Quotes about system
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“GNU, which stands for Gnu's Not Unix, is the name for the complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free to everyone who can use it.
[this document has a footnote mentioning that the word "free" was not used as carefully in this 1985 Manifesto as it should have been]”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)

“The rule systems governing transactions among agents in a defined sphere specify, to a greater or lesser extent, who participates (and who is excluded), who does what, when, where and how, and in relation to whom. ln particular, they define possible rights and obligations, including rules of command and obedience, governing specified categories of actors or roles vis a vis one another. The theory deals with the properties of social rule systems, their role in patterning social life, and the social and political processes whereby such systems are produced, maintained, and transformed as well as implemented in social action and interaction.”

Tom R. Burns (1937) American sociologist

Source: The shaping of social organization (1987), p. 8; Cited in: Carola Aili, Pamela Denicolo, Lars-Erik Nilsson (2008) In Tension Between Organization and Profession. p. 228.

Life

“The basic idea is that cognitive activities are ultimately just activities of the nervous system; and if one wants to understand the activities of the nervous system, then the best way to gain that understanding is to examine the nervous system itself.”

Paul Churchland (1942) Canadian philosopher

Source: Matter and Consciousness, 1984/1988/2013, p. 96; As cited in: Peter Zachar (2000) Psychological Concepts and Biological Psychiatry. p. 132

Way, Idea, Understanding

“A world view is a system of co-ordinates or a frame of reference in which everything presented to us by our diverse experiences can be placed. It is a symbolic system of representation that allows us to integrate everything we know about the world and ourselves into a global picture, one that illuminates reality as it is presented to us within a certain culture.”

Diederik Aerts (1953) Belgian theoretical physicist

Source: World views. From Fragmentation to Integration (1994), p. 8

World, Reality

“Later, in your time, all of you will look down into the physical system like giants peering through small windows at the others now in your position and smile. But you will not want to stay, nor crawl through the same enclosures... We protect such systems. Our basic and ancient knowledge automatically reaches out to nourish all system that grow”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Seth Material (1970), p. 256

Smile, Knowledge, Time

“We were put here as witnesses to the miracle of life. We see the stars, and we want them. We are beholden to give back to the universe…. If we make landfall on another star system, we become immortal.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Speech to National School Board Association (1995)

Life, Star, Universe

“We deserve an immigration system that puts America first, and yes, builds a wall to keep America safe.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

2010s, Speech at the Republican National Convention (July 20, 2016)

“Cellular automata are discrete dynamical systems with simple construction but complex self-organizing behaviour. Evidence is presented that all one-dimensional cellular automata fall into four distinct universality classes. Characterizations of the structures generated in these classes are discussed. Three classes exhibit behaviour analogous to limit points, limit cycles and chaotic attractors. The fourth class is probably capable of universal computation, so that properties of its infinite time behaviour are undecidable.”

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

[10, 1–2, January 1984, 1–35, Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, Universality and complexity in cellular automata, 10.1016/0167-2789(84)90245-8]

Universe, Time

“Primary work systems. These are the systems which carry out the set of' activities involved in an identifiable and bounded subsystem of a whole organization - such as a line department or a service unit…”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981)

“Cooling systems… need only supply a drop of from 10 to 20 degrees below that of the outside temperature. …greater cooling differentials… are a real injury to health.”

Ken Kern American writer

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

Health

“The dominant metaphor of conceptual relativism, that of differing points of view, seems to betray an underlying paradox. Different points of view make sense, but only if there is a common co-ordinate system on which to plot them; yet the existence of a common system belies the claim of dramatic incomparability.”

Donald Davidson (philosopher) (1917–2003) scriitor amator

Donald Davidson. "On the Very Idea," p. 184; as cited in: Johannes Brandl, Wolfgang Leopold Gombocz. The Mind of Donald Davidson. Rodopi, 1989, p. 152

Sense

“The statistical study presented in the following pages may be best defined as an attempt to construct, on the basis of available statistical materials, a Tableau Economique of the United States for 1919 and 1929. One hundred and fifty years ago, when Quesnay first published his famous scheme, his contemporaries and disciples acclaimed it as the greatest discovery since Newton’s laws. The idea of general interdepence among the various part of the economic system has become by now the very foundation of economic analysis. Yet, when it comes to the practical application of this theoretical tool, modern economists must rely exactly as Quesnay did upon fictitious numerical examples.”

Wassily Leontief (1906–1999) Russian economist

Source: Structure of American economy, 1919-1929, 1941, p. 9.

Law, Idea, Study, Parting

“The economy is a nonlinear fractal system, where the smallest scales are linked to the largest, and the decisions of the central bank are affected by the gut instincts of the people on the street.”

David Orrell (1962) Canadian mathematician

Source: The Other Side Of The Coin (2008), Chapter 7, Straight Versus Crooked, p. 229

People, Decision

“I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so — and neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test — even by indirection — for it. If they disagree with that safeguard they should be out openly working to repeal it.”

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

1960, Speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association

“The methods of logical procedure are very different in ancient and modem logic, but behind all difference is the construction of a universally valid order of thought, neutral with respect to material content. Long before technological man and technological nature emerged as the objects of rational control and calculation, the mind was made susceptible to abstract generalization. Terms which could be organized into a coherent logical system, free from contradiction or with manageable contradiction, were separated from those which could not. Distinction was made between the universal, calculable, “objective” and the particular, incalculable, subjective dimension of thought.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 137-138

Nature, Universe

“I have tried to show that psychiatric research can be empirical and experimental, controlled, and operational and not dependent on inferences, analogies, or anecdotes. Hypotheses can be derived which are testable. Theory is a different matter. At the present we rely heavily on psychoanalytic theory or on still poorly formulated and defined general systems theory, information theory, or transactional theory. To explain the depth and variety of the interrelationship of somatopsychosocial facets of the totality of human behavior in process requires a unified theory of human behavior which we have not yet even approached. Integration or synthesis of biological, psychological, and social theory is not enough.”

Roy R. Grinker, Sr. (1900–1993) American psychiatrist and neurologist

Ginker (1964) as cited in: S. Nassir Ghaemi (2009) The Rise and Fall of the Biopsychosocial Model. p. 24

Behavior, Dependency

“In recent weeks, we have taken bold steps to prevent a severe disruption of the American economy, which would have a devastating effect on other economies around the world. We've promoted stability in the markets by preventing the disorderly failure of major companies. The Federal Reserve has injected urgently needed liquidity into the system. And last week, I announced a decisive action by the federal government to address the root cause of much of the instability in our financial markets, by purchasing illiquid assets that are weighing down balance sheets and restricting the flow of credit. I can assure you that my administration and our Congress are working together to quickly pass legislation approving this strategy, and I'm confident we will act in the urgent time frame required.”

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

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

World, Confidence, Failure, Decision

“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”

Mary McCarthy book Memories of a Catholic Girlhood

"To the Reader"
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957)

Happiness, Children, World, History

“We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i. e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against people in general. We do not expect the advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed.
In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, therefore, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

Ch. 4 : Supplementary Explanations by Engels http://www.smirnov.demon.co.uk/socialism/writings/lenin/staterev/ch04.htm The State and Revolution (1917)

Life, People, Communication

“It may hereafter be considered how far the excellent experiments of Count Rumford, which tend very greatly to weaken the evidence of the modern doctrine of heat, may be more or less favourable to one or the other system of light and colours.”

Thomas Young (scientist) (1773–1829) English polymath

"Outlines of Experiments and Inquiries Respecting Sound and Light" (1800)

Light

“Carnap, who has so far probably advanced the work of the Vienna Circle the most towards empiricism, made an attempt to create a constitutive constructive system; in this he distinguished two languages: a ‘monologizing’ (phenomenalist) one and an ‘intersubjective’ (physicalist) one. He tries to deduce the physical one from the phenomenalist.”

Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist

Source: 1930s, "Physicalism" (1931), p. 54

“But the problem is that the boundaries of tax havens themselves can become very blurred. London is an international financial system that sees trillions of dollars from all over the world go through it each year, and that offers the most sought after financial services. This alone would be enough to make this city a desired anchorage for those looking to launder and reinvest unlawful funds. But there is more; besides this, the British capital is at the heart of the world’s most important offshore system.”

Roberto Saviano (1979) Italian journalist, writer and essayist

Dirty Money in London event (2016)

World, Problem, Heart

“Nothing is more characteristic of the Hegelian system of knowledge than the fact that upon its highest pinnacle, where it becomes knowledge of knowledge, i. e. knowledge knowing of itself, it is impossible for it to have any other content but simply the history of philosophy, the account of its continuing self-exposition, in which all individual developments, coming full circle, can only be stages along the road to the absolute philosophy reached in Hegel himself. But that which knowledge is explicitly upon this topmost pinnacle as the history of philosophy, the philosophy completed in Hegel, it is implicitly all along the line: the knowledge of history and the history of knowledge, the history of truth, the history of God, as Hegel was able to say: the philosophy of History. History here has entered so thoroughly into reason, philosophy has so basically become the philosophy of history, that reason, the object of philosophy itself, has become history utterly and completely, that reason cannot understand itself other than a sits own history, and that, from the opposite point of view, it is in a position to recognize itself at once in all history in some stage of its life-process, and also in its entirety, so far as the study permits us to divine the whole. It is a matter of the production of self-movement of the thought-content in the consciousness of the thinking subject. It is not a matter of reproduction! The Hegelian way of looking is the looking of a spectator only in so far as it is in fact in principle and exclusively theory, thinking consciousness. Granting this premise, and setting aside Kierkegaard’s objection that with it the spectator might by chance have forgotten himself, that is the practical reality of his existence, then for Hegel it is also in order (only too much in order!) that the human subject, whilst looking in this manner, stands by no means apart as if it were not concerned. It is in this looking that the something seen is produced. And the thing seen actually has its reality in the fact that it is produced as the thing seen in the looking of the human subject. Man cannot participate more energetically (within the frame-work of theoretical possibility), he cannot be more forcefully transferred from the floor of the theatre on to the stage than in his theory.”

Karl Barth (1886–1968) Swiss Protestant theologian

Karl Barth Protestant Thought From Rousseau to Ritschl, 1952, 1959 p. 284-285
Protestant Thought From Rousseau to Ritschl 1952, 1956

Life, God, Truth, Way

“Companies are in the midst of a revolutionary transformation. Industrial age competition is shifting to information age competition. During the industrial age, from 1850 to about 1975, companies succeeded by how well they could capture the benefits from economies of scale and scope. Technology mattered, but, ultimately, success accrued to companies that could embed the new technology into physical assets that offered efficient, mass production of standard products.
During the industrial age, financial control systems were developed in companies, such as General Motors, DuPont, Matsushita, and General Electric, to facilitate and monitor efficient allocations of financial and physical capital. A summary financial measure such as return-on-capital employed (ROCE) could both direct a company’s internal capital to its most productive use and monitor the efficiency by which operating divisions used financial and physical capital to create value for shareholders.
The emergence of the information era, however, in the last decades of the twentieth century, made obsolete many of the fundamental assumptions of industrial age competition. No longer could companies gain sustainable competitive advantage by merely deploying new technology into physical assets rapidly, and by excellent management of financial assets and liabilities.”

David P. Norton (1941) American business theorist, business executive and management consultant

Source: The Balanced Scorecard, 1996, p. 2-3

Age, Success

“As control engineers and scientists, we have greatly altered the way people and nations live and interact with one another. We have helped to create a world in which people live longer, enjoy better health, are better educated, and can travel and communicate over greater distances. But the systems that provide these better lives are fragile systems subject to unpredictable failures and possible destruction. We have also helped to create a world in which international relations are such that the very civilizations we have helped to build over centuries can be destroyed in a matter of hours.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Harold Chestnut (1986) " Applications of Control Principles to International Relations http://www.ieeecss.org/CSM/library/1986/dec1986/w13-14.pdf" In: IEEE Control Systems Magazine, Vol.6, No. 6, Dec. 1986. pp. 13-14

People, Health, World, Education

“Pure mathematics is a collection of hypothetical, deductive theories, each consisting of a definite system of primitive, undefined, concepts or symbols and primitive, unproved, but self-consistent assumptions (commonly called axioms) together with their logically deducible consequences following by rigidly deductive processes without appeal to intuition.”

Joshua Girling Fitch (1824–1903) British educationalist

The Fourth Dimension simply Explained. (New York, 1910), p. 58. Reported in Moritz (1914); Also cited in: Howard Eves (2012), Foundations and Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics, p. 167

Mathematics

“Our primary concern has been U. S. global policy and propaganda, and the filtering and distorting effect of Western ideology, not the problems of reconstruction and modernization in societies that have been victimized by Western imperialism. Correspondingly, we have not developed or expressed our views here on the nature of the Indochinese regimes. To assess the contemporary situation in Indochina and the programs of the current ruling groups is a worthwhile endeavor, but it has not been our current objective. […] The success of the Free Press in reconstructing imperial ideology since the U. S. withdrawal has been spectacular. The shift of the United States from causal agent to bystander – and even to leader of the struggle for human rights – in the face of its empire of client fascism and long, vicious assault on the peasant societies of Indochina, is a remarkable achievement. The system of brainwashing under freedom, with mass media voluntary self-censorship in accord with the larger interests of the state, has worked brilliantly.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. 299.

Nature, Problem, Freedom, Success

“Everyone knows what engineering is. All that's left is to define systems, and I'm not fool enough to do that.”

Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer

Source: Mathematicians are useful (1971), p. 1: Machol explains his definition of systems engineering.

Fools

“For a general semanticist, communication is not merely words in proper order properly inflected (as for the grammarian) or assertions in proper relation to each other (as for the logician) or assertions in proper relation to referents (as for the semanticist), but all these together, with the chain of 'fact to nervous system to language to nervous system to action.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

1950, p. 14; as cited in: Adam Schaff (1962). Introduction to semantics, p. 105.
1950s, "What is Semantics?", 1950

Communication

“Simplicity in a system tends to increase that system’s efficiency. Because less can go wrong with fewer parts, less will. Complexity in a system tends to increase that system’s inefficiency; the greater the number of variables, the greater the probability of those variables clashing, and in turn, the greater the potential for conflict and disarray. Because more can go wrong, more will. That is why centralized systems are inclined to break down quickly and become enmeshed in greater unintended consequences.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 191

Parting

“I think that life is a paradox and you have to embrace that in your work and your belief systems… you can't be a literalist, and that's the trouble that people always find themselves in. That's why people always hit a wall with any of my stuff, because you can't take it literally.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Dazed & Confused magazine 29 February 2008 http://dazeddigital.com/article/388/1/madonna_worldwide_exclusive_in_dