Way, Problem

“Wars always bring about a conservative reaction. They overwhelm and destroy patient and careful efforts to improve the condition of man. Nothing can be heard in the cannon's roar but the voice of might. All the safeguards laboriously built to preserve individual freedom and foster man's welfare are blown to pieces with shot and shell. In the presence of the wholesale slaughter of men the value of life is cheapened to the zero point. What is one life compared with the almost daily records of tens of thousands or more mowed down like so many blades of grass in a field? Building up a conception of the importance of life is a matter of slow growth and education; and the work of generations is shattered and laid waste by machine guns and gases on a larger scale than ever before. Great wars have been followed by an unusually large number of killings between private citizens and individuals. These killers have become accustomed to thinking in terms of slaying and death toward all opposition, and these have been followed in turn by the most outrageous legal penalties and a large increase in the number of executions by the state. It is perfectly clear that hate begets hate, force is met with force, and cruelty can become so common that its contemplation brings pleasure, when it should produce pain.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 26 "The Aftermath Of The War"

Life, Death, Men, Pain

“We know that investment causes growth. But it is also true that growth causes investment.”

Jim Stanford (1961) Canadian economist

Part 3, Chapter 12, Investment and Growth, p. 144 (See also: Government spending.)
Economics For Everyone (2008)

“Tax revenues are up 59 percent since 1980. Because of our economic growth? No. During Carter's four years, we had growth of 37.2 percent; Reagan's five years have given us 30.7 percent. The new revenues are due to four giant Republican tax increases since 1981. All republicans rightly chastised Carter for his $38 billion deficit. But they ignore or even defend deficits of $220 billion, as government spending has grown 10.4 percent per year since Reagan took office, while the federal payroll has zoomed by a quarter of a million bureaucrats… big government has been legitimized in a way the Democrats never could have accomplished. It was tragic to listen to Ronald Reagan on the 1986 campaign trail bragging about his high spending on farm subsidies, welfare, warfare, etc… the IRS has grown bigger, richer, more powerful, and more arrogant. In the words of the founders of our country, our government has "sent hither swarms" of tax gatherers "to harass our people and eat out their substance." His officers jailed the innocent George Hansen, with the President refusing to pardon a great American whose only crime was to defend the Constitution. Reagan's new tax "reform" gives even more power to the IRS. Far from making taxes fairer or simpler, it deceitfully raises more revenue for the government to waste… I want to totally disassociate myself from the policies that have given us unprecedented deficits, massive monetary inflation, indiscriminate military spending, an irrational and unconstitutional foreign policy, zooming foreign aid, the exaltation of international banking, and the attack on our personal liberties and privacy.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Letter to chairman of the RNC http://www.textfiles.com/politics/ron_paul.txt Frank Fahrenkopf (March 1987). <br class="br">1980s

People, Way, Personality, Country

“As opposed to [megatechnics], an organic system directs itself to qualitative richness, amplitude, spaciousness, free from quantitative pressure and crowding, since self-regulation, self-correction, and self-propulsion are as much an integral property of organisms as nutrition, reproduction, growth, and repair. Balance, wholeness, completeness, continuous interplay between inner and outer, the subjective and the objective aspects of existence are identifying characteristics of the organic model; and the general name for an economy based on such a model is an economy of plenitude.”

Lewis Mumford book The Myth of the Machine

The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), The Pentagon of Power (1970)

“The disconnected impressions which we derive from life form a kind of knowledge ‘in growth,’ as Bacon called it; an over-early and peremptory attempt to digest this knowledge into a system tends, as he suggests, to falsify and distort it.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

“English Aphorists,” p. 103
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

Life, Knowledge

“Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

To My Daughters, With Love (1967)

Happiness

“President Obama has weakened our military by weakening our economy. He's crippled us with wasteful spending, massive debt, low growth, a huge trade deficit and open borders.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, April, Foreign Policy Speech (27 April 2016)

“What is there new that we have yet to accomplish? Love, for as yet we have only accomplished hatred and self-pleasing; Knowledge, for as yet we have only accomplished error and perception and conceiving; Bliss, for as yet we have only accomplished pleasure and pain and indifference; Power, for as yet we have only accomplished weakness and effort and a defeated victory; Life, for as yet we have only accomplished birth and growth and dying; Unity, for as yet we have only accomplished war and association.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

Love, Life, Pain, War

“The simple answer to the question with which we began is that we do not know whether democracy fosters or hinders economic growth.”

Adam Przeworski (1940) Polish-American academic

Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi, The Journal of Economic Perspectives (Summer, 1993)

Democracy, Question

“An income tax intended to reduce inequality and promote the diffusion of wealth has in practice fostered reinvestment of corporate earnings, thereby favoring the growth of large corporations, inhibiting the operation of the capital market, and discouraging the establishment of new enterprises.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: (1962), Ch. 13 Conclusion, 2002 edition, p. 198

Wealth

“Hope is like a harebell, trembling from its birth,
Love is like a rose, the joy of all the earth,
Faith is like a lily, lifted high and white,
Love is like a lovely rose, the world’s delight.
Harebells and sweet lilies show a thornless growth,
But the rose with all its thorns excels them both.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Hope is like a Harebell; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love, World, Faith, Hope

“Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand still without. Here is a youth hard pressed by poverty and labor; confined long hours in an unhealthy workshop; unschooled, and lacking all the arts of refinement. But he dreams of better things; he thinks of intelligence, of refinement, of grace and beauty. He conceives of, mentally builds up, an ideal condition of life; the vision of a wider liberty and a larger scope takes possession of him; unrest urges him to action, and he utilizes all his spare time and means, small though they are, to the development of his latent powers and resources.
Very soon so altered has his mind become that the workshop can no longer hold him. It has become so out of harmony with his mentality that it falls out of his life as a garment is cast aside, and, with the growth of opportunities which fit the scope of his expanding powers, he passes out of it forever.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

As A Man Thinketh (1902), Visions and Ideals

Life, Youth, Beauty, Dreams

“Because demography is concerned with human affairs and human populatlons it is possible, in principle, to consider demography as a sub-ﬁeld of many other subjects. It provided the scope of any particular subject-ﬁeld like anthropology, genetics, ecology, economics, sociology, etc., and is deﬁned in a sufﬁciently comprehensive manner. While not denying the possibility of considering demography as a sub-ﬁeld of one or another subject, at least for certain special purposes, it is suggested that demography should be logically viewed as the totality of convergent and inter-related factors and topics which (although these could be, spearately, the concern of many diﬂ'erent subjects like genetics and anthropology, sociology, education, psychology. economics, social and political affairs etc.) jointly, together with their mutual inter-actions, form the determinants as well as the consequences of growth (or decline), changes in composition, territorial movements, and social mobility of population in different geographical regions or in the world as a whole, at any given period of time, or over diﬂ'erent periods of time. Such a view would supply an aggregative, inter-related, and mutually interacting system of all those factors which have any inﬂuence over, or are inﬂuenced by, demographic or population changes over space and time.”

