Quotes about organizing
page 30

Christopher Hitchens photo
Theodor Mommsen photo

“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the monarchy… Not only in Rome (but all over the Italian peninsula) … we find the rulers for life of an earlier epoch superseded in after times by annual magistrates.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

Adolf A. Berle photo
Kevin Kelly photo

“Organisms are self-causing agencies. Every self is a tautology: self-evident, self-referential, self-centered, and self-created.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

Paul Krugman photo

“Any approach to the study of organizations is built on specific assumptions about the nature of organizations and how they are designed and function.”

Karl E. Weick (1936) Organisational psychologist

R.L. Daft, Karl E. Weick. "Toward a model of organizations as interpretation systems," Academy of management review, 1984.
1980s-1990s

Cloris Leachman photo
Ilya Prigogine photo

“We have seen that the formation and maintenance of self-organizing systems are compatible with the laws of physical chemistry.”

Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003) physical chemist

Part 2; Cited in: Evgenii Rudnyi (2013).
Thermodynamics of Evolution (1972)

Marshall McLuhan photo

“Language is a form of organized stutter.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Interview with John Lennon, December 1969, CBS Television
1960s

Jane Roberts photo
Francisco Varela photo

“The emergence of a unified cognitive moment relies on the coordination of scattered mosaics of functionally specialized brain regions. Here we review the mechanisms of large-scale integration that counterbalance the distributed anatomical and functional organization of brain activity to enable the emergence of coherent behaviour and cognition. Although the mechanisms involved in large-scale integration are still largely unknown, we argue that the most plausible candidate is the formation of dynamic links mediated by synchrony over multiple frequency bands.”

Francisco Varela (1946–2001) Chilean biologist

Francisco Varela*, Jean-Philippe Lachaux*, Eugenio Rodriguez, and Jacques Martinerie (2001) "The brainweb: phase synchronization and large-scale integration" in: Nature Rviews Vol 2. (April 2001). p. 229 ( online http://www.saminverso.com/brg/archive/varela%202001%20Brainweb-Phase%20synchronization%20and%20large%20scale%20integration.pdf)

“Organization theory is the branch of sociology that studies organizations as distinct units in society. The organizations examined range from sole proprietorships, hospitals and community-based non-profit organizations to vast global corporations. The field’s domain includes questions of how organizations are structured, how they are linked to other organizations, and how these structures and linkages change over time. Although it has roots in administrative theories, Weber’s theory of bureaucracy, the theory of the firm in microeconomics, and Coase’s theory of firm boundaries, organization theory as a distinct domain of sociology can be traced to the late 1950s and particularly to the work of the Carnegie School. In addition to sociology, organization theory draws on theory in economics, political science and psychology, and the range of questions addressed reflects this disciplinary diversity. While early work focused on specific questions about organizations per se – for instance, why hierarchy is so common, or how businesses set prices – later work increasingly studied organizations and their environments, and ultimately organizations as building blocks of society. Organization theory can thus be seen as a family of mechanisms for analysing social outcomes.”

Gerald F. Davis (1961) American sociologist

Gerald F. Davis (2013). "Organizational theory," in: Jens Beckert & Milan Zafirovski (eds.) International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology, p. 484-488

Christopher Hitchens photo
Walter Rauschenbusch photo
John Perkins photo
Francis Escudero photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
Rensis Likert photo
Thomas Henry Huxley photo

“We know, that, in the individual man, consciousness grows from a dim glimmer to its full light, whether we consider the infant advancing in years, or the adult emerging from slumber and swoon. We know, further, that the lower animals possess, though less developed, that part of the brain which we have every reason to believe to be the organ of consciousness in man; and as, in other cases, function and organ are proportional, so we have a right to conclude it is with the brain; and that the brutes, though they may not possess our intensity of consciousness, and though, from the absence of language, they can have no trains of thoughts, but only trains of feelings, yet have a consciousness which, more or less distinctly, foreshadows our own. I confess that, in view of the struggle for existence which goes on in the animal world, and of the frightful quantity of pain with which it must be accompanied, I should be glad if the probabilities were in favour of Descartes' hypothesis; but, on the other hand, considering the terrible practical consequences to domestic animals which might ensue from any error on our part, it is as well to err on the right side, if we err at all, and deal with them as weaker brethren, who are bound, like the rest of us, to pay their toll for living, and suffer what is needful for the general good.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

William Foote Whyte photo
Charles Lyell photo
Kurt Schwitters photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, government relief for the destitute and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life. The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome. When in the thirties the wave of union organization crested over the nation, it carried to secure shores not only itself but the whole society.”

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

Speech to the state convention of the Illinois American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) (7 October 1965) http://www.aft.org/yourwork/tools4teachers/bhm/mlktalks.cfm, as quoted in Now Is the Time. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Labor in the South: The Case for a Coalition (January 1986)
1960s

Nigel Cumberland photo

“Any team, consciously or unconsciously, agrees a set of understandings around which all of their thinking and activities are organized. This is your team’s culture.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Source: Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Managing Teams in a Week (2013) https://books.google.ae/books?idqZjO9_ov74EC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIIDAB#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, p.108

Hans Frank photo

“Biochemistry asks how the remarkable properties of living organisms arise from the thousands of different biomolecules.”

Albert L. Lehninger (1917–1986) American biochemist

Principles of Biochemistry, Ch. 1 : The Foundations of Biochemistry

Frances Kellor photo

“A second principle of Americanization is identity of economic interest. At this time, after all America has united to win the war, one hesitates to turn a page so shameful in American history. And yet, if America reverts to its former industrial brutality and indifference, Americanization will fail. Identity of economic interest, generally speaking, has meant to the American getting the immigrant to work for him at as low a wage as possible, for as long hours as possible, and scrapping him at the end of the game, with as little compunction as he did an old machine. And the immigrant's successful fellow-countryman, elevated to be a private banker, a padrone, or a notary public, has shared the practices of the native American. Always the immigrant has been in positions of the greatest danger, and with less safeguards for his care. He has been called by number and nicknamed and ridiculed. Frequently trades-unions have excluded him from their benefits, compensation laws have discriminated against him, trades have been closed to him, until he has wondered in the bitterness of his spirit what American opportunity was and how he could pursue life, liberty, and happiness at his work. Whenever he has been discontented, the popular remedy has been higher wages or shorter hours, and rarely the expansion of personal relationships. Very little self-determination has been given to him; on the contrary he has been made a cog in a highly organized industrial machine. His spirit has been imprisoned in the hum of machinery. His special gifts have been lost, even as his lack of skill in mechanical work has injured delicate processes and priceless materials. His pride has been humiliated and his initiative stifled because he has been given little of the artisan's pleasure in seeing his finished product.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Jefferson Davis photo

“To understand how caste works concretely, one must, however, look beyond kinship organization and ritual idiom to the political economy of caste.”

Eric Wolf (1923–1999) American anthropologist

Source: Europe and the People Without History, 1982, Chapter 2, The World in 1400, p. 46.

Carl Sagan photo

“Carbonaceous meteorites that fall to the Earth… have several percent to as much as 10 percent of complex organic matter in them.”

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

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

Aron Ra photo
Aron Ra photo
Margaret Mead photo
Yoichiro Nambu photo
Kanō Jigorō photo
Adelaide Anne Procter photo
Freeman Dyson photo

“The 19th and first half of the 20th century conceived of the world as chaos. Chaos was the oft-quoted blind play of atoms, which, in mechanistic and positivistic philosophy, appeared to represent ultimate reality, with life as an accidental product of physical processes, and mind as an epi-phenomenon. It was chaos when, in the current theory of evolution, the living world appeared as a product of chance, the outcome of random mutations and survival in the mill of natural selection. In the same sense, human personality, in the theories of behaviorism as well as of psychoanalysis, was considered a chance product of nature and nurture, of a mixture of genes and an accidental sequence of events from early childhood to maturity.
Now we are looking for another basic outlook on the world -- the world as organization. Such a conception -- if it can be substantiated -- would indeed change the basic categories upon which scientific thought rests, and profoundly influence practical attitudes.
This trend is marked by the emergence of a bundle of new disciplines such as cybernetics, information theory, general system theory, theories of games, of decisions, of queuing and others; in practical applications, systems analysis, systems engineering, operations research, etc. They are different in basic assumptions, mathematical techniques and aims, and they are often unsatisfactory and sometimes contradictory. They agree, however, in being concerned, in one way or another, with "systems," "wholes" or "organizations"; and in their totality, they herald a new approach.”

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

Source: General System Theory (1968), 7. Some Aspects of System Theory in Biology, p. 166-167 as quoted in Lilienfeld (1978, pp. 7-8) and Alexander Laszlo and Stanley Krippner (1992) " Systems Theories: Their Origins, Foundations, and Development http://archive.syntonyquest.org/elcTree/resourcesPDFs/SystemsTheory.pdf" In: J.S. Jordan (Ed.), Systems Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1998. Ch. 3, pp. 47-74.

Antonio Negri photo
Anthony Watts photo
Walter Lippmann photo

“The principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being--which cannot be proved existentially to the sense organs--where it matters supremely that the human person is inviolable, that reason shall regulate the will, that truth shall prevail over error.”

Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) American journalist

Essays in The Public Philosophy http://books.google.com/books?id=nD3zAAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+principles+of+the+good+society+call+for+a+concern+with+an+order+of+being+which+cannot+be+proved+existentially+to+the+sense+organs+where+it+matters+supremely+that+the+human+person+is+inviolable+that+reason+shall+regulate+the+will+that+truth+shall+prevail+over+error%22 (1955)

Herbert A. Simon photo
Robert LeFevre photo

“So the thing I object to about government isn't its organizational feature. Organization has to be accomplished. It is the coercive nature of government organization. My argument is that we can organize better without coercion.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

Rampart Institute, (Society for Libertarian Life edition), from 1977 speech, p. 8.
Good Government: Hope or Illusion? (1978)

“No matter how dysfunctional the present, no matter how sensible the reasons for change, most people and organizations would rather wring out the old than ring in the new.”

Tim Hurson (1946) Creativity theorist, author and speaker

Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking

Charles Edward Merriam photo
Geoffrey Hodgson photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Bonnie Koppell photo
N. Gregory Mankiw photo
Peter F. Drucker photo

“Unless the power of the corporation can be organized on an accepted principle of legitimacy, it will… be taken over by a Central government…”

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

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Future of Industrial Man (1942), p. 96

Roger Manganelli photo
Milton Friedman photo
John O. Brennan photo

“Our strategy is also shaped by a deeper understanding of al-Qa’ida’s goals, strategy, and tactics. I’m not talking about al-Qa’ida’s grandiose vision of global domination through a violent Islamic caliphate. That vision is absurd, and we are not going to organize our counterterrorism policies against a feckless delusion that is never going to happen. We are not going to elevate these thugs and their murderous aspirations into something larger than they are.”

John O. Brennan (1955) 7th Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

[Remarks of John O. Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, on Ensuring al-Qa'ida's Demise -- As Prepared for Delivery, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/06/29/remarks-john-o-brennan-assistant-president-homeland-security-and-counter, whitehouse.gov, 2015-10-07]

Kent Hovind photo

“Did you know that the black suited organization that attacked the Koresh cult was a United Nations task force?”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

Kate Mulgrew photo
George Washington Carver photo
Sayyid Qutb photo
Carl Sagan photo

“This is Phobos… Its mean density is known, and it is consistent with organic matter. Deimos… same story.”

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

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

Gene Simmons photo
Zeev Sternhell photo
John McCain photo

“Vietnam vet: We haven't heard why you voted against your colleagues' proposals to increase health care funding in 2004, '05, '06, and '07, when we had troops coming back from two wars.
Madow: Instead of the answer the questioner is looking for, McCain now takes credit for the GI bill and takes a political shot at Jim Webb.
McCain: On the issue of the GI bill, I was disappointed that Senator Webb didn't support making it permanent. Senator Graham, other veterans and I will be looking to extend that to all veterans, not just 2001. I hope you'll urge Senator Webb to agree with that.
McCain: I received every award from every major veterans' organization in America. The reason is I have a perfect voting record from organizations like Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, and all the other veterans service organizations because of my support of them.
Vietnam vet: You do not have a perfect voting record by the DIV and the VFW. That's where these votes [of yours against increasing vet health care] are recorded. The votes were proposals by your colleagues in the Senate to increase health care funding of the VA in 2003, '04, '05, and '06 for troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and you voted against those proposals. I can give you specific Senate votes, the numbers of those Senate votes right now.
McCain: I thank you, and I'll examine your version of what my voting record is, but again, I've been endorsed in every election by all of the veterans' organizations that do that. I've been supported by them, and I've received their highest rewards, from all of those organizations, so I guess they don't know something you know.
Rieckoff: [McCain's] voting record is not very strong. The Disabled American Veterans gave him a 20% rating out of 100. Our organization, the IAVA, gave him a D rating in the last voting session. He does not have a perfect voting record from the VFW. He's consistently voted against increased funding of the VA, and he's been a major opponent of the new GI bill.”

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

Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans for America and author of Chasing Ghosts, on Countdown, discussing a town hall exchange between McCain and another Vietnam vet; 9 July 2008; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnyEMLXvgV8
IAVA ratings: McCain: D; Obama: B+ http://www.iava.org/full-ratings-list; DAV: McCain: 20%; Obama: 80%; the AL and VFW don't perform such voting record ratings http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/does_mccain_have_a_perfect_voting_record.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnyEMLXvgV8
2000s, 2008

N. Gregory Mankiw photo
George Cheyne (physician) photo
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux photo

“The Judge has not organs to know and to deal with the text of the foreign law, and therefore requires the assistance of a foreign lawyer who knows how to interpret it.”

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) English barrister, politician, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Sussex Peerage Case (1844), 11 Cl. & F. 115.

Michael Chabon photo
Simon Kuznets photo

“The natural order of organisms is a divergent inclusive hierarchy and that hierarchy is recognized by taxic homology.”

Alec Panchen (1930–2013) British paleontologist

Characterizing the sufficient and necessary beliefs of "transformed" or "pattern" cladists. In Classification, Evolution and the Nature of Biology (1992), p. 194.

John Crowley photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Marvin Bower photo

“Cooptation is the process of absorbing new elements into the leadership or policy- determining structure of an organization as a means of averting threats to its stability or existence.”

Philip Selznick (1919–2010) American sociologist

Source: TVA and the grass roots : a study in the sociology of formal organization, 1949, p. 13

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Rensis Likert photo
Leoš Janáček photo
Edward R. Murrow photo