Quotes about orientation
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“The early thirties brought what liberal economists called the Great Depression and Marxist economists described as the great crisis of capitalism. It dawned on me that the economic world order was unreliable, unstable, and, most of all, iniquitous. I sought intellectual contacts and friendship with a group of socialist students and also with a small handful of communist-oriented students and unemployed workers.”

Tjalling Koopmans (1910–1985) Dutch American economist

" Tjalling C. Koopmans - Biographical http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1975/koopmans-bio.html". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2013. Web. 9 Jun 2014.

Friendship, World

“All complex organizations use people to pursue their tasks, but people-changing organizations work not only with or through people but also on them. People constitute the raison d'etre of these organizations, and, and, as our label suggests, the desired product is a new or altered person. People-changing organizations can be contrasted with organizations that produce, distribute, or service inanimate objects or symbols. The latter may have important consequences for their members' statuses, role-orientations, identities, and personalities, but these alterations are usually incidental, personal, or instrumental. In people-changing organizations the alterations re the primary end. Conceived in this way, the term "people-changing" encompasses a broad variety of organizations, ranging from the monastery (which cleanses the soul while teaching the outward signs of grace) to Menninger's (which restructures the personality), and even to the House of Venus”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

which reshapes buttocks and identity simultaneously
Source: 1960s, Organization for treatment, 1966, p. 3

People, Way, Soul, Change

“This Conference:… (3) recognises that there are among us persons who experience themselves as having a homosexual orientation. Many of these are members of the Church and are seeking the pastoral care, moral direction of the Church, and God's transforming power for the living of their lives and the ordering of relationships. We commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons and we wish to assure them that they are loved by God and that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ; (4) while rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture, calls on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals”

Peter Akinola (1944) Anglican Primate of the Church of Nigeria

Resolution 1.10 on Human Sexuality, Lambeth Conference 1988.
Associated quotations

Love, God, People, Fear

“Actually I made up the term "object-oriented", and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.”

Alan Kay (1940) computer scientist

The Computer Revolution hasn't happend yet — 1997 OOPSLA Keynote http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY Alternative: I invented the term Object-Oriented, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind. Attributed to Alan Kay in: Peter Seibel (2005) Practical Common Lisp. p.189 1990s

“Obama shared in the more philosophical part of the discussion as vigorously as he did in the more context-oriented part …. The impression you report, of impatience with speculative exploration, is false. It does justice neither to him nor to me to represent these conversations under the lens of philistine activist against starry-eyed theoretician. He was always interested in ideas, big and small.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Quoted in David Remnick, The Bridgeː The Life and Rise of Barack Obama (2010), p. 185 (explaining the nature of Obama's participation in the two seminars that Obama took with Unger while studying at Harvard Law School)
On Barack Obama

Justice, Idea, Parting, Falseness

“What is new poetry? The difference is not mere details of form, measure rhyme schemes or diction, but a return to contemporary speech, thought, imagination and spiritual life, coupled with oriental (Japan & China) and cosmopolitan influences, and a direction of vision, with perfection of form and delicacy of feeling.”

Harriet Monroe (1860–1936) American poet and editor

The New Poetry -An anthology ed Monroe & Henderson Macmillan 1918
The New Poetry (1918)

Life, Feeling, Imagination, Perfection

“Different subunits within an organization may confront different external demands. To cope with these various environments, organizations create specialized subunits with differing structural features. For example, some subunits may exhibit higher levels of formalization than others; some may be more centralized in decision making; some may be oriented to longer planning horizons. The more varied the types of environments confronted by an organization, the more differentiated its structure needs to be.”

W. Richard Scott (1932) American sociologist

Source: Institutions and Organizations., 1995, p. 89 (2001: 103)

Decision

“‘That it is still possible for a man of initiative to make money in the East is the firm opinion of balding, plump Mr Denham who adds, however, “Not if you take a wife with you.” Mr Denham has scathing things to say about Englishwomen and their lack of domestic virtues. He particularly selects their cooking as a target, but considers also that they are far inferior to the slant-eyed beauties of the Orient in the all-important matter of fidelity to their menfolk. Mr Denham is considered an authority on the women of Japan who, he says, are lovely, demure and submissive…. On his own admission he has little time for anything except money, dalliance, and the “imbibing of liquors of all kinds”.’”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Love, Women, Money, Beauty

“I have a weakness for Egyptian sculpture: its figures are sculptured gods, sculptured ideas. Very different in expression, Hindu sculpture is based on very similar assumptions... The oriental people are much more artistic than we. When nations grow old, their art grows complicated and soft.”

Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) sculptor from France

Source: Conversations with Judith Cladel (1939–1944), p. 406

God, People, Art, Idea

“And what is going on is that the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) has lost the trust of working class German voters, is overwhelmingly a party of the public sector, social science graduates and ethnic minorities and won barely more than a quarter of the vote. It has moved its concerns from those of the internal governance of the political economy to a political and legal orientation that requires the passing of laws, external regulation and redistribution. It has not seriously defended the internal virtues of its economic system, preferring to stress external factors such a stimulus and taxation. Justice and rights rather than democracy and the good have come to define the position. I am strongly suggesting the party has become liberal rather than socialist and that is the fundamental problem.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Blue Labour, The Profundity of Defeat http://www.bluelabour.org/2013/10/30/285/

Justice, Law, Democracy, Problem

“I'm trying to reproduce healthily in a vegetarian way every kind of flesh there is — bacon, smoked salmon, roast meat. We're working on it. A lot of vegetarians complain that my book [Linda McCartney's Home Cooking] is meat-oriented and some of the products look like meat. For me, though, it's a matter of not just preaching — I hate to do it and it doesn't work — but helping to make the alternatives more attractive to more people. Change the eating habits and maybe you change the thinking habits. … I'm convinced that part of the reason the world is so sick is that so many people eat flesh. What are you doing but eating a slab of fear? … Look how long it took to abolish slavery. There was a time when much of the "civilized" world thought it was acceptable. And then they saw that it was wrong. I think the same thing will happen with eating animals. I have faith that the day will come when the world looks back and says, "How could we have done that?"”

Linda McCartney (1941–1998) American photographer

Interview from The Paul McCartney 1990 New World Tour Book; quoted in "Paul & Linda McCartney - In Their Own Words", Super Seventies RockSite! https://www.superseventies.com/ssmccartneys.html.

Hate, People, Books, World

“Pope Benedict XVI is working softly, slowly, often silently, unobtrusively, behind the scenes, mostly unseen. But he is working hard. I like the great job of reconciliation that he is doing inside the Roman Catholic Church: reconciliation between traditionalists and liberals, conservative and reform-oriented faithful, liturgical Latinists and Mass polyglots, old-time lovers and progressives, high-flying souls and pedestrian believers, thinkers and doers--Christians and Catholics. It is a hidden work of diplomacy, interactions, influences, concessions, agreements, acknowledgments. A "hard job" well done until now.”

Leon Bertoletti (1971)

Christians and Catholics http://www.hicsuntleones.co.uk/2008/10/christians-and-catholics.html, Hic Sunt Leones, 9/10/2008

Faith, Soul, Lovers, Time

“Various sociopolitical movements are oriented to the nostrums of ‘social justice,’ favoring entitlements for all those with economic disparity. They struggle for what is scientifically impossible: equality of outcome. They want everyone to end up with the same amount of wealth—billions of people all possessing the same numerical affluence.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 72

People, Justice, Wealth

“Conceptual graphs are system of logic based on the existential graphs of Charles Sanders Peirce and the semantic networks of artificial intelligence. The purpose of the system is to express meaning in a form that is logically precise, humanly readable, and computationally tractable. With their direct mapping to language, conceptual graphs can serve as an intermediate language for translating computer-oriented formalisms to and from natural languages. With their graphic representation, they can serve as a readable, but design and specification language.”

John F. Sowa (1940) artificial intelligence researcher

Source: Conceptual graphs for knowledge representation, 1993, p. 3-51. cited in: Bernhard Ganter, Gerd Stumme, Rudolf Wille (2005) Formal Concept Analysis: Foundations and Applications. p. 87

Intelligence, Nature

“Who's an Aryan? And what are these lower peoples anyway? Well, Hitler taught that the blond-haired, blue-eyed Norwegians were close to pure Aryan. Did you follow all of that? The blond-haired, blue-eyed Norwegian. And he thought the Germans were mostly Aryan? The Mediterranean's are slightly Aryan. Slavics are half Aryan, half ape. Orientals are slightly ape. The black Africans are mostly ape and the Jews are close to pure ape. Hitler killed the Jews because of his evolution thinking. We fought a really big war, probably a 100 million people died in World War II altogether because of that stupid theory. It's not just dumb, folks, it's dangerous.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

War, People, Stupidity, World

“The effort to get rid of what we do not want is reactive, retrospectively oriented problem solving. The effort to obtain what we want is proactive, prospectively oriented problem solving.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Cited in: Chris Griffiths, Melina Costi (2011) GRASP: The Solution. p. 64.
1970s, The Art of Problem Solving, 1978

Problem, Effort

“Every ship from the New World came freighted with marvels which put the fictions of chivalry to shame; and to the Spaniard of that day America was a region of wonder and mystery, of vague and magnificent promise. Thither adventurers hastened, thirsting for glory and for gold, and often mingling the enthusiasm of the crusader and the valor of the knight-errant with the bigotry of inquisitors and the rapacity of pirates. They roamed over land and sea; they climbed unknown mountains, surveyed unknown oceans, pierced the sultry intricacies of tropical forests; while from year to year and from day to day new wonders were unfolded, new islands and archipelagoes, new regions of gold and pearl, and barbaric empires of more than Oriental wealth. The extravagance of hope and the fever of adventure knew no bounds.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. I, Ch. 1 Early Spanish Adventure
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

World, Hope, Mountain, Sea

“It is, thank heaven, difficult if not impossible for the modern European to fully appreciate the force which fanaticism exercises among an ignorant, warlike and Oriental population. Several generations have elapsed since the nations of the West have drawn the sword in religious controversy, and the evil memories of the gloomy past have soon faded in the strong, clear light of Rationalism and human sympathy. Indeed it is evident that Christianity, however degraded and distorted by cruelty and intolerance, must always exert a modifying influence on men's passions, and protect them from the more violent forms of fanatical fever, as we are protected from smallpox by vaccination. But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting. Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace. Luckily the religion of peace is usually the better armed.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Story of the Malakand Field Force

The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (1898), Chapter III.
Early career years (1898–1929)

Death, Men, War, People

“The lack of understanding of the history of Blacks in the United States, including the variation of slave utilization, coupled with narrow theoretical orientation of some of the more recent social sciences studies has stimulated the limited conception of the black experience, past and present; this, in turn, paves the way for internal conflict”

Vera Mae Green (1928–1982) American anthropologist and academic

among Blacks
Gacs, Ute (1988). Women Anthropologists: Selected Biographies. University of Illinois Press. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-252-06084-7.

Way, History, Understanding, Study

“The employee-oriented supervisor, in contrast to the production-oriented, or institution-oriented supervisor gives major attention to creating employee motivation. The specific ways in which he does this may vary from situation to situation, but they contribute to a supportive personal relationship between himself and his work group members”

Daniel Katz (1903–1998) American psychologist

Source: The Social Psychology of Organizations (1966), p. 562

Way, Motivation, Support, Personality

“OOA - Object-Oriented Analysis - is based upon concepts that we first learned in kindergarten: objects and attributes, wholes and parts, classes and members.”

Peter Coad (1953) American software entrepreneur

Peter Coad & Ed Yourdon (1991, p. 1); cited in: Sten Carlsson and Benneth Christiansson. (1999) " The Concept of Object and its Relation to Human Thinking: Some Misunderstandings Concerning the Connection between Object-Orientation and Human Thinking http://www.vits.org/publikationer/dokument/289.pdf." Informatica, Lith. Acad. Sci. 10.2. p. 147-160.

Learning, Parting

“that we could not turn them over to France and Germany-our commercial rivals in the Orient — that would be bad business and discreditable”

William McKinley (1843–1901) American politician, 25th president of the United States (in office from 1897 to 1901)

Business

“In this situation, it becomes vital that our own country orient its policies in consonance with this basic evolutionary condition rather than pursue a course blind to the reality that the colonial era is now past and the Asian peoples covet the right to shape their own free destiny. What they seek now is friendly guidance, understanding, and support — not imperious direction — the dignity of equality and not the shame of subjugation.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

1950s, Farewell address to Congress (1951)

People, Understanding, Support, Reality

“Paleoanthropologists were congenitally media-oriented.”

Michael Bishop book No Enemy But Time

Source: No Enemy But Time (1982), Chapter 17 “Pensacola, Florida” (p. 147)

“…and worst of all, on June's huge doublebed with the Oriental drapecover on it we had ample room for sometimes six of us to sprawl with coffee cups and ashtrays and discuss the decadence of the 'bourgeoisie' for days on end.”

Joan Vollmer (1923–1951) Common-law wife of William S. Burroughs

About

Coffee

“Mr Liversedge…saw the whole ridiculous Oriental susah in true proportion. Here men would murder for five dollars, here men would seek divorce because their wives sighed at the handsomeness of the film star P. Ramlee…. nodding at the lucid exposition of Mr Lim from Penang, though contemning inwardly the Pommie accent…”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Beds in the East (1959)

Men, Star

“"Old" and "new" are the perennial poles of all feeling and sense of orientation in the world. We cannot do without the old, because in what is old is invested all our past, our wisdom, our memories, our sadness, our sense of realism. We cannot do without faith in the new, because in what is new is invested all our energy, our capacity for optimism, our blind biological yearning, our ability to forget — the healing ability that makes reconciliation possible.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)

Wisdom, World, Sadness, Faith

“Confidence depends upon the people in whom you are to confide. You would not confide free representative institutions to the Hottentots, for instance. Nor, going higher up the scale, would you confide them to the Oriental nations whom you are governing in India—although finer specimens of human character you will hardly find than some of those who belong to these nations, but who are simply not suited to the particular kind of confidence of which I am speaking. Well, I doubt whether you could confide representative institutions to the Russians with any great security. You have done it to the Greeks, but I do not know whether the result has been absolutely what you wish. And when you come to narrow it down you will find that this which is called self-government, but which is really government by the majority, works admirably well when it is confided to people who are of Teutonic race, but that it does not work so well when people of other races are called upon to join in it.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Speech to the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations in St. James's Hall, London (15 May 1886), quoted in The Times (17 May 1886), p. 6
1880s

People, Confidence, Dependency

“Geoffrey also recognized that the opposite orientations of gut and nervous system posed a problem for his claim that insects and vertebrates represent different versions of the same archetypal animal - and he proposed the first account of the inversion theory to resolve this threat to unification. …Geoffroy pursued the… aim of establishing a "unity of type" that could generate both arthropods and vertebrates from the same basic blueprint. …The single grand design includes a gut in the middle and the main nerve cords somewhere on the periphery.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Brotherhood by Inversion", p. 326
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Problem, Animals

“Doing philosophy was an opportunity to learn something new. I expected this to be an adjunct to my practice of architecture. But it turned out the other way. It turned out that the philosophy of science gave me the opportunity to design social systems, and I was more interested in people-oriented systems than in buildings. They were both design, but different kinds of design. I like creating things.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Ackoff cited in: Carole Novak (2000) " Interview with Russell L. Ackoff http://www.ait.net/technos/tq_09/3ackoff.php". in: Technos Quartely. Fall 2000 Vol. 9 No. 3. This quote is the answer to the question, why Ackoff switched from architecture to philosophy in his graduate studies. 2000s

People, Way, Learning, Science

“I don't think of my work as calligraphic. Critics also describe Jackson and De Kooning as calligraphic painters but calligraphy has nothing to do with us. It's interesting that the Oriental critics never say this. The Oriental idea of space is an infinite space; it is not painted space, and ours is. In the first place, calligraphy is writing and I am not writing. People sometimes think I take a white canvas and paint a black sign on it, but this is not true. I paint the white as well as the black, and the white is just as important.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

Quote, (1958)
1960's, Talks with Seventeen Artists, 1962

People, Idea, Thinking, Painting

“Although our grammar schools are teaching a whole generation computer language to adjust to the technological needs of a Stage II society, we have neglected to teach this generation relationship language and conflict resolution skills to address the social and psychological needs of a Stage II society. And when it is taught, in countries like Germany, although called “social competence” it focuses on workplace teamwork -- still on survival, breadwinner oriented work goals.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 116.