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893–1972) Indian scientist

Quote, Professor P.C. Mahalanobis and the Development of Population Statistics in lndia

World, Education, Change, Time

“That statement can not be too much emphasized. The country's growth has compelled the Federal establishment to exceed by far the Government plants of even the greatest States. With this growth in physical extent, in revenue, in personnel, there has inevitably been the suggestion that the Federal Government was overshadowing the States. Yet the State governments deal with far more various and more intimate concerns of the people than does the National Government. All the operations of the minor civil divisions, parishes, wards, school districts, towns, cities, counties, and the like, are dependencies of the State. The maintenance of order through police, the general business of enforcing law, is left to the States. So is education.”

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

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

People, Education, School, Law

“When you improve the people's economic well-being, it will lead to higher wage increases and higher purchasing power, which will lead to better economic growth. This is a self-fulfilling and virtuous cycle.”

Lim Guan Eng (1960) Finance Minister of Malaysia

Lim Guan Eng (2018) cited in " Govt not just in cost-cutting mode, says Lim https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2018/10/10/govt-not-just-in-costcutting-mode-says-lim/" on The Star Online, 10 October 2018

People

“Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom.”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Speech, Jan. 14, 1766, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Age, Confidence

“[T]he psychic and physical characteristics of human beings, and the differences between individuals, are the consequence of an interaction between the genes that are present in the fertilized egg and the sequence of environmental circumstances that the developing organism experiences during its entire life history. With a few exceptions, like cystic fibrosis where possession of the defective genotype leads ineluctably to the disease, or language acquisition where the language spoken depends only on experience and not at all on genotype, human characteristics are all subject to this interaction of forces. There are, moreover, random events in cell growth and differentiation that are neither genetic nor environmental in the usual sense, and which play an extremely important part in development, especially in behavioral traits.”

Richard C. Lewontin (1929) American evolutionary biologist

Genes and Sexuality: An Exchange (1995)

Life, Disease, Behavior, History

“Obeying an inalienable law, things grew, growing riotous and strange in their impulse for growth.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Hothouse

Source: Hothouse (1962), Chapter 1 (first line)

Law

“Only through intuition does a work rise above more or less subjective expression. Different periods produce different feelings and conceptions, and in each period men differ. Consequently different art expressions even in a single period are not only logical but a tribute to the general development of art. Intuition always finds the way of progress, which is continuous growth toward a clearer establishment of the content of art: the unification of man with the universe.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

'A New Realism', p. 17
1940's, A New Realism', 1943-1945

Men, Art, Way, Feeling

“Capitalism is commodity production at the highest stage of development, when labor power itself becomes a commodity. The growth of internal exchange, and particularly of international exchange, is a special feature of capitalism. The uneven and spasmodic character of the development of individual enterprises, of individual branches of industry and individual countries, is inevitable under the capitalist system.”

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

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Four, "The Export of Capital"

Country

“From our humble beginning as a supply town for miners, to the national leader in smart growth and environmental stewardship we are today, Boulder has always been dedicated to the careful balance of entrepreneurship and wise land use.”

Jared Polis (1975) American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and US Representative

Jared Polis, "Boulder, Colorado's Sesquicentennial", Congressional Record, June 25, 2009.

“We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.”

Virginia Satir (1916–1988) American psychologist

Magic Touch: Six Things You Can Do to Connect in a Disconnected World. https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolynrosenblatt/2011/01/18/magic-touch-six-things-you-can-do-to-connect-in-a-disconnected-world/, Forbes, 18 Jan 2011.

“I have gained a lot from my German teachers and philosophers and I acknowledge this debt whole heartedly but it does not mean that others have not contributed to the growth of my ideas. I have been influenced in much the same way by thoughts of Indian, Swiss, English and American teachers and educational philosophers. I always treat truth and discretion as my lost property and pick it up wherever I find it.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

Source: Quest for Truth (1999), p. 145.

Truth, Education, Way, Idea

“Well, method is, it seems to me, a natural growth out of a need, and from a need the modern artist has found new ways of expressing the world about him. I happen to find ways that are different from the usual techniques, which seems a little strange at the moment, but I don't think there's anything very different about it. I paint on the floor and this isn't unusual – the Orientals did that.”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

Source: 1950's, Interview by William Wright, Summer 1950, pp. 142-143

World, Way, Nature, Thinking

“The caring person is the carrier of radical middle politics. … To see this clearly, it helps to look at three competing archetypes of the Good American. … Self-aggrandizers are ambitious strivers. They get their primary identity from their occupation and the social status associated with that. … Self-sacrificing individuals are not personally ambitious – and when they are they try to hide it. They get their primary identity from their ethnic, racial, or religious affiliation or sexual orientation. … Caring persons may or may not be personally ambitious, but they want their jobs to provide them with opportunities for personal growth and social relevance. They get their primary identity from the lifestyle choices they make and the values they consciously choose. They are equally committed to personal freedom and social justice, self-development and social change.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Source: Radical Middle (2004), Chapter 2, "The Caring Person," pp. 17–18.

Justice, Freedom, Change, Help

“Whenever the rate of return on capital is significantly and durably higher than the growth rate of the economy, it is all but inevitable that inheritance (of fortunes accumulated in the past) predominates over saving (wealth accumulated in the present). … The inequality r > g in one sense implies that the past tends to devour the future: wealth originating in the past automatically grows more rapidly, even without labor, than wealth stemming from work, which can be saved. Almost inevitably, this tends to give lasting disproportionate importance to inequalities created in the past, and therefore to inheritance.”

