Quotes about level
page 11

“The Internet is a medium only at the bit level. At the human level, it is a conversation that, because of the persistence and linkedness of pages, has elements of a world. It could only be a medium if we absolutely didn't care about it.”

David Weinberger (1950) American philosopher

"The Internet is not a medium" http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/002544.html, Hyperorg.com (2004-03-27)

World

“We lean on our church heavily, and they have helped us a lot, particularly in recent years… I have fame on the level of Marilyn Monroe, John Belushi, or Elvis Presley, but part of the reason I didn't go the way they did was because of my beliefs. People make judgments about Scientology, but often they don't know what they're talking about.”

John Travolta (1954) American actor, dancer and singer

"Stayin' Alive" Rosebud. Vol. 2 Issue 15.

People, Way, Help, Parting

“If there is any group that can be typified by their frequent objection to and rejection of education, it is religion. From the Dark Ages to the Revivals, from the Taliban in Pakistan to American Christian creationists, religious extremism has historically always been an impediment to progress on many levels, and especially when that involves teaching actual factual information instead of baseless beliefs. What happens to the kids on the street when the government no longer requires or provides free schooling in the essential fundamentals? How bad could it be? Let's look at how bad it's already been; Christian dominionists seem to have this fantasy where they want to take us back to the good old days of the Industrial Revolution, where there will be no middle class and where poor illiterate children return to work in unrestricted factories, with no vaccinations and no hope for their future. That's not the America I know.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Don't Blame the Atheists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Ca88xNw_w (October 21, 2012)

Children, Age, Education, School

“When software applications became larger and larger, people such as Shaw and Garlan coined the term software architecture. This notion of architecture deals with the key design principles underlying software artefacts. In the 1980s and 1990s, people became aware that the development of information technology (IT) should be done in conjunction with the development of the context in which it was used. This led to the identification of the so-called business/IT alignment problem. Solving the business/IT alignment problem requires enterprises to align human, organizational, informational, and technological aspects of systems. Quite early on, the term architecture was also introduced as a means to further alignment, and thus analyzes and solves business? IT alignment problems, Recently, the awareness emerged that alignment between business an IT is not enough, there are many more aspects in the enterprise in need of alignment. This has led to the use of the term architecture at the enterprise level: enterprise architecture.”

Erik Proper (1967) Dutch computer scientist

Martin Op 't Land, Erik Proper (2009) Enterprise Architecture: Creating Value by Informed Governance. p. 26-27

People, Business, Problem

“More and more I am coming to the conviction that Roe vs. Wade, in the guise of a great victory, has been in some respects a disaster for feminism. We might be better off today if it had never happened, and we had had to continue a state-by-state political fight. Roe vs. Wade resulted in a lot of women declaring victory and going home. In the meantime we have been losing abortion rights on the ground, both in terms of access and funding and on the ideological and psychological levels.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Vote for Ralph Nader!" http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/06/willis/index.html, Salon (6 November 2000)

Women, Home, Victory, Fight

“It really began with my own personal evolution that brought me to a new way of thinking for ethical reasons: I wanted to get the violence out of my life and adopt a truly non-violent lifestyle. One night while pontificating over my pursuit of a non-violent lifestyle over steak dinner with a friend, he leaned forward and said, “This is all very nice, Michael, but if you really want to eliminate the violence in your life, you might want to start with that piece of flesh on your plate—because your desire for that taste of meat in your mouth is paying for the death of an animal.” When he said that, a little voice inside me said, “You know, he’s right.” And it didn’t take long before my leather shoes had to go, along with milk, cheese and everything else in my life with hidden violence attached that I could jettison, or at least, modify. I became vegan in my diet, lost 20 pounds, and saw my borderline high blood pressure drop to normal levels along with a reduction in my cholesterol levels. I then began applying this to my patients—and they saw the same great results.”

Michael Klaper (1947) American physician

"Interview with Michael Klaper, M.D." https://web.archive.org/web/20141113185517/https://www.healthscience.org/about/nha-history/books-and-publications/health-science-summer-2013/interview-michael-klaper-md by Mark Huberman, National Health Association (29 April 2014).

Life, Death, Shoe, Way

“Stress, loneliness, depression, boredom- the madness of everyday life. Ever-greater levels of sadness, implying a recognition, on the visceral level at least, that things could be different. How much joy is there left in the technological society, this field of alienation and anxiety.”

John Zerzan book Future Primitive and Other Essays

"The Mass Psychology of Misery"
Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

Life, Sadness, Joy, Loneliness

“As I flew over the Shahyad monument, I saw that one corner was completely dark. A moment later I realized this black mass was a mass of Iranian women, women who had achieved one of the highest levels of emancipation in the Middle East. Here they were in the mournful black chador their grandmother had worn. My god, I thought, is this how it ends?”

Ashraf Pahlavi (1919–2016) Iranian royal

In a memoir, Faces in a Mirror, p. 205 (1981)

Women, God

“Political parties in the United States would not allow candidates to reach that level unless they are qualified to lead a country the size of the United States of America. I believe that that statement was not made after our most recent meeting between myself and Mrs. Clinton. But also in Egypt there will not be a chance for any dictatorship because in Egypt there is a constitution, there is law, and there the will of the people which will refuse to allow any leader to stay in his position for any period longer than his term which is four years.”

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954) Current President of Egypt

Remarks by al-Sisi responding to Democratic presidential candidate Hilary Clinton's claims that Egypt is "an army dictatorship" during an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett on 21 September 2016 http://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/21/us/egyptian-president-abdel-fattah-el-sisi-erin-burnett-outfront-cnn/ 2016

People, Law, Chance, Country

“Don't be scared of the high language of economists and Cabinet ministers, but think of politics at our own household level. After all, women live in contact with food supplies, housing shortages, and the ever-decreasing opportunities for children, and we must therefore face up to the position, remembering that as more power is taken away from the people, so there is less responsibility for us to assume.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Bexley Conservative Women (15 September 1949) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/100836 1940s

Women, Children, People, Food

“My hon. Friend must be aware of the words used by the Chancellor on Tuesday, when he said that, this year, the Government expect to make a surplus of £14 billion—part of which will be used to pay off the national debt. In those circumstances, would it not be more appropriate and beneficial to the rest of the world if more money were given for overseas aid and to assist the very poor countries in the usary levels of debt repayments that they are forced into at present?”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Question http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/mar/17/overseas-development in the House of Commons (17 March 1989). 1980s

Money, World, Parting, Country

“Unfortunately, the optimistic view that "classical civilization" handed down certain fundamental works that managed to include the knowledge contained in the lost writings has proved groundless. In fact, in the face of a general regression in the level of civilization, it's never the best works that will be saved through an automatic process of natural selection.”