School, Country

“I would say that, whenever religion has rule over law, that madness will reign, with automatic violations of human rights, but maybe I'm being alarmist. What do they say? How can we know what sort of society they envision?.. We know that they are nearly all republicans, and that that party has been virtually assimilated by them, and we know they will speak more freely when they feel the safety of numbers. So let's look at the Republican Party platform of one of the red states, a very red state… Of course, they want to make pornography illegal (no surprises there), they also want to be able to filibuster the US senate again… Regarding the environment, they strongly support the immediate repeal and abolishment of the Endangered Species Act. Remember that these people don't believe in evolution, so they don't understand the importance of biodiversity and they don't care about the rights of animals either. They want to dominate and subdue the earth, just like their abominable doctrine demands, so they strongly oppose all efforts of environmental groups that stymie business interests, especially those of the oil and gas industry… Texas republicans not only want marriage to be restricted to one man and one woman (despite what the Bible says), but they insist it must be a natural man and a natural woman… So transgender people would be completely ostracized under the law should they get their way. There's no civil union options for gay couples either, because the platform also opposes the creation, recognition or benefits of partnerships outside marriage that are provided by some political subdivisions. As if that weren't enough, they also want to define the word "family" such that it excludes homosexual couples. They say they deplore sensitivity training (think about that for a moment), and they state very clearly that they want homosexuality condemned as unacceptable. They mean that very strongly too, so strongly in fact that they oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality as a reaction of religious faith. In fact, they go so far as to urge the immediate repeal of the hate crimes law specifically where that relates to sexual orientation… If you're uncertain whether that includes acts of violence, there at least two members of the current State Board of Education who implied that it should, and we know of a few Tea Partiers who insist that homosexuals should be executed, murdered by the state. I am alarmed at how popular this abominable sentiment is… Under the heading "supporting motherhood", they strongly support women who "choose" to devote their lives to their families and raising their children, but they implicitly object to women choosing other options such as college, careers, or not having children at all. A woman's ambition beyond the confines of the kitchen and obeisance to her husband is decried by conservatives as a deplorable assault on the family which, of course, they blame on liberals. Regarding the right to life, they say that all innocent human life must be respected and safeguarded from fertilization to natural death. Notice a few subtle caveats here: the qualifier of protecting only innocent life is how Texas republicans justify having executed more prisoners than any other state in the union, nearly five times as many as the next deadliest state in fact. Says something about Christian forgiveness, doesn't it!”

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

Youtube, Other, Republican Theocracy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSjNg7nQvB0 (November 4, 2012)

Life, Death, Women, Hate

“Father thinks about the three races, yellow, black, and white. Orientals can contribute in the spiritual aspect, white people can contribute in the analytical, scientific area, while black people can contribute in the physical area-physical educational development of physical fitness, the area of health. That's one of the reasons Glenda Moody's project with black young people is very fantastic. From now on, two thirds of the athletes may come from black people. Even basketball teams have a dominant population of black people. The talented area of black people is in this physical aspect. So, the short cut for black peoples' achievement in this world is the physical area. So, Father has a special concern in this area.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Master Speaks: Address To Prayer And Fast Participants, Part 1, (1974-07-29 http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/sunmyungmoon74/SM740729.htm)

People, Health, World, Education

“The systems view of nature and man is clearly non- anthropocentric, but it is not non-humanistic for all that. It allows us to understand that man is one species of system in a complex and embracing hierarchy of nature, and at the same time it tells us that all systems have value and intrinsic worth. They are goal-oriented, self-maintaining, and self-creating expressions of nature's penchant for order and adjustment. The status of man is not lessened by admitting the amoeba as his kin, nor by recognizing that sociocultural systems are his supersystems. Seeing himself as a connecting link in a complex natural hierarchy cancels man's anthropocentrism, but seeing the hierarchy itself as an expression of self-ordering and self-creating nature bolsters his self-esteem and encourages his humanism.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: Introduction to Systems Philosophy (1972), p. 118.

Understanding, Nature, Time

“There is a train track in the history of art that goes way back to Mesopotamia. It skips the whole Orient, The Mayas, And American Indians. Duchamp is on it. Cézanne is on it. Picasso and the Cubists are on it; Giacometti, Piet Mondrian, and so many... I have some feeling about all these people – millions of them – on this enormous track, a way into history. They had a peculiar way of measuring. They seemed to measure with a length similar to their own height... The idea that the thing that the artist is making can come to know for itself, how high it is, how wide and how deep it is, is a historical one, - a traditional one I think. It comes from man's own image.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

De Kooning’s lecture Trans/formation at Studio 35, 1950.
1950's

People, Art, Way, Feeling

“The Spanish Republic did not find itself free of obligations. For the most part the leaders were Freemasons. Before their duty to their country came their obligations to the Grand Orient. In my opinion, Freemasonry, with all its international influence, is the organization principally responsible for the political ruin of Spain, as well as the murder of Calvo Sotelo, who was executed in accordance with orders from the Grand Secretary of Freemasonry in Geneva.”

Francisco Franco (1892–1975) Spanish general and dictator

Interview with Spanish journalist Nena Belmonte, as quoted in "Freemasonry and the Spanish Civil War" https://web.archive.org/web/20080513182157/http://www.freemasonrytoday.com/30/p09.php by Matthew Scanlan.

Parting, Country

“Possibly the only real object-oriented system in working order. (About Internet)”

Alan Kay (1940) computer scientist

2010 for Computerworld Australia http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/352182/z_programming_languages_smalltalk-80/ 2010s

“This text is oriented toward human organizations since this has been the emphasis in the practice of O. R. in business and industry.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1940s - 1950s, Introduction to Operations Research (1957), p. 7

Business

“Previous research addressing market orientation from a cultural perspective typically has used behavioral measures of this construct. Drawing on literature in the fields of organizational theory and marketing, the authors develop a multilayer model of market-oriented organizational culture. They draw an explicit distinction among values that support market orientation, norms for market orientation, artifacts indicating high and low market orientation, and market-oriented behaviors. On the basis Of qualitative research and a subsequent survey, the authors develop scales for measuring the different layers of market-oriented culture and analyze relationships among the different components of market-oriented culture. Findings indicate that artifacts play a crucial role in determining behavior within organizations. Results also indicate that a market-oriented culture influences financial performance indirectly through market performance and that this relationship is stronger in highly dynamic markets.”

Christian Homburg (1962) German academic

Source: "A multiple-layer model of market-oriented organizational culture", 2000, p. 449 ; Abstract

Behavior, Literature, Support, Drawing

“Fascism was created by the nationalization of certain sectors of the revolutionary left, and the central role in its conceptual orientation was played by revolutionary syndicalists who embraced extreme nationalism.”

Stanley G. Payne (1934) American historian

Source: Fascism: Comparison and Definition (1980), p. 42

“The concept of teleological mechanisms, however it be expressed in many terms, may be viewed as an attempt to escape from these older mechanistic formulations that now appear inadequate, and to provide new and more fruitful conceptions and more effective methodologies for studying self-regulating processes, self-orienting systems and organisms, and self-directing personalities. Thus, the terms feedback, servomechanisms, circular systems, and circular processes may be viewed as different but equivalent expressions of much the same basic conception”

Lawrence K. Frank (1890–1968) American cyberneticist

L.K. Frank (1948) "Foreword". In L. K. Frank, G. E. Hutchinson, W. K. Livingston, W. S. McCulloch, & N. Wiener, Teleological mechanisms. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sc., 1948, 50, 189-96; As cited in: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968) "General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications". p. 16-17

Study, Appearance, Personality

“With what philosophical point of view did I begin my career as teacher? Looking back to that period, I see that it was a rather inchoate form of idealism, reflecting the liberal Protestant orientation I had then adopted. This idealism was gradually revised to make room for major aspects of Deweyan instrumentalism. In my years at Columbia, Dewey had impressed me as a person, and during my decade in Chicago, in close contact with colleagues whom he had deeply influenced, I came to accept what appeared to be the core of his contribution to philosophy. But continued sensitivity to insights from various quarters prevented me from becoming a disciple of any one philosopher or philosophical school.”