Thomas Piketty book Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Source: Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), p. 377.

Sense, Past, Future, Wealth

“Madness is locked beneath. It goes into tissues, is swallowed by the cells. The cells go mad. Cancer is their flag. Cancer is the growth of madness denied.”

Norman Mailer book An American Dream

Stephen Rojack, in Ch. 8
An American Dream (1965)

Madness

“I learned later that economic reasoning was not just mathematics and could be applied to a wide variety of social problems. Now, I think that no forms of social interaction—including religion, love, crime, and fertility choice—are immune from the power of economic reasoning. Hence, even widely held beliefs—for example, that beauty is an illegitimate credential of a worker or that democracy is important for economic growth—are not sacred truths and are subject to analysis.”

Robert Barro (1944) American classical macroeconomist

Source: Nothing Is Sacred (2002), p. xiii

Love, Truth, Religion, Beauty

“Everything that promotes the welfare, the advancement and the growth of the individual is right. And everything that interferes with the welfare, the advancement and the growth of the individual is wrong. This is the only natural standard by which we can judge what is right and what is wrong. It is therefore the true standard, being based upon the nature, the principle and the purpose of life itself.”

Christian D. Larson (1874–1962) Prolific author of metaphysical and New Thought books

What is Truth (1912)

Life, Nature

“Political conservatives have focused on tax reduction as an economic growth strategy for three reasons. First it is self-serving; it saves rich people lots of money. Second, it comports with their ideological allegiance to laissez-faire economics. And third, tax incentives are less intrusive to business-as-usual than any other form of government planning.”

Robert Kuttner (1943) American journalist

Source: The Economic Illusion (1984), Chapter 5, Taxes, p. 227

Money, People, Business

“My journey to veganism began when I was a sophomore in high school. … For a long time before that, I felt a connection to animals and believed it was wrong to eat creatures with personalities, thoughts, and the ability to show love and affection. I grew up on an animal farm … It was in this environment, with direct contact to farm animals, that I decided that eating meat was not in accordance with my values. … There is nothing more effective than tangible results to show people that athletic achievement and substantial muscle growth can be achieved healthfully on a plant-based diet.”

Robert Cheeke (1980) American bodybuilder

"Plant Power: Q & A with Vegan Bodybuilder Robert Cheeke" https://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/plant-power-q-a-with-vegan-bodybuilder-robert-cheeke, interview with Vegetarian Times (May 1, 2013).

Love, People, School, Time

“The only problem with capitalism is that it destroys the planet, and that it’s based on growth. I mean apart from those two little details it’s got a lot to be said in its favour.”

David Fleming (1940–2010) British activist

Interview, November 4th, 2010 http://www.darkoptimism.org/2016/10/14/by-popular-demand-david-flemings-interviews/

Problem, Thinking

“I am ever solicitous for your future prosperity, and I wish that I could convince you, as I feel convinced, that it all depends upon your bringing out with spirit the talents you possess. I wish that I could impart to you a little of that Bonapartian feeling with which I am imbued—a feeling that spurs me on with the conviction that all the obstacles to fortune with which I am impeded, will (nay, shall) yield if assailed with energy. All is lost to you, if you succumb to those desponding views which you mentioned when we last spoke. Dame Fortune, like other fair ones, loves a brisk and confident wooer. I want to see you able to pitch your voice in a higher key, especially when you are espousing your own interests, and above all, never to see you yield or become passive and indifferent when your cause is just, and only wants to be spiritedly supported to be sure of a triumph. But all this must proceed from within, and can be only the fruits of a larger growth of spirit, to the cultivation of which without further lecture I most earnestly commend you.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to his brother (30 January 1832), quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), p. 20.
1830s

Love, Feeling, Confidence, Support

“We take the same line as the United States: the austerity policies need to be accompanied by greater flexibility to stimulate growth.”

Federica Mogherini (1973) Italian politician

As quoted in "Yearning for Change: Italian Diplomacy Just Got Younger" by Walter Mayr, in Der Spiegel (4 July 2014) http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/youthful-italian-foreign-minister-mogherini-confident-of-success-a-979059.html.

“Animal growth can be considered as a result of a counteraction of synthesis and destruction, of the anabolism and catabolism of the building materials of the body. There will be growth so long as building up prevails over breaking down.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Von Bertalanffy (1949) "Problems of Organic Growth". In: Nature, Vol. 163. p. 156
1940s

Animals

“Due process is a growth too sturdy to succumb to the infection of the least ingredient of error.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

Roberts v. New York, 295 U.S. 264, 278 (1935)
Judicial opinions

Error

“Remember Marxism? It used to be a sour sort of fun to tease Marxists about the contradictions in some of their pet ideas. The revolution of the proletariat was inevitable, good Marxists believed, but if so, why were they so eager to enlist us in their cause? If it was going to happen anyway, it was going to happen with or without our help. But of course the inevitability that Marxists believe in is one that depends on the growth of the movement and all its political action. There were Marxists working very hard to bring about the revolution, and it was comforting to them to believe that their success was guaranteed in the long run. And some of them, the only ones that were really dangerous, believed so firmly in the rightness of their cause that they believed it was permissible to lie and deceive in order to further it. They even taught this to their children, from infancy. These are the "red-diaper babies," children of hardline members of the Communist Party of America, and some of them can still be found infecting the atmosphere of political action in left-wing circles, to the extreme frustration and annoyance of honest socialists and others on the left.Today we have a similar phenomenon brewing on the religious right: the inevitability of the End Days, or the Rapture, the coming Armageddon that will separate the blessed from the damned in the final day of Judgment. Cults and prophets proclaiming the imminent end of the world have been with us for several millennia, and it has been another sour sort of fun to ridicule them the morning after, when they discover that their calculations were a little off. But, just as with the Marxists, there are some among them who are working hard to "hasten the inevitable," not merely anticipating the End Days with joy in their hearts, but taking political action to bring about the conditions they think are the prerequisites for that occasion. And these people are not funny at all. They are dangerous, for the same reason that red-diaper babies are dangerous: they put their allegiance to their creed ahead of their commitment to democracy, to peace, to (earthly) justice — and to truth. If push comes to shove, some of the are prepared to lie and even to kill…”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Children, People, Truth, Lie

