Quotes about operating
page 17

“We need a real test. The capitalists are operating alongside us. They are operating like robbers; they make profit; but they know how to do things. But you - you are trying to do it in a new way: you make no profit, your principles are communist, your ideals are splendid; they are written out so beautifully that you seem to be saints, that you should go to heaven while you are still alive. But can you get things done? We need a test, a real test, not the kind the Central Control Commission makes when it censures somebody and the All-Russia Central Executive Committee imposes some penalty. Yes, we want a real test from the view point of the national economy.”

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

"Communism and New Economic Policy",(April 1921)
1920s

Way, Making love, Penalty

“Any operating system without a browser is going to be fucking out of business. Should we improve our product, or go out of business?”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

"In Search of the Real Bill Gates," Time (20 October 2005)
2000s

Business

“Our competitive system of industry is a vestigial institution. It is a survival from the militant ages of the past. It is a form of warfare. It is unsuited to a world of co-operation and division of labor. Higher men are beings of sympathy. They have the natures to put themselves in the places of others. Their ideal is the Golden Rule. But our system of industry compels us to fight each other. It is a heart-hardener. It is a system of cannibalism. Instead of instilling the feeling of brotherhood, it compels us to eat each other. It will pass away. It is already far advanced in its transition to a system based on sympathy and systematic co-operation.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Vestigial Customs and Institutions, pp. 190–191
Savage Survivals (1916), Savage Survivals in Higher Peoples (Continued)

Past, Heart, Nature, Fight

“The well being of others is on an average as important as our own, and should as a general thing be appraised at the same value. If a certain amount of happiness is scheduled to fall to the lot of the earth, it makes absolutely no difference whether it falls on me, or on you, or on somebody a thousand miles away. It would serve the ends of absolute ethics quite as well if it fell on an insect or a horse as if it fell on a man. The only important thing from the standpoint of universal good is that the pleasure be experienced. It is not important what particular individual or species is the beneficiary. It might even go to another world, and be just as satisfactory to a universal well-wisher, who looked at Cosmos from the serene altitudes of pure reason, without any prejudices whatever one way or another in the matter. This is the ideal. It is a long, long way from our natures. But only in so far as we approximate this ideal do we rise above those imperfections of our being which have been ground out by the methods that have operated in the development of life on earth.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Ethics and Education (1912), Contents of Ethics, pp. 54–55

Nature, Pleasure, Universe, Horse

“Ethical culture should do for human character what physical culture should do for the body. It should produce a race of kind, honest, courageous, public-spirited, and justice-loving men and women. It is all so perfectly plain. Men are moral invalids. They come into the world bearing the curse of their animal origin. They are unfit for a life of love and co-operation. The defects of human character are as well known and as well understood as the defects of the human body. They are the cause of more unhappiness to mankind than any other one thing. They can be corrected by the application of the same remedies that have proved so efficacious in the case of mental and physical defects. The school should be the mental, physical, and moral infirmary of society.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Ethics and Education (1912), Ethical Anxiety, p. 38–39

School, Courage, Justice, Animals

“The relations of living beings to each other observed among the races (especially the unconscious races) of the earth to-day, or as contemplated in the paleontologies of past evolutions, are not such, I assert, as to appeal with anything like eloquence to the ideal of any unbiased mind. I will assert further, that the principle that has operated in the development of life on this planet, the natural selection principle, and the relations prevalently established among living beings by the necessities of this principle, are irrational and barbarous—that the moral progress thus far made by civilized beings here on the earth has been made in spite of, and in opposition to, this principle—and finally, that the great task of reforming and regenerating the universe and of establishing right relations among its inhabitants consists in the elimination of those tendencies implanted in the natures of living beings by the struggle and survival principle.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Problem, pp. 90–91

Past, Nature, Universe, Relation ships

“Inventions are a blessing. They tame the wild tendencies of the inanimate and train them to do human bidding. They save human bodies hard and laborious exertions by becoming their obsequious aids. But they are not invariable and universal blessings. The sad and peculiar conditions prevailing in human industry cause inventions to be to many human beings a catastrophe and a dread. To those who are able to own them and have lands on which to operate them they are blessings. But to the great disinherited class, who have nothing on earth but their hands, inventions are a disadvantage and an evil.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Problem of Industry, pp. 40–41

Universe, Training, Sadness, Evil

“Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas. One seeks the most general ideas of operation which will bring together in simple, logical and unified form the largest possible circle of formal relationships. In this effort toward logical beauty spiritual formulas are discovered necessary for the deeper penetration into the laws of nature.”

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

1930s, Obituary for Emmy Noether (1935)

Law, Beauty, Nature, Mathematics

“There is no such thing as unbiased or objective reporting of news. All reports and analyses are selective and inferential to some inescapable degree - all the more reason to provide a wider ideological spectrum of opinions and not let one bias predominate. If we consider censorship to be a danger to our freedom, then we should not overlook the fact that the media are already heavily censored by those who own or advertise in them. The very process of selection allows the politico-economic interests of the selector to operate as a censor.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 10 , p. 177

Freedom

“That in nonarithmetic operations the small and slow human brain can still do so much better than the large and fast electronic computer is an impressive tribute to how cleverly the brain is packaged and programmed—features brought about, of course, by natural selection. Those who possessed poorly programmed brains eventually did not live long enough to reproduce.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 8, “The Future Evolution of the Brain” (p. 224)

Nature

“The entire recent history of biology shows that we are, to a remarkable degree, the results of the interactions of an extremely complex array of molecules; and the aspect of biology that was once considered its holy of holies, the nature of the genetic material, has now been fundamentally understood in terms of the chemistry of its constituent nucleic acids, DNA and RNA, and their operational agents, the proteins.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Introduction (p. 7)
The Dragons of Eden (1977)

History, Nature

“Thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have co-operated in the invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of men.”

Peter Kropotkin book The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 1 : Our Riches, p. 57

Men

“Facebook, Google, et al. operate in an almost uniformly Left-Democratic culture, and they heard a great deal from both organized and semi-organized efforts from progressives and left-wing organizations whose sole purpose in life is trying to discredit conservative figures and exclude conservatives from public discourse.”