Lucio Russo (1944) Italian historian and scientist

1.1, "The Erasure of the Scientific Revolution", p. 8
The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn (2004)

Nature, Knowledge

“The Shoshone, as well as those peoples around the world who still survive at the least complex levels of social organization, know that romantic love exists. But they also recognize it for what it is—in their case, a form of madness. …they regard the participants with tolerance and patience, for they know that the illness will soon go away. …To them, only someone mentally backward would base an institution so important to survival as marriage on romantic love. …it is a life and death business.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

Love, Life, Death, Marriage

“Fortunately the Italian people has not yet accustomed itself to eat many times a day, and possessing a modest level of living, it feels deficiency and suffering less.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Carol F. Helstosky, Garlic and Oil: Food and Politics in Italy (2006)
Undated

People, Feeling, Suffering, Time

“The only way which this ruling sees out of what it calls “the communal strife” is that Hindu history should be substantially diluted and tailored to the needs of Islamic imperialism, and that Muslim history should be given a liberal coat of whitewash or even made to pass muster as national history. This has been the main plank in the platform for “national integration”. Hitherto this Experiment with Untruth was confined mainly to Muslim and Communist “historians” who have come to control the Indian History Congress, the Indian Council of Historical Research, and even the University Grants Commission. Now it has been taken up by the National Integration Council. The Ministry of Education of the Government of India has directed the education departments in the States to extend this experiment to school-level text-books of history. And this perverse programme of suppressing truth and spreading falsehood is being sponsored by a state which inscribes Satyameva Jayate on its emblem.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)

Truth, Books, Education, School

“The process of dumbing people down so they’ll buy official figures showing inflation “under control” at levels of 1 to 2 percent or so (when it is actually more like 8 to 9 percent) is actually a fairly recent development.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

Quotes from Crash Proof (2006)

People

“I became a vegetarian 3 years ago. … The best thing about being a vegetarian for me, number one is I know I'm not harming any animals. … The number two thing is increased strength. I'm a lot stronger than I was when I was eating meat. … Most of your most powerful animals in the wild are vegetarian, so I'm trying to get my strength to that level. I don't know if I'll make it or not, but elephants are vegetarians. They're pretty big, so…”

Michael Clarke Duncan (1957–2012) American actor

"Michael Clarke Duncan's Exclusive Interview With PETA", video on PETA's YouTube channel (10 May 2012) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGh2_qgYJd8.

Animals

“I wanna say this to every man that has a mind, to all the intelligent life forms that exist on this planet Earth. I wish the British would say this to the Scottish Rites and the Masons and all the people with minds who have degrees of knowledge, and who are aware of courts, laws, United Nations, governments.
In the 40s, we had a war, and all of our economies went towards this war effort. The war ended on one level, but we wouldn't let it end on the other levels. We kept buying and selling this war. I'm not locked in the penitentiary for crimes, I'm locked in the Second World War. I'm locked in the Second World War with this decision to bring to the World Court - there must be a One World Court, or we're all gonna be devoured by crime.
Crime, and the definition of crime comes from Nuremberg, when the judges decided that they wanted to call Second World War a crime. Honor and war is not a crime. Crime is bad. When you go to war and you're a soldier, and you fight for your God and your country, that's not criminal. That's honorable. That's what you must do to be a man. If you don't fight for your God and your country, you're not worth anything. If you have no honor, then you're not worth petty's pigs.
Truth is, we've got to overturn this decision that you made in the Second World War, or the Second World War will never end. Degrees of the war was written in Switzerland, in Geneva, at conferences that were made by the men at the tables, clearly stated that anyone in uniform would be given the respect of their rank and their uniforms. Then when the United States and got all the Germans in handcuffs, they started breaking their own rules. And they've been breaking their own rules ever since. War is not a crime, but if you judge war as a crime in a court room, then turn around: If 2 + 3 = 5, and 3 + 2 = 5; if you say war is a crime, then crime becomes your war. I am, by all standards, a prisoner of war.
I've been a prisoner of war since 1944 in Juvenile Hall, for setting a school building on fire in Indianapolis, Indiana. I've been locked up 45 years trying to figure out why I got to be a criminal. It matters not whether I want to be; you've got to keep criminals going to keep the war going because that's your economy, your whole economy is based on the war. You've got to get your dollar bills off the war, you've got your silver market sterling off of the war, you've got to take your gold and your diamonds off of the war - You've got to overturn that decision, that hung 6000 men by the neck.
You killed 6000 soldiers for obeying orders. It's wrong. And the world has got to accept that's wrong. When you accept you're wrong, and you say you're sorry for all the things you've done, then that will be a note on that court, and we'll have some harmony going on this planet Earth, now.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Interview with Bill Murphy (1994) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAjh_wOByoY

Life, Men, God, War

“To believe what another says about you is unconscious, robot thinking. Nothing is true in self-discovery unless it is true in your own experience. This is the only protection against the robot levels of the mind.”

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

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Thinking

“Their football Arsenal is on another level but Spurs are fighting like beavers defending for their lives, It's a terrific game, still one nill" Jeff: "Did I hear that correctly? fighting like beavers? not tigers or lions but beavers those ferocious little devils" Chris: "The game as a spectacle is magnificent. Spurs working like beavers but the football from Arsenal Jeff, well it's out of this world it's sensational, their carving them up as easy as….. well, as easy as anything Jeff”

Chris Kamara (1957) English association football player and manager

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/take-a-tour-of-english-football-grounds-with-chris-kamara-9928156.html

World, Game, Fight, Football

“Well, I've grown up on the tennis circuit which has friendships with people from diverse religions, races, backgrounds and scores of different countries across the globe. I think this experience broadened my horizons. I can comfortably embrace relationships on a personal level while looking beyond narrow constraints.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

Source: Arun Sharma "Sachin's my inspiration - he's also excellent at tennis: Sania Mirza"

Friendship, People, Religion, Thinking

“Both the existence of these parallels and their tragic nature would not have escaped Charles Kindleberger, whose World in Depression, 1929-1939 was published exactly 40 years ago, in 1973. Where Kindleberger’s canvas was the world, his focus was Europe. While much of the earlier literature, often authored by Americans, focused on the Great Depression in the US, Kindleberger emphasised that the Depression had a prominent international and, in particular, European dimension. It was in Europe where many of the Depression’s worst effects, political as well as economic, played out. And it was in Europe where the absence of a public policy authority at the level of the continent and the inability of any individual national government or central bank to exercise adequate leadership had the most calamitous economic and financial effects.”

Barry Eichengreen (1952) Economist

J. Bradford DeLong and Barry Eichengreen, "New preface to Charles Kindleberger, The World in Depression 1929-1939" http://www.voxeu.org/article/new-preface-charles-kindleberger-world-depression-1929-1939 (2012)

World, Exercises, Literature, Nature

“The Prophet said: Prayer in congregation is twenty-five levels better than a prayer offered on one’s own.”

Aisha (605–678) Muhammad's wife

Nasai hadith 840

“We are now faced with massive unemployment, on a scale certainly at the level of the 1930s and to become greater. The improvement in housing, education and the standard of living has stopped. To all of us, that is a matter of the greatest possible regret…One of our intentions after the 1930s was to ensure that the Conservative Party was never again considered to be the party of unemployment. I ask my hon. Friends to think seriously about that in our present circumstances.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Speech in the House of Commons (27 November 1980) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1980/nov/27/industry-and-the-economy Post-Prime Ministerial

Education, Thinking, Housing

“Conferences at the top level are always courteous. Name calling is left to the foreign ministers.”