“1. The standard neoclassical model the formal articulation of Adam Smith's invisible hand, the contention that market economies will ensure economic efficiency provides little guidance for the choice of economic systems, since once information imperfections (and the fact that markets are incomplete) are brought into the analysis, as surely they must be, there is no presumption that markets are efficient.
2. The Lange-Lerner-Taylor theorem, asserting the equivalence of market and market socialist economies, is based on a misguided view of the market, of the central problems of resource allocation, and (not surprisingly, given the first two failures) of how the market addresses those basic problems.
3. The neoclassical paradigm, through its incorrect characterization of the market economies and the central problems of resource allocation, provides a false sense of belief in the ability of market socialism to solve those resource allocation problems. To put it another way, if the neoclassical paradigm had provided a good description of the resource allocation problem and the market mechanism, then market socialism might well have been a success. The very criticisms of market socialism are themselves, to a large extent, criticisms of the neoclassical paradigm.
4. The central economic issues go beyond the traditional three questions posed at the beginning of every introductory text: What is to be produced? How is it to be produced? And for whom is it to be produced? Among the broader set of questions are: How should these resource allocation decisions be made? Who should make these decisions? How can those who are responsible for making these decisions be induced to make the right decisions? How are they to know what and how much information to acquire before making the decisions? How can the separate decisions of the millions of actors decision makers in the economy be coordinated?
5. At the core of the success of market economies are competition, markets, and decentralization. It is possible to have these, and for the government to still play a large role in the economy; indeed it may be necessary for the government to play a large role if competition is to be preserved. There has recently been extensive confusion over to what to attribute the East Asian miracle, the amazingly rapid growth in countries of this region during the past decade or two. Countries like Korea did make use of markets; they were very export oriented. And because markets played such an important role, some observers concluded that their success was convincing evidence of the power of markets alone. Yet in almost every case, government played a major role in these economies. While Wade may have put it too strongly when he entitled his book on the Taiwan success Governing the Market, there is little doubt that government intervened in the economy through the market.
6. At the core of the failure of the socialist experiment is not just the lack of property rights. Equally important were the problems arising from lack of incentives and competition, not only in the sphere of economics but also in politics. Even more important perhaps were problems of information. Hayek was right, of course, in emphasizing that the information problems facing a central planner were overwhelming. I am not sure that Hayek fully appreciated the range of information problems. If they were limited to the kinds of information problems that are at the center of the Arrow-Debreu model consumers conveying their preferences to firms, and scarcity values being communicated both to firms and consumers then market socialism would have worked. Lange would have been correct that by using prices, the socialist economy could "solve" the information problem just as well as the market could. But problems of information are broader.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz book Whither Socialism?

Source: Whither Socialism? (1994), Ch. 1 : The Theory of Socialism and the Power of Economic Ideas

Books, Way, Communication, Failure

“Hinduism is a relentless pursuit after truth and if today it has become moribund, inactive, irresponsive to growth, it is because we are fatigued. As soon as the fatigue is over, Hinduism will burst forth upon the world with a brilliance perhaps never known before.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Young India (24 April 1924)
1920s

Truth, World

“Everyday we see evidence of biological growth in technological systems. This is one of the marks of the network economy: that biology has taken root in technology. And this is one of the reasons why networks change everything.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

Change

“What is called music today is all too often only a disguise for the monologue of power. However, and this is the supreme irony of it all, never before have musicians tried so hard to communicate with their audience, and never before has that communication been so deceiving. Music now seems hardly more than a somewhat clumsy excuse for the self-glorification of musicians and the growth of a new industrial sector.”

Jacques Attali (1943) French economist

Quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ed. Richard Kostelanetz and Joseph Darby (Wadsworth, 1996, ISBN 0-028-64581-2)

Music, Communication

“When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.”

Thomas Piketty book Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Source: Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), p. 1.

“The triplet of specifications - the product-market scope, the growth vector and the competitive advantage - describes the firm's product-market path in the external environment.”

Igor Ansoff (1918–2001) American mathematician

Source: Corporate Strategy, 1965, p. 110

“Right now alternative energy is still treated as a supplement rather than a substitute for fossil fuels within the energy industry as presently constituted. The rapid growth of alternative energy should not therefore be seen as a radical break with the domination of fossil fuels. That still needs to occur.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Interview with Left Voice, 2017

“The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We’ve done that for so long that we've forgotten there’s any other way.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

"Amory Blaine" in This Side of Paradise (1920) Bk. 2, Ch. 5
Quoted

Way, Idea

“There's a very strong connection between a lot of the evils of the modern world—factory farming, abuse against women—and the environment. We're destroying the female. If you think about the earth as a female organism which it is, in its totality, you know how we're disrespecting and abusing it. … [I have] very strong feelings about factory farming … I’m a vegetarian myself … I don’t want any kind of suffering of any living form but it’s more to do with the awareness that so much of the meat on the planet is being produced by factory farms. Animals are being pumped full of growth hormones which are then getting fed to our kids. And it’s affecting the water, environment. … We are being duped and controlled by huge multinationals that are concerned about the short term, not the long term and don’t care about the individual.”

Thandie Newton (1972) English actress

“The ‘superhero’ in feisty actress Thandie Newton,” interview with Inquirer.net (13 April 2013) http://entertainment.inquirer.net/89505/the-superhero-in-feisty-actress-thandie-newton.

Women, World, Feeling, Thinking

“The learning process is endless. We must read, we must observe, we must assimilate, and we must ponder that to which we expose our minds. I believe in the evolution of the mind, the heart, and the soul of humanity. I believe in improvement. I believe in growth. There is nothing quite as invigorating as being able to evaluate and then solve a difficult problem, to grapple with something that seems unsolvable and then find a resolution.”

Gordon B. Hinckley book Standing for Something

Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes.

Soul, Problem, Learning, Reading

“With much of the world in turmoil, calling for higher economic growth is every politician's comfort blanket of choice. But Tim Jackson compellingly urges those politicians to give up their comfort blanket, to re-think our continuing dependence on economic growth, and to start preparing – urgently – for a world where such growth is no longer viable as its environmental cost massively exceeds its benefits.”