Kevin D. Williamson (1972) American writer

A Fairness Doctrine for the Internet? (2018)

Life, Effort

“No Hindoo, who has received an English education, ever remains sincerely attached to his religion. Some continue to profess it as matter of policy; but many profess themselves pure Deists, and some embrace Christianity. It is my firm belief that, if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence. And this will be effected without any efforts to proselytise; without the smallest interference with religious liberty; merely by the natural operation of knowledge and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the prospect.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Letter written to his father in 1836. Quoted in Indian Church History Review, December 1973, p. 187. Partially quoted in Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 13. ISBN 9788185990354 . Quoted from Koenraad Elst, The Argumentative Hindu (2012) Chapter 3

Religion, Nature, Knowledge, Sincerity

“There’s an awareness in Brazil that the reforms are vital for the federal entities to continue operating. Brazil has to work out. If not, the Left will return and we won’t know Brazil’s destiny, maybe it’ll become more like the regime that we have in Venezuela.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

In Davos, in an interview published on 23 January 2019. Bolsonaro Says Brazil Must Reform or Become Next Venezuela https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-23/brazil-leader-pledges-sweeping-reform-to-avoid-deeper-crisis. Bloomberg (23 January 2019).

“To the economically illiterate, if some company makes a million dollars in profit, this means that their products cost a million dollars more than they would have cost without profits. It never occurs to such people that these products might cost several million dollars more to produce if they were produced by enterprises operating without the incentives to be efficient created by the prospect of profits.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-2003-12-26-0312241220-story.html, South Florida Sun Sentinel, December 26, 2003 2000s

Making love, People

“When a cat greets you, he makes a big operation of it, bumping, stropping your legs, buzzing like mischief. But when he leaves, he just walks off and never looks back. Cats are smart.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Tunnel in the Sky

Source: Tunnel in the Sky (1955), Chapter 2, “The Fifth Way” (p. 42)

Cats, Making love

“That I address you as a friend is no formality. I own no foes. My business in life has been for the past 33 years to enlist the friendship of the whole of humanity by befriending mankind, irrespective of race, colour or creed. … We have no doubt about your bravery or devotion to your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents… But your own writings and pronouncements and those of your friends and admirers leave no room for doubt that many of your acts are monstrous and unbecoming of human dignity, especially in the estimation of men like me who believe in human friendliness. Such are your humiliation of Czechoslovakia, the rape of Poland and the swallowing of Denmark. I am aware that your view of life regards such spoliations as virtuous acts. But we have been taught from childhood to regard them as acts degrading humanity…Hence we cannot possibly wish success to your arms…. But ours is a unique position. We resist British imperialism no less than Nazism… If there is a difference, it is in degree. One-fifth of the human race has been brought under the British heel by means that will not bear scrutiny… Our resistance to it does not mean harm to the British people. We seek to convert them, not to defeat them on the battle-field… No spoliator can compass his end without a certain degree of co-operation, willing or unwilling, of the victim…. The rulers may have our land and bodies but not our souls…. We know what the British heel means for us and the non-European races of the world. But we would never wish to end the British rule with German aid… We have found in non-violence a force which, if organized, can without doubt match itself against a combination of all the most violent forces in the world… If not the British, some other power will certainly improve upon your method and beat you with your own weapon. You are leaving no legacy to your people of which they would feel proud.”

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

Letter to Hitler. 24 December 1940. Quoted from Koenraad Elst: Return of the Swastika (2007). (Also in https://web.archive.org/web/20100310135408/http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/fascism/gandhihitler.html) 1940s

Childhood, Soul, Friendship, Success

“I don’t think I was a particularly good or diligent mother. It took a long time for the obvious to become obvious: I could not operate in a conventional family.”

Annie Proulx (1935) American novelist, short story and non-fiction author

On women being expected to embrace motherhood naturally in “Annie Proulx: ‘I’ve had a life. I see how slippery things can be’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/05/annie-proulx-ive-had-a-life-i-see-how-slippery-things-can-be in The Guardian (2016 Jun 5) Personal life and writing career

Family, Thinking, Time

“Karma is an unfamiliar word for Western ears. It is the name adopted by Theosophists of the nineteenth century for one of the most important of the laws of nature. Ceaseless in its operation, it bears alike upon planets, systems of planets, races, nations, families, and individuals. It is the twin doctrine to reincarnation. So inextricably interlaced are these two laws that it is almost impossible to properly consider one apart from the other. No spot or being in the universe is exempt from the operation of Karma, but all are under its sway, punished for error by it yet beneficently led on, through discipline, rest, and reward, to the distant heights of perfection. It is a law so comprehensive in its sweep, embracing at once our physical and our moral being, that it is only by paraphrase and copious explanation one can convey its meaning in English. For that reason the Sanskrit term Karma was adopted to designate it.”

William Quan Judge (1851–1896) American occult writer

The Ocean of Theosophy by William Q. Judge (1893), Chapter 11, Karma

Family, Law, Nature, Universe

“The teachings of Theosophy deal for the present chiefly with our earth, although its purview extends to all the worlds, since no part of the manifested universe is outside the single body of laws which operate upon us. Our globe being one of the solar system is certainly connected with Venus, Jupiter, and other planets, but as the great human family has to remain with its material vehicle — the earth — until all the units of the race which are ready are perfected, the evolution of that family is of greater importance to the members of it. Some particulars respecting the other planets may be given later on. First let us take a general view of the laws governing all.”

William Quan Judge (1851–1896) American occult writer

The Ocean of Theosophy by William Q. Judge (1893), Chapter 2, General Principles

Family, Law, Universe, Perfection

“It is not infrequently our custom to seek to cover our own blank ignorance of certain subjects with the confident assertion that nothing ever has been or can be really known… and our treatment of this question of the life after death is one of the worst examples of this habit. If popular theology had not most unhappily altogether lost sight of the cardinal doctrine of reincarnation, its· views on this subject of death would naturally be entirely different. A man who realizes that he has died many times before regards the operation more philosophically than one who believes it to be an absolutely new experience fraught with all kinds of vague· and awful possibilities.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: The Other Side of Death (1903), p. 42, (1903)

Confidence, Time, Question, Nature

“Part One… discusses at length the opposing ways of approaching and dealing with life: co-operating or competing. It traces the competitive spirit back to the animal kingdom and shows its gradual replacement by co-operation as humanity advances. Many of the problems of the modern world are seen in this context and co-operation is shown as the way, in line with our soul’s intent, to solve them.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Art of Co-operation (2002)

Soul, Animals, Problem, Way

“When the chancellor imagines I have the inclination to become his successor, he is mistaken tremendously. Right now, I wish that he continue holding his office and that he sees for himself how poorly he has operated recently. I consider anyone who wants to accept the succession to be very bold. When one or another successor has broken his neck, perhaps there is room for discussion.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee in his diary, 9 February 1889

Imagination, Success

“I am aware that the age is not what we all wish. But I am sure, that the only means of checking its precipitate degeneracy, is heartily to concur with whatever is the best in our time; and to have some more correct standard of judging what that best is, than the transient and uncertain favour of a court. If once we are able to find, and can prevail on ourselves to strengthen an union of such men, whatever accidentally becomes indisposed to ill-exercised power, even by the ordinary operation of human passions, must join with that society, and cannot long be joined, without in some degree assimilating to it. Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough, (and for a worthy man perhaps too much,) to deal out its infamy to convicted guilt and declared apostacy.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

Time, Men, Age, Passion

“The killing of infidels by any method including martyrdom (suicide) operations has been sanctified by many scholars even if it means killing innocent Muslims…The shedding of Muslim blood…is allowed in order to avoid the greater evil of disrupting jihad.”

Abu Musab Zarqawi (1966–2006) Jordanian jihadist

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in quotes https://www.irishtimes.com/news/abu-musab-al-zarqawi-in-quotes-1.786124 The Irish Times (18th May 2005)

Suicide, Evil

“Two things are essential to the astrologer, namely, a bag of cowries and an almanac, When any one comes to consult him he quietly sits down, facing the sun, on a plank seat or mat, murmuring some mantrams or sacred verses, opens his bag of cowries and pours them on the floor. With his right hand he moves them slowly round and round, solemnly inciting meanwhile a stanza or two in praise of his guru or teacher and of his deity, invoking their help. He then stops and explains what, lie has been doing, at the same time taking a handful of cowries from the heap and placing them on one side. In front is a diagram drawn with chalk on tire floor and consisting of twelve compartments. Before commencing operations with the diagram he selects three or five of the cowries highest up in tho heap and places them in a line on the right-hand side. These represent Ganapati (the Belly God, the remover of difficulties), the sun, the planet Jupiter, Sarasvati (the Goddess of speech), and his own Guru or preceptor. To all of those the astrologor gives due obeisance, touching his ears and the ground three times with both hands. The cowries are next arranged in the compartments of tho diagram and are moved about from compartment to compartment by the astrologer, who quotes meanwhile tho authority on which ho makes such moves. Finally he explains the result, and ends with again worshipping the deified cowries who were witnessing the operation as spectators.”

William Logan (author) book Malabar Manual

Malabar Manual, Page 142 https://archive.org/details/MalabarLogan/page/n154 Malabar Manual (1887)

God, Time, Sun, Help

“It is a good policy, so long as there are no considerable bases of operations and invulnerable places, to take no prisoners. Survivors ought to be set free. The wounded should be cared for with all possible resources at the time of the action. Conduct toward the civil population ought to be regulated by a large respect for all the rules and traditions of the people of the zone, in order to demonstrate effectively, with deeds, the moral superiority of the guerrilla fighter over the oppressing soldier.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. I: 3. Guerrilla Tactics

Time, People

“As a consequence of disease and environmental forces, as well as other factors, a large number of polymorphisms may exist in a population. Some may be related to present selective forces, and others to forces which operated in the past, but which are no longer significant. Present gene frequencies may also result from gene mixture between populations.”

Baruch Samuel Blumberg (1925–2011) American doctor

[Polymorphisms of the serum proteins and the development of iso-preciptins in transfused patients, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 40, 5, 1964, 377–386, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1750599/?page=2] (quote from 378)

Past, Relation ships, Disease

“Shortly we will be fighting our way across the Continent of Europe in battles designed to preserve our civilization. Inevitably, in the path of our advance will be found historical monuments and cultural centers which symbolize to the world all that we are fighting to preserve. It is the responsibility of every commander to protect and respect these symbols whenever possible. In some circumstances the success of the military operation may be prejudiced in our reluctance to destroy these revered objects. Then, as at Casssino, where the enemy relied on our emotional attachments to shield his defense, the lives of our men are paramount. So, where military necessity dictates, commanders may order the required action even though it involves destruction to some honored site. But there are many circumstances in which damage and destruction are not necessary and cannot be justified. In such cases, through the exercise of restraint and discipline, commanders will preserve centers and objects of historical and cultural significance. Civil Affairs Staffs at higher echleons will advise commanders of the locations of historical monuments of this type both in advance of the front lines and in occupied areas. This information together with the necessary instruction, will be passe down through command channels to all echleons.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

May 26 1944 letter as qtd. in “The Law of Armed Conflict: Constraints on the Contemporary Use of Military Force”, edited by Howard M. Hensel, 2007, p. 58.
1940s

Success, Fight, Way, Men

“My upbringing does not allow me to take a life… When we go against nature then everything becomes dangerous; human beings too become dangerous. On the other hand, if we co-operate with nature, then she also co-operates with us.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

Quoted in Bear Grylls impressed with Modi’s 'humility'; says PM calm during crisis, agreed to sit in homemade raft https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/bear-grylls-impressed-with-modis-humility-says-pm-calm-during-crisis-agreed-to-sit-in-homemade-raft/articleshow/70615908.cms Bear Grylls 2019

Life, Nature

“Profoundly interesting is this world-tragedy of conflict to those who see in it a necessary preparation, a clearing of the ground, for the coming of the World-Teacher and for the new civilisation… The terrible lesson now being taught, the widespread suffering, the devastation by sword and fire, the poverty caused by the dislocation of trade, the tension, the bankruptcies… But through this Armageddon the world will pass into a realm of peace, of brotherhood, of co-operation, and will forget the darkness and the terrors of the night in the joy that cometh in the morning…”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

The Theosophist (October 1914)

Peace, Night, Forgetting, Suffering

“Mitch McConnell… does not want to be responsible for enslavement that happened 150 years ago, but, yet and still, wants the right to operate his business or operate his career in a building that was built by enslaved people.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975) writer, journalist, and educator

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Reparations Are Not Just About Slavery But Also Centuries of Theft & Racial Terror, Democracy Now (20 June 2019)

Business, People

“In case of a resumption of hostilities we are militarily in a position to reconquer, in the east, the province of Posen and to defend our frontier. In the west, we cannot, in view of the numerical superiority of the Entente and its ability to surround us on both flanks, count on repelling successfully a determined attack of our enemies. A favorable outcome of our operations is therefore very doubtful, but as a soldier I would rather perish in honor than sign a humiliating peace.”

Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and president of Germany

Letter to Friedrich Ebert after the Treaty of Versailles was presented to Germany (17 June 1919), quoted in Andreas Dorpalen, Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic (Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 39 and John W. Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918-1945 (London: Macmillan, 1964), p. 52
Chief of the German General Staff

Peace, Hostility

“The press to-day is an army with carefully organized arms and branches, with journalists as officers, and readers as soldiers. But here, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and war-aims and operation-plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither knows, nor is allowed to know, the purposes for which he is used, nor even the role that he is to play. A more appalling caricature of freedom of thought cannot be imagined. Formerly a man did not dare to think freely. Now he dares, but cannot; his will to think is only a willingness to think to order, and this is what he feels as his liberty.”

Oswald Spengler book The Decline of the West

Vol. II, Alfred A. Knopf, 1928, p. 462 https://archive.org/stream/Decline-Of-The-West-Oswald-Spengler/Decline_Of_The_West#page/n931/mode/2up The Decline of the West (1918, 1923)

Imagination, Freedom, War, Knowledge

“We have entered a new reality where fossil fuel companies have lost their legitimacy and social license to operate.”

Mary Robinson (1944) Former President of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

The Elders Chair Mary Robinson Uses UN Press Conference to Denounce President Trump, Canada Free Press, Joseph A. Klein (13 June 2019)

Reality

“The Negro voter … had, then, but one clear economic ideal and that was his demand for land, his demand that the great plantations be subdivided and given to him as his right. This was a perfectly fair and natural demand and ought to have been an integral part of Emancipation. To emancipate four million laborers whose labor had been owned, and separate them from the land upon which they had worked for nearly two and a half centuries, was an operation such as no modern country had for a moment attempted or contemplated. The German and English and French serf, the Italian and Russian serf, were, on emancipation, given definite rights in the land. Only the American Negro slave was emancipated without such rights and in the end this spelled for him the continuation of slavery.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book Black Reconstruction

Source: Black Reconstruction in America (1935), p. 611

Country, Parting, Nature

“The remote control had 48 buttons. No resident of the Old Farts Senile Dying Center knew how to operate it. They were the Greatest Generation, men and women who had survived the Depression, defeated the Nazis, built America into the greatest nation the world had ever seen. But this damned gizmo had beaten them.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Novels, Tricky Business (2002), Chapter 4

World, Women, Men

“It was the standard airport-security operation, which meant it appeared to have been designed to hassle law-abiding passengers just enough to reassure them, while at the same time providing virtually no protection against criminals with an IQ higher than celery.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Novels, Big Trouble (1999), Chapter 11

Appearance, Law, Time

“If it took half the revenue of the nation, nobody would grudge it, nor even if it took it all save a bare pittance. But in truth the expense of educating ten thousand youth is not ten nor five times that of educating one thousand. The principle which makes all operations on a large scale proportionally cheaper than on a small scale holds as to education also.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25439 (1888), Ch. 21.

Time, Truth, Youth, Education

“As the war rages on in Afghanistan and—despite spin to the contrary—in Iraq as well, US Special Operations Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency are engaged in parallel, covert, shadow wars that are waged in near total darkness and largely away from effective or meaningful Congressional oversight or journalistic scrutiny. The actions and consequences of these wars is seldom discussed in public or investigated by the Congress. The current US strategy can be summed up as follows: We are trying to kill our way to peace. And the killing fields are growing in number.”

Jeremy Scahill (1974) American journalist

[Jeremy Scahill Testifies Before Congress on America's Secret Wars, The Nation, http://www.thenation.com/blog/156977/jeremy-scahill-testifies-congress-americas-secret-wars#, December 9, 2010, January 2, 2013]

Peace, War, Intelligence, Rage

“They (i. e., the Olympian gods) operate on moral principles. You have to break a promise to them, or break a rule, for them to get power over you.”

John C. Wright (1961) American novelist and technical writer

Victor commented darkly, “That explains why religions have rules no one can follow. If everyone is a sinner, by definition, everyone is under their power.”
Source: Fugitives of Chaos (2006), Chapter 9, “Wings” (p. 142)

God

“He was a very strong man and he could fight his own battles, but the Operation Bluestar was one that shook him and brought tears to his eyes. Four days after Operation Bluestar, when he visited Golden Temple and Akal Takhat Sahib, he came back devastated and in deep anguish. He was shaken by the damage caused to the sanctum sanctorum.”

Zail Singh (1916–1994) Indian politician and former President of India

Giani Zail Singh's daughter [Dr. Gurdeep Kaur] says PM, govt ignored his pleas for help

Fight, Strong, Tear

“He made big news as PM by visiting to the Golden Temple asking forgiveness for Operation Bluestar, released militants in exchange of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s daughter, and had tussle with Reliance giant Dhirubhai Ambani.”

V. P. Singh (1931–2008) Indian politician

VP Singh: The Renaissance Man (25 June 1931- 27 Nov 2008)

Forgiveness, Daughters

“Behind the the scenes of the fantastic success of Operation Flood is the nearly invisible skillful guding hand, vision and the brilliant mind and the unique management skill of Kurien.”

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

By Norman Borlauge in "Our Leaders".

Success

“There always is an architecture, whether it is defined in advance - as with modern computers - or found out after the fact - as with many older computers. For architecture is determined by behavior, not by words. Therefore, the term architecture, which rightly implies the notion of the arch, or prime structure, should not be understood as the vague overall idea. Rather, the product of the computer architecture, the principle of operations manual, should contain all detail which the user can know, and sooner or later is bound to know.”

Gerrit Blaauw (1924–2018) Dutch computer scientist

Source: Computer architecture (1972), p. 155

Idea, Behavior

“Dominicus Corea had a posthumous son, Lewis Corea who became the Dissawe of Uva. Sir Paul Peiris wrote that `With the disappearance of Dominicus Corea, came a short lull in military operations of which the Portuguese officials availed themselves to give free rein to that rapacity which so frequently disgraced their careers in the East’. Dominicus Corea was succeeded by his brother Simon, as Dissawe of the Sat Korale, Kotte and Sitawaka.”

Dominicus Corea (1565–1596) King of Kotte and Sitawaka

By Deva Corea in his article 'Dominicus Corea of Kotte.' http://vernoncorea.wordpress.com/category/king-dominicus-corea-of-kotte/

“I think he’s very good and very blessed to be operating behind those five guys. That’s the big problem, having to sort through those five big guys to find where he is. When they all come off at one time they look like a herd of water buffalo stampeding at you and there’s a gazelle somewhere in behind them. He’s also very persistent and you can see how strong he is.”

Javon Ringer (1987) All-American college football player, professional football player, running back

Florida Atlantic head coach Howard Schnellenberger, quoted at Ringer 23.com (undated)

Time, Strong, Problem, Water

“The Tribunal is satisfied that Matsui knew what was happening. He did nothing, or nothing effective to abate these horrors. He did issue orders before the capture of the city enjoining propriety of conduct upon his troops and later he issued further orders to the same purport. These orders were of no effect as is now known, and as he must have known. It was pleaded in his behalf that at this time he was ill. His illness was not sufficient to prevent his conducting the military operations of his command nor to prevent his visiting the City for days while these atrocities were occurring. He was in command of the Army responsible for these happenings. He knew of them. He had the power, as he had the duty, to control his troops and to protect the unfortunate citizens of Nanking. He must be held criminally responsible for his failure to discharge this duty.”

Iwane Matsui (1878–1948) Japanese general

Tribunal decision.

Time, Failure

“General Kurt Student was a German of the almost obsessively meticulous order and was determined to ensure that every unit involved in the forthcoming operation was kept fully briefed.”

Kurt Student (1890–1978) German Luftwaffe general during World War II

Ernle Dusgate Selby Bradford.

“Saturday is a dismayingly bad book. The numerous set pieces—brain operations, squash game, the encounters with Baxter, etc.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

are hinged together with the subtlety of a child's Erector Set. The characters too, for all the nuzzling and cuddling and punching and manhandling in which they are made to indulge, drift in their separate spheres, together but never touching, like the dim stars of a lost galaxy. The politics of the book is banal, of the sort that is to be heard at any middle-class Saturday-night dinner party, before the talk moves on to property prices and recipes for fish stew. There are good things here, for instance the scene when Perowne visits his senile mother in an old-folks' home, in which the writing is genuinely affecting in its simplicity and empathetic force. Overall, however, Saturday has the feel of a neoliberal polemic gone badly wrong; if Tony Blair — who makes a fleeting personal appearance in the book, oozing insincerity — were to appoint a committee to produce a "novel for our time," the result would surely be something like this. Banville on Saturday http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2005/05/banville_on_sat.html, from The New York Review of Books (source dated 10 May 2005). Original source http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2005/may/26/a-day-in-the-life/?pagination=false.

Game, Books, Bad luck

“Anti-feminism is also operating whenever any political group is ready to sacrifice one group of women, one faction, some women, some kinds of women, to any element of sex-class oppression: to pornography, to rape, to battery, to economic exploitation, to reproductive exploitation, to prostitution. There are women all along the male-defined political spectrum, including both extreme ends of it, ready to sacrifice some women, usually not themselves, to the brothels or the farms. The sacrifice is profoundly anti-feminist; it is also profoundly immoral…”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

"Anti-feminism," Right Wing Women (1983), pp. 230-231.

Sex, Women

“The whole science of heat is founded Thermometry and Calorimetry, and when these operations are understood we may proceed to the third step, which is the investigation of those relations between the thermal and the mechanical properties of substances which form the subject of Thermodynamics.”

James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) Scottish physicist

The whole of this part of the subject depends on the consideration of the Intrinsic Energy of a system of bodies, as depending on the temperature and physical state, as well as the form, motion, and relative position of these bodies. Of this energy, however, only a part is available for the purpose of producing mechanical work, and though the energy itself is indestructible, the available part is liable to diminution by the action of certain natural processes, such as conduction and radiation of heat, friction, and viscosity. These processes, by which energy is rendered unavailable as a source of work, are classed together under the name of the Dissipation of Energy. Theory of Heat http://books.google.com/books?id=DqAAAAAAMAAJ "Preface" (1871)

Science, Relation ships

“But, ironically, the latest product of that way of doing things is a new instrument — a new system — that while it could make conformity more rigid, more totalitarian, than ever before in history, could also blow everything wide open. Because with it, we could operate on the basis that values and standards — and ethics and facts and truth — all depend on what your view of the world is — and that there may be as many views of that, as there are people.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

The Day the Universe Changed (1985), 10 - Worlds Without End

History, Dependency, People, Truth

“The operation was a success, but the patient died.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

What such a procedure is to medicine, the Court's opinion in this case is to law.
National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, 524 U.S. 569 (1998) (Scalia, concurring).
1990s

Success

“Without wasting an instant, must start the hair recovery task. The first operation is reduced to dismantling the siphon from the sink to see if the hair has become hooked in any of the rugosities of the drain. If it is not found, it is necessary to expose the section of pipe that goes from the siphon to the main drainage pipe. It is certain that in this part will appear many hairs and we will have to count on the help of the rest of the family to examine them one by one in search of the knot. If it does not appear, the interesting problem of breaking the pipe down to the ground floor will arise, but this means a greater effort, because for eight or ten years we will have to work in a ministry or trading house to collect enough money to buy the four departments located under the one of my elder cousin, all that with the extraordinary disadvantage of what while working during those eight or ten years, the distressing feeling that the hair is no longer in the pipes anymore can not be avoided and that only by a remote chance remains hooked on some rusty spout of the drain.”

Julio Cortázar book Historias de cronopios y de famas

Historias de Cronopios y de Famas (1962)

Money, Family, Chance, Housing

“Alike in the highest regions of speculation and in the smaller practical concerns of daily life, her mind was the same perfect instrument, piercing to the very heart and marrow of the matter; always seizing the essential idea or principle. The same exactness and rapidity of operation, pervading as it did her sensitive as well as her mental faculties, would, with her gifts of feeling and imagination, have fitted her to be a consummate artist, as her fiery and tender soul and her vigorous eloquence would certainly have made her a great orator, and her profound knowledge of human nature and discernment and sagacity in practical life, would, in the times when such a carrière was open to women, have made her eminent among the rulers of mankind. Her intellectual gifts did but minister to a moral character at once the noblest and the best balanced which I have ever met with in life.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/186/mode/1up pp. 186-187

Nature, Women, Time, Perfection

“Emotions are continually affecting our thought processes and decisions, below the level of our awareness. And the most common emotion of them all is the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Our thoughts almost inevitably revolve around this desire; we simply recoil from entertaining ideas that are unpleasant or painful to us. We imagine we are looking for the truth, or being realistic, when in fact we are holding on to ideas that bring a release from tension and soothe our egos, make us feel superior. This pleasure principle in thinking is the source of all of our mental biases. If you believe that you are somehow immune to any of the following biases, it is simply an example of the pleasure principle in action. Instead, it is best to search and see how they continually operate inside you, as well as learn how to identify such irrationality in others.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 1 : Master Your Emotional Self
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Pain, Imagination, Search, Learning

“We have a side to our character that we are generally unaware of—our social personality, the different person we become when we operate in groups of people. In the group setting, we unconsciously imitate what others are saying and doing. We think differently, more concerned with fitting in and believing what others believe. We feel different emotions, infected by the group mood. We are more prone to taking risks, to acting irrationally, because everyone else is. This social personality can come to dominate who we are. Listening so much to others and conforming our behavior to them, we slowly lose a sense of our uniqueness and the ability to think for ourselves. The only solution is to develop self-awareness and a superior understanding of the changes that occur in us in groups. With such intelligence, we can become superior social actors, able to outwardly fit in and cooperate with others on a high level, while retaining our independence and rationality.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 14 : Resist the Downward Pull of the Group
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Understanding, Personality, Intelligence, People

“And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets
Of the evening paper: "Our day is our loss, O show us
History the operator, the
Organiser, Time the refreshing river."”

W. H. Auden book Spain

And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life
That shapes the individual belly and orders
The private nocturnal terror:
"Did you not found the city state of the sponge,"Raise the vast military empires of the shark
And the tiger, establish the robin's plucky canton?
Intervene. Descend as a dove or
A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend."
Source: Spain (1937), Lines 33–44

Loss, Time, History

“Cruelty is cruelty under whatever colouring it may appear; and whether exercised on a man or on a fly, cruelty is still cruelty. It matters not whether the victim be furnished with two legs or with four, with wings, with fins, or with arms; where there is sensation, there is subject for cruelty, and in proportion to the degree of sensation will its action operate.”

Lewis Gompertz (1783–1861) Early animal rights activist

Source: Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), Chapter 11, pp. 149–150

Exercises, Appearance, Flying

“These considerations did not make us overlook the folly of premature attempts to dispense with the inducements of private interest in social affairs, while no substitute for them has been or can be provided: but we regarded all existing institutions and social arrangements as being (in a phrase I once heard from Austin) "merely provisional," and we welcomed with the greatest pleasure and interest all socialistic experiments by select individuals (such as the Co-operative Societies), which, whether they succeeded or failed, could not but operate as a most useful education of those who took part in them, by cultivating their capacity of acting upon motives pointing directly to the general good, or making them aware of the defects which render them and others incapable of doing so.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/233/mode/1up pp. 233-234

Making love, Parting, Pleasure, Education

“In spite of the lack of clarity in the concept of society, the word is doubtless necessary. In everyday language, words denoting local communities, large-scale society and global society exist, and all refer to actually existing entities, existing at different systemic levels. Humans are integrated in (that is, they participate in and contribute to) several social systems, some operating at a large scale, others at a small scale. When anthropologists delineate their field of study, the level of scale is determined by the issues at hand.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts

Study, Communication

“But success in a military operation always feels short-lived. You shoulder your rifle and move on from there to the next battle.”

Lynn Compton (1921–2012) Easy Company soldier turned noted jurist

Source: Call of Duty: My Life Before, During and After the Band of Brothers (2008), p. 107

Feeling, Success

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Mission Vol. II (1993)

Housing, Food, Country, People

“[After the stock-markets crash] the number one priority will be the provision of adequate food for all the people; two, the provision of adequate housing for all the people; thirdly, the provision of adequate healthcare and education for all the people. These are the basic human rights needed everywhere by all people, yet there is no country in the world in which all of these pertain as a universal right. When the economic collapse occurs, humanity will begin to recognize its oneness, and the need to co-operate and share the world’s resources.Maitreya will present the nations with an alternative way of living, of conducting economic and political affairs... The new government which will emerge after the stock market crash will reflect the will of the people and stand for the people.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: Maitreya's Mission Vol. II (1993), Chapter 4, Economic Change

Housing, Food, Country, People

“I am interested in how we interrogate architecture in terms of its social functions and meanings. Architectural historians writing on eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain have tended to see social history as the answer to this question. But the social history of architecture or the histories of specific social groups which operated in and around the architecture or building(s), or indeed the spaces created by them or for them, provide only a backdrop or loose historical context.”

Dana Arnold (1961) Middlessex uni prof

Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 4 : A class performance : Social histories of architecture

History, Question

“There is life after the operating table.”

Sudhir Choudhrie (1949) Indian businessman

"From the Heart Recounts Survival of Sudhir Choudrie's Heart-Transplant Surgery" http://www.tntmagazine.com/lifestyle-career/health-and-beauty/told-from-the-heart-recounts-survival-of-sudhir-choudries-heart-transplant-surgery", TNT Magazine (9th Mar 2020)

Life

“During the period between the two world wars, US gunboat diplomacy operated in the Caribbean to make "The American Lake" safe for the fortunes...”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Introduction

World, War, Making love

“Telecenters are facilities where the general public can access computers for free. The computers are usually equipped with a variety of open source, and sometimes closed source, software and are connected to the internet. Some Telecenters offer computer lectures and workshops to communities in order to improve social and technical skills. Such activities are an attempt to promote use of the technology to fulfill individual and community needs, increasing human capital and employment. The government, NGOs, and the private sector operate Telecenter units.”

David Nemer

(p. 66)
Favela Digital- The other side of technology. (2013)

Communication

“Goebbels never doubted that he was a socialist. He understood Nazism to be a better and more plausible form of socialism than that propagated by Lenin. Instead of spreading itself across different nations, it would operate within the unit of the Volk.”

Daniel Hannan (1971) British politician

2010s, Nazism (2014)

“On 16 June 1941, as Hitler readied his forces for Operation Barbarossa, Josef Goebbels looked forward to the new order that the Nazis would impose on a conquered Russia. There would be no come-back, he wrote, for capitalists nor priests nor Tsars.”

Daniel Hannan (1971) British politician

2010s, Nazism (2014)

“When we create an economic system based on co-operation and sharing rather than on competition and market forces, we will create a more moral economic structure. When the stock exchanges collapse, humanity will be brought face to face with its illusions about the nature of reality.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Mission Vol. III (1997)

Reality, Nature

“Maitreya will call for the creation of trust. There is no trust between the nations. No one trusts anyone. So no one can do anything. Banks don’t lend as they did before. He will talk about the need for trust, and without it how nothing can happen for the good. And competition of course destroys trust. It is the opposite. Co-operation is necessary for humanity. We are all hooked on greed and competition – and you see the result, we are living it. Every time you turn on your television you hear about firms going out of business, the banks don’t lend and so on. That is the result of competition and greed, and it is folly. Sharing is the only solution.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Quoted in Questions & Answers, Share International https://www.share-international.org/magazine/old_issues/2018/2018-10.htm#q-n-a (October 2018) Share International Magazine

Business, Time

“The achievements of the age, the aspirations of the millions, the readiness to share, the aid agencies, organizations like the United Nations and the various international groupings which, behind the scenes, unite people with people and give a sense of internationalism and co-operation, will be maintained and will grow; they can only flourish in the new situation. But those which stand in the way, those narrow, nationalistic structures based on competition, market forces and greed, will find it impossible to stand against the “onslaught of the new”, the ideas of the new time.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Awakening of Humanity (2008)

Time, People, Way, Age

“News outlets correct lies. Slimy political operations deliberately use lies to advance their agenda and smear their adversaries. MSNBC has proven over and over again that they are decisively in the latter category. This is just the latest but by no means the only or even worst example.”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

"MSNBC Yet Again Broadcasts Blatant Lies, This Time About Bernie Sanders’s Opening Speech, and Refuses to Correct Them" (3 March 2019)

Decision

“Some think that we are approaching a critical moment in the history of Liberalism. ... We hear of a divergence of old Liberalism and new. ... The terrible new school, we hear, are for beginning operations by dethroning Gladstonian finance. They are for laying hands on the sacred ark. But did any one suppose that the fiscal structure which was reared in 1853 was to last for ever, incapable of improvement, and guaranteed to need no repair? ... Another heresy is imputed to this new school which fixes a deep gulf between the wicked new Liberals and the virtuous old. We are adjured to try freedom first before we try interference of the State. That is a captivating formula, but it puzzles me to find that the eminent statesman who urges us to lay this lesson to heart is strongly in favour of maintaining the control of the State over the Church? But is State interference an innovation? I thought that for 30 years past Liberals had been as much in favour as other people of this protective legislation. ... [O]ther countries have tried freedom and it is just because we have decided that freedom in such a case is only a fine name for neglect, and have tried State supervision, that we have saved our industrial population from the waste, destruction, destitution, and degradation that would otherwise have overtaken them. ... In short, gentlemen, I am not prepared to allow that the Liberty and the Property Defence League are the only people with a real grasp of Liberal principles, that Lord Bramwell and the Earl of Wemyss are the only Abdiels of the Liberal Party.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Annual presidential address to the Junior Liberal Association of Glasgow (10 February 1885), quoted in 'Mr. John Morley At Glasgow', The Times (11 February 1885), p. 10
1880s

School, History, Freedom, Country

“Sooner or later, our entire industry will be operated by AI (artificial intelligence) and robots, not humans.”

Liu Qiangdong (1973) Chinese businessman

Reuters, Robots will replace humans in retail, says China's JD.com, Emma, Thomasson, April 17, 2018 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jd-com-retail/robots-will-replace-humans-in-retail-says-chinas-jd-com-idUSKBN1HO1NJ?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtechnologyNews+%28Reuters+Technology+News%29,

Intelligence

“We are not saved on account of the Holy Ghost's work in us; we are saved by means of it. We are saved on account of Christ's work for us. The Spirit never tells us to look iiiwara even to His own operations, for peace, but outward to Christ.”

William Paton Mackay (1839–1885) Scottish clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 319.

Peace, Christ

“But for a long time to come the prime movers in these operations must continue to be European. And we hope that a great Christian, and if we may use the term, ecclesiastical army will be raised, the rank and file consisting of natives, while the captains and generals are highly qualified Europeans.”

Sir Richard Temple, 1st Baronet (1826–1902) British politician

"Oriental experience; a selection of essays and addresses delivered in various occasions" in Shourie, Arun (1994). Missionaries in India: Continuities, changes, dilemmas. New Delhi : Rupa & Co, 1994 https://archive.org/stream/orientalexperien00tempuoft/orientalexperien00tempuoft_djvu.txt

Time, Hope

“Humanity is entirely responsible for being at the root of the problems arising from global warming. We need to rethink the way we live on earth in order to preserve life. Global warming is out of control…. Time is not on our side, which is why I am calling on all young millennials to hasten this radical revolution. You are a part of nature and compassion decrees that you take care of it as much as you do yourselves. It is only through mutual support and co-operation that you will be able to contain disasters that are fuelled by economic and social injustice and are fuelled by greed, selfishness, and other negative states of mind…. You are responsible for the wellbeing of billions of humans and all manner of living species sharing the adventure of life on earth. It is up to you to protect natural resources and guard over air, water, oceans, forests, fauna and flora. To do so it is essential that you realize your potential for love and compassion in order to care for the earth. Learn to love it through sharing it rather than striving to possess it and thereby destroying it.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

A Call for Revolution (2017-2018)

Selfishness, Time, Support, Learning

“Human extinction is still a sparse, loose idea advocated by sometimes opposing groups. Most obviously, there is the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT), the Church of Euthanasia and efilism. VHEMT is somewhat divided between those who wish the human race to cease population in order to eradicate human overpopulation and its exhaustion and destruction of the earth, and those who also choose not to breed but see an apocalyptic horizon and operate under an 'every man for himself' attitude of imminent hedonism 'for tomorrow we die."”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Ahumanism subscribes to no singular human extinction group, but clearly the message of the former sector of the group is more in keeping with the affirmative benefits of human death.
Embracing Death, p. 143
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)

Idea

“You aspired to be God’s advocate, you got the job, you performed admirably. But God’s advocate was ipso facto my advocate. Theodicy’s a sucker’s game, Professor. When Yahweh was operational, humanity’s obligation wasn’t to worship Him, for chrissakes. It was to celebrate His creativity and stand forevermore opposed to His malice. And anybody such as yourself, anybody who sought to shoehorn an omnibenevolent God into the same universe as Auschwitz...that person, Dr. Gregory Francis Lovett—that person did the Devil’s work for him.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 15 (p. 391; spoken by the Devil)

Universe, Personality, Game, God

“No one has more than a given number of minutes... in which he can work, and no matter how great his ability he will soon find his limitations. If, however, he uses that ability in finding and teaching others as capable as himself, or in certain details even more so, the limits to his sphere of operations are hard to set.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), A Representative Business of the Twentieth Century

“Communist parties are both legal and illegal, and the illegal structure governs the legal. But legality is an enormous aid to the illegal conspiracy. It prevents forthright action against the chief criminals; it leads to roundabout persecution; it enables the Communist to deceive simple, generous-hearted, and gullible citizens, and it leads to dubiously legal actions from the government itself. The present half-legal, half-persecuted position of the Party and its members is not justice. It operates to eliminate one evil with another, both evils containing dangers to the Constitutional order.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Source: "Let the Record Speak" 1939, “The Truth about Communism” https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015051180423&view=1up&seq=5 (1948), p. 15-16

Evil, Justice, Heart

“The Communists and Fascists are engaged in a sham struggle of ideas. The actual forms of government under which Fascists and Communists live are almost identical. One claims to abolish private property and attacks the other as its defender. But the property of Russia is not controlled by the people, but by the bureaucracy, operating in the name of the people, just as it is in Germany, where you get your head cut off if you try to hold your property in gold or in anything except German paper.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 62

Idea, People

“If the economy today were operating close to capacity levels with little unemployment, or if a sudden change in our military requirements should cause a scramble for men and resources, then I would oppose tax reductions as irresponsible and inflationary; and I would not hesitate to recommend a tax increase, if that were necessary. But our resources and manpower are not being fully utilized; the general level of prices has been remarkably stable; and increased competition, both at home and abroad, along with increased productivity will help keep both prices and wages within appropriate limits.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Men, Home, Help, Change

“There...is the necessity for freedom of speech and the arts. We have to scrutinize all the advances of society to judge whether they are cruel or frustrate cruelty, and for that purpose we must hear the evidence of all persons affected by their operation and of all persons qualified by experience or learning or speculative gifts to form an interesting opinion on what those operations might be. It is therefore necessary that all classes of men should be given the fullest opportunity to express themselves without constraint, not only out of admiration for an abstraction , but as a practical measure toward human survival. It is also necessary that the artist, of whatsoever kind, should be free to anatomize the spirit, so that we can comprehend the battlefield that is this life, and which are the troops of light and which of darkness, and what light may be, and darkness.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

Source: "I Believe", in I Believe : The Personal Philosophies of Certain Eminent Men and Women Of Our Time edited by Clifton Fadiman. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1939.

Freedom, Light, Personality, Learning

“You can never master the context where you physically and mentally operate; you can only learn to master how you will operate through it.”

Erwan Le Corre (1971)

Source: The Practice of Natural Movement: Reclaim Power, Health, and Freedom (2019), p. 79

Learning

“Race and racism is probably the most studied social, economic and political phenomenon in this country, but it's also the least understood. The reality is that race in the United States operates on a spectrum from black to white. Doesn't mean that people who are in between don't experience racism, but it means that the closer you are to white on that spectrum, the better off you are. And the closer to black that you are on that spectrum the worse off your are.”

Alicia Garza (1981) Co-founder of the Black Lives Matter International movement

An Interview with the Founders of Black Lives Matter, Ted Talks, https://www.ted.com/talks/alicia_garza_patrisse_cullors_and_opal_tometi_an_interview_with_the_founders_of_black_lives_matter?language=en (October 2016)

Study, Reality, People, Country

“[My party is] committed to work co-operatively with every other opposition party and do everything in our power to avoid a catastrophic crash-out Brexit”

Adam Price (1968) Welsh politician and Plaid Cymru leader (born 1968)

Brexit: Opposition MPs agree strategy to block no deal https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49483374 BBC News (27 August 2019) 2019

“[W]e live... in the pockets of reducibility. ...I should have realized [that] very many years ago, but didn't... [I]t could very well be that everything about the world is computationally irreducible and completely unpredictable, but... in our experience of the world there is at least some amount of prediction we can make. ...[T]hat's because we have ...chosen a slice of ...how to think about the universe, in which we can... sample a certain amount of computational reducibility, and that's... where we exist. ...It may not be the whole story about how the universe is, but it is that part of the universe that we care about and ...operate in. ...In science, that's been ...a very special case ...science has chosen to talk a lot about places where there is this computational reducibility... The motion of the planets can be ...predicted. The... weather is much harder to predict. ...[S]cience has tended to concentrate itself on places where its methods have allowed successful prediction.”

Stephen Wolfram (1959) British-American computer scientist, mathematician, physicist, writer and businessman

Stephen Wolfram: Fundamental Theory of Physics, Life, and the Universe (Sep 15, 2020)

Success, Universe, Thinking, Weather

“The perceptive faculty natural to our soul is single, but it is split into two distinct modes of operation as a result of Adam's disobedience.”

Diadochos of Photiki (400–486) Byzantine saint

§ 25
On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination (480 AD)

Soul, Nature

“Whether Protection is a universal poison, or whether it may be conceived to operate as food in cases where it is granted for a few years in order to shelter the first investments in a new industry, I do not now inquire. We at least have never seen or known it in that mitigated form. With us it has sheltered nothing but the most selfish instincts of class against the just demands of the public welfare. These it has supplied with strongholds, from whose portals our producers have too generally marched forth in the day of need, armed from head to foot with power and influence largely gotten at the expense of the community, to do battle with a perverted prowess, against nature, liberty, and justice.”

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

'Free Trade, Railways, and the growth of Commerce', The Nineteenth Century, No. XXXVI (February 1880), quoted in The Nineteenth Century, Vol. VII (January–June 1880), p. 377
1880s

Universe, Selfishness, Justice, Food

“The highest production and living standards cannot be achieved without a new and human spirit in the industrial world. No industry can succeed without the co-operation of capital, management and labour. Each must be encouraged. Each must be fairly rewarded. Between the three there must be mutual understanding and respect.”

Robert Menzies (1894–1978) Australian politician, 12th Prime Minister of Australia

1949 election campaign speech https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1949-robert-menzies, delivered in Melbourne on November 10, 1949 Wilderness Years (1941-1949)

World, Understanding

“Where (as today) problems of transportation and communication do not constitute effective limitations on the size of the geographical regions over which self-propagating systems operate, natural selection tends to create a world in which power is mostly concentrated in the possession of a relatively small number of global self-propagating systems.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

Source: Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2015), p. 47

Problem, Self-confidence, World, Nature

“The issuance of this guaranteed currency promoted the profession and operations of finance. The older Romans used temples as their banks, as we use banks as our temples; and the state continued to the end to use its strongly built shrines as repositories for public funds, perhaps on the theory that religious scruples would help discourage robbery.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), III - Caesar and Christ (1944), Chapter 4, Part 6

Help

“Simulation systems (mathematical models, philosophical thought experiments) that don’t have real world applications are like SPACs - shells with all the paperwork in place till something operational is ready to merge into them.”

Anand Gandhi (1980) Indian film director

World, Mathematics

“Make believability-weighted decisions. ...
Operate by principles ... that are so clearly laid out that their principles can be easily assessed and you and others can see if you walk the talk.”

Ray Dalio (1949) American businessman

[Principles: Life and Work, https://books.google.com/books?id=6LGuDgAAQBAJ&pg=PR10, xiv]
Principles: Life and Work (2017)

Making love, Decision

“In a nutshell, poor education, a poor culture (one that impedes people from operating effectively together), poor infrastructure, and too much debt cause bad economic results. The best results come when there is more rather than less of: a) equal opportunity in education and in work, b) good family or family-like upbringing through the high school years, c) civilized behavior within a system that most people believe is fair, and d) free and well-regulated markets for goods, services, labor, and capital that provide incentives, savings, and financing opportunities to most people.”

Ray Dalio (1949) American businessman

[Economic Principles – Why and How Capitalism Needs to be Reformed, April 5, 2019, lejourdapres.parlement-ouvert.fr, https://lejourdapres.parlement-ouvert.fr/uploads/decidim/attachment/file/308/Economic_Principles_-_Why_and_How_Capitalism_Needs_To_Be_Reformed.pdf] (quote from p. 5 of 42)

School, Family, Education, Bad luck

Quotes about operating page 17

Quotes about operating
page 17