W. Averell Harriman (1891–1986) American businessman, politician and diplomat

Comment on the 1955 Geneva Summit, quoted in the CQ Weekly Report ( 1 August 1955 http://books.google.com/books?id=GN8tAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Conferences+at+the+top+level+are+always+courteous+Name+calling+is+left+to+the+foreign+ministers%22&pg=PA910#v=onepage)

“It’s time to rethink the whole system of HMOs and managed care. This entire unnecessary level of corporatism rakes off profits and worsens the quality of care. But HMOs did not arise in the free market; they are creatures of government interference in health care dating to the 1970s. These non-market institutions have gained control over medical care through collusion between organized medicine, politicians, and drug companies, in an effort to move America toward “free” universal health care.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Diagnosing our Health Care Woes, September 25, 2006 http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2006/tst092506.htm 2000s, 2006-2009

Health, Effort, Universe, Time

“Pulitzer Prizes are the preeminent mark of achievement in American journalism. As the prizes for reporting on Vietnam in defiance of official wishes show, they also point to the press's view of its role in society. That view has changed substantially over the more than eighty years of the Pulitzer Prizes' existence. Exposing official corruption on a local level had always been part of what journalists see as their function. But today, more than ever before, they are ready to write critically about the policies of the federal government, even in the once sacrosanct areas of foreign and national security affairs.”

Anthony Lewis (1927–2013) American journalist

[ix-x, Anthony, Lewis, w:Anthony Lewis, Written into History: Pulitzer Prize Reporting of the Twentieth Century from The New York Times, Times Books, 2002, 9780805071788]

Change, Parting

“I would like to congratulate everybody with the commencement of the "Combined Endeavour 2007" military exercises. This exercise is running simultaneously in Armenia and Germany. We have about 130 participants from 6 countries, this being evidence of importance and actuality of the event. It is notable that the cooperation between the Ministry of Defence of Armenia and the US European Command is developing and implementing a number of projects, and the vivid evidence of this cooperation is this military exercise. This is not the first military exercise in Armenia. Since 2003, we have hosted a number of military exercises organized with the NATO/PfP and the US European Command. It is important that the running of military exercises in Armenia is growing into a good tradition. Especially since, we already have an arrangement of hosting "Cooperative Longbow/Lancer" military exercises in Armenia for 2008. I would also like to mention with appreciation that the planning conference and working meetings before the military exercise would be held in a constructive atmosphere. We have effectively managed to run all preparation activities with joint efforts of the US European Command, the MOD of Armenia and other partners. The communication field is that chain which has fundamental importance for realizing multinational activities. The effectiveness and successes of our cooperation is related to that. This military exercise not only supports the testing of capabilities of participating units and experts, but also an opportunity for developing effective mechanisms for ensuring an interoperability and carrying out the tasks jointly. It is not accidental that Armenia has always expressed its readiness to host such kinds of events, and all participants have been trying to create appropriate conditions for their work. Taking this opportunity, one more time, I would like to thank all participants for their presence here and the US European command for their assistance in organizational matters. I am sure that due to our joint activities, the military exercise would be on a high professional and organizational level. I also hope that while you are in Armenia, you have a chance to make yourselves familiar with our history, culture and will have wonderful impressions. I am sure that on the 10th of May, after the completion of the military exercise, we will ascertain one more time that another multinational military exercise was held with success and fulfilled its tasks. I would like to wish all participants fruitful work and further success. I allow the commencement of the opening of the "Combined Endeavour 2007" military exercise.”

Mikael Harutyunyan (1946) Armenian general

Quoted in 2007 article. [April 27, 2007]

Hope, Exercises, History, Communication

“Systems philosophy first must find out the "nature of the beast" This is the question of what is meant by "system", and how systems are realized in reality in various levels of observation. In Laslo's terms, this is the methodology and theory of natural systems. Secondly, there is epistemology, i. e. the methodology and theory of cognitive systems.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: Introduction to Systems Philosophy (1972), p. xix.

Question, Nature, Reality

“Art is simultaneously particular and general. This is a real dichotomy. The great thing about proportion, one aspect of art, is that it is both extremes at once. The level of quality of a work can usually be established by the extent of the polarity between its generality and particularity. Or, to state the idea a little too simply, the better the work, the more diverse its aspects. The nature of the general aspects and the particular ones changes from artist to artist and especially from time to time, since the changes are due to broad changes in philosophy. This change is the essential change in art, determining its purpose and appearance”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Source: 1980, "Art and Architecture," 1987, p. 177

Art, Idea, Nature, Appearance

“Interference between universes at the quantum level means that information transfer takes place between them.”

James P. Hogan (1941–2010) British writer

Source: Paths to Otherwhere (1996), Ch. 1

Universe

“We in America – and men across the earth – have trapped ourselves with that word equality, which is inapplicable to the genus man. I wish we would forget it. Stop its use in our country: Let the communists have it. It isn’t fit for men who fling thei…r dreams across the skies. It is fit only for a leveling down of mankind.”

Lillian Smith (author) (1897–1966) American author, social critic

"Killers of the Dream" Lillian Smith

Men, Dreams, Country, Forgetting

“When you hold a grudge, you want someone else's sorrow to reflect your level of hurt but the two rarely meet.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 135

Hurt, Heartbreaking, Hurtful

“Land has lost its original strategic value; military forces are no longer employed primarily to conquer land, but to ensure stable economic, energy and information flows, which constitute the true resources, along with the natural resources. Alongside military hard power, international organization are increasing attempts to use soft power, at regional level, to solve environmental problems that do not pose short-term problems, but which can generate conflicts in the medium-to-long term, such as water-related problems or desertification.”

Corrado Maria Daclon (1963) Italian journalist and scientist

From Geopolitics of Environment, A Wider Approach to the Global Challenges, La Comunità Internazionale, no. 4, (2007)

Nature, Problem, Water

“In these days he promoted a bramin, by name Seeva Dew Bhut, to the office of prime minister, who embracing the Mahomedan faith, became such a persecutor of Hindoos that he induced Sikundur to issue orders proscribing the residence of any other than Mahomedans in Kashmeer; and he required that no man should wear the mark on his forehead, or any woman be permitted to burn with her husband's corpse. Lastly, he insisted on all golden and silver images being broken and melted down, and the metal coined into money. Many of the bramins, rather than abandon their religion or their country, poisoned themselves; some emigrated from their native homes, while a few escaped the evil of banishment by becoming Mahomedans. After the emigration of the bramins, Sikundur ordered all the temples in Kashmeer to be thrown down; among which was one dedicated to Maha Dew, in the district of Punjhuzara, which they were unable to destroy, in consequence of its foundation being below the surface of the neighbouring water. But the temple dedicated to Jug Dew was levelled with the ground; and on digging into its foundation the earth emitted volumes of fire and smoke which the infidels declared to be the emblem of the wrath of the Deity; but Sikundur, who witnessed the phenomenon, did not desist till the building was entirely razed to the ground, and its foundations dug up….”

Sikandar Butshikan

Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, first published in 1829, New Delhi Reprint 1981, Vol. III p.268-69

Money, Faith, Religion, Home

“In addition to vision-level BHAGs [shorthand for Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals], an envisioned future needs what we call vivid description – that is, a vibrant, engaging, and specific description of what it will be like to achieve the BHAG. Think of it as translating the vision from words into pictures, of creating an image that people can carry around in their heads. It is a question of painting a picture with your words. Picture painting is essential for making the 10-to-30- year BHAG tangible in people’s minds.”