Tim Jackson (1957) British economist, specialist of ecological economics

Jonathon Porritt, founder and director of the Forum for the Future, cited in Prosperity Without Growth, 2017 edition.
About

World, Thinking, Dependency

“The last 20 years have· seen an enormous growth of institutions devoted to anthropological enterprises, membership within the discipline, and students, text books, and paraphernalia. From a tiny scholarly group that could easily be fitted into a couple of buses, and most of whom knew each other, we have grown into a group of tremendous, anonymous milling crowds, meeting at large hotels where there are so many sessions that people do well to find those of their colleagues who are interested in the same specialty. Today we look something like the other social science disciplines, suffering some of the same malaise, and becoming cynical about slave markets and worried when grants and jobs seem to be declining.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1970s, Changing Styles of Anthropological Work, 1973, p. 1

People, Books, Suffering, Science

“How much longer, for instance, can we continue to crowd more and more people into this world? How much longer can we afford to wage senseless, destructive wars? How long can we permit the uncontrolled use of the earth's resources when there is no possibility of replacing them? Indeed, how long will it be before we have completely used up everything our lives depend on? These issues are the politics of the future. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have begun to spell out in substantive fashion the means by which we can control population growth, environmental problmes, and the conservation of our natural resources.”

Leo Ryan book USA/From Where We Stand

USA/From Where We Stand: Readings in Contemporary American Problems (1970), Introduction, p. 3.

War, People, World, Fashion

“So Sen is right that democracy can be pressed into the service of reducing injustice. Indeed this can happen against expectations. Had there been neoclassical economists around in the late eighteenth century, they would have scoffed at the possibility of abolishing the slave trade. In the absence of a system of multilateral enforcement, Britain had to bear the enormous expense unilaterally—over several decades—without any obvious prospect of a return. whether democracy fosters or hinders economic growth.”

Ian Shapiro (1956) American political theorist

Review of The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen, Journal of Economic Literature (December 2011).

Democracy

“The common growth of Mother Earth
Suffices me,—her tears, her mirth,
Her humblest mirth and tears.”

William Wordsworth Peter Bell

Prologue, stanza 27.
Peter Bell (1798)

Tear

“Italy has shown that there is a way of fighting the subversive forces which can rally the masses of the people, properly led, to value and wish to defend the honour and stability of stabilized society. She has provided the necessary antidote to the Russian poison. Hereafter no great nation will be unprovided with an ultimate means of protection against the cancerous growth of Bolshevism.”

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

Press statement from Rome (20 January 1927), as quoted in Introduction: A Political-Biographical Sketch by Tariq Ali in Class War Conservatism and Other Essays (2015) by Ralph Miliband, with date of quote given in Go Betweens for Hitler by Karina Urbach.
Early career years (1898–1929)

People, Way, Fight

“We must stop spending money that we just don’t have. Historic debt leads to historic tax increases, which stifle job growth.”

Kristi Noem (1971) South Dakota politician

Lawrence, Tom. S.D. Rep. Noem pushes for big cuts in federal spending http://www.mitchellrepublic.com/event/article/id/50875/group/homepage/, The Daily Republic, March 11, 2011.

Money

““One should know,” he wrote, “that jihad is an advantageous and beneficial institution. Mankind derives benefits from its advantages in various ways, just like rain, the advantages of which are imparted upon both plants, animals and men.” Barelvi promised that if Muslims waged jihad, they would receive “the blessings of heaven,” including “timely downpour of rain, abundant vegetation, growth of profits and trade, absence of calamities and pestilences, growth of wealth and presence of men of learning and perfection.””

Syed Ahmad Barelvi (1786–1831) Muslim activist

Rudolph Peters, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (Mouton Publishers, 1979) 47, Quoted from Spencer, Robert (2018). The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS.

Men, Way, Learning, Time

“It was the FLP that was committed to reducing the cost of doing business and started by lowering the cost of utilities, and requested the commercial banks and lending organizations to reduce their fees, charges and interest rates. The FLP also moved to reduce public expenditure, which saw a saving of $96 million in its year in office. It was also the FLP, which lowered interest in Housing Authority home loans from 12 per cent to 6 per cent for those on lower incomes. It was the aggregate effect of this and a range of other measures of tight fiscal control, investment in key growth areas and a firm hand on curbing corruption that saw the economy record an unprecedented growth of 9.6% in 1999.”

Mahendra Chaudhry (1942) Fijian politician

Reaction to Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase's address to the Fiji Employers Federation in Nadi, 4 September 2005

Home, Business, Housing

“The centrally planned economies, dissatisfied with the outcome of their own efforts to achieve good economic growth performance, have changed strategy and decided to import high technology from the West. as well as necessary grains to supplement their domestic agicultural supplies. This new approach has opened their economies to Western inflation because imports have been reflecting rising world price. Gold and oil sales at correspondingly rising prices have been used by the Soviet Union to finance part of their import needs. but they are fully enmeshed in world inflation accounting in balancing rising export prices.”

Lawrence Klein (1920–2013) American economist

"Some Economic Scenarios for the 1980's," 1980

World, Effort, Change, Parting

“We found that technological optimism is the common and the most dangerous reaction to our findings… Technology can relieve the symptoms of the problem without affecting the underlying causes. Faith in technology as the ultimate solution to all problems can thus divert our attention from the most fundamental problem— the problem of growth in a finite system- and prevent us from taking effective action to solve it… We would deplore an unreasoned rejection of the benefits of technology as strongly as we argue here against an unreasoned acceptance of them. Perhaps the best summary of our position is the motto of the Sierra Club; not blind opposition to progress but opposition to blind progress.
Taking no action to solve these problems is equivalent of taking strong action. Every day of continued exponential growth brings the world system closer to the ultimate limits of that growth. A decision to do nothing is a decision to increase the risk of collapse.
The way to proceed is clear… [we posses] all that is necessary to create a totally new form of human society… the two missing ingredients are the realistic long-term goal… and the human will to achieve that goal.”

