Quotes about limitation
page 21

“Before explaining these methods let us recall exactly the conditions of the problem which we are attempting to solve. Our purpose is to be able to measure the intellectual capacity of a child who is brought to us in order to know whether he is normal or retarded. We should therefore, study his condition at the time and that only. We have nothing to do either with his past history or with his future; consequently we shall neglect his etiology, and we shall make no attempt to distinguish between acquired and congenital idiocy; for a stronger reason we shall set aside all consideration of pathological anatomy which might explain his intellectual deficiency. So much for his past. As to that which concerns his future, we shall exercise the same abstinence; we do not attempt to establish or prepare a prognosis and we leave unanswered the question of whether this retardation is curable, or even improvable. We shall limit ourselves to ascertaining the truth in regard to his present mental state.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Source: The development of intelligence in children, 1916, p. 37 : lead paragraph of "New Methods for the Diagnosis of the Intellectual Level of Subnormals"

Truth, Exercises, History, Question

“In spite of such limitations, the New Institutional Economics research programme, given its willingness to acknowledge the central role played by information in the economic process, constitutes a marked advance over what is on offer from the neoclassical orthodoxy. There, information retains the status of the luminiferous ether of classical physics before Einstein: a ubiquitous medium that admitted of a mechanical account of action at a distance and kept the world conveniently Newtonian.
Institutional economics, however, needs a more explicit and dynamic theory of information flows if it is to make more than a dent in the neoclassical defences. Having established that there exists credible institutional alternatives to markets, it needs to show how information production and exchange underpins them all, shaping their internal evolution as well as how they collaborate and compete. In effect, what is needed is a theory of social learning that extends beyond the individual or the organization to encompass more complex institutional settings. Such as theory, I believe, is foreshadowed in Douglas North’s historical studies of institutions. It now needs further development.”

Max Boisot (1943–2011) British academic and educator

Source: Information Space, 1995, p. 290; As cited in: Ortiz et al. (2006)

World, Study, Learning

“In the imagination of those who are sensitive to the realities of our era, the earth has become a space ship, and this, perhaps, is the most important single fact of our day. For millennia, the earth in men's minds was flat and illimitable. Today, as a result of exploration, speed, and the explosion of scientific knowledge, earth has become a tiny sphere, closed, limited, crowded, and hurtling through space to unknown destinations. This change in man's image of his home affects his behaviour in many ways, and is likely to affect it much more in the future.”

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

Kenneth Boulding (1965) Earth as a Spaceship http://earthmind.net/earthmind/docs/boulding-1965.pdf Lecture May 10, 1965, Washington State University, Committee on Spaces Sciences 1960s

Men, Way, Home, Imagination

“The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more… Consider Uganda, pearl of Africa, as an example of the British record. … the British planted coffee and cotton and tobacco, and they were broadly right… If left to their own devices, the natives would rely on nothing but the instant carbohydrate gratification of the plantain. You never saw a place so abounding in bananas: great green barrel-sized bunches, off to be turned into matooke. Though this dish (basically fried banana) was greatly relished by Idi Amin, the colonists correctly saw that the export market was limited… The best fate for Africa would be if the old colonial powers, or their citizens, scrambled once again in her direction; on the understanding that this time they will not be asked to feel guilty.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Discussing his views on Africans and "Instant Carbohydrate Gratification" The Spectator 2 February 2002
2000s, 2002

Fate, Feeling, Coffee, Understanding

“The question is: How bad do things have to get before you will do something about it? Where is your line in the sand? If you don't enforce the constitutional limitations on your government very soon, you are likely to find out what World War III will be like. I'm quite sure that I will never experience that war - because dissidents are always the first to be eliminated.”

Michael Badnarik (1954) American software engineer

Source: Good to be King (2004)

War, World, Question

“The wise man looks into space and does not regard the small as too little, nor the great as too big, for he knows that, there is no limit to dimensions.”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

“These contributions [federal taxes on consumption of foreign goods] enable us to support the current expenses of the Government, to fulfill contracts with foreign nations, to extinguish the native right of soil within our limits, to extend those limits, and to apply such a surplus to our public debts as places at a short day their final redemption, and that redemption [of debt] once effected," he said, "the revenue thereby liberated may, by a just repartition among the States and a corresponding amendment of the Constitution, be applied, in time of peace, to rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education, and other great objects within each State. In time of war,—if injustice, by ourselves or others, must sometimes produce war,— increased as the same revenue will be increased by population and consumption, and aided by other resources reserved for that crisis, it may meet within the year all the expenses of the year without encroaching on the rights of future generations by burdening them with the debts of the past. War will then be but a suspension of useful works, and a return to a state of peace a return to the progress of improvement.”

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

Advising the origination of an annual fund from surplus revenue.
1800s, Second Inaugural Address (1805)

War, Education, Peace, Art

“It is in a sculptor's interest that there should exist a close relationship between his art and that of the poet. Otherwise, his sculpture may lack human or emotional content and become too strictly architectural. We sculptors pay a heavy price for the limited freedom that we enjoy as a result of our being able to create in three dimensions; we must sacrifice color and whole realms of subject matter, such as landscape, that scarcely lend themselves to a representation in three dimensions.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

c. 1960, in France
Source: 1960 - 1968, Dialogues – conversations with.., quotes, c. 1960, p. 153

Art, Color, Freedom

“In portraits you need a lot of general, very little of specific. Usually there is too much specificity, always too much... For a portrait to really work well for me, I need for it to be hardly a portrait. Almost for it to no longer be a portrait. It is then that it begins working at full capacity. I like things carried to the extreme limits of what is possible.”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Quote in a letter to Max Loreau, 29 June, 1963, reprinted in Prospectus II, Jean Dubuffet; Gallimard, Paris, 1967, pp. 374–375
1960-70's

“A single tiny cell had decided the fate of a population pressed so close to the ultimate limit of the planet’s resources that there was no margin for error. Facing such risks, how could any sane and responsible ruling group dare to demand still more mouths to cry for food? It was a shabby, horrible way to run a world.”

Lester del Rey (1915–1993) Novelist, short story writer, editor

Source: The Eleventh Commandment (1962), Chapter 11 (p. 107)

Fate, World, Food, Way

“Nature is richer than I represent it... Nature is so beautiful that when I am not tortured by poverty I am tortured by her splendor. How fortunate we are to be able to see and admire the glories of the sky and earth; if only I could be content just to admire them. But there is always the torment of struggling to reproduce them, the impossibility of creating anything within the narrow limits of painting.”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote from Boudin's Journal, March 1854; as cited in Eugène Boudin, G. Jean-Aubrey & Robert Schmit, Greenwich, New York graphic society, 1968, p. 24
1850s - 1870s

Beauty, Nature, Painting

“The self-regulating adaptive disposition of organised life may, in part, be traced to the extreme fecundity of Nature, who, as before stated, has, in all the varieties of her offspring, a prolific power much beyond (in many cases a thousand-fold) what is necessary to fill up the vacancies caused by senile decay. As the field of existence is limited and pre-occupied, it is only the hardier, more robust, better suited to circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle forward to maturity, these inhabiting only the situations to which they have superior adaptation and greater powers of occupancy than any other kind; the weaker, less circumstance-suited, being prematurely destroyed.”

Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) British scientist

On naval timber and arboriculture (1831), Appendix F, part II

Life, Nature, Parting

“As I've often said, I'm a fan of hard SF. No, it's more like I am addicted to it, even the stepped-on 20 times and cut with pow[d]ered milk and rat-poison sort of hard SF. This gets us to Stephen Baxter's Mayflower II, published last year in a limited edition from PS Publishing. In one of the great tragedies of publishing, it was not a limited enough edition and so I have read it.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[cvneu0$29s$1@reader2.panix.com, 2005]
2000s

Time, Reading

“I mean, it became particularly acute because Keynes, against his intentions, had stimulated the development of macroeconomics. And I was convinced that not only his particular conclusions, but the whole foundation of macroeconomics was wrong.
So I wanted to demonstrate that we had to return to microeconomics, that this whole prejudice supported by the natural scientists that could deduce anything from measurable magnitudes, the effects of aggregates and averages, came to fascinate me much more. I felt in a way, that the thing which I am now prepared to do, I don’t know as there’s anybody else who can do this particular task. And I rather hoped that what I had done in capital theory would be continued by others. This was a new opening which was much more fascinating. The other would have meant working for a result which I already knew, but had to prove it. Which was very dull.
The other thing was an open problem: How does economics really look like when you recognize it as the prototype of a new kind of science of complex phenomena which could not employ the simple model of mechanics or physics, but had to deal with what then I described as mere pattern predictions, certain limited prediction. That was so much more fascinating as an intellectual problem.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

In a 1985 interview with Gary North and Mark Skousen, in Hayek on Hayek (1994)
1980s and later

Hope, Way, Support, Nature

“Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 39, Popcorn, Lord Jim, Extinction

Love, Life

“Its importance is that if R[egulator] is fixed in its channel capacity, the law places an absolute limit to the amount of regulation (or control) that can be achieved by R, no matter how R is re-arranged internally, or how great the opportunity in T. Thus the ecologist, if his capacity as a channel is unchangeable, may be able at best only to achieve a fraction of what he would like to do. This fraction may be disposed in various ways —he may decide to control outbreaks rather than extensions, or virus infections rather than bacillary — but the quantity of control that he can exert is still bounded. So too the economist may have to decide to what aspect he shall devote his powers, and the psychotherapist may have to decide what symptoms shall be neglected and what controlled.”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

Source: An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956), Part 3: Regulation and control, p. 245: Regarding the law of requisite variety

Law, Way

“The realist, then, would seek in behalf of philosophy the same renunciation the same rigour of procedure, that has been achieved in science. This does not mean that he would reduce philosophy to natural or physical science. He recognizes that the philosopher has undertaken certain peculiar problems, and that he must apply himself to these, with whatever method he may find it necessary to employ. It remains the business of the philosopher to attempt a wide synoptic survey of the world, to raise underlying and ulterior questions, and in particular to examine the cognitive and moral processes. And it is quite true that for the present no technique at all comparable with that of the exact sciences is to be expected. But where such technique is attainable, as for example in symbolic logic, the realist welcomes it. And for the rest he limits himself to a more modest aspiration. He hopes that philosophers may come like scientists to speak a common language, to formulate common problems and to appeal to a common realm of fact for their resolution. Above all he desires to get rid of the philosophical monologue, and of the lyric and impressionistic mode of philosophizing. And in all this he is prompted not by the will to destroy but by the hope that philosophy is a kind of knowledge, and neither a song nor a prayer nor a dream. He proposes, therefore, to rely less on inspiration and more on observation and analysis. He conceives his function to be in the last analysis the same as that of the scientist. There is a world out yonder more or less shrouded in darkness, and it is important, if possible, to light it up. But instead of, like the scientist, focussing the mind's rays and throwing this or that portion of the world into brilliant relief, he attempts to bring to light the outlines and contour of the whole, realizing too well that in diffusing so widely what little light he has, he will provide only a very dim illumination.”

Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) American philosopher

Chap XXV.
The Present Conflict of Ideals: A Study of the Philosophical Background of the World War (1918)

World, Dreams, Hope, Question

“Ultimately, the State has overwhelming power when compared to the limited resources and power of an accused.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Flynn's Sin Was Lying To Liars, Not Colluding With Russia," http://www.wnd.com/2017/12/flynns-sin-was-lying-to-liars-not-colluding-with-russia/ WND.COM, December 7, 2017 2010s, 2017

“The total effective demand for commodities in the market is limited to the number of units of money of account that dealers are prepared to offer, and the number they are prepared to offer over any period of time is limited according to the number they hope to receive.”

Ralph George Hawtrey (1879–1975) British economist

Source: Currency and Credit (1919), p. 3

Money, Hope, Time

“We do not, however, reckon that trade disadvantageous which consists in the exchange of the hard-ware of England for the wines of France; and yet hard-ware is a very durable commodity, and were it not for this continual exportation, might too be accumulated for ages together, to the incredible augmentation of the pots and pans of the country. But it readily occurs that the number of such utensils is in every country necessarily limited by the use which there is for them; that it would be absurd to have more pots and pans than were necessary for cooking the victuals usually consumed there; and that if the quantity of victuals were to increase, the number of pots and pans would readily increase along with it, apart of the increased quantity of victuals being employed in purchasing them, or in maintaining an additional number of workman whose business it was to make them.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book IV, Chapter I, p. 471.

Age, Business, Wine, Cooking

“But when reason and the study of history began revealing the irrationality, the limitations, and the merely transitory nature of the capitalist order, bourgeois ideology as a whole and with it bourgeois economics began abandoning both reason and history.”

Paul A. Baran (1909–1964) American Marxist economist

Source: The Political Economy Of Growth (1957), Chapter One, A General View, p. 4

History, Nature, Study

“Lightweight concrete obtained with special admixtures producing bubbles throughout the mass shows lower resistance, which makes it less suitable for structural purposes; its practical application is limited to smaller structural elements adequately reinforced in which thermal insulation is required.”

Eduardo Torroja (1899–1961) Spanish architect

p, 125
Philosophy of Structures (1958)

“No nation owns these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them. We have no intention of imposing our culture. But America will always stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law; limits on the power of the state; respect for women; private property; free speech; equal justice; and religious tolerance.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Women, Justice, Law

“Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century.”

Lewis Mumford book Technics and Civilization

Source: Technics and Civilization (1934), Ch. 8, sct. 12

“The attentive synthesis of any particular letter or figure takes an appreciable time, of the order of 100ms…If a whole row of letters is to be identified, they must be synthesized one at a time… To "identify" generally means to name, and hence to synthesize not only a visual object but a linguistic-auditory one… Hence the span of apprehension is limited to what can be synthesized, and then verbally stored.”