Jerry I. Porras (1938) American writer

Source: "Building your company's vision," 1996, p. 74

People, Question, Thinking, Future

“Remember, if this is your world, you're one of them, a teenager. You live in two worlds. You're with them, day in, day out, and you'll never know, Mac, what that does to your mind. Teenager forever. June will come and it’s bye-bye teacher, nice knowin' you, my sister's gonna be in your class in September. But there’s something else, Mac. In any classroom, something is always happening. They keep you on your toes. They keep your fresh. You'll never grow old, but the danger is you might have the mind of an adolescent forever. That's a real problem, Mac. You get used to talking to those kids on their level. Then when you go to a bar for a beer you forgot how to talk to your friends and they look at you. They look at your like you just arrived from another planet and they're right.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

World, Beer, Problem, Sister

“The Western societies have had hundreds of years of reformation behind them. Islam has never had its reformation, and that is part of the problem. If you look back to the 16th and 17th centuries when men were killing one another in the name of religion throughout Europe, that's where we're at more or less, historically speaking, in terms of the level of debate and discourse. The Quran is considered an untouchable text, not a historical document. … This is the literal word of God, and it is very dangerous to play with that in the Middle East today.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/makiya.html, PBS Frontline (2002)

Men, God, Religion, Problem

“The concupiscence of the eyes touches the soul at a higher level than that of the flesh, and is consequently even more subtle and dangerous. Everyone can distinguish sins of the flesh, and most people endeavor to keep themselves from any serious entanglement with them, but it is quite possible to become considerably involved in the concupiscence of the eyes without being in the least aware of the fact.”

Frederic Harton (1889–1958) English Theologian

The Elements of the Spiritual Life: A Study in Ascetical Theology (1960), p. 104

People, Soul

“We have had enough of white presidents. So, let's this time elect a president from the Negro race. What will you do if I say so? There's no question there. We must never forget that we are brothers and sisters in a huge human family. In any level of community, we must become like a family. Even in the Israelite nation, there were Negro people. God has mixed whites, yellow, and blacks all over the world, but especially in the United States. If you go to Israel, you will see many black people there, and you would perhaps ask them, "Are you an Israelite, too?" And he would say "Yes." Maybe in his ancestry, one of the Israelites married an African Negro. I don't know, but they are Israelites by lineage. Most of the people in Israel have black hair, but I very often found blonde hair. Then I would ask them, "Are you an Israelite, too?" And he would say "Yes."”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

I imagine that in his ancestral line, one Israelite woman married a white man. Still, he's an Israelite. Restoration Through Indemnity And America's Role http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/SunMyungMoon75/SunMyungMoon-750323.htm 1974-03-23

God, People, World, Family

“The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness.
We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor, and that our personal experience is politically useless and our political will a minor illusion. Very often, the fear of total permanent war paralyzes the kind of morally oriented politics, which might engage our interests and our passions. We sense the cultural mediocrity around us-and in us-and we know that ours is a time when, within and between all the nations of the world, the levels of public sensibilities have sunk below sight; atrocity on a mass scale has become impersonal and official; moral indignation as a public fact has become extinct or made trivial.
We feel that distrust has become nearly universal among men of affairs, and that the spread of public anxiety is poisoning human relations and drying up the roots of private freedom. We see that people at the top often identify rational dissent with political mutiny, loyalty with blind conformity, and freedom of judgment with treason. We feel that irresponsibility has become organized in high places and that clearly those in charge of the historic decisions of our time are not up to them. But what is more damaging to us is that we feel that those on the bottom-the forced actors who take the consequences-are also without leaders, without ideas of opposition, and that they make no real demands upon those with power.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

Source: Letters & Autobiographical Writings (1954), pp. 184-185.

Men, War, People, World

“The hotel was called the Alta Loma. It was built on a hillside in reverse, there on the crest of Bunker Hill, built against the decline of the hill, so that the main floor was on the level with the street but the tenth floor was downstairs ten levels. If you had room 862, you got in the elevator and went down eight floors, and if you wanted to go down in the truck room, you didn't go down but up to the attic, one floor above the main floor.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter One

“It’s always a joy to work with Spike. He creates an environment that’s wonderful for creativity. People leave their egos at the door and just we all come from different genres and different levels within the business. It’s kind of exciting to finally meet people like Common, John Cusack, Jennifer Hudson and work with them, and see what the flavors are. You know the most seasoned veterans, we always want to see what the young guys, the young crew, has to offer. If they learn something and if they bring something to the table or if they should just be written off.”

Wesley Snipes (1962) film actor, Martial artist, film producer

Wesley Snipes, Comic Con: Wesley Snipes On ‘Blade’ Marvel Talks, ‘The Player’ & Spike Lee http://deadline.com/2015/07/wesley-snipes-blade-comic-con-interview-blade-the-player-1201472733/, Deadline Hollywood, 9 July 2015

People, Guy, Business, Learning

“Reality can be grasped at levels of different depths. It is immediately given to us in a kind of block form, which is simply the "apprehended reality."”

Étienne Gilson (1884–1978) French historian and philosopher

Methodical Realism

Reality

“In this very special form, feedback became part of the jargon of Group Dynamics, which has also assumed many of the characteristics of a cult in the efforts made to conserve some of the rigor of procedure with which Kurt Lewin and the experimentalist, Alex Bavelas, had attempted to imbue it. In this case, far from serving as a catalyzing, high-level theoretical tool, the term feedback has become a jargon-catchall for any kind of report back to government, management, the subjects of an experiment, subjects during an experiment, and so on. Stripped of its intellectual potential, the term knocks about the corridors of Unesco and for the most part those who use it have no idea that this bit of enjoined, Group Dynamic-recommended behavior is in any way related to the forbidding cross-disciplinary integration known as cybernetics.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1960s, Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964), p. 273

Way, Behavior, Idea, Effort

“In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Franklin Roosevelt's Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act (16 June 1933) http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html 1930s Source: [Tritch, Teresa, F.D.R. Makes the Case for the Minimum Wage, http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/f-d-r-makes-the-case-for-the-minimum-wage/, March 7, 2014, New York Times, March 7, 2014]

Men, Business, Dependency, Country

“How many gay people have not had children as a result of coming out of the closet and being gay? Millions, isn't that correct? Some of our most talented, wonderful, intelligent people, because of the openness of modern American society going back for now 40 years, have opted out of being hidden or closeted. In the old days, if a person was gay, or felt an attraction to the same sex, they probably would have gotten married to hide it. And they probably would've had a family, producing children. But because of this 'let it all hang out,' 'if you feel gay, act gay,' 'if it feels good, do it,' they've opted not to have children. And as a result, number one, society has lost millions of remarkable children. That's one point that is almost irrefutable. And for years I have thought about this. Why is society devolving so rapidly? One of the reasons is some of our most talented intelligent people have not had children. That's one point. And then there's another point I wanna make, and this is more important… I kept asking myself, why are gay people liberal? Why are most of them so liberal? Why is society unraveling on so many other levels, putting aside the issue of sexuality. And one of the reasons is because some of our most intelligent…passionate people happen to be gay. And while in the past they would've taken on other causes that are so critical for the betterment of society, they've been single-focused only on gay issues. And as a result society has again devolved, because the gay movement has sucked so many people into a single issue. They've ignored all the other important issues of our society, which is why we're collapsing. Why would a gay person want open borders? Why would a gay person want unlimited welfare? Why would a gay person want to be tolerant for Islamists coming into America? Because they're not focused on any of it. Their community has focused them only on one issue. And as a result the entire society has lost out. … And therefore I would say to you that a traditional society has offered us protections, both obvious and not so obvious, that we may not be aware of, and that openness is not necessarily for the betterment of the people or for society.”