Mihajlo D. Mesarovic (1928) Serbian academic

Source: Mankind at the Turning Point, (1974), p. 88, quoted in: Martin Bridgstock, David Burch, John Forge, John Laurent, Ian Lowe (1998) Science, Technology and Society: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. pp. 245-246

World, Faith, Way, Optimism

“The Muslim invaders, no doubt, came to India singing a hymn of hate against the Hindus. But, they did not merely sing their hymn of hate and go back burning a few temples on the way. That would have been a blessing. They were not content with so negative a result. They did a positive act, namely, to plant the seed of Islam. The growth of this plant is remarkable. It is not a summer sapling. It is as great and as strong as an oak. Its growth is the thickest in Northern India. The successive invasions have deposited their ‘silt’ more there than anywhere else, and have served as watering exercises of devoted gardeners. Its growth is so thick in Northern India that the remnants of Hindu and Buddhist culture are just shrubs. Even the Sikh axe could not fell this oak.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Source: Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946), pp. 65

Hate, Way, Exercises, Strong

“Thou wast a bauble once; a cup and ball,
Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloined
The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down
Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs
And all thine embryo vastness at a gulp.
But fate thy growth decreed.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Source: The Yardley Oak (1791), Lines 18-23

Fate, Food

“It is in the character of growth that we should learn from both pleasant and unpleasant experiences.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Nelson Mandela on character, Foreign Correspondent's Association's Annual Dinner, Johannesburg, South Africa (21 November 1997). Source: From Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations © 2010 by Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation http://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/mini-site/selected-quotes <br class="br">1990s

Learning

“In this regard, I hope the dry rubber products segment continues to chart a more creditable growth in exports. These are challenging times. On the external front, the United States-China trade conflict, if protracted, could affect global growth and demand. On the domestic front, the private sector has to step up investment to drive economic growth, especially in the downstream sector.”

Teresa Kok (1964) Malaysian politician

Teresa Kok (2018) cited in " Teresa Kok: Rubber to surpass palm oil’s contribution to economy https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2018/09/18/teresa-kok-rubber-to-surpass-palm-oils-contribution-to-economy/" on FMT News, 18 September 2018

Hope, Time

“The translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years.”

Max Müller (1823–1900) German-born philologist and orientalist

Letter to his wife Georgina, published in The Life and Letters of Right Honorable Friedrich Max Müller (1902) edited by Georgina Müller

Fate, Religion, Way, Feeling

“Kyoto questions the philosophies underpinning societies such as America and Australia, which cling to the myth of limitless growth.”

Tim Flannery book The Weather Makers

Source: The Weather Makers (2005), Chapter 25 (p. 237)

Question

“Imperialism - the era of bank capital, the era of gigantic capitalist monopolies, the era of the transformation of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism - has particularly witnessed an unprecedented strengthening of the "state machine" and an unprecedented growth of its bureaucratic and military apparatus, in connection with the increase in repressive measures against the proletariat in the monarchical as well as in the freest republican countries.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

2.2, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)

Country

“Modern macroeconomics flourished in its pursuit of the secrets of long-run economic growth, but it neglected short-run economic problems. In the long run, prices are flexible, and the growth of the economy is determined by the growth in the ability to supply goods and services. But in the short run prices are not flexible. Growth can be held back because prices are too high and, as a result, demand is too low. Keynes made his name by analyzing short-run problems caused by the stickiness or even rigidity of some important prices. But these Keynesian ideas were abandoned by modern macroeconomics.”

Peter Temin (1937) American economist

Why Keynes is Important Today (2014)

Secret, Idea, Problem

“Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

“It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Progress In Religion (2000)
Context: My personal theology is described in the Gifford lectures that I gave at Aberdeen in Scotland in 1985, published under the title, Infinite In All Directions. Here is a brief summary of my thinking. The universe shows evidence of the operations of mind on three levels. The first level is elementary physical processes, as we see them when we study atoms in the laboratory. The second level is our direct human experience of our own consciousness. The third level is the universe as a whole. Atoms in the laboratory are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. God may be either a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. So I am thinking that atoms and humans and God may have minds that differ in degree but not in kind. We stand, in a manner of speaking, midway between the unpredictability of atoms and the unpredictability of God. Atoms are small pieces of our mental apparatus, and we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus. Our minds may receive inputs equally from atoms and from God. This view of our place in the cosmos may not be true, but it is compatible with the active nature of atoms as revealed in the experiments of modern physics. I don't say that this personal theology is supported or proved by scientific evidence. I only say that it is consistent with scientific evidence.

God, Law, Nature, Universe

“The final result will be that the American people will ultimately prefer communities. They will cop out or opt out of the system. Today everything is a bureaucratic structure, and brainwashed people who are not personalities are trained to fit into this bureaucratic structure and say it is a great life--although I would assume that many on their death beds must feel otherwise. The process of copping out will take a long time, but notice: we are already copping out of military service on a wholesale basis; we are already copping out of voting on a large scale basis. …People are also copping out by refusing to pay any attention to newspapers or to what’s going on in the world, and by increasing emphasis on the growth of localism, what is happening in their own neighborhoods.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Life, Death, People, World

“A vegetarian diet, by reason of its low content of saturated fatty acids, cholesterol, and animal proteins, and its high concentrations of folic acids, antioxidants, and phytoestrogens—shown to be effective in inhibiting the growth or in promoting the regression of serious coronary pathologies—constitutes a barrier against a number of chronic degenerative diseases, cancer among them. And that is not all. Fruits and vegetables—besides contaminating us much less than some other foods—are troves of precious substances that enable the neutralization of carcinogenic agents and that 'dilute' the concentration of diseased cells and reduce their proliferation. All of these advantages, as well as many others, emerged from studies on populations in the last century.”

Umberto Veronesi (1925–2016) Italian oncologist and politician

The First Day Without Cancer (2013)

Disease, Food, Study, Animals

“The modern world is still suffering from the native incapacity of the Jews to be political. The art of making and preserving a City, which we call be the Greek name, “Politics,” was never an indigenous growth among the Hebrews. The City of the Greeks and the other civilized nations of antiquity was hateful to them. Their ideas were essentially anti-political. The politics of Judaea, when there were any, were borrowed from the Egyptians and Babylonians and, later, from the Greeks. These borrowings were regarded with violent disapproval by the champions of Hebrew orthodoxy, who objected to organized civilization on two grounds. Some, like Amos, hated it just because it was civilization and not nomadic barbarism. It was in the desert that God had made his covenant with the Chosen Race, and in the desert there was nothing else to think about but God. So, Back to the Desert! was their war-cry. Others, the Ebionites, objected to civilization because it was hierarchical, because it made for social inequality. They gave prophetically indignant utterance to the envious hatred of the poor in cash and in spirit against the rich and talented and cultured. A pious and universal mediocrity was their ideal.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“One and Many,” pp. 17–18
Do What You Will (1928)

God, Hate, War, World

“I'm not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that's a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I'm not a scientist. I don't think I'm qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries.”