Ulric Neisser (1928–2012) American psychologist

Source: Cognitive Psychology, 1967, p. 103; As cited in: A.H.C. Van der Heijden (1996)

Time

“A geologist should be well versed in chemistry, natural philosophy, mineralogy, zoology, comparative anatomy, botany; in short, in every science relating to organic and inorganic nature. …But the brief duration of human life, and our limited powers, are so far from permitting us to aspire to such extensive acquisitions, that excellence even in one department is within the reach of few, and those individuals most effectually promote the general progress, who concentrate their thoughts on a limited portion of the field of inquiry.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.1, p. 3
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Life, Nature, Science

“This divergence and perversion of the essential question is most striking in what goes today by the name of philosophy. There would seem to be only one question for philosophy to resolve: What must I do? Despite being combined with an enormous amount of unnecessary confusion, answers to the question have at any rate been given within the philosophical tradition on the Christian nations. For example, in Kant´s Critique of Practical Reason, or in Spinoza, Schopenhauer and specially Rousseau.

But in more recent times, since Hegel´s assertion that all that exists is reasonable, the question of what one must do has been pushed to the background and philosophy has directed its whole attention to the investigation of things as they are, and to fitting them into a prearranged theory. This was the first step backwards.

The second step, degrading human thought yet further, was the acceptance of the struggle for existence as a basic law, simply because that struggle can be observed among animals and plants. According to this theory the destruction of the weakest is a law which should not be opposed. And finally, the third step was taken when the childish originality of Nietzsche´s half-crazed thought, presenting nothing complete or coherent, but only various drafts of immoral and completely unsubstantiated ideas, was accepted by the leading figures as the final word in philosophical science. In reply to the question: what must we do? the answer is now put straightforwardly as: live as you like, without paying attention to the lives of others.

If anyone doubted that the Christian world of today has reached a frightful state of torpor and brutalization (not forgetting the recent crimes committed in the Boers and in China, which were defended by the clergy and acclaimed as heroic feats by all the world powers), the extraordinary success of Nietzsche´s works is enough to provide irrefutable proof of this.

Some disjointed writings, striving after effect in a most sordid manner, appear, written by a daring, but limited and abnormal German, suffering from power mania. Neither in talent nor in their basic argument to these writings justify public attention. In the days of Kant, Leibniz, or Hume, or even fifty years ago, such writings would not only have received no attention, but they would not even have appeared. But today all the so called educated people are praising the ravings of Mr. N, arguing about him, elucidating him, and countless copies of his works are printed in all languages.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: What is Religion, of What does its Essence Consist? (1902), Chapter 11

People, World, Education, Law

“Abstract art as it is conceived at present is a game bequeathed to painting and sculpture by art history. One who accepts its premises must consent to limit his imagination to a depressing casuistry regarding the formal requirements of modernism.”

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

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 71, "Lester Johnson's Abstract Men"

Art, Imagination, History, Game

“Reader! Imagine a school-boy who has outgrown his clothes. Imagine the repairs made on the vestments where the enlarged frame had burst the narrow limits of its inclosure. Imagine the additions made where the projecting limbs had fairly and far emerged beyond the confines of the garment. Imagine the boy still growing, and the clothes, mended all over, now more than ever in want of mending”

John Joseph Griffin (1802–1877) English chemist and publisher

such is chemistry, and such its nomenclature.
Chemical Recreations (7th Edition, 1834) "The Romance of Chemistry" p189

School, Imagination, Boy, Clothes

“He paused a moment and then pointed to the brook. "You see that the water divides there and flows on each side of a great rock. Now, if we imagine the brook endowed with consciousness, no doubt the stream on the right of the rock will feel itself separate from the stream on the left, but to us they are plainly continuous and the same. So I suppose every life in the world flows from the same infinite source and finally returns to it and while feeling itself separate, because limited and partial, is really continuous and the same.”

John William Lloyd (1857–1940) American anarchist, sexologist, utopian theorist and author (1857-1940)

Source: The Natural Man (1902), p. 95

Life, World, Feeling, Imagination

“There is within the limits of our experience no reason to seek the causes of these adaptations in a greater whole. All organisms are designed only for life upon the earth. The state of the earth's crust accordingly contains all (external) reasons of its arrangement. …They are peculiar (individual). According to all that experience teaches we must assume that they are not repeated on other heavenly bodies.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Life

“Included in this “almost nothing,” as a kind of geological afterthought of the last few million years, is the first development of self-conscious intelligence on this planet—an odd and unpredictable invention of a little twig on the mammalian evolutionary bush. Any definition of this uniqueness, embedded as it is in our possession of language, must involve our ability to frame the world as stories and to transmit these tales to others. If our propensity to grasp nature as story has distorted our perceptions, I shall accept this limit of mentality upon knowledge, for we receive in trade both the joys of literature and the core of our being.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"Literary bias on the slippery slope", p. 252
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

World, Intelligence, Literature, Nature

“What the rest of us see only under the influence of mescalin, the artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time. His perception is not limited to what is biologically or socially useful.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

Page 168
The Doors of Perception (1954)

Time

“I, Lawrence J. Hogan, Jr, Governor of the state of Maryland, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of Maryland, including but not limited to Title 14 and Section 13-702 of the Public Safety Article of the Annotated Code of Maryland, declare that a state of emergency exists in Baltimore City, I call the Maryland National Guard into action and state service and hereby authorize the Maryland Emergency Management Agency or other appropriate state authority, during this emergency period, to engage, deploy, and coordinate available resources.”

Larry Hogan (1956) American politician

" Declaration of Emergency https://governor.maryland.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/EO01.01.2015.16.pdf" (27 April 2015).

Law

“Limitation is not a matter of justice. It is a rule of public policy which has its origin in history and its justification in convenience.”

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning (1899–1999) British judge

The Bramley Moore [1964] P 200 at 220, commenting on the limitation of liability in maritime claims.
Judgments

Justice, History

“This proof can at most, therefore, demonstrate the existence of an architect of the world, whose efforts are limited by the capabilities of the material with which he works, but not of a creator of the world, to whom all things are subject.”

Immanuel Kant book Critique of Pure Reason

A 627, B 655 (Physico-Theological Proof Impossible)
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)

World, Effort

“It was not her eloquence but her healing of the sick which raised Sharon to such eminence that she promised to become the most renowned evangelist in America. People were tired of eloquence; and the whole evangelist business was limited, since even the most ardent were not likely to be saved more than three of four times. But they could be healed constantly, and of the same disease.”

Sinclair Lewis book Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry (1927)

People, Disease, Business, Time

“Conservatives believe in limited government. Liberals believe in intrusive government when required to achieve societal needs. (Exception: social-issues conservatives advocate government intrusion on matters of abortion, drugs and pornography.)”

