Quotes about standardization
page 9

George W. Bush photo

“As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured.”

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

In speech http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2623880720070926 to schoolchildren in New York City, urging Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, (September 26, 2007) Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ej7ZEnjSeA&feature=related
2000s, 2007

Kevin Kelly photo

“Eventually technical standards will become as important as laws.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

“Let us think of standards as a way to move from publication to innovation, to move from trying to increase a meaningless impact factor to actually having an impact and fostering new ideas that people can build upon.”

Bush, Stephen F., Keynote Speech, First IEEE International Conference on Communications 2012 Workshop on Telecommunications: From Research to Standards July 18, 2012.

Beck photo
Thomas Kuhn photo
Jerry Coyne photo
Benjamin N. Cardozo photo

“Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

Meinhard v. Salmon, 249 N.Y. 458, 164 N.E. 545 (N.Y. 1928), describing the fiduciary duties inherent in a partnership.
Judicial opinions

Karl Freund photo
Desmond Tutu photo

“Whether Jews like it or not, they are a peculiar people. They can't ever hope to be judged by the same standards which are used for other people.”

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

As quoted in http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Nobel-winners-problem-with-a-peculiar-people-and-Israel (June 2, 2012)

Hatshepsut photo
A. James Gregor photo
Samuel Gompers photo
Arun Shourie photo

“I have hated every Kress I read, especially this one, but the Bear is a standard Bear and if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[at2mut$at9$1@panix1.panix.com, 2002]
Compare "People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like." (attributed to w:Abraham Lincoln).
2000s

Karl Polanyi photo
Herbert Marcuse photo
Charles Bukowski photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

The New York Times Magazine (9 October 1960)

José Ortega Y Gasset photo
Joseph Chamberlain photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Theodor Mommsen photo

“This (The launching of an invasion into Armenia) was itself hazardous; but the smallness of the number (of the army, not more than 15,000 men) might be in some degree compensated by the tried valour of the army consisting throughout of veterans. A much worse circumstance was the temper of the soldiers, to which Lucullus, in his high aristocratic fashion, had given far too little heed. Lucullus was an able general, and - according to the aristocratic standard - an upright and benevolent man, but very far from being a favorite with his soldiers. He was unpopular, as a decided adherent of the oligarghy; unpopular, because he had vigorously checked the monstrous usury of the Roman capitalists in Asia Minor; unpopular, on account of the toils and fatigues which he inflicted on his troops; unpopular, because he demanded strict discipline in his soldiers and prevented as far as possible the pillage of the Greek towns by his men, but withal caused many a waggon and many a camel to be alden with the treasures of the East for himself; unpopular too on account of his manner, which was polished, stately, Hellenising, not at all familiar, and inclining, wherever it was possible, to ease and pleasure. There was no trace in him of the charm which creates a personal bond between the general and the soldier.”

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

Vol. 4, Pt. 1, Chpt 2. "Rule of the Sullan Restoration" Translated by W.P. Dickson
Beginning of the Armenian War
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

Barry Eichengreen photo
Mahmud of Ghazni photo

“The Sultan, contrary to the disposition of man, which induces him to prefer a soft to a hard couch, and the splendour of the cheeks of pomegranate-bosomed girls to well-tempered sword blades, was so offended at the standard which Satan had raised in Hind, that he determined on another holy expedition to that land.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 33 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi

Ken Livingstone photo

“Oliver Finegold: Mr Livingstone, Evening Standard. How did it…
Ken Livingstone: Oh, how awful for you.
Finegold: How did tonight go?
Livingstone: Have you thought of having treatment?
Finegold: How did tonight go?
Livingstone: Have you thought of having treatment?
Finegold: Was it a good party? What does it mean for you?
Livingstone: What did you do before? Were you a German war criminal?
Finegold: No, I'm Jewish. I wasn't a German war criminal.
Livingstone: Ah … right.
Finegold: I'm actually quite offended by that. So, how did tonight go?
Livingstone: Well you might be, but actually you are just like a concentration camp guard. You're just doing it 'cause you're paid to, aren't you?
Finegold: Great. I've you on record for that. So how did tonight go?
Livingstone: It's nothing to do with you because your paper is a load of scumbags.
Finegold: "How did tonight go?"
Livingstone: It's reactionary bigots…
Finegold: I'm a journalist. I'm doing my job.
Livingstone: … and who supported fascism.
Finegold: I'm only asking for a simple comment. I'm only asking for a comment.
Livingstone: Well, work for a paper that isn't…
Finegold: I'm only asking for a comment.
Livingstone: … that had a record of supporting fascism.
Finegold: You've accused me…”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Exchange with Evening Standard reporter Oliver Finegold (8 February 2005). These remarks led to an official investigation into Livingstone's conduct. Transcript from Guardian Unlimited http://politics.guardian.co.uk/gla/story/0,,1717652,00.html

Alexandra Kollontai photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50 thousand years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward — and so will space.”