Marco Rubio (1971) U.S. Senator from state of Florida, United States; politician

2012
December
All Eyez on Him
Michael
Hainey
GQ
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/201212/marco-rubio-interview-gq-december-2012?currentPage=2
Posed question: How old do you think the Earth is?
2010s, 2012

People, Age, Faith, History

“An example of such emergent phenomena is the origin of life from non-living chemical compounds in the oldest, lifeless oceans of the earth. Here, aided by the radiation energy received from the sun, countless chemical materials were synthesized and accumulated in such a way that they constituted, as it were, a primeval “soup.” In this primeval soup, by infinite variations of lifeless growth and decay of substances during some billions of years, the way of life was ultimately reached, with its metabolism characterized by selective assimilation and dissimulation as end stations of a sluiced and canalized flow of free chemical energy.”

Reinout Willem van Bemmelen (1904–1983) Dutch geologist

Source: "The Scientific Character of Geology," 1961, p. 458, as cited in: Reinout Willem van Bemmelen - Today In Science History http://todayinsci.com/V/VanBemmelen_RW/VanBemmelenRW-Quotations.htm, 1999-2014

Life, Way, Sun

“Greatness of name in the father oft-times overwhelms the son; they stand too near one another. The shadow kills the growth: so much, that we see the grandchild come more and oftener to be heir of the first.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Timber: or Discoveries

Time

“The moral is obvious: it is that great armaments lead inevitably to war. If there are armaments on one side there must be armaments on other sides. While one nation arms, other nations cannot tempt it to aggression by remaining defenceless…The increase of armaments, that is intended in each nation to produce consciousness of strength, and a sense of security, does not produce these effects. On the contrary, it produces a consciousness of the strength of other nations and a sense of fear. Fear begets suspicion and distrust and evil imaginings of all sorts, till each government feels it would be criminal and a betrayal of its own country not to take every precaution, while every government regards every precaution of every other government as evidence of hostile intent…The enormous growth of armaments in Europe, the sense of insecurity and fear caused by them - it was these that made war inevitable. This, it seems to me, is the truest reading of history, and the lesson that the present should be learning from the past in the interest of future peace, the warning to be handed on to those who come after us.”

Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1862–1933) British Liberal statesman

Vol. 1, pp. 91-92.
Twenty-five Years (1925)

Hostility, War, Fear, Peace

“How do wealth-income and capital-output ratios evolve in the long run, and why? Until recently it was difficult to properly address this question, for one simple reason: national accounts were mostly about ﬂows, not stocks. Economists had at their disposal a large body of historical series on ﬂows of output, income and consumption – but limited data on stocks of assets and liabilities. When needed, for example for growth accounting exercises, estimates of capital stocks were typically obtained by cumulating past ﬂows of saving and investment. This is ﬁne for some purposes, but severely limits the set of questions one can ask.”

Thomas Piketty (1971) French economist

Piketty, Thomas, and Gabriel Zucman. Capital is back: Wealth-income ratios in rich countries, 1700-2010 http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/PikettyZucman2013WP.pdf. Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2013.

Exercises, Question, Past, Wealth

“This doctrine was not so much to do with sinlessness but with personal growth. It is about the attitude that should guide us in our relationships with others according to the commandment of loving your neighbor. I will just add that I am far from perfect in my faith. I often stumble and fall but I will never stop striving to serve God in the best way I can, to honor him and to serve the purpose for which he has called me. I know in my heart that what has transpired since the elections are part of God's plan for Fiji. He has given me a part to play in this and I cannot refuse it.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

quoted in Fiji Village http://www.Fijivillage.com/news <br class="br">Interview, 16 June 2006

Love, God, Faith, Way

“If the aim of economics is really to provide the greatest happiness to the most people, than it is rather shocking to discover that economic growth has no net effect on happiness. So what has gone wrong with the neoclassical prospect?”

David Orrell (1962) Canadian mathematician

Source: The Other Side Of The Coin (2008), Chapter 2, Odd Versus Even, p. 75

People, Happiness

“After September 11th, you had core al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan with (Osama) bin Laden. Bin Laden was killed. You have al Qaeda growing in countries like Somalia, but most particularly in Yemen. And there's still substantial threat out of Yemen. And now you have the countries in the Arab Spring: Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Mali; Egypt most recently, where they're breeding grounds for radical extremists who may not stay there, but may present an attack. And, finally, you have, within the United States, the growth of homegrown, radicalized extremists who are radicalized on the Internet and then get their instructions for developing explosives on the Internet, as well.”

Robert Mueller (1944) Sixth director of the FBI; American attorney

CNN Interview (2013)

Spring, Country

“Centuries of growth in advanced economies have left little carbon space for the developing world, challenging their growth. The thin lines of balancing economic development and protection of the environment will remain a great challenge in future development policy-setting. It is therefore critical that developed countries honour their commitments and compensate damage to the environment, on the basis of common but differentiated responsibilities.”

Mahinda Rajapaksa (1945) Prime Minister of Sri Lanka

United Nations, Sri "Lanka urges UN to study global inequality, failure to lift millions out of poverty" http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp/html/story.asp?NewsID=45978&Cr=general+assembly&Cr1=, 24 September 2013.

World, Future, Country

“As a result of this continuous improvement of productivity through the division of labor and technical advancement, one hour's labor today is worth about 25 times more than it was in the mid-19th century […. ] Growth and productivity alone are capable of raising real wages in the long run.”