Edwin Arthur Burtt (1892–1989) American philosopher

Burtt (1972), cited in: D. Villemaire, (2002), E.A. Burtt, Historian and Philosopher: : A Study of the Author of The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science. p. 20

School, Teachers, Appearance, Personality

“In order to better understand object-oriented methodologies in general, it helps to understand the people who make up the "object-oriented community" itself. Far from being monolithic, there is a great deal of diversity within this community. Many object-oriented people, for example, seem to focus almost entirely on programming language issues. They tend to cast all discussions in terms of the syntax and semantics of their chosen object-oriented programming language. These people find it impossible (for all intents and purposes) to discuss any software engineering activity (e. g., analysis, design, and testing) without direct mention of some specific implementation language.
Outside of producing executable "prototypes", people who emphasize programming languages seldom have well-defined techniques for analyzing their clients' problems or describing the overall architecture of the software product. A great deal of what they do is intuitive. If they happen to have a natural instinct/intuition for good analysis or good design, their efforts on small-to-medium, non-critical projects can result in respectable software solutions.”

Edward V. Berard

Source: Essays on object-oriented software engineering (1993), p. 5

People, Communication, Understanding, Nature

“Recently, John and I got to go to Selma and perform “Glory” on the same bridge that Dr. King and the people of the civil rights movement marched on 50 years ago. This bridge was once a landmark of a divided nation, but now is a symbol for change. The spirit of this bridge transcends race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and social status. The spirit of this bridge connects the kid from the South Side of Chicago, dreaming of a better life, to those in France standing up for their freedom of expression, to the people in Hong Kong protesting for democracy. This bridge was built on hope, welded with compassion, and elevated by love for all human beings.”

Common (rapper) (1972) American rapper, actor and author from Illinois

The 87th Oscars ceremony, 22 February, 2015.
Interviews

Love, Life, People, Religion

“The most profound breach in this country is not between the rich and the poor, but between the people and the intellectuals. In their view of life, the American people are predominantly Apollonian. The mainstream intellectuals are Dionysian. This means the people are reality-oriented, common sense-oriented, technology-oriented. The intellectuals call this "materialistic," and "middle-class." The intellectuals are emotion-oriented, and seek in panic an escape from a reality they are unable to deal with, and from a technological civilization that ignores their feelings.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Apollo and Dionysus (1969)

Life, People, Feeling, Reality

“The Copts — the only branch of the Christian Church which was thoroughly integrated into the Orient! But then your good Bishop of Salisbury openly said he considered these oriental Christians as worse than infidels, and your Crusaders massacred them joyfully.”

Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet

The Alexandria Quartet (1957–1960), Mountolive (1958)

“'Party,' in the general vocabulary of world intellectuals, is basically a unified social organization with a 'world-view,' an 'Ideology,' a 'philosophy of history,' and 'ideal social order,' a 'class foundation,' a 'class orientation,' a 'social leadership,' a 'political philosophy,' a 'political orientation,' a 'tradition,' a 'slogan,' a 'strategy,' a "tactic of struggle," and … a "hope" that wants to change the "status quo" in man, society, people, or a particular class, and establish the "desired status" in its stead.”

Ali Shariati (1933–1977) Iranian academic and activist

Ali Shariati, in: The Islamic Quarterly, Vol. 27-29, (1983), p. 215; as quoted in: Ali Mirsepassi (2000), Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization, p. 126.

People, World, Hope, History

“Hindus temples have been under unprecedented attack for a thousand years. They suffered desecration, destruction, confiscation of their property and iniquitous taxation under the Muslim rulers. Under the British, the more physical methods ceased but fiscal methods were adopted for undermining "heathenism". A large part of the land and properties of the temples were taken away under all kinds of pretexts. After independence, the temples have fared no better. Their properties have not been restored to them and they continue to exist in deepening poverty. In the South where there are still many noble structures left, the temples are under the control of a Government which takes pride in being "secular", and whose secularity is thoroughly anti-Hindu in orientation.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

Suffering, Parting

“The Ethics of Competition is a book of Frank H. Knight's writings on a common theme: the problem of social control and its various implications. Knight believed in free economic institutions but was also aware that the competitive economic system could be improved. One of the central figures of neoclassical economics in the twentieth century, Knight pursued a lifelong campaign against irrationalities of nationalism, religious fanaticism, and group conflict, while conceding that these were fundamental orientations of human action that might yet frustrate his own work as an economist. While Knight vigorously defended human freedom and the liberal order, he also was sufficiently moved by the shortcomings of liberalism as to condemn it as rife with abuse.”

Frank Knight (1885–1972) American economist

Abstract
The Ethics of Competition, 1935

Books, Problem, Freedom

“And as for the close connection between philosophy and poetry, we can refer to a little-known statement by Thomas Aquinas in his Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics [I, 3]: the Philosopher is akin to the Poet in this, that both are concerned with the mirandum, the "wondrous," the astonishing, or whatever calls for astonishment or wonder. This statement is not that easy to fathom, since Thomas, like Aristotle, was a very sober thinker, completely opposed to any Romantic confusion of properly distinct realms. But on the basis of their common orientation towards the "wonderful" (the mirandum — something not to be found in the world of work!) — on this basis, then, of this common transcending-power, the philosophical act is related to the "wonderful," is in fact more closely related to it than to the exact, special sciences; to this point we shall return.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 68–69
The Aquinas quote cited — "The reason why the philosopher can be compared to the poet is that both are concerned with wonder" — is the epigraph of "The Philosophical Act".

World, Science

“"Isn't it sad, that in a time when we face so many devastating problems – poverty, HIV/AIDS, war and conflict – that in our Communion we should be investing so much time and energy on disagreement about sexual orientation?" [The Communion, which] "used to be known for embodying the attribute of comprehensiveness, of inclusiveness, where we were meant to accommodate all and diverse views, saying we may differ in our theology but we belong together as sisters and brothers" now seems "hell-bent on excommunicating one another. God must look on and God must weep."”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

"Tutu calls on Anglicans to accept gay bishop" http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=33&idsub=128&id=2141 in Spero News (14 November 2005)

God, War, Sadness, Hell

“[Alan] Watts did two main things for me. He opened up the connections between what I was doing and the traditional Oriental philosophies. And he pointed me toward the distinction between Self and Mind.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Interview with William Warren Bartley, cited in [Bartley, William Warren, w:William Warren Bartley, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978, New York, 118, 0-517-53502-5]

“We had stayed up all night — my friends and I — beneath mosque lamps hanging from the ceiling. Their brass domes were filigreed, starred like our souls; just as, again like our souls, they were illuminated by the imprisoned brilliance of an electric heart. On the opulent oriental rugs, we had crushed our ancestral lethargy, arguing all the way to the final frontiers of logic and blackening reams of paper with delirious writings.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

Original Italian text:
Avevamo vegliato tutta la notte — i miei amici ed io — sotto lampade di moschea dalle cupole di ottone traforato, stellate come le nostre anime, perchè come queste irradiate dal chiuso fulgòre di un cuore elettrico. Avevamo lungamente calpestata su opulenti tappeti orientali la nostra atavica accidia, discutendo davanti ai confini estremi della logica ed annerendo molta carta di frenetiche scritture.
Source: 1900's, The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism' 1909, p. 49 Lead paragraph

Way, Soul, Star, Heart

“If books were sold as software and online recordings are, they would have this legalese up front:
The content of this book is distributed on an 'as is' basis, without warranty as to accuracy of content, quality of writing, punctuation, usefulness of the ideas presented, merchantability, correctness or readability of formulae, charts, and figures, or correspondence of (a) the table of contents with the actual contents, (2) page references in the index (if any) with the actual page numbering (if present), and (iii) any illustration with its adjacent caption. Illustrations may have been printed reversed or inverted, the publisher accepts no responsibility for orientation or chirality. Any resemblance of the author or his or her likeness or name to any person, living or dead, or their heirs or assigns, is coincidental; all references to people, places, or events have been or should have been fictionalized and may or may not have any factual basis, even if reported as factual. Similarities to existing works of art, literature, song, or television or movie scripts is pure happenstance. References have been chosen at random from our own catalog. Neither the author(s) nor the publisher shall have any liability whatever to any person, corporation, animal whether feral or domesticated, or other corporeal or incorporeal entity with respect to any loss, damage, misunderstanding, or death from choking with laughter or apoplexy at or due to, respectively, the contents; that is caused or is alleged to be caused by any party, whether directly or indirectly due to the information or lack of information that may or may not be found in this alleged work. No representation is made as to the correctness of the ISBN or date of publication as our typist isn't good with numbers and errors of spelling and usage are attributable solely to bugs in the spelling and grammar checker in Microsoft Word. If sold without a cover, this book will be thinner than those sold with a cover. You do not own this book, but have acquired only a revocable non-exclusive license to read the material contained herein. You may not read it aloud to any third party. This disclaimer is a copyrighted work of Jef Raskin, first published in 2004, and is distributed 'as is', without warranty as to quality of humor, incisiveness of commentary, sharpness of taunt, or aptness of jibe.”

Jef Raskin (1943–2005) American computer scientist

"If Books Were Sold as Software" http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&dateissued=20040818#11200, NewsScan.com (18 August 2004) If Books Were Sold as Software (2004)

Death, People, Books, Art

“At any rate that is precisely what happens: the “means” oriented stories come from countries which have managed to overcome the obstacles to economic achievement more successfully than other countries… These results serve to direct our attention as social scientists away from an exclusive concern with the external events in history to the “internal” psychological concerns that in the long run determine what happens in history”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. 104-5

History, Country

“I am not alone in making this point. At least one European Indologist accuses Pollock of relocating Orientalism 'to the "New Raj" across the deep blue sea.'”

Rajiv Malhotra book The Battle for Sanskrit

The Battle for Sanskrit (2016)
Source: Reference is to Gruenendahl 2012

Sea

“Russia, Russia — unwashed, backward, appealing Russia, so ashamed of your own backwardness, so orientally determined to conceal it from us by clever deceit. So sensitive and so suspicious in the face of the wicked, civilized west. I shall always remember you — slyly, touchingly, but with great shouting and confusion — pumping hot water into our sleeping car in the frosty darkness of a December morning in order that we might not know, in order that we might never realize, to how primitive a land we had come.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

Written about an incident where hot water was pumped from a switch engine on the next track into a diplomats sleeping-car; as quoted in George Kennan and the Dilemmas of US Foreign Policy (1988) by David Allan Mayers, p. 30

Cars, Sleep, Water

“As late as the summer of 1941, the Atlantic Monthly, then a still respected magazine for literates and edited by White men, published a long article by Albert Jay Nock, in which he proved that the Jews are an Oriental race that is incompatible with ours. He was not punished and the magazine was not destroyed, strange and almost incredible as that seems today.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"A World Grown Grey With Their Breath", Liberty Bell magazine (January 1988)
1970s, 1980s

Men, Summer

“To me, the circle and the square where the sky and the earth, as symbolized by the ancient Oriental religions; they formed a kind of rudimentary alphabet by means of which everything could be expressed with the most limited means. They evoked prehistoric runes and the early I-Ching, or Book of Changes.”

Michel Seuphor (1901–1999) designer, draughtsman, painter

Source: Abstract Painting (1964), p. 98

Books, Religion, Change

“The function of leadership in the guerrilla, the function of Andreas Baader in the RAF is orientation: not just to distinguish the main points from the minor ones in each situation but also to remain with the entire political context in all situations; to never lose sight, among technical and logistic details and problems, of the aim, which is the revolution.”

Ulrike Meinhof (1934–1976) German left-wing militant

Published in "Minor Literature: Case Study: the Red Army Faction" http://www.simonosullivan.net/articles/red-army-faction.pdf

Problem

“A conceptual level view of an object design describes the key abstractions. While someone might think of key abstractions as being nothing more or nothing less than high-level descriptions of "candidate classes", I prefer to consider a conceptual design from a slightly different angle--I'm thinking about design at a slightly different level.
An object-oriented application is a set of interacting objects. Each object is an implementation of one or more roles. A role supports a set of related (cohesive) responsibilities. A responsibility is an obligation to perform a task or know certain information. And objects don't work in isolation, they collaborate with others in a community to perform the overall responsibilities of the application. So a conceptual view, at least to start, is a distillation of the key object roles and their responsibilities (stated at a fairly high level). More than likely (unless you form classification hierarchies and use inheritance and composition techniques) many candidates you initially model will map directly to a single class in some inheritance hierarchy. But I like to open up possibilities by think first of roles and responsibilities, and then as a second step towards a specification-level view, mapping these candidates to classes and interfaces.”

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock (1953) American software engineer

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock (2003) in " An Interview with Rebecca Wirfs-Brock Author of Object Design http://www.objectsbydesign.com/books/RebeccaWirfs-Brock.html" 2003-2005 Objects by Design, Inc: Answer to the question Can you clarify what you consider to be the essential elements of a "conceptual view".

Communication, Support, Thinking

“Semiotic itself neither rests on nor necessarily implies a particular philosophy. A science of signs no more decides between an 'empirical' and a 'non-empirical' philosophy than it decides between a 'naturalistic' and a 'supernaturalistic' religion. In itself it cannot force one to believe only scientifically verified statements, nor to use only scientific discourse, nor to form one's appraisals and prescriptions in the light of science. It will nevertheless have a profound influence on the course of philosophy, since it deals with topics peculiarly relevant to philosophic systematization… In this sense, the philosophy of the future will be semiotically oriented. But the nature of this influence will not always be the same, and will depend upon the role which given individuals and societies assign to scientific knowledge.”

Charles W. Morris (1903–1979) American philosopher

Source: Signs, Language and Behavior, 1946, p. 238; as cited in: Adam Schaff (1962). Introduction to semantics, p. 88-89

Religion, Nature, Knowledge, Sense

“In this country … we are young, brash and technologically oriented. We are all trying to build machines so that we can push a button and get things done a millisecond faster. But as a consequence, we are drawing away from one of the most priceless things we have — where we came from and how we got to be where we are. The young are drawing away from older people.”

Alex Haley (1921–1992) African American biographer, screenwriter, and novelist

TIME interview (1977)

People, Drawing, Country

“With orient pearl, with ruby red,
With marble white, with sapphire blue,
Her body every way is fed,
Yet soft in touch, and sweet in view:”

Thomas Lodge (1558–1625) English dramatist and writer

Poem, Rosalynde

Way

“Rolling Stone: It's been 10 years since the Macintosh was introduced. When you look around at the technological landscape today, what's most surprising to you?
Jobs: People say sometimes, "You work in the fastest-moving industry in the world." I don't feel that way. I think I work in one of the slowest. It seems to take forever to get anything done. All of the graphical-user interface stuff that we did with the Macintosh was pioneered at Xerox PARC [the company's legendary Palo Alto Research Center] and with Doug Engelbart at SRI [a future-oriented think tank at Stanford] in the mid-'70s. And here we are, just about the mid-'90s, and it's kind of commonplace now. But it's about a 10-to-20-year lag. That's a long time.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

1990s

People, World, Way, Feeling

“Because the Systems Age is teleologically oriented, it is preoccupied with systems that are goal-seeking or purposeful, that is, systems that can display choice of either means or ends, or both. It is interested in purely mechanical systems only.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1970s, Redesigning the future, 1974, p. 18.

Age

“I have worked for this restlessness oriented toward inward deepening. But “without authority.” Instead of conceitedly making myself out to be a witness for the truth and causing others rashly to want to be the same, I am an unauthorized poet who influences by means of the ideas.”

Sören Kierkegaard book For Self-Examination

Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination, Hong p. 21
1850s, For Self-Examination (1851), What is Required in Order to Look at Oneself with True Blessing in the Mirror of the Word?

Truth, Idea

“That the principles for which these three men stood might be still more firmly established destiny raised up Theodore Roosevelt. To political freedom he strove to add economic freedom. By building the Panama Canal he brought into closer relationship the east and the west and realized the vision that inspired Columbus in his search for a new passage to the Orient.”

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

1920s, Address at the Black Hills (1927)

Men, Search, Freedom

“So that’s that, Barney said to himself. I violated Rule One of career-oriented functioning: never tell your superior something he doesn’t want to hear.”

Philip K. Dick book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Source: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Chapter 4 (p. 60)

“Orientation in time, space, and status are the essentials of social existence, and the Balinese, although they make very strong spirits for ceremonial occasions, with a few startling exceptions resist alcohol, because if one drinks one loses one's orientation. Orientation is felt as a protection rather than as a strait jacket and its loss provokes extreme anxiety.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Balinese Character (1942), p. 11

Alcohol, Drink, Strong, Loss

“The man, whose head and heart had in a desperate emergency and amidst a despairing people paved the way for their deliverance, was no more, when it became possible to carry out his design. Whether his successor Hasdrubal forbore to make the attack because the proper moment seemed to him to have not yet come, or whether, more a statesman than a general, he believed himself unequal to the conduct of the enterprise, we are unable to determine. When, at the beginning of [221 B. C], he fell by the hand of an assassin, the Carthaginian officers of the Spanish army summoned to fill his place Hannibal, the eldest son of Hamilcar. He was still a young man--born in [247 B. C], and now, therefore, in his twenty-ninth year [221 B. C]; but his had already been a life of manifold experience. His first recollections pictured to him his father fighting in a distant land and conquering on Ercte; he had keenly shared that unconquered father's feelings on the Peace of Catulus (also see Treaty of Lutatius), on the bitter return home, and throughout the horrors of the Libyan war. While yet a boy, he had followed his father to the camp; and he soon distinguished himself. His light and firmly-knit frame made him an excellent runner and fencer, and a fearless rider at full speed; the privation of sleep did not affect him, and he knew like a soldier how to enjoy or to dispense with food. Although his youth had been spent in the camp, he possessed such culture as belonged to the Phoenicians of rank in his day; in Greek, apparently after he had become a general, he made such progress under the guidance of his confidant Sosilus of Sparta as to be able to compose state papers in that language. As he grew up, he entered the army of his father, to perform his first feats of arms under the paternal eye and to see him fall in battle by his side. Thereafter he had commanded the cavalry under his sister's husband, Hasdrubal, and distinguished himself by brilliant personal bravery as well as by his talents as a leader. The voice of his comrades now summoned him--the tried, although youthful general--to the chief command, and he could now execute the designs for which his father and his brother-in-law had lived and died. He took up the inheritance, and he was worthy of it. His contemporaries tried to cast stains of various sorts on his character; the Romans charged him with cruelty, the Carthaginians with covetousness; and it is true that he hated as only Oriental natures know how to hate, and that a general who never fell short of money and stores can hardly have been other than covetous. But though anger and envy and meanness have written his history, they have not been able to mar the pure and noble image which it presents. Laying aside wretched inventions which furnish their own refutation, and some things which his lieutenants, particularly Hannibal Monomachus and Mago the Sammite, were guilty of doing in his name, nothing occurs in the accounts regarding him which may not be justified under the circumstances, and according to the international law, of the times; and all agree in this, that he combined in rare perfection discretion and enthusiasm, caution and energy. He was peculiarly marked by that inventive craftiness, which forms one of the leading traits of the Phoenician character; he was fond of taking singular and unexpected routes; ambushes and stratagems of all sorts were familiar to him; and he studied the character of his antagonists with unprecedented care. By an unrivaled system of espionage--he had regular spies even in Rome--he kept himself informed of the projects of the enemy; he himself was frequently seen wearing disguises and false hair, in order to procure information on some point or other. Every page of the history of this period attests his genius in strategy; and his gifts as a statesman were, after the peace with Rome, no less conspicuously displayed in his reform of the Carthaginian constitution, and in the unparalleled influence which as a foreign exile he exercised in the cabinets of the eastern powers. The power which he wielded over men is shown by his incomparable control over an army of various nations and many tongues--an army which never in the worst times mutinied against him. He was a great man; wherever he went, he riveted the eyes of all.”

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

The History of Rome, Volume 2 Translated by W.P. Dickson
On Hannibal the man and soldier
The History of Rome - Volume 2

Life, Men, Money, Hate

“A critical aspect of the operation of the New Deal system was the long history of incremental change and resistance to more fundamental modification. This incremental adjustment orientation was apparent in government policy, managerial practice, and union bargaining objectives.”

Thomas A. Kochan (1947) American academic

Source: The transformation of American industrial relations, 1986, p. 45

History, Change

“I believe that freedom is not a constant attribute that "we have" or "we don’t have"; perhaps there is only one reality: the act of liberating ourselves in the process of using choices. Every step in life that heightens the maturity of man heightens his ability to choose the freeing alternative.
I believe that "freedom of choice" is not always equal for all men at every moment. The man with an exclusively necrophilic orientation; who is narcissistic; or who is symbiotic-incestuous, can only make a regressive choice. The free man, freed from irrational ties, can no longer make a regressive choice.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Credo (1965)

Life, Men, Reality, Freedom

“Whereas object-oriented analysis typically focuses upon one specific problem at a time, domain analysis seeks to identify the classes and objects that are common to all applications within a given domain, such as missile avionics systems, compilers, or accounting software.”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

Source: Object-oriented design: With Applications, (1991), p. 142

Problem, Time

“On the third floor of Manning's Coffee Shop in the Farmer's Market in Seattle confronting the Sound, the windows are opaque with fog. Sitting here in the long deserted room, I feel suspended enveloped by a white silence. Two floors below, the farmers are bending over their long rows of fruit and vegetables; washing and arranging their produce under intense lights shaded by circular green shades. Above, where I sit, the world seems obliterated from all save memory; abstracted without the feeling of being divorced from one’s roots. My eye keeps focusing upon the opaque windows [an equivalent of the picture plane]. Suddenly the vision is disturbed by the shape of a gull floating silently across the width of the window, a line of movement drawn across the picture surface. Then space again. In opposing lines to the gull's flight, the Sound moves northward through the Inland Passage... It is true that trains run daily out of Seattle to points East and South, but my mind takes but little cognizance of this fact. To me Seattle seems pocketed. There is only one way out: Alaska, toward the North! Swerving to the South, there is the Orient, although in San Francisco I feel the Orient rolling in with its tides. My imagination, it would seem, has its own geography.”

Mark Tobey (1890–1976) American abstract expressionist painter

Source: 1950's, In: Reminiscence and Reverie, 1951, pp. 45, 46

World, Way, Feeling, Imagination

“Hail, gentle Dawn! mild blushing goddess, hail!
Rejoic'd I see thy purple mantle spread
O'er half the skies, gems pave thy radiant way,
And orient pearls from ev'ry shrub depend.”

William Somervile (1675–1742) English poet

Bk. II, line 79.
The Chace (1735)

Way, Dependency

“Humans in modern societies are driven by a perhaps desperate hope that they might find some way of mobilizing their theoretical and empirical knowledge and their evaluative systems so as both to locate themselves and their projects in some larger imaginative structure that makes sense to them. … Furthermore, many modern agents would like it to be the case that the form of orientation which their life has is, if not true, at least compatible with the best available knowledge.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Philosophy and Real Politics (2008).
Philosophy and Real Politics (2008)

Life, Hope, Way, Imagination

“The experimental psychologist… needs historical sophistication within his own sphere of expertness. Without such knowledge he sees the present in distorted perspective, he mistakes old facts and old views for new, and he remains unable to evaluate the significance of new movements and methods. In this matter I can hardly state my faith too strongly. A psychological sophistication that contains no component of historical orientation seems to me to be no sophistication at all.”

Edwin Boring (1886–1968) American psychologist

Source: A History of Experimental Psychology, 1929, p. ix; As cited in: Baldwin R. Hergenhahn (2008). An Introduction to the History of Psychology. p. 5

Faith, Knowledge

“As a moral guide, [the Bible] utterly fails, because much of the original Hebrew scriptures were written by ignorant and bigoted savages who condoned and promoted animal cruelty, incest, slavery, abuse of slaves, spousal abuse, child abuse, child molestation, abortion, pillage, murder, cannibalism, genocide, and prejudice against race, nationality, religion, sex, and sexual orientation.”

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

"2nd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFrkjEgUDZA&list=PL126AFB53A6F002CC&index=2, Youtube (November 24, 2007) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Religion, Sex, Animals

“… the mighty Knight who set sail in the most western part of Europe and there in the Orient (where the infant Sun gives its first light) set the standard of the Holy Escutcheons. He punished the evil tyrant and won the city of the Golden Kingdom of Malaya through his strength and skill, and with pious example transformed the profane mosque into a sacred temple. …The time is coming, King Afonso VI, when holy Zion will have its freedom through you. And the Monarchy, consecrated by Heaven for eternity, that well-born plant which flowering will give fruit to Christendom, the theme of a thousand swans, singing about you as they immortalize themselves with you. Titus avenged the unjust death of Christ by the total destruction of Jerusalem; and God has chosen you to whom he gave an unconquerable heart to be the Avenger of His Faith. Take up the staff, then, when Heaven bids you march against the false worship of the Muslims, a worthy enterprise for your courage.”