Michael Savage book The Savage Nation

The Savage Nation The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015-04-29 Radio (Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFNm7C_uJpI&feature=youtu.be&t=40m27s) 2015

Children, People, Family, Sex

“As a result of this excessive reliance on ticketing, today, the city generates a significant amount of revenue from the enforcement of code provisions. Along with taxes and other revenue streams, in 2010, the city collected over $1.3 million in fines and fees collected by the court. For fiscal year 2015, Ferguson’s city budget anticipates fine revenues to exceed $3 million – more than double the total from just five years prior. Our review of the evidence, and our conversations with police officers, have shown that significant pressure is brought to bear on law enforcement personnel to deliver on these revenue increases. Once the system is primed for maximizing revenue – starting with fines and fine enforcement – the city relies on the police force to serve, essentially, as a collection agency for the municipal court rather than a law enforcement entity focused primarily on maintaining and promoting public safety. And a wide variety of tactics, including disciplinary measures, are used to ensure certain levels of ticketing by individual officers, regardless of public safety needs.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

Law

“Enlightenment … asks, innocently and subversively, for proofs, sources, and evidence. At the beginning it solemnly avers that it would willingly believe everything, if only it could find someone to convince it. Here it becomes clear that the biblical texts, taken philologically, remain themselves their only witness. Their revelatory character is their own claim, and it can be believed or not; the church, which elevates this revelatory character to the status of a grand dogma, itself plays only the role of an interpreter. With his radical biblicism, Luther rejected the church’s claim to authority. This repudiation then repeats itself on the higher level through biblicism itself. For text remains text, and every assertion that it is divinely inspired can, in turn, be only a human, fallible assertion. With every attempt to grasp the absolute source, critique comes up against relative, historical sources that only ever assert the Absolute. The miracles spoken about in the Bible to legitimate God’s power are only reports of miracles for which there are no longer any means of verification. The revelatory claim is stuck in a philological circle.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 24

God

““A splendidly inept thing,” Sylveste said, nodding despite himself.
“What?”
“The human capacity for grief. It just isn’t capable of providing an adequate emotional response once the dead exceed a few dozen in number. And it doesn’t just level off—it just gives up, resets itself to zero. Admit it. None of us feel a damn about these people.””

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 15 (p. 323).

People, Feeling, Dead

“Object-oriented methods tend to focus on the lowest-level building block: the class and its objects.”

Peter Coad (1953) American software entrepreneur

Source: Object-oriented patterns. (1992), p. 152

“Now, I know there are still a few who insist that climate change is one big hoax, even a political conspiracy. My friends, these people are so out of touch with science that they believe rising sea levels don’t matter, because, in their view, the extra water is just going to spill out over the sides of a flat Earth.”

John F. Kerry (1943) politician from the United States

John Kerry, December 9, 2015, Paris. Source: http://www.democracynow.org/2015/12/9/it_is_not_enough_despite_promise

People, Water, Science, Change

“At the level of firms, therefore, only those whose cultural repertoire gives them transactional capacity throughout the I-Space can summon and adequate learning response to any emerging gaps between technology and culture. Those operating from too narrow a cultural base in the space, however, must of necessity lose control of the SLC unless they can complement their limited cultural repertoire through carefully selected interfirm and intercultural collaborations – i. e. through an externalization of transactions that link them with agents located elsewhere in the space. However, they will then confront the same problems of integration that more culturally diverse firms encounter inside their organization when trying to coordinate the activities of different functions or businesses. There is no cheap grace.”

Max Boisot (1943–2011) British academic and educator

Source: Knowledge Assets, 1998, p. 151; As cited in: Ortiz et al. (2006)

Business, Problem, Learning

“In a democracy, it is the people who are sovereign. Therefore, with regard to the promotion of democracy at the local, country and regional levels, civil society must have a stronger voice in all political processes.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas 2013 Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order
2013

People, Democracy, Country

“I have had no formal training in painting: I gave up Art A level because I was sick of drawing peppers.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Portraits (2009)

Art, Drawing, Painting, Training

“Even if [9/11 conspiracy theories] were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares? It doesn't have any significance. It's a little bit like the huge energy that's put out on trying to figure out who killed John F. Kennedy. Who knows? And who cares? Plenty of people get killed all the time, why does it matter that one of them happened to be John F. Kennedy? If there was some reason to believe that there was a high level conspiracy, it might be interesting. But the evidence against that is just overwhelming. And after that, if it happened to be a jealous husband, or the mafia, or someone else, what difference does it make? It's just taking energy away from serious issues onto ones that don't matter. And I think the same is true here; it's my personal opinion.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Q&A at the Kossuth Club, in Budapest, Hungary, May 16, 2004 https://web.archive.org/web/20071029232518/http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/10/chomsky_on_911.html. Quotes 2000s, 2004

People, Thinking, Time, Personality

“There is, therefore, both positive and negative proof in favour of my mental and suggestive theory, and in opposition to the magnetic, occult, or electric theories of the Mesmerists and electro-biologists. My theory, moreover, has this additional recommendation, that it is level to our comprehension, and adequate to account for all which is demonstrably true, without offering any violence to reason and common sense, or being at variance with generally admitted physiological and psychological principles.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

Original Philosophy of Hypnotism The International College of Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy

Sense

“The concept of 'measurement' becomes so fuzzy on reflection that it is quite surprising to have it appearing in physical theory at the most fundamental level… does not any analysis of measurement require concepts more fundamental than measurement? And should not the fundamental theory be about these more fundamental concepts?”

John S. Bell (1928–1990) Northern Irish physicist

"Quantum Mechanics for Cosmologists" (1981); published in Quantum Gravity (1981) edited by Christopher Isham, Roger Penrose and Dennis William Sciama, p. 611 - 637

Appearance

“If I tried to imagine the public as a particular person (for although some better individuals momentarily belong to the public they nevertheless have something concrete about them, which holds them in its grip even if they have not attained the supreme religious attitude), I should perhaps think of one of the Roman emperors, a large well-fed figure, suffering from boredom, looking only for the sensual intoxication of laughter, since the divine gift of wit is not earthly enough. And so for a change he wanders about, indolent rather than bad, but with a negative desire to dominate. Every one who has read the classical authors knows how many things a Caesar could try out in order to kill time. In the same way the public keeps a dog to amuse it. That dog is the sum of the literary world. If there is some one superior to the rest, perhaps even a great man, the dog is set on him and the fun begins. The dog goes for him, snapping and tearing at his coat-tails, allowing itself every possible ill-mannered familiarity – until the public tires, and says it may stop. That is an example of how the public levels. Their betters and superiors in strength are mishandled – and the dog remains a dog which even the public despises. The leveling is therefore done by a third party; a non-existent public leveling with the help of a third party which in its significance is less than nothing, being already more than leveled.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