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

Source: 1962, Rice University speech

George F. Kennan photo

“We must be very careful when we speak of exercising "leadership" in Asia. We are deceiving ourselves and others when we pretend to have answers to the problems, which agitate many of these Asiatic peoples. Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction…
In the face of this situation we would be better off to dispense now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the aspiration to 'be liked' or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague — and for the Far East — unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”

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

VII. Far East
Memo PPS23 (1948)

Clement Attlee photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Henry Adams photo

“As a type for study, or a standard for education, Lodge was the more interesting of the two. Roosevelts are born and never can be taught; but Lodge was a creature of teaching — Boston incarnate — the child of his local parentage; and while his ambition led him to be more, the intent, though virtuous, was — as Adams admitted in his own case — restless. An excellent talker, a voracious reader, a ready wit, an accomplished orator, with a clear mind and a powerful memory, he could never feel perfectly at ease whatever leg he stood on, but shifted, sometimes with painful strain of temper, from one sensitive muscle to another, uncertain whether to pose as an uncompromising Yankee; or a pure American; or a patriot in the still purer atmosphere of Irish, Germans, or Jews; or a scholar and historian of Harvard College. English to the last fibre of his thought — saturated with English literature, English tradition, English taste — revolted by every vice and by most virtues of Frenchmen and Germans, or any other Continental standards, but at home and happy among the vices and extravagances of Shakespeare — standing first on the social, then on the political foot; now worshipping, now banning; shocked by the wanton display of immorality, but practicing the license of political usage; sometimes bitter, often genial, always intelligent — Lodge had the singular merit of interesting. The usual statesmen flocked in swarms like crows, black and monotonous. Lodge's plumage was varied, and, like his flight, harked back to race. He betrayed the consciousness that he and his people had a past, if they dared but avow it, and might have a future, if they could but divine it.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Calvin Coolidge photo
Ludwig Klages photo
Buckminster Fuller photo

“We can now take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever known. It does not have to be “you or me,” so selfishness is unnecessary and war is obsolete. This has never been done before.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Norie Huddle interview (1981)
Context: Neither the great political or financial powers of the world nor the population in general realize that the engineering-chemical-electronic revolution now makes it possible to produce many more technical devices with ever less material. We can now take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever known. It does not have to be “you or me,” so selfishness is unnecessary and war is obsolete. This has never been done before. Only twelve years ago technology reached the point where this could be done. Since then it has made it ever so much easier to do.

Karen Horney photo
Bernie Sanders photo
Wilfred Thesiger photo
Ann Coulter photo

“The only standard journalists respect is: Will this story promote the left-wing agenda?”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2004, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) (2004)

Glenn Beck photo

“…I said yesterday on Fox & Friends, I think the president is a racist, I think he has race issues. Don't know if he hates white people, but there's something going on with the president. Well, I stand by that. And I deem him a racist based on really his own standard of racism, the standard of the left.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2009-07-29
Beck "stands by" Fox & Friends remarks that "I think the president is a racist"
Media Matters for America
2009-07-29
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200907290012
2000s, 2009

Naomi Klein photo
Henry Blodget photo
Paul Krugman photo
Bill O'Reilly photo

“America today is a confused society, caught up in a terror war, a culture war, and a media war, where honesty and professional standards have vanished.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2007-03-23
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television

Dana Gioia photo
Thomas Kuhn photo
Ellen Page photo
Ellen G. White photo

“God has set up a high standard of righteousness. He has made plain a distinction between human and divine wisdom. All who work on Christ's side must work to save, not to destroy.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Medical Ministry (1932), p. 133

Samuel Rogers photo

“Lo, steel-clad War his gorgeous standard rears!
The red-cross squadrons madly rage,
And mow thro' infancy and age”

Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) British poet

III.2. l. 1-3.
Ode to Superstition (1786)

Frederic William Farrar photo
Hans Freudenthal photo

“No statistician present at this moment will have been in doubt about the meaning of my words when I mentioned the common statistical model. It must be a stochastic device producing random results. Tossing coins or a dice or playing at cards are not flexible enough. The most general chance instrument is the urn filled with balls of different colours or with tickets bearing some ciphers or letters. This model is continuously used in our courses as a didactic tool, and in our statistical analyses as a means of translating realistic problems into mathematical ones. In statistical language " urn model " is a standard expression.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Source: The Concept and the Role of the Model in Mathematics and Natural and Social Sciences (1961), p. 79; Partly cited in: Norman L. Johnson and Samuel Kotz (1977) Urn Models and Their Application: an. Approach to Modern Discrete Probability Theory http://dis.unal.edu.co/~gjhernandezp/sim/hide/Urn%20Models%20and%20Their%20Application%20-%20An%20approach%20to%20modern%20discrete%20probability%20theory_Norman%20L.Johnson(Wiley%201977%20413s).pdf, John Wiley & Sons.