Mike Rosen (1944) American political pundit

Rocky Mountain News column, 2000

“"What," said I, "does the puny creature mean by 'it'?" "He means himself," said the Sphere: "have you not noticed before now, that babies and babyish people who cannot distinguish themselves from the world, speak of themselves in the Third Person? But hush!"
"It fills all Space," continued the little soliloquizing Creature, "and what It fills, It is. What It thinks, that It utters; and what It utters, that It hears; and It itself is Thinker, Utterer, Hearer, Thought, Word, Audition; it is the One, and yet the All in All. Ah, the happiness ah, the happiness of Being!" "Can you not startle the little thing out of its complacency?" said I. "Tell it what it really is, as you told me; reveal to it the narrow limitations of Pointland, and lead it up to something higher." "That is no easy task," said my Master; "try you." ”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 20. How the Sphere Encouraged Me in a Vision

People, World, Thinking, Baby

“Because they [the ancient Greeks] feared infinite processes they missed the limit process. In approximating a circle by a polygon they were content to make the difference smaller than any given quantity, but something positive was always left over. Thus the process remained clear to the intuition; the limit process, on the other hand, would have involved the infinitely small.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 176

Fear

“Industrial Americanization is not, as we sometimes think, welfare work, or the introduction of a few makeshifts to keep men at work. It is the practical operation of the American spirit in management. The man who comes here expecting opportunity, fair remuneration for his day's work, fair working conditions, friendly personal relations, and that the utmost will be made of his abilities, cannot be met with limitations and discriminations and still become Americanized. He comes to escape the brutality of the military system, and he finds the brutality of the industrial system, ruthless in its destruction of life and property and morality.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life, Men, Thinking, Personality

“Germany agreed to restrict her Navy to one third the size of the British but was accorded the right to build submarines, explicitly denied her by the peace treaty, up to 60 percent of British strength, and to 100 percent in case she decided it was necessary to her security, which she shortly did. Germany also pledged that her U-boats would never attack unarmed merchant ships, a word that she went back on from the very beginning of the second war. As soon as the deal with Britain was concluded Germany laid down two battleships, the Bismarck and Tirpitz, with a displacement of over 45,000 tons. By the terms of the Washington and London naval accords, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States had to limit their battleships to 35,000 tons. Great Britain, as the French contended, had no legal right to absolve Germany from respecting the naval clauses of the Versailles Treaty. And, as many Frenchmen added, no moral right either.”

William L. Shirer book The Collapse of the Third Republic

Book Three, Chapter 15, Aftermath: Widening of the Gulf: 1934-1936, discussing the Anglo-German Naval Agreement.
The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

War, Peace

“Somehow the inclination to write about my private life in public is related to the ability to do so. It is not enough to say that my mother and father do not want to write their autobiographies. It needs also to be said that they are unable to write to a public reader. They lack the skill. Though both of them can write in Spanish and English, they write in a hesitant manner. Their syntax is uncertain. Their vocabulary limited. The man who sits in his chair so many hours, and the woman at the ironing board—‘keeping busy because I don’t want to get old’—will never be able to believe that any description of their personal lives could be understood by a stranger far from home.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Life, Home, Business, Personality

“In the first stages of the industrial revolution, animals were used as machines. As also were children. Later, in the so-called post-industrial societies, they are treated as raw material. Animals required for food are processed like manufactured commodities. … This reduction of the animal … is part of the same process as that by which men have been reduced to isolated productive and consuming units. Indeed, during this period an approach to animals often prefigured an approach to man. The mechanical view of the animal’s work capacity was later applied to that of workers. F. W. Taylor who developed the “Taylorism” of timemotion studies and “scientific” management of industry proposed that work must be “so stupid” and so phlegmatic that he (the worker) “more nearly resembles in his mental makeup the ox than any other type.” Nearly all modern techniques of social conditioning were first established with animal experiments. As were also the methods of so-called intelligence testing. Today behaviourists like Skinner imprison the very concept of man within the limits of what they conclude from their artificial tests with animals.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Source: About Looking (1980), Chapter "Why Look at Animals?"

Men, Children, Stupidity, Food

“Racism does not limit itself to biology or economics or psychology or metaphysics; it attacks along many fronts and in many forms, deploying whatever is at hand, and even what is not, inventing when the need arises.”

Albert Memmi (1920) French writer

Racism (1982)

“[How is it consistent with what you advocated this evening in terms of a vision for peace, that you continued to allow the building of settlements in the West Bank, during your primeministership? ] Let me tell you, first of all, during my term as a Prime Minister, we have not built a single new settlement. I ordered the dismantling of many voluntary -- I don't know how to call it -- new settlements that had been set on top of hills in different parts of the West Bank, basically. But, I allowed contracts, contracts that had been signed, legally, in Israel, beforehand. To build new neighborhoods in some big cities in the West Bank, cities with 25,000 or 30,000 people. And very few new homes, in small settlements, where youngsters, who came back from the army service, asked to build their home near the home of their parents. Now, Israel is a law-abiding state, you cannot break contracts, there is Supreme Court. If the government behaves in a way that is not proper, any individual can appeal and change whatever we decide. Realizing that this is a sensitive issue from the Palestinian side, I talked to Arafat, at the beginning of my term as a Prime Minister, and I told him: Mr. Chairman, I know that you are worried about it, it creates some problems, in your own constituency. But let me tell you, we have a great opportunity here to put an end to the whole conflict, in a year and a half. When President Clinton that invested unbelievable amount of energy and political capital in trying to solve it, and he's still in power. Now, I understand your problem with settlement if there is no end, there is no time limit, and you are afraid that maybe the accumulation of new settlements will change the nature of the situation, for the worse, from your position. So I tell you, out of our own considerations, independent of you, we have decided not to set even a single new settlement. We will not allow anyone to establish his own private initiatives on the hills, for our own reasons, not because of you. But at the same time I will respect any contract that has been signed, under law, in Israel. But -- and here is a point -- bearing in mind that we can put an end to the conflict, to reach an agreement within a year and a half, why the hell it will matter? To build a new building in Israel takes more than a year and a half, so you won't see any building that is not already emerging from the ground, having it's roof before we can reach an agreement. Now if such a building happens to be in a settlement that will become, under the agreement, part of the new independent Palestine, why the hell you have to care? Take it, use it, put some refugees in it. And if it will happen to be a part of what will be agreed, as Israel, in a mutual agreement that is signed by you, why the hell do you care, if you agree? I believe that that simple answer would not solve his public -- or internal political -- problems, but it would solve the real issue if the will was there to make peace, and not just to politically maneuver and manipulate.”