Johan Norberg book In Defense of Global Capitalism

In Defense of Global Capitalism

Time

“Summer is the season when the sun reaches its zenith, its peak, when it burns the hottest and shines most golden for the longest days of the year… It embraces everything with its light, spreads a blanket of reassuring warmth, induces fertility and growth and regeneration, and even causes rainstorms to balance its own overwhelming power. Michael Jackson was very much like that with an abundance of creative spiritual energies that enriched, inspired, and empowered the lives of more human beings than anyone can accurately count.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(from essay Michael Jackson and Summertime from this Point On).
From Articles, Essays, and Poems, On Michael Jackson

Light, Sun, Summer, Season

“Mutual aid is the way to prevent the third world war. Mutual aid is also the way to stop the internal growth of Communism by providing our people with plenty, security and freedom.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

What Does God Want Us to Do About Russia? (1948)

War, People, World, Way

“Every major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline. Others, which are thought of as seasoned growth industries, have actually stopped growing. In every case the reason growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not because the market is saturated. It is because there has been a failure of management.”

Theodore Levitt (1925–2006) American economist and professor at Harvard Business School

Source: Marketing Myopia, 1960, p. 1; Lead paragraph

Failure, Season

“The human population growth over the last 2,000 years is well documented. The current population of seven billion could easily have come from eight people who got off Noah’s ark 4,400 years ago. If man had really been here four million years ago, like the evolutionists teach, why isn’t the earth stacked with people halfway to the moon?”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 39

People

“Uncertainty is he root of all progress and all growth. As the old adage goes, the man who believes he knows everything learns nothing. We cannot learn anything without first not knowing something.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 6, “You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I)” (p. 135)

Learning

“A fundamental change is taking place in the nature and application of technology in business, a change with profound and far-reaching implications for companies of every size and shape. A multimillion dollar research program conducted by the DMR Group, Inc., studied more than 4,500 organizations in North America, Europe, and the Far East to investigate the nature and impact of changes in technology. The synthesis and analysis of this information indicate that information technology is going through its first paradigm shift. Driven by the demands of the competitive business environment and profound changes in the nature of computers, the information age is evolving into a second era. Computing platforms in most organizations today are not able to deliver the goods for corporate rebirth. It is only through open network computing that the open networked client/server enterprise can be achieved. In nontechnical language this book shows managers and professionals how to take immediate action for the short-term benefits of the new technology while positioning their organizations for long-term growth and transformation…”

Don Tapscott (1947) Canadian businessman

Don Tapscott and Art Caston (1993) Paradigm Shift: The New Promise of Information Technology. McGraw Hill, Inc. Abstract

Books, Age, Business, Nature

“…human beings need community. If there are no communities available for constructive ends, there will be destructive, murderous communities… Only the social sector, that is, the nongovernmental, nonprofit organization, can create what we now need, communities for citizens… What the dawning 21st century needs above all is equally explosive growth of the nonprofit social sector in building communities in the newly dominant social environment, the city.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Civilizing the City, Leader to Leader, No. 7 (Winter 1998)
1990s and later

Communication

“He should have remembered, there was [an Islamist] attack on Akshardham temple in September 2002, so many people were killed inside the temple, yet Gujarat maintained peace. Gujarat maintained peace even after serial blasts. There was a time when Gujarat used to have riots over kite flying and cricket matches. Gujarat has not witnessed riots for last 12 years. The children of Gujarat don’t know what is curfew all about? Gujarat has progressed because of peace and harmony. And this is what the nation needs for growth as these things will have catalytic effect in achieving that.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2014, "Read full interview of Narendra Modi to Rajat Sharma", 2014

Children, People, Peace, Time

“The economic illusion is the belief that social justice is bad for economic growth.”

Robert Kuttner (1943) American journalist

Introduction, p. 1 (First text line.)
The Economic Illusion (1984)

Justice

“A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.”

Garrett Hardin (1915–2003) American ecologist

Tragedy of the Commons, 1968.
Tragedy of the Commons (1968)

World, Support

“The effects of Asian contacts on Europe, though considerably less, cannot be considered insignificant. The growth of capitalism in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in itself a profound and revolutionary change, is intimately connected with the expansion of European trade and business into Asia. The political development of the leading Western European nations during this period was also related to their exploitation of their Asian possessions and the wealth they derived from the trade with and government of their Eastern dependencies. Their material life, as reflected in clothing, food, beverages, etc., also bears permanent marks of their Eastern contacts. We have already dealt briefly with the penetration of cultural, artistic and philosophical influences, though their effects cannot still be estimated. Unlike the Rococo movement of the eighteenth century, the spiritual and cultural reactions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are deeper, and have not yet fully come to the surface. The influence of Chinese literature and of Indian philosophical thought, to mention only two trends which have become important in recent years, cannot be evaluated for many years to come. Yet it is true, as T. S. Eliot has stated, that most modern poets in Europe have in some measure been influenced by the literature of China. Equally the number of translations of the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, which have been appearing every year, meant not for Orientalists and scholars but for the educated public, and the revival of interest in the religious experience of India, are sufficient to prove that a penetration of European thought by Oriental influences is now taking place which future historians may consider to be of some significance.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Life, Education, Food, Literature

“When someone asks me where MP3 Newswire stands with regards to file trading (or piracy as some try to call it) I tell them that we support the growth of this notion of an online music industry. One that uses technology to bring us more music, broadening our pallettes while leveraging the Net to reduce distribution costs. The music can be paid for like CDs and tape or it can be free to its audience and supported by advertising like radio and MTV are. Whatever the model, the point is online music easily can and does supplement what we already purchase in the stores.”

Richard Menta American journalist

Source Three Lawsuits and a Funeral http://web.archive.org/web/20031217142538/www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/funeral.html - 11/30/2001 <br class="br">Quotes from the MP3 Newswire

Music, Support

“Hypocrisy, double standards, and "but nots" are the price of universalist pretensions. Democracy is promoted, but not if it brings Islamic fundamentalists to power; nonproliferation is preached for Iran and Iraq, but not for Israel; free trade is the elixir of economic growth, but not for agriculture; human rights are an issue for China, but not with Saudi Arabia; aggression against oil-owning Kuwaitis is massively repulsed, but not against non-oil-owning Bosnians. Double standards in practice are the unavoidable price of universal standards of principle.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 8 : The West and the Rest: Intercivilizational Issues, § 1 : Western Universalism, p. 184

Democracy, Universe

Quotes about growth page 3

Quotes about growth
page 3