Ron Paul photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
George W. Bush photo
Northrop Frye photo

“Yesterday's kook book becomes tomorrow's standard text.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

2:495
"Quotes", Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2002)

Susie Bright photo
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo
Norbert Wiener photo

“The odors perceived by the ant seem to lead to a highly standardized course of conduct; but the value of a simple stimulus, such as an odor, for conveying information depends not only on the information conveyed by the stimulus itself but on the whole nervous constitution of the sender and receiver of the stimulus as well. Suppose I find myself in the woods with an intelligent savage who cannot speak my language and whose language I cannot speak. Even without any code of sign language common to the two of us, I can learn a great deal from him. All I need to do is to be alert to those moments when he shows the signs of emotion or interest. I then cast my eyes around, perhaps paying special attention to the direction of his glance, and fix in my memory what I see or hear. It will not be long before I discover the things which seem important to him, not because he has communicated them to me by language, but because I myself have observed them. In other words, a signal without an intrinsic content may acquire meaning in his mind by what he observes at the time, and may acquire meaning in my mind by what I observed at the time. The ability that he has to pick out the moments of my special, active attention is in itself a language as varied in possibilities as the range of impressions that the two of us are able to encompass. Thus social animals may have an active, intelligent, flexible means of communication long before the development of language.”

VIII. Information, Language, and Society. p. 157.
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)

James Fallows photo
Frances Kellor photo
Ray Comfort photo
Hyman George Rickover photo
Sun Myung Moon photo
Nathan Deal photo
Kurt Lewin photo
Gunnar Myrdal photo
Peter Woit photo

“We have an incredibly successful theory called the Standard Model. … It still leaves open several questions.”

Peter Woit (1957) American physicist

[Big Think Interview with Peter Woit, 23 April 2012, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnWjZCS9YVY] (See Big Think.)

Anna Yesipova photo
Garry Kasparov photo

“The leaders of the free world keep lowering their standards and authoritarians keep taking more territory. Eventually people wake up and ask why Putin murders in the UK or hacks in the US. Why wouldn’t he? You didn’t stop him before.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

As quoted in "Is Putin Popular?" https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/is-putin-popular-c/ (2018), by Jay Nordlinger, National Review
2010s

Kathleen Hanna photo

“Because we don't wanna assimilate to someone else's (boy) standards of what is or isn't.”

Kathleen Hanna (1968) American musician and feminist activist

As quoted in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, Paul Du Noyer, ed. (2003).
On riot grrrl

Stanley Baldwin photo
Thorstein Veblen photo

“Mathematicians themselves set up standards of generality and elegance in their exposition which are a bar to understand.”

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

Source: 1940s, Economic Analysis, 1941, p. 236 (rev. ed. 1948) cited in: G.C. Harcourt, C. Sardoni (1992) On Political Economists and Modern Political Economy. Vol 4. p. 197

Jozef Israëls photo

“As the paintings the 'Night Watch' and the 'Staalmeesters' [famous works of Rembrandt ] are showed now it is clear to everyone that they have searched but, indeed messed with it, to enable these paintings to do what they can do [visually]. But you see, they did not find a good solution just because they appreciated the museum itself [a rather new building, then! ] higher than the paintings themselves. I told at the very first opening of the Rijksmuseum [1885] already everyone who wanted to listen to me: in this room, where the Night Watch' is hanging now, it can never comes to its full right…. There must be built for the 'Night Watch' and for the 'Staalmeesters' a separate room each…. [with] standing light and the paintings positioned on an easel or standard behind…. I just want to add here, that my own studio can serve as a very special model…. concerning the sizes and the lighting.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

Quote from Israëls' letter to the Dutch Minister S. van Houten, 4 Nov. 1894; as cited in In het Rijksmuseum, Jan Veth (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek); Holkema's Boekhandel http://docplayer.nl/42488824-In-het-rijksmuseum-door-jan-veth-met-twee-brieven-van-jozef-israels-holkema-s-boekhandel-i-4-november-mdcccxciv.html, Amsterdam, 1894, p. 10
During Israel's whole artistic life Rembrandt was his inspiration and had a strong impact on his own painting-style
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1871 - 1900

Katherine Heigl photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Max Horkheimer photo
George Galloway photo

“Pipe down Mr Indignation. We'll see what the viewers thought of your double standards, your indignation about me and the aplomb with which you become a lying plutocrat in your gentleman's club.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

Anita Singh, " Galloway falls out with Big Brother housemates http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article718676.ece", The Times, January 24, 2006
Referring to fellow housemate Samuel Preston while in the Celebrity Big Brother 2006 house.

Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon photo
William F. Buckley Jr. photo

“Sitting in a metropolis like Delhi, it’s easy to pass a judgement that laws are being misused. But we should look at the larger reality where the laws are yet to reach the minimum standards of use.”

Flavia Agnes (1947) Indian activist and lawyer

On the claim that India's anti-dowry laws are being misused, as quoted " Women mis(using) laws to get even? http://www.tribuneindia.com/1999/99oct19/nation.htm#7" The Tribune (19 October 1999)