Ehud Barak (1942) Israeli politician and prime minister

Speech at UC Berkeley http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/19324/edition_id/391/format/html/displaystory.html, November 22, 2002

People, Peace, Law, Way

“Nature is objective, and nature is knowable, but we can only view her through a glass darkly—and many clouds upon our vision are of our own making: social and cultural biases, psychological preferences, and mental limitations (in universal modes of thought, not just individualized stupidity).”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Source: Full House (1996), p. 8

Stupidity, Nature, Universe

“Entities other than Brahman can be objects of such cognitions of the nature of joy only to a finite extent and for limited duration. But Brahman is such that cognizing of him is an infinite and abiding joy. It is for this reason that the shruti [scripture] says, `Brahman is bliss’ (Taittitriya Upanishad II.6.) Since the form of cognition as joy is determined by its object, Brahman itself is joy.”

Ramanuja (1017–1137) Hindu philosopher, exegete of Vishishtadvaita Vedanta school

Ramanuja. Vedarthasangraha §241, as quoted by Shyam Ranganathan " Rāmānuja (c. 1017 – c. 1137 CE) http://www.iep.utm.edu/ramanuja/," at Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Accessed May 20. 2014.

Nature, Joy

“Cognitive load theory has been designed to provide guidelines intended to assist in the presentation of information in a manner that encourages learner activities that optimize intellectual performance. The theory assumes a limited capacity working memory that includes partially independent subcomponents to deal with auditory/verbal material and visual/2- or 3-dimensional information as well as an effectively unlimited long-term memory, holding schemas that vary in their degree of automation. These structures and functions of human cognitive architecture have been used to design a variety of novel instructional procedures based on the assumption that working memory load should be reduced and schema construction encouraged. This paper reviews the theory and the instructional designs generated by it.”

John Sweller (1946) educational psychologist

John Sweller, Jeroen van Merrienboer, and Fred Paas. "Cognitive architecture and instructional design." Educational psychology review 10.3 (1998): 251-296.

Optimism, Memory

“We want to determine whether he understands the inherent limits that make an unelected Judiciary inferior to Congress or the President in making policy judgments. That, for example, a judge will never be in the best position to know what is in the national security interests of our country.”

Alberto Gonzales (1955) 80th United States Attorney General

About selecting federal judicial candidates.
Speech to American Enterprise Institute (January 17, 2007)

Understanding, Country

“I'm a libertarian, which means I'm against the government doing almost anything. But citizens having arsenals? No, that is the kind of rough stuff I would like the government to get involved in…. It just seems the debate, — you know, they will not give an inch. There are many attempts to pass a law in states just requesting a limit of buying one gun a month, and it doesn't pass. People are like, "What about Christmas?" I mean, one gun a month. If you started when you were 18, by the time you were 60 that's over a thousand guns. I don't care how small your penis is, that should be enough guns.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Be More Cynical (2000)

People, Law, Time, Christmas

“There is no mortality. It is only the Immortal who can die; the mortal could neither be born nor perish. There is nothing finite. It is only the Infinite who can make for Himself limits; the finite can have no beginning nor end, for the very act of conceiving its beginning and end declares its infinity.”

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

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana

“Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties.”

Martin Dempsey (1952) Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Praising the Israeli army's actions in the military engagement with Gaza in 2014, as quoted in The Jewish Chronicle, 26 December 2014, p.20.

“Intervening variables are essential to psychological analysis because without them our description of economic behavior would remain incomplete, our understanding of behavior limited, and our predictions of future behavior incorrect.”

George Katona (1901–1981) American psychologist

George Katona (1951). Psychological Analysis of Economic Behavior. McGraw-Hill, New York. p. 31

Behavior, Understanding, Future

“There is a crucial difference between the criminal and the outlaw. The criminal is a perverse rebel who acts out against the law. … The outlaw is a supranormal individual who cares about others too much to accept the limitations on eros that are imposed by normal life. Thus the outlaw question moves outside end beyond, not against the law. While the rebel is an antinomian, merely rejecting the established, the outlaw is motivated by a quest for autonomy.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 130-131

Life, Law, Motivation, Question

“How is an ordinary citizen or subject of the King to stand up against this formidable machine, which, once it is in power, will prescribe for every one of them where they are to work; what they are to work at; where they may go and what they may say; what views they are to hold and within what limits they may express them; where their wives are to go to queue up for the State ration; and what education their children are to receive to mould their views of human liberty and conduct in the future?”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (4 June 1945) for the 1945 general election, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Never Despair': Winston S. Churchill, 1945–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1988), p. 34
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Children, Education, Future

“Science has become too complex to affirm the existence of universal truths, but it strives for nothing else, and disputes the problem, within its own limits, almost as earnestly as in the twelfth century, when the whole field of human and superhuman activity was shut between these barriers of Substance, Universals, and Particulars. Little has changed except the vocabulary and the method.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Truth, Problem, Universe, Science

“Our aid has humanitarian objectives only; it is never governed by politics or limited by the geography, race, color or religion of the beneficiary.”

Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (1949) Emirati politician

Quotes on Philanthropy, http://www.sheikhmohammed.co.ae/vgn-ext-templating/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=99c18960a5a11310VgnVCM1000004d64a8c0RCRD&appInstanceName=default, sheikhmohammed.ae.

Religion, Color

“Under the leadership of their democratic governments, all the anti-Japanese people in the Liberated Areas of China are called upon to join organizations of workers, peasants, youth and women, and cultural, professional and other organizations, which will wholeheartedly perform various tasks in support of the armed forces. Those tasks are not limited to rallying the people to join the army, transporting grain for it, caring for soldiers' families and helping the troops in meeting their material needs. They also include mobilizing the guerrilla units, militia and self-defence corps to make widespread raids and lay land mines against the enemy, gather intelligence about him, comb out traitors and spies, transport and protect the wounded and take direct part in the army's operations.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Coalition Government (1945)

Women, People, Youth, Family

“The Reason of the present Animadversions. …How far Hevelius has proceeded. That his instruments do not much exceed Ticho. The bigness, Sights and Divisions, not considerably differing. Ticho not ignorant of his new way of Division. …That so great curiosity as Hevelius strives for is needless without the use of Telescopic Sights, the power of the naked eye being limited. That no one part of an Instrument should be more perfect than another. …
That if Hevelius could have been prevail'd on by the Author to have used Telescopic Sights, his observations might have been 40 times more exact than they are.
That Hevelius his Objections against Telescopic sights are of no validity; but the Sights without Telescopes cannot distinguish a less angle then half a Minute.
That an Instrument of 3 foot Radius with Telescopes, will do more then one of 3 score foot Radius with common Sights, the eye being unable to distinguish. This is proved by the undiscernableness of spots in the Moon, and by an Experiment with Lines on a paper, by which a Standard is made of the power of the eye. …
A Conclusion of the Animadversions. That the learn'd World is obllig'd to Hevelius for what he hath done, but would have more, if he had used other instruments.
That the Animadvertor both contrived some hundreds of Instruments, each of very great accurateness for taking Angles, Levels, &c.; and a particular Arithmetical lnstrument for performing all Operations in Arithmetick, with the greatest ease, swiftness and certainty imaginable.
That the Reader may be the more certain of this, the Author describes an Instrument for taking Angles in the Heavens…”

Robert Hooke (1635–1703) English natural philosopher, architect and polymath

Contents, Animadversions on the First Part of the Machina Coelestis of the Astronomer Johannes Hevelius https://books.google.com/books?id=KAtPAAAAcAAJ (1674)

World, Way, Imagination, Time

“The most beautiful fate of a physical theory is to point the way to the establishment of a more inclusive theory, in which it lives on as a limiting case.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1917) as quoted by Gerald Holton, The Advancement of Science, and Its Burdens: the Jefferson Lecture and other Essays (1986
1910s

Fate, Beauty, Way

“A quantity growing exponentially toward a limit reaches that limit in a surprisingly short time.”