The Present Age 1846 by Søren Kierkegaard, translated by Alexander Dru 1962, p. 65-66
1840s, Two Ages: A Literary Review (1846)

World, Dogs, Way, Imagination

“…the power to control the supply of money, which is one of the fundamental aspects of sovereignty, has passed from government into other hands; and therefore new institutions must be set up which will in effect exercise some of the major functions of government. They would set the level of public expenditure, and settle fiscal policy, the exercise of taxing and borrowing powers of the state, since these are indisputedly the mechanism by which the money supply is determined. But they would do more than this. They would be supreme over the economic ends and the social structure of society: for by fixing prices and incomes they would have to replace the entire automatic system of the market and supply and demand—be that good or evil—and put in its place a series of value judgments, economic or social, which they themselves would have to make…There is a specific term for this sort of polity. It is, of course, totalitarian, because it must deliberately and consciously determine the totality of the actions and activities of the members of the community; but it is a particular kind of totalitarian regime, one, namely, in which authority is exercised and the decisions are taken by a hierarchy of unions or corporations—to which, indeed, on this theory the effective power has already passed. For this particular kind of totalitarianism the Twentieth Century has a name. That name is "fascist."”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Leamington (18 September 1972), quoted in The Times (19 September 1972), p. 12
1970s

Money, Exercises, Communication, Decision

“If you want to be an effective leader, you need to cultivate one-on-one feedback from trusted individuals throughout your organization, touching all the different levels. Not people who will tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to hear.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company https://books.google.com/books?id=mIxwVLXdyjQC&lpg=PR9&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=Don%20Soderquist&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2005, p. 124. On Leading Well

People

“Chief, perhaps it would be clearest to say that the fasarta modulates the garbab in such a phase relationship that the thrimaleen is forced to bast—or, to put it another way, somebody loosed mice in the washroom. Seriously, there is no popular way to explain it. If you were willing to spend five hard years with me, working up through the math, I could probably bring you to the same level of ignorance and confusion that I enjoy.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 17, “To Reset the Clock” (p. 176)

Way

“Mankind has advanced. Human progress is ceaseless. We can look at Bosnia or Zaire or Rwanda and conclude that building just societies is a fool's errand. We are always, despite our advances, only one sin away from slipping into the abyss of terror and ignorance.
But that is not so. Generations upon generations have driven the human race farther and farther from darkness. Past episodes of abominable human cruelty are kept vivid in the memories of succeeding generations. "Never again," is the admonition passed from the survivors of the Holocaust to their descendants and to us all. And although such an important reminder will not always prevent the occurrence of cruelty and violence even at levels approaching genocide, the civilized world is more inclined to organize opposition to such tragedies if not as early as we should, at least sooner than we once would have.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

1990s, Speech at Ohio Wesleyan University (1997)

World, Fools, Memory, Past

“If you use conventional data compression on the [human brain's] genome, you get about 23 million bytes (a small fraction of the size of Microsoft Word), which is a level of complexity we can handle.”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

"The Singularity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

“[Interviewer: Do you believe in climate change? Do you think it exists? ] Er, there is a cooling and there is a heating, and I mean, look, it used to not be climate change, it used to be global warming. [Interviewer: Right. ] Right? That wasn't working too well, because it was getting too cold all over the place. The ice caps were going to melt, they were going to be gone by now, but now they're setting records, OK, they're at a record level.”

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

Interviewed on British TV https://www.itv.com/news/2018-01-29/what-we-learned-from-donald-trumps-interview-with-itv/ (28 January 2018) 2010s, 2018, January

Thinking, Change

“Under the Socialists, rapid strides have been taken towards the Iron Curtain State. We have seen increased nationalisation measures, increased powers of central Government over both large and small companies, increased levels of tax on the pay packet and on savings alike, and an increased proportion of the national income spent not by the wage-earner but by the Government or Government agencies. In the result, the Prime Minister has become the first Socialist Minister since the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1951 to say that his policies will mean a reduced standard of living for our people…it is clear that Socialist systems are not good at creating wealth; they can only spend the wealth that others create.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in the House of Commons (9 June 1976) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103046 Leader of the Opposition

People, Wealth

“The equilibrium price level is determined at the point where the money market is in equilibrium. The temporary suspension of Walras' Law, far from making economic nonsense, thus appears as the crucial "trick" by which the tatonnement process is decomposed in two parts.
This analysis confirms that for a neoclassical general equilibrium system with neutral money there is indeed a consistent decomposition procedure, based on appropriate compensation principles, permitting the determination of real variables in the real sector while the price level is determined in the monetary sector. However, the amount of intellectual effort which, in the wake of Lange and Patinkin, was devoted to this issue, is entirely out of proportion to its economic significance. The real economic question is not whether a system can be dichotomized, but whether money is neutral.”

Jürg Niehans (1919–2007) Swiss economist

Source: The theory of money, 1978, p. 12

Money, Law, Question, Effort

“Eros is a great leveller. Perhaps the true Democracy rests, more firmly than anywhere else, on a sentiment which easily passes the bounds of class and caste, and unites in the closest affection the most estranged ranks of society. It is noticeable how often Uranians of good position and breeding are drawn to rougher types, as of manual workers, and frequently very permanent alliances grow up in this way, which although not publicly acknowledged have a decided influence on social institutions, customs and political tendencies”

Edward Carpenter book The Intermediate Sex

The Intermediate Sex (1908), pp. 114-115

Way, Democracy

“!-- Most of the effects described in classical magical tradition I believe I can duplicate with art, possibly drugs – or some other means of integrating myself more deeply with that sort of reality, that sort of consciousness – I believe I could do most of the things that are described in traditional magic. This opens up wider possibilities. It also enables me to understand myself on a deeper level. -->By accepting the idea of endless pantheons of gods, I somehow accept these creatures as being distinct and separate from me, and not as being, to some degree, higher functions of me. Iain Sinclair was asking me about this: he asked me ‘do you think they are inside you, or outside you?’ The only answer I could come up with was, the more I think about it the inside is the outside. That the objective world and the non-objective world are the same thing, to some degree. Ideaspace and this space are the same space. Just different ends of the scale. That’s not a very good explanation, but the best I can come up with so far.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)

God, World, Art, Idea

“In tracking down and eliminating terrorists, we need to change our metaphor from a "war on terror" — exactly what, pray tell, is that? — to the mind-set of Interpol tracking down master criminals through intense global cooperation among nations, or the FBI stalking the Mafia, or local police determined to quell street gangs without leveling the entire neighborhood in the process.”

Bill Moyers (1934) American journalist

"The Meaning of Freedom", Sol Feinstone Lecture at the United States Military Academy (15 November 2006), as quoted in Moyers on Democracy (2008), p. 78

War, Change

“It all began with my painting a picture of an American flag. Using this design took care of a great deal for me because I didn't have to design it. So I want on to similar things like the targets things the mind already knows. That gave me room to work on other levels. For instance, I've always thought of a painting as a surface; painting it in one color made this very clear... A picture ought to be looked at the same way you look at a radiator.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

His heart belong to DADA, Time 73, 4 May, 1959: 58; as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 82
1950s

Color, Way, Painting

“The rights of individuals to the use of resources (i. e., property rights) in any society are to be construed as supported by the force of etiquette, social custom, ostracism, and formal legally enacted laws supported by the states' power of violence of punishment. Many of the constraints on the use of what we call private property involve the force of etiquette and social ostracism. The level of noise, the kind of clothes we wear, our intrusion on other people's privacy are restricted not merely by laws backed by police force, but by social acceptance, reciprocity, and voluntary social ostracism for violators of accepted codes of conduct.”

Armen Alchian (1914–2013) American economist

Source: Economic Forces at Work, 1977, p. 129-130 ; as cited in Eggertsson (1990; 34)

People, Law, Support, Clothes

“Of course there are Chinese millionaires in big cars and big houses. Is it the answer to make a few Malay millionaires with big cars and big houses? How does telling a Malay bus driver that he should support the party of his Malay director (UMNO) and the Chinese bus conductor to join another party of his Chinese director (MCA) - how does that improve the standards of the Malay bus driver and the Chinese bus conductor who are both workers in the same company? If we delude people into believing that they are poor because there are no Malay rights or because opposition members oppose Malay rights, where are we going to end up? You let people in the kampongs believe that they are poor because we don't speak Malay, because the government does not write in Malay, so he expects a miracle to take place in 1967 (the year Malay would become the national and sole official language in Malaysia). The moment we all start speaking Malay, he is going to have an uplift in the standard of living, and if doesn't happen, what happens then? Meanwhile, whenever there is a failure of economic, social and educational policies, you come back and say, oh, these wicked Chinese, Indian and others opposing Malay rights. They don't oppose Malay rights. They, the Malay, have the right as Malaysian citizens to go up to the level of training and education that the more competitive societies, the non-Malay society, has produced. That is what must be done, isn't it? Not to feed them with this obscurantist doctrine that all they have got to do is to get Malay rights for the few special Malays and their problem has been resolved.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Lee Kuan Yew in the Parliament of Malaysia, 1965 http://maddruid.com/?p=645 1960s

People, Education, Cars, Failure

“No one any longer knows who will live in this steel-hard casing and whether entirely new prophets or a mighty rebirth of ancient ideas and ideals will stand at the end of this prodigious development. Or, however, if neither, whether a mechanized ossification, embellished with a sort of rigidly compelled sense of self-importance, will arise. Then, indeed, if ossification appears, the saying might be true for the “last humans” in this long civilizational development:narrow specialists without mind, pleasure-seekers without heart; in its conceit, this nothingness imagines it has climbed to a level of humanity never before attained.”

Max Weber book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Source: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905; 1920), Ch. 5 : Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism

Pleasure, Imagination, Idea, Sense

“On one level, then, Cadbury can be seen as a classic example of Victorian industrial paternalism, albeit carried to greater lengths than in most other companies of the day. On another level, however, the Cadbury system resulted in a very strong, highly flexible organisation which, thanks to the strong levels of employee commitment and participation, could draw on a large bank of experience and intelligence to solve problems and undertake what amounted to continuous improvement. The employee participation system in particular meant that Cadbury was constantly upgrading its processes and products. Herbert Casson regarded Cadbury in the 1920s as one of the best-run companies in Britain, if not the world, and summed up the key to its success very succinctly: ‘At Cadbury, everybody thinks.”

Morgen Witzel (1960) Canadian historian, business theorist

Source: Fifty key figures in management, 2004, p. 39; Quote on the Cadbury company at the time Edward Cadbury was managing director.

World, Intelligence, Problem, Thinking

“And when I joined politics people told me it wasn’t the same as the Independence era, so you can imagine how it has become now. It’s such a sad thing. Instead of taking to the country to a higher level we are going downwards.”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

Why Vyjayanthimala has 'nothing to say' about today's heroines

People, Sadness, Imagination, Country

“Part of the downfall came early and on theoretical grounds, with the realization that real-world information lags for aggregate variables like the price level and money supply were much too short to rationalize the persistent multiyear deviations from equilibrium that seemed to characterize business cycles in most industrialized countries. The second dubious assumption, continuous market clearing, was viewed more critically once it was recognized that it was not an inextricable concomitant of rational expectations, especially when Stanley Fischer (1977) and Edmund Phelps and John Taylor (1977) showed that rational expectations could be embedded in a model containing real-world institutional features like multiperiod wage and price contracts to generate nonmarket-clearing behavior. Once Fischer and Phelps-Taylor had shown that rational expectations by itself was a necessary but not a sufficient condition to validate new-classical policy conclusions, the race was on to develop the new-Keynesian theory based on rational expectations and one or another institutional impediment to continuous market clearing.”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

"Fresh Water, Salt Water, and other Macroeconomic Elixirs", 1989

Money, World, Behavior, Business

“Every employee in an undertaking, then, takes a larger or smaller share in the work of administration, and has, therefore, to use and display his administrative faculties. This is why we often see men, who are specially gifted, gradually rise from the lowest to the highest level of the industrial hierarchy, although they have only had an elementary education. But young men, who begin practical work as engineers soon after leaving industrial schools, are in a particularly good position both for learning administration and for showing their ability in this direction, for in administration, as in all other branches of industrial activity, a man’s work is judged by its results.”

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) Developer of Fayolism

Source: Henri Fayol addressed his colleagues in the mineral industry, 1900, p. 908

Men, Education, School, Learning

“If it's we who choose
I'll reach another level
To be that one who never lost a day.”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

Man In Uniform
Song lyrics

“Early in April, an international community of sustainability theorists and practitioners gathered in New York City at a special High Level Meeting at the United Nations… the larger purpose of the meeting was to articulate the elements of a new economic paradigm, and to issue a call to world leaders to adopt its fundamental precepts.”

Eric Zencey (1953–2019) American writer

Eric Zencey, " Toward a New Bretton Woods and a Sustainable Civilization http://steadystate.org/new-bretton-woods/," at steadystate.org, 2012.

World, Communication

“Business is the highest evolution of consciousness, responsibility, and morality. No other living organism is even remotely able to function on a business level. The essences of business are honesty, effort, responsibility, integration, abstraction, conceptualization, objectivity, long-range planning, discipline, thought, control. Business creates essentially every major human value, ranging from the development of consciousness, language, mathematics, the arts, up to the electronic and biogenic revolutions.”

Frank R. Wallace (1932–2006) Philosopher, author, entrepreneur

Wallace, Frank. The Neo-Tech Discovery. Appendix F http://www.neo-tech.com/discovery/appendixf.html

Art, Mathematics, Business, Effort

“To Namier it had seemed obvious that political theories act as the merest ex post facto rationalisations of political behaviour. If we are looking for explanations of political action, he maintained, we must seek them at the level of ‘the underlying emotions, the music, to which ideas are a mere libretto, often of very inferior quality’. For critics of Namier such as Sir Herbert Butterfield, the only possible retort seemed to be to go back to a famous dictum of Lord Acton’s to the effect that ideas are often the causes rather than the effects of public events. But this response duly incurred the scorn of Namier and his followers for the alleged naiveté of supposing that political actions are ever genuinely motivated by the principles used to rationalise them.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

Source: Liberty Before Liberalism (1998), p. 104

Music, Motivation, Idea

“Theater of Cruelty means a theater difficult and cruel for myself first of all. And, on the level of performance, it is not the cruelty we can exercise upon each other by hacking at each other’s bodies, carving up our personal anatomies, or, like Assyrian emperors, sending parcels of human ears, noses, or neatly detached nostrils through the mail, but the much more terrible and necessary cruelty which things can exercise against us. We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been created to teach us that first of all.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Source: The Theatre and Its Double (1938, translated 1958), Ch. 1

Exercises, Personality

“A mightier force than ever followed Grant or Lee has leveled both their hosts, raised up an united Nation, and made us all partakers of a new glory. It is not for us to forget the past but to remember it, that we may profit by it. But it is gone; we can not change it. We must put our emphasis on the present and put into effect the lessons the past has taught us.”

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

1920s, The Democracy of Sports (1924)

Change, Past, Forgetting

“These individual actions are really trans-actions instead of either individual behavior or the "exchange" of commodities. It is this shift from commodities and individuals to transactions and working rules of collective action that marks the transition from the classical and hedonic schools to the institutional schools of economic thinking. The shift is a change in the ultimate unit of economic investigation. The classic and hedonic economists, with their communistic and anarchistic offshoots, founded their theories on the relation of man to nature, but institutionalism is a relation of man to man. The smallest unit of the classic economists was a commodity produced by labor. The smallest unit of the hedonic economists was the same or similar commodity enjoyed by ultimate consumers. One was the objective side, the other the subjective side, of the same relation between the individual and the forces of nature. The outcome, in either case, was the materialistic metaphor of an automatic equilibrium, analogous to the waves of the ocean, but personified as "seeking their level." But the smallest unit of the institutional economists is a unit of activity -- a transaction, with its participants. Transactions intervene between the labor of the classic economists and the pleasures of the hedonic economists, simply because it is society that controls access to the forces of nature, and transactions are, not the "exchange of commodities," but the alienation and acquisition, between individuals, of the rights of property and liberty created by society, which must therefore be negotiated between the parties concerned before labor can produce, or consumers can consume, or commodities be physically exchanged.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

"Institutional Economics," 1931

Pleasure, School, Behavior, Nature

“Reification, the essential tendency of capitalism, can never be wholly realized. If it were, if the system were actually able to change individuals into things moved only by economic “forces,” it would collapse not in the long run, but immediately. The struggle of people against reification is, just as much as the tendency towards reification, the condition for the functioning of capitalism. Capitalism can function only by continually drawing upon the genuinely human activity of those subject to it, while at the same time trying to level and dehumanize them as much as possible.”

Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997) Greek-French philosopher

Source: The Imaginary Institution of Society (1975), p. 16.

People, Change, Time, Drawing

“I'm basically tired of doing what I have been doing for the last 10 years. My interest level was dipping. I was doing a fairly good job, when compared to others. The standards I have set for myself are higher. When I watched the Broadway show Miss Saigon, I was ashamed of being called an actress. The leading lady's performance was outstanding. I was ashamed that I am in the same profession but could not touch those heights.”

Manisha Koirala (1970) Nepalese actress, UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador and social activist

Manisha Koirala on FILMBUG http://www.filmbug.com/db/30781

“My analysis of living systems uses concepts of thermodynamics, information theory, cybernetics, and systems engineering, as well as the classical concepts appropriate to each level. The purpose is to produce a description of living structure and process in terms of input and output, flows through systems, steady states, and feedbacks, which will clarify and unify the facts of life.”

James Grier Miller (1916–2002) biologist

Source: Living Systems: Basic Concepts (1969), p. 126

Life

“(In reference to Vermont's Act 60): This is Marxism. It's leveling everything by decimating what works … It's that vindictive 'We've suffered, and now we're going to take money from your kid and watch you squirm'… There's a minority which is an open target in this country which no one protects, and that's rich people.”

John Irving (1942) American novelist and screenwriter

[Salon, News, July 1, 1998, http://www.salon.com/news/1998/07/01news.html]

Money, People, Suffering, Country

“Treatises may be didactic in tone, but essentially they lack the conclusiveness of an instruction which could be asserted, like doctrine, by virtue of its own authority. … Tirelessly the process of thinking makes new beginnings, returning in a roundabout way to its original object. This continual pausing for breath is the mode most proper to the process of contemplation. For by pursuing different levels of meaning in its examination of one single object it receives both the incentive to begin again and the justification for its irregular rhythm.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels [Origin of the German Mourning Play] (1925), p. 28

Way, Thinking

“If you need more than 3 levels of indentation, you're screwed anyway, and should fix your program.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Linux 1.3.53 CodingStyle documentation, 2011-08-13, 1995 https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/process/coding-style.rst, 1990s, 1995-99

“Traditional measures of relatedness provide an incomplete and potentially inaccurate picture of the scope of exploit interrelationships between its SBUs. This is because traditional measures look at relatedness only at the industry or market level. But as we explain below, the relatedness that really matters is that between 'strategic assets' (i. e., those that cannot be accessed quickly and cheaply by nondiversified competitors.) Therefore, to accurately measure whether two businesses are related, we need to go beyond broad definitions of relatedness that focus on market similarity; we need to look at the similarities between the underlying strategic assets of the various businesses that a company is operating in.”

Constantinos C. Markides (1960) Cypriot business theorist

Source: "Related diversification, core competences and corporate performance", 1994, p. 150

Business

“A few things led me to the vegan diet. I guess the first thing to say was that I had multiple injuries and surgeries. Then additional complications: stamina level, inflammation, stuff with my stomach, overall mood, how my body was feeling and working. … Eating a vegan diet has changed my everyday living. I sleep better, I wake up in a better mood, I recover faster, I’m not so inflamed, not so achey. I feel better overall, in everything that I do. I can take in more information easier. My mind is just open.”

Wilson Chandler (1987) American basketball player

"NBA Star Wilson Chandler Reveals the Vegan Secrets Behind His Success" https://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/09/28/wilson-chandler-interview/, interview with Highsnobiety (September 28, 2017).

Feeling, Mood, Sleep, Change

“Now, of course, one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows the fact that there are those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty. It's a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent. But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced. The truth must be told, and I say that those who are seeking to make it appear that anyone who opposes the war in Vietnam is a fool or a traitor or an enemy of our soldiers is a person that has taken a stand against the best in our tradition.”

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

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

War, People, Truth, Fools

“There is a strong current in contemporary culture advocating ‘holistic’ views as some sort of cure-all… Reductionism implies attention to a lower level while holistic implies attention to higher level. These are intertwined in any satisfactory description: and each entails some loss relative to our cognitive preferences, as well as some gain… there is no whole system without an interconnection of its parts and there is no whole system without an environment.”

Francisco Varela (1946–2001) Chilean biologist

Varela (1977) "On being autonomous: The lessons of natural history for systems theory. In: George Klir (ed.) Applied Systems Research. New York: Plenum Press. p. 77-85 as cited in: D. Rudrauf (2003) " From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology: Francisco Varela's exploration of the biophysics of being http://www.scielo.cl/pdf/bres/v36n1/art05.pdf". In: Biol Res 36: 27-65

Strong, Loss, Parting