Francisco de Sá de Meneses (1600–1664) Portuguese poet

. . . . . . o grande Cavaleiro, Que ao vento velas deu na ocídua parte, E lá, onde infante o Sol dá luz primeiro, Fixou das Quinas santas o Estandarte. E com afronta do infernal guerreiro, (Mercê do Céu) ganhou por força, e arte O áureo Reino, e trocou com pio exemplo A profana mesquita em sacro templo. * * * * O tempo chega, Afonso, em que a santa Sião terá por vós a liberdade, A Monarquia, que hoje o Céu levanta, Devoto consagrando à eternidade. Ó bem nascida generosa planta, Que em flor fruto há-de dar à Cristandade, E matéria a mil cisnes, que, cantando De vós, se irão convosco eternizando.De Cristo a injusta morte vingou Tito Na de Jerusalém total ruína: E a vós, a quem Deus deu um peito invito, Ser vingador de sua Fé destina. Extinguir do Agareno o falso rito É de vosso valor a empresa dina: Tomai pois o bastão da empresa grande Para o tempo que o Céu marchar vos mande. Malaca Conquistada pelo grande Afonso de Albuquerque (1634) — quoted in The Commentaries of the Great Afonso Dalboquerque, Vol. III (London, 1880) https://archive.org/stream/no62works01hakluoft#page/n13/mode/2up, and translated by Edgar C. Knowlton Jr. http://www.sabrizain.org/malaya/library/conquestofmalacca.pdf

Death, God, Faith, Flowers

“Of the various plastic orientations developed over the past twenty-five years, abstract art is the most important, the most interesting... It is an extreme state which only a few creators and admirers are capable of achieving. The danger of this formula lies in the very elevation of its intention. Modelings, contrasts, objects have disappeared, leaving only very pure, very precise relations, and a few colors, a few lines; blank spaces, without depth. Add to this a respect for the vertical plane – thin, rigid, sharp. It is a true, incorruptible purism.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote, 1945 of Fernand Leger, in Abstract Painting, Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co., 1964, p. 33
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1940's

Art, Color, Past

“Amedahad being inhabited also by a great number of heathens, there are Pagods, or Idol-Temples it it. That which was called the Pagod of Santidas was the chief, before King Auranzeb converted it into a Mosque. When he performed that ceremony, he caused a cow to be killed in the place, knowing very well, that after such an action, the Gentiles according to their Law, could worship no more therein. All round the temple there is a cloyster furnished with lovely Cells, beautified with Figures of Marble in relief, representing naked Women sitting after the Oriental fashion. The inside Roof of the Mosque is pretty enough, and the Walls are full of the Figures of Men and Beasts; but Auranzeb, who hath always made a show of an affected Devotion, which at length raised him to the Throne, caused the Noses of all these Figures which added a great deal of Magnificence to that Mosque, to be beat off.”

Shantidas Jhaveri (1580–1659) Indian jewellery and bullion trader during Mughal era

Description of the temple built by Shantidas Jhaveri. Indian Records Series Indian Travels Of Thevenot And Careri https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.210583/2015.210583.Indian-Records_djvu.txt Cited in Harsh Narain, The Ayodhya Temple Mosque Dispute: Focus on Muslim Sources, Appendix VI

Love, Women, Men, Law

“Each of the most basic physical laws that we know corresponds to some invariance, which in turn is equivalent to a collection of changes which form a symmetry group. …whilst leaving some underlying theme unchanged. …for example, the conservation of energy is equivalent to the invariance of the laws of motion with respect to translations backwards or forwards in time… the conservation of linear momentum is equivalent to the invariance of the laws of motion with respect to the position of your laboratory in space, and the conservation of angular momentum to an invariance with respect to directional orientation… discovery of conservation laws indicated that Nature possessed built-in sustaining principles which prevented the world from just ceasing to be. There were fewer roles for the Deity to play…”

John D. Barrow (1952–2020) British scientist

New Theories of Everything (2007)

World, Law, Nature, Change

“Gradually I began to intellectually reject some of the delusionally influenced lines of thinking which had been characteristic of my orientation. This began, most recognizably, with the rejection of politically-oriented thinking as essentially a hopeless waste of intellectual effort.”

John Nash (1928–2015) American mathematician and Nobel Prize laureate

Autobiographical essay (1994)

Thinking, Effort

“The sign work of the Orient it runneth up and down;
The Talmud stalks from right to left, a rabbi in a gown;”

Nathalia Crane (1913–1998) American writer

"The Symbols"
The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)
Context: p>The sign work of the Orient it runneth up and down;
The Talmud stalks from right to left, a rabbi in a gown;The Roman rolls from left to right from Maytime unto May;
But the gods shake up their symbols in an absent-minded way.Their language runs to circles like the language of the eyes,
Emphasised by strange dilations with little panting sighs.</p

“Natural work democracy is politically neither "left" nor "right." It embraces anyone who does vital work; for this reason, its orientation is only and alone forward.”

Wilhelm Reich book The Mass Psychology of Fascism

Section 1 : Give Responsibility to Vitally Necessary Work!
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 10 : Work Democracy
Context: Natural work democracy is politically neither "left" nor "right." It embraces anyone who does vital work; for this reason, its orientation is only and alone forward. It has no inherent intention of being against ideologies, including political ideologies. On the other hand, if it is to function, it will be forced to take a firm stand, on a factual basis, against any ideology or political party which puts irrational obstacles in its path. Yet, basically, work democracy is not "against," as is the rule with politics, but "for"; for the formulation and solution of concrete tasks.

Democracy, Nature

“They are quite sincere but they are not critical enough. Biochemists and biologists who adhere blindly to the Darwinism theory search for results that will be in agreement with their theories and consequently orient their research in a given direction,”

Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985) French zoologist

Grassé, Pierre Paul (1977); Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation. Academic Press, p. 7
Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation (1977)
Context: For those who would still doubt the relevance of our criticisms, another quote from a paper written by two American biologists, King and Jukes (1969), is presented:. These biologists are convinced that the Darwinian credo is correct, and they accept it. They are quite sincere but they are not critical enough. Biochemists and biologists who adhere blindly to the Darwinism theory search for results that will be in agreement with their theories and consequently orient their research in a given direction, whether it be in the field of ecology, ethology, sociology, demography (dynamics of populations), genetics (so-called evolutionary genetics), or paleontology. This intrusion of theories has unfortunate results: it deprives observations and experiments of their objectivity, makes them biased, and, moreover, creates false problems. Heedful of genetics and demography, Darwinians have seldom taken fossils* into consideration, or, and this is more serious, they have applied the laws of genetics to them without making a critical analysis; considering our ignorance of the relationships between fossils, which in most cases are found very far apart and in distinct beds, this approach can only be arbitrary.

Search, Sincerity

“Now it is symptomatic of our rusty-beer-can type of sanity that our culture produces very few magical objects. Jewelry is slick and uninteresting. Architecture is almost totally bereft of exuberance, obsessed with erecting glass boxes. Children's books are written by serious ladies with three names and no imagination, and as for comics, have you ever looked at the furniture in Dagwood's home? The potentially magical ceremonies of the Catholic Church are either gabbled away at top speed, or rationalized with the aid of a commentator. Drama or ritual in everyday behavior is considered affectation and bad form, and manners have become indistinguishable from manerisms—where they exist at all. We produce nothing comparable to the great Oriental carpets, Persian glass, tiles, and illuminated books, Arabian leatherwork, Spanish marquetry, Hindu textiles, Chinese porcelain and embroidery, Japanese lacquer and brocade, French tapestries, or Inca jewelry. (Though, incidentally, there are certain rather small electronic devices that come unwittingly close to fine jewels.)
The reason is not just that we are too much in a hurry and have no sense of the present; not just that we cannot afford the type of labor that such things would now involve, nor just that we prefer money to materials. The reason is that we have scrubbed the world clean of magic. We have lost even the vision of paradise, so that our artists and craftsmen can no longer discern its forms. This is the price that must be paid for attempting to control the world from the standpoint of an "I" for whom everything that can be experienced is a foreign object and a nothing-but.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 84-85

Money, Children, Books, World

“Philosophy is explicitness, generality, orientation and assessment.”

Ernest Gellner (1925–1995) Czech anthropologist, philosopher and sociologist

Source: Words and Things (1959), p. 265
Context: Philosophy is explicitness, generality, orientation and assessment. That which one would insinuate, thereof one must speak.

“We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: Man’s Search for Himself (1953), p. 180
Context: We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for.

Life, Religion

“Humans need stories — grand compelling stories — that help to orient us in our lives in the cosmos. The Epic of Evolution is such a story, beautifully suited to anchor our search for planetary consensus, telling us of our nature, our place, our context.”

Ursula Goodenough book The Sacred Depths of Nature

Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998), p. 174
Context: Humans need stories — grand compelling stories — that help to orient us in our lives in the cosmos. The Epic of Evolution is such a story, beautifully suited to anchor our search for planetary consensus, telling us of our nature, our place, our context. Moreover, responses to this story — what we are calling religious naturalism — can yield deep and abiding spiritual experiences. And then, after that, we need other stories as well, human-centered stories, a mythos that embodies our ideals and our passions. This mythos comes to us, often in experiences called revelation, from the sages and the artists of past and present times.

Search, Nature, Help

“It is true that the chimpanzee is dominance-oriented, violent, territorial. But it's also cooperative in many ways, and so that side is sometimes forgotten. The bonobo is sensual, sensitive, sexual, a peacemaker, but also can have a nasty side, and that's sometimes forgotten.”

Frans de Waal (1948) Dutch primatologist and ethologist

The Bonobo in All of Us (2007)
Context: It is true that the chimpanzee is dominance-oriented, violent, territorial. But it's also cooperative in many ways, and so that side is sometimes forgotten. The bonobo is sensual, sensitive, sexual, a peacemaker, but also can have a nasty side, and that's sometimes forgotten. So both species are sort of the ends of the spectrum, and we fall somewhere in between. Clearly, we have both of these sides in us, and that's why I sometimes call us "the bipolar apes."

Way

“All knowledge is oriented toward some object and is influenced in its approach by the nature of the object with which it is pre-occupied. But the mode of approach to the object to be known is dependent upon the nature of the knower.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)
Context: This first non-evaluative insight into history does not inevitably lead to relativism, but rather to relationism. Knowledge, as seen in the light of the total conception of ideology, is by no means an illusory experience, for ideology in its relational concept is not at all identical with illusion. Knowledge arising out of our experience in actual life situations, though not absolute, is knowledge none the less. The norms arising out of such actual life situations do not exist in a social vacuum, but are effective as real sanctions for conduct. Relationism signifies merely that all of the elements of meaning in a given situation have reference to one another and derive their significance from this reciprocal interrelationship in a given frame of thought. Such a system of meanings is possible and valid only in a given type of historical existence, to which, for a time, it furnishes appropriate expression. When the social situation changes, the system of norms to which it had previously given birth ceases to be in harmony with it. The same estrangement goes on with reference to knowledge and to the historical perspective. All knowledge is oriented toward some object and is influenced in its approach by the nature of the object with which it is pre-occupied. But the mode of approach to the object to be known is dependent upon the nature of the knower.

Nature, Knowledge, Dependency

“Grace is everywhere as an active orientation of all created reality toward God, though God does not owe it to any creature to give it this special orientation.”

Karl Rahner (1904–1984) German Catholic theologian

Meditations on the Sacraments (1977), Introduction, p. xi.
Context: Grace is everywhere as an active orientation of all created reality toward God, though God does not owe it to any creature to give it this special orientation. Grace does not happen in isolated instances here and there in an otherwise profane and graceless world. It is legitimate, of course, to speak of grace-events which occur at discrete points in space and time. But then what we are really talking about is the existential and historical acceptance of this grace by human freedom. … Grace itself … is everywhere and always, even though a human being's freedom can sinfully say no to it, just as a human being's freedoms can protest against humankind itself. This immanence of grace in the conscious world always and everywhere does not take away the gratuity of grace, because God's immediacy out of self-giving love is not something anyone can claim as his or her due. The immanence of grace always and everywhere does not make salvation history cease to be history, because history is the acceptance of grace by the historical freedom of human beings and the history of spirit coming ever more to itself in grace.

God, Reality

“The surrealists have set up non-oriented thought as a model; they have chosen the total absence of value as their supreme value.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

“The responsibility of writers,” p. 167
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)
Context: Dadaism and surrealism … represented the intoxication of total license, the intoxication in which the mind wallows when it has made a clean sweep of value and surrendered to the immediate. The good is the pole towards which the human spirit is necessarily oriented, not only in action but in every effort, including the effort of pure intelligence. The surrealists have set up non-oriented thought as a model; they have chosen the total absence of value as their supreme value. Men have always been intoxicated by license, which is why, throughout history, towns have been sacked. But there has not always been a literary equivalent for the sacking of towns. Surrealism is such an equivalent.

“The hour is come, the world's unclosing eyes
Discern with rapture where its wisdom lies;
From western heav'ns th' inverted Orient springs,
The morn of man, the dreadful night of kings.”

Joel Barlow (1754–1812) American diplomat

The Conspiracy of Kings (1792)
Context: Once draw the sword; its burning point shall bring
To thy quick nerves a never-ending sting;
The blood they shed thy weight of wo shall swell,
And their grim ghosts for ever with thee dwell. Learn hence, ye tyrants, ere ye learn too late,
Of all your craft th' inevitable fate.
The hour is come, the world's unclosing eyes
Discern with rapture where its wisdom lies;
From western heav'ns th' inverted Orient springs,
The morn of man, the dreadful night of kings.
Dim, like the day-struck owl, ye grope in light,
No arm for combat, no resource in sight;
If on your guards your lingering hopes repose,
Your guards are men, and men you've made your foes;
If to your rocky ramparts ye repair,
De Launay's fate can tell your fortune there.
No turn, no shift, no courtly arts avail,
Each mask is broken, all illusions fail;
Driv'n to your last retreat of shame and fear,
One counsel waits you, one relief is near :
By worth internal, rise to self-wrought fame,
Your equal rank, your human kindred claim;
'Tis Reason's choice, 'tis Wisdom's final plan,
To drop the monarch and assume the man.

Wisdom, World, Spring, Night

“Man has historically devoted much more subtle and ingenious thought to inflicting cruelty than to giving others pleasure — which, given his gregarious nature, would seem a much more survival-oriented behavior.”

Spider Robinson (1948) Canadian author

God Is An Iron (1977)
Context: Man has historically devoted much more subtle and ingenious thought to inflicting cruelty than to giving others pleasure — which, given his gregarious nature, would seem a much more survival-oriented behavior. Poll any hundred people at random and you'll find at least twenty or thirty who know all there is to know about psychological torture and psychic castration — and maybe two who know how to give a terrific back-rub.

Pleasure, Behavior, Nature

“Orientalism is reproduced in the name of a critique of Orientalism. It is completely irrelevant whether one uses a Marx, a Weber or a Max Müller to do so. (…) the result is the same: uninteresting trivia, as far as the growth of human knowledge is concerned; but pernicious in its effect as far as Indian intellectuals are concerned.”

S. N. Balagangadhara (1952) Indian philosopher

quoted from Koenraad Elst, On Modi Time : Merits And Flaws of Hindu Activism In Its Day Of Incumbency – 2015. Ch. 3. The Lost Honour of India Studies

Knowledge

“A universal spiritual art would be art that any person would recognize as having a spiritual intention. It could speak to the heart and soul of the individual and orient them toward the greater aspect of their own being, their interconnectedness with all life and the cosmos. A universal spiritual art would return the viewer to their own ultimate identity, which lies beyond representation, but can be pointed to when our inspired visions are brilliantly transmitted. The challenge to artists today is to integrate the vast history of art from as many cultures as possible, to reach deep inside themselves for their own personal insights into the transcendental and allow this to coalesce into the most powerful imagery possible.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

High Times interview (2002)

Soul, History, Personality, Heart

Quotes about orientation page 4

Quotes about orientation
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