Donella Meadows (1941–2001) American environmental scientist, teacher, and writer

Thinking in systems: A Primer (2008)

Time

“Don’t lean on your own understanding. If your trust in God is limited by your understanding of His ways, you will always have a limited trust.”

James MacDonald (1960) American pastor

Source: Always True (Moody, 2011), p. 59

God, Way, Understanding

“Bare Attention first allows things to speak for themselves, without interruption by final verdicts pronounced too hastily. Bare Attention gives them a chance to finish their speaking, and one will thus get to learn that, in fact, they have much to say about themselves, which formerly was mostly ignored by rashness or was drowned in the inner and outer noise in which ordinary man normally lives. Because Bare Attention sees things without the narrowing and leveling effect of habitual judgments, it sees them ever anew, as it for the first time; therefore it will happen with progressive frequency that things will have something new and worthwhile to reveal. Patient pausing in such an attitude of Bare Attention will open wide horizons to one’s understanding, denied to the strained efforts of an impatient intellect. Owing to a rash or habitual limiting, labeling, misjudging, and mishandling of things, important sources of knowledge often remain closed.”

Nyanaponika Thera (1901–1994) German Buddhist monk

Source: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1965), p. 35

Understanding, Knowledge, Effort, Learning

“I'm a big believer that as much as possible, and there's obviously political limitations, freedom of migration is a good thing.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

"Bill Gates backs immigration reform on Mexico trip" Reuters (21 March 2007) http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN2024750720070321 2000s

Freedom

“Such was the character, such the inflexible rule of austere Cato – to observe moderation and hold fast to the limit, to follow nature, to give his life for his country, to believe that he was born to serve the whole world and not himself.”
Hi mores, haec duri inmota Catonis secta fuit, servare modum finemque tenere naturamque sequi patriaeque inpendere vitam nec sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo.

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus book Pharsalia

Book II, line 380 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia

Life, World, Nature, Country

“…whereas there still lingers some absurd prejudice against living on one's friends, no limits are set, either by society or by one's own conscience, to the amount one may impose upon one's relatives.”

Stella Gibbons book Cold Comfort Farm

Source: Cold Comfort Farm (1932), Chapter 1.

“Because of his social position there are left no limits to the power lust of the modern capitalist. He can interfere with inconsiderate egoism in the lives of his fellowmen and play the part of Providence for others. Only when we take into consideration this passionate urge for political power over their own people as well as over foreign nations are we able really to understand the character of the typical representatives of modern capitalism. It is just this trait which makes them so dangerous to the social structure of the future.”

Rudolf Rocker book Nationalism and Culture

Source: Nationalism and Culture (1937), Ch. 1 "The Insufficiency of Economic Materialism"

People, Understanding, Passion, Future

“A second justification for corporate taxation is that the corporation receives a number of special privileges from society, the most important of which is limited liability of the stockholders. The corporation tax can be viewed as a user fee for this benefit.”

Harvey S. Rosen (1949) American economist

Source: Public Finance - International Edition - Sixth Edition, Chapter 17, The Corporation Tax, p. 399

“All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set to thought.”

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American teacher and writer

Source: The Greek Way (1930), Ch. 1

Question

“Our world model was built specifically to investigate five major trends of global concern – accelerating industrialization, rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion of nonrenewable resources, and a deteriorating environment. The model we have constructed is, like every model, imperfect, oversimplified, and unfinished… Our conclusions are : (1.) If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity…”

Eduard Pestel (1914–1988) scholar

The Limits to Growth, abstract established by Eduard Pestel http://www.unav.es/adi/UserFiles/File/80963990/The%20Limits%20to%20Growth%20Informe%20Meadows.pdf, 1972, by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis l. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, William W. Behrens III.

World, Food

“As far as talent goes, Marilyn Monroe was so minimally gifted as to be almost unemployable, and anyone who holds to the opinion that she was a great natural comic identifies himself immediately as a dunce…As a natural silent comedian Marilyn might possibly have qualified, with the proviso that she was not to be depended on to invent anything. But as a natural comedian in sound she had the conclusive disadvantage of not being able to speak. She was limited ineluctably to characters who rented language but could not possess it, and all her best roles fell into that category. She was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Mailer's Marilyn
Essays and reviews, At the Pillars of Hercules (1979)

Nature, Dependency

“(referring to people in favor of commercializing the Internet)"I suppose their thinking is that since ideas can be dangerous, there should be limits on which ideas are expressed. Which is only the foundation of fascism. Thanks, government!"”

Brian Clevinger (1978) writer

http://www.nuklearpower.com/daily.php?date=060425

People, Idea, Thinking

“(On airplane etiquette) Although reclining your seat is technically your right, just like free speech if you exercise it to your limits everyone around you will think you're an asshole.”

Ze Frank (1972) American online performance artist

http://www.zefrank.com/wiki/index.php/the_show:_08-23-06
"The Show" (www.zefrank.com/theshow/)

Exercises, Thinking

“Being an art form, verse cannot be "free" in the sense of having no limitations or guiding principle.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

As quoted in Free Verse. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics 2nd ed (1975)
General sources

Art, Sense

“The problem is one in the general physiology of society. The continuance of life and health for any individual depends on maintenance of a moving organic equilibrium within certain definite limits of tolerance. The daily work of the world is done by individuals living their specialized economic and social lives within a moving equilibrium… But specialized progress brought uneven social and economic developments and serious maladjustment. General equilibrium is lost. The limits of tolerance, the margins of safety, are exceeded.”

Wallace Brett Donham (1877–1954) American academic

Source: "The Failure of Business Leadership and the Responsibility of the Universities", 1933, p. 423; as cited in: Wallace Donham http://www.eoht.info/page/Wallace+Donham at Hmolpedia, 2015

Life, Health, World, Problem

“It is generally assumed that men are damaged in their capacity for closeness and intimacy. If intimacy is defined as a loving closeness with another person, then it is usually true that the early conditioning of men to be performers and competitors in the impersonal competitive world limits their intimacy capacity. Women are assumed to have a greater capacity for intimacy than men because they express caring emotions and allow themselves to be dependent and close in relationships more easily. Yet, a closer look will provide a different perspective.

True intimacy is love and closeness based on knowledge of the inner reality and inner experience of the other. However, in romantic relationships, closeness ends or is put into crisis when men describe honestly their inner experiences to women. Women assail the relationship behavior of men and men acknowledge what they are told. Rarely is the opposite true. Men accept the reality of women more than women accept the reality of men.

The fact that a woman's priority is placed on personal needs bears no relationship to a genuine capacity for intimacy. To be loved and known, and to be fully comfortable expressing one's personal self, are two major components of intimacy. There are few men who have received that from a woman. The opposite holds true. A woman's love for a man is contingent on his participating in her romantic fantasy of what he and the relationship should be. Few men risk challenging or undermining that fantasy. Instead, they play by the rules of romance even when it feels uncomfortable, knowing that being loved by her is fragile and easily broken once he reveals his resistances and unromantic feelings.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

Why Women Are Also Incapable of Intimacy, pp. 120–121
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Love, Women, Men, World

“…The right to self-determination refers to the right of a given population (usually a nation) to create its own future more or less free from external coercion, but within the limits of the historical realities with which it is faced.”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

Source: The Right to Struggle (1993), P. 17.

Reality, Future

“Ignorance or disregard of our evolutionary heritage, and of the fundamental biological, emotional, cognitive, and social similarities on which much in everyday human life and thought depend, can lead to speculative philosophies and empirical programs that misconstrue the natural scope and limits of our species-specific abilities and competencies. The intellectual and moral consequences of this misconstrual have varying significance, both for ourselves and for others, for example, in the ways relativism informs currently popular notions of "separate but equal" cultural worlds whose peoples are in some sense incommensurably different from ourselves and from one another. Relativism aspires directly to mutual tolerance of irreducible differences. Naturalism-the evolutionary-based biological and cognitive understanding of our common nature and humanity-aims first to render cultural diversity comprehensible. If anything, evolution teaches us that from one or a few forms wondrously many kinds will arise.”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 17
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

Life, People, World, Way

“Diophantos lived in a period when the Greek mathematicians of great original power had been succeeded by a number of learned commentators, who confined their investigations within the limits already reached, without attempting to further the development of the science. To this general rule there are two most striking exceptions, in different branches of mathematics, Diophantos and Pappos. These two mathematicians, who would have been an ornament to any age, were destined by fate to live and labour at a time when their work could not check the decay of mathematical learning. There is scarcely a passage in any Greek writer where either of the two is so much as mentioned. The neglect of their works by their countrymen and contemporaries can be explained only by the fact that they were not appreciated or understood. The reason why Diophantos was the earliest of the Greek mathematicians to be forgotten is also probably the reason why he was the last to be re-discovered after the Revival of Learning. The oblivion, in fact, into which his writings and methods fell is due to the circumstance that they were not understood. That being so, we are able to understand why there is so much obscurity concerning his personality and the time at which he lived. Indeed, when we consider how little he was understood, and in consequence how little esteemed, we can only congratulate ourselves that so much of his work has survived to the present day.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

Historical Introduction, p.17
Diophantos of Alexandria: A Study in the History of Greek Algebra (1885)

Fate, Age, Mathematics, Understanding

“[RAM1993] I laid out memory so the bottom 640 K was general purpose RAM and the upper 384 I reserved for video and ROM, and things like that. That is why they talk about the 640 K limit. It is actually a limit, not of the software, in any way, shape, or form, it is the limit of the microprocessor. That thing generates addresses, 20-bits addresses, that only can address a megabyte of memory. And, therefore, all the applications are tied to that limit. It was ten times what we had before. But to my surprise, we ran out of that address base for applications within—oh five or six years people were complaining.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Bill Gates Interview: Winner of the 1993 Price Waterhouse Leadership Award for Lifetime Achievement, Computerworld Smithsonian Awards, https://web.archive.org/web/20080501040344/http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/gates.htm, May 10, 2008, National museum of American history - Smithsonian Institution, 1993, October 8, 2014 http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/gates.htm, 1990s

People, Way, Memory, Time

“The Social System School: Closely related to the human behavior school and often confused or intertwined with it is one which might be labeled the social system school. This includes those researchers who look upon management as a social system, that is, a system of cultural interrelationships. Sometimes, as in the case of March and Simon, the system is limited to formal organizations, using the term "organization" as equivalent to enterprise, rather than the authority-activity concept used most often in management. In other cases, the approach is not to distinguish the formal organization, but rather to encompass any kind of system of human relationships.”

Harold Koontz (1909–1984)

Source: "The Management Theory Jungle," 1961, p. 179

School, Behavior

“Exceptionally good memory exhibited by some people may stem from genetic differences in CREB-2 that limit the activity of this repressor protein in relation to CREB-1.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

In Search of Memory (2006)

People, Memory

“There is nothing wrong in the idea of a body, nor even in the idea ‘I am the body.’ But limiting oneself to one body only is a mistake. In reality all existence, every form, is my own, within my consciousness. (…).”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Body
Source: I am That, P.136.

Idea, Reality

“[S]cience is often regarded as the most objective and truth-directed of human enterprises, and since direct observation is supposed to be the favored route to factuality, many people equate respectable science with visual scrutiny—just the facts ma'am, and palpably before my eyes. But science is a battery of observational and inferential methods, all directed to the testing of propositions that can, in principle, be definitely proven false. […] At all scales, from smallest to largest, quickest to slowest, many well-documented conclusions of science lie beyond the strictly limited domain of direct observation. No one has ever seen an electron or a black hole, the events of a picosecond or a geological eon.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"Muller Bros. Moving & Storage", pp. 200–201
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

People, Truth, Lie, Science

“Once in pre-war days, when curiously-bonneted women drivers were familiar sights at the taxi-wheels, I cried out to one in my dismay: "Is there no speed limit in this mad city?"
"Oh, yes, monsieur," she answered sweetly over her shoulder, "but no one has ever succeeded in reaching it."”

Alexander Woollcott (1887–1943) American critic

"The Paris Taxi-Driver Considered as an Artist," in Enchanted Aisles (1924).

Women, War, Speed, Madness

“The earliest achievement of this (of equality and the restriction on the powers of the constitutionally mandated magistrates), the most ancient opposition in Rome, consisted in the abolition of the life-tenure of the presidency of the community; in other words, in the abolition of the monarchy… Not only in Rome (but all over the Italian peninsula) … we find the rulers for life of an earlier epoch superseded in after times by annual magistrates. In this light the reasons which led to the substitution of the consuls for kings in Rome need no explanation. The organism of the ancient Greek and Italian polity through its own action and by a sort of natural necessity produced the limitation of the life-presidency to a shortened, and for the most part an annual, term… Simple, however, as was the cause of the change, it might be brought about in various ways, resolution (of the community),.. or the rule might voluntarily abdicate; or the people might rise in rebellion against a tyrannical ruler, and expel him. It was in this latter way that the monarchy was terminated in Rome. For however much the history of the expulsion of the last Tarquinius, "the proud", may have been interwoven with anecdotes and spun out into a romance, it is not in its leading outlines to be called in question. Tradition credibly enough indicates as the causes of the revolt, that the king neglected to consult the senate and to complete its numbers; that he pronounced sentences of capital punishment and confiscation without advising with his counsellors(sic); that he accumulated immense stores of grain in his granaries, and exacted from the burgesses military labours and task-work beyond what was due… we are (in light of the ignorance of historical facts around the abolition of the monarchy) fortunately in possession of a clearer light as to the nature of the change which was made in the constitution (after the expulsion of the monarchy). The royal power was by no means abolished, as is shown by the fact that, when a vacancy occurred, a "temporary king" (Interrex) was nominated as before. The one life-king was simply replaced by two [one year] kings, who called themselves generals (praetores), or judges…, or merely colleagues (Consuls) [literally, "Those who leap or dance together"]. The collegiate principle, from which this last - and subsequently most current - name of the annual kings was derived, assumed in their case an altogether peculiar form. The supreme power was not entrusted to the two magistrates conjointly, but each consul possessed and exercised it for himself as fully and wholly as it had been possessed and exercised by the king; and, although a partition of functions doubtless took place from the first - the one consul for instance undertaking the command of the army, and the other the administration of justice - that partition was by no means binding, and each of the colleagues was legally at liberty to interfere at any time in the province of the other.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 1, Book II , Chapter 1. "Change of the Constitution" Translated by W.P. Dickson
The History of Rome - Volume 1

Life, People, Justice, Way

“I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen: that I desired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character, than was here within my reach.”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Jane (Ch. 12)
Jane Eyre (1847)

Life, World, Business

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am in the position of a pilot without his checklist, so I’ll have to wing it a bit. … [Prior to the Apollo missions, ] no one knew what kind of person could be persuaded to take the trip. Prisoners were suggested. Soldiers could be ordered. Photographers could take pictures — and they’re expendable. Doctors understood the limits of human physiology. Finally, both sides picked pilots.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

On being awarded a Congressional Gold Medal on (21 July 2009)

Personality

“He had developed his own limited, or very simple style. He was never very keen on improving himself as a bass player and half the time I would play bass on the records because I would tend to do it quicker. Right back to those early records; I mean, at least half the bass on all recorded output is me anyway. … Rog used to come in and say, "Thank you very much" to me once in a while for winning him bass-playing polls.”

David Gilmour (1946) guitarist, singer, best known as a member of Pink Floyd

On Roger Waters, as quoted in Rock Compact Disc (September 1992)

Time

“He [ Aristotle ] refers to many examples of changes now constantly going on, and insists emphatically on the great results which they must produce in the lapse of ages. He instances particular cases of lakes that had dried up, and deserts that had at length become watered by rivers and fertilized. He points to the growth of the Nilotic delta since the time of Homer, to the shallowing of the Palus Maeotis within sixty years from his own time… He alludes,… to the upheaving of one of the Eolian islands, previous to a volcanic eruption. The changes of the earth, he says, are so slow in comparison to the duration of our lives, that they are overlooked; and the migrations of people after great catastrophes, and their removal to other regions, cause the event to be forgotten…. He says [twelfth chapter of his Meteorics] 'the distribution of land and sea in particular regions does not endure throughout all time, but it becomes sea in those parts where it was land, and again it becomes land where it was sea, and there is reason for thinking that these changes take place according to a certain system, and within a certain period.' The concluding observation is as follows: 'As time never fails, and the universe is eternal, neither the Tanais, nor the Nile, can have flowed for ever. The places where they rise were once dry, and there is a limit to their operations, but there is none to time. So also of all other rivers; they spring up and they perish; and the sea also continually deserts some lands and invades others The same tracts, therefore, of the earth are not some always sea, and others always continents, but every thing changes in the course of time.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 17
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

People, Age, Spring, Thinking

“When the majority of the country could not live with the extremes of brutality they witnessed, political remedies were enacted and customs were altered. / These partial advances were, however, limited principally to the South and progress did not automatically spread throughout the nation. There was also little depth to the changes. White America stopped murder, but that is not the same thing as ordaining brotherhood; nor is the ending of lynch rule the same thing as inaugurating justice.”

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

1960s, The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement (1967)

Justice, Change, Country

“Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans only as members of groups and never as individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike; as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called 'diversity' actually perpetuate racism. Their intense focus on race is inherently racist, because it views individuals only as members of racial groups. Conservatives and libertarians should fight back and challenge the myth that collectivist liberals care more about racism. Modern liberalism, however, well-intentioned, is a byproduct of the same collectivist thinking that characterizes racism. The continued insistence on group thinking only inflames racial tensions. The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity. In a free market, businesses that discriminate lose customers, goodwill, and valuable employees- while rational businesses flourish by choosing the most qualified employees and selling to all willing buyers. More importantly, in a free society every citizen gains a sense of himself as an individual, rather than developing a group or victim mentality. This leads to a sense of individual responsibility and personal pride, making skin color irrelevant. Rather than looking to government to correct what is essentially a sin of the heart, we should understand that reducing racism requires a shift from group thinking to an emphasis on individualism.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

What Really Divides Us https://web.archive.org/web/20120127094927/http://www.ronpaularchive.com/2002/12/what-really-divides-us/ (23 December 2002). 2000s, 2001-2005

Color, Understanding, Business, Thinking

“\frac {dy}{dx} = \frac {\omega^2x}{g}…The first derivative, the result of the differentiation of y with respect to x, was written by Leibniz in the form
\frac {dy}{dx}…Leibniz's notation …is both extremely useful and dangerous. Today, as the concepts of limit and derivative are sufficiently clarified, the use of the notation… need not be dangerous. Yet, the situation was different in the 150 years between the discovery of calculus by Newton and Leibniz and the time of Cauchy. The derivative \frac {dy}{dx} was considered as the ratio of two "infinitely small quanitites", of the infinitesimals dy and dx. …it greatly facilitated the systematization of the rules of the calculus and gave intuitive meaning to its formulas. Yet this consideration was also obscure… it brought mathematics into disrepute… some of the best minds… such as… Berkeley, complained that calculus is incomprehensible. …\frac {dy}{dx} is the limit of a ratio of dy to dx… Once we have realized this sufficiently clearly, we may, under certain circumstances, treat \frac {dy}{dx} so as if it were a ratio… and multiply by dx to achieve the separation of variables. We get
{dy} = \frac {\omega^2x}{g}xdx”

George Pólya (1887–1985) Hungarian mathematician

Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)

Mathematics, Time

“The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"The Duchess and the Bugs", 'Lanterns & Lances (1961). The piece was "a response" to an award Thurber received from the Ohioana Library Association in 1953.
From Lanterns and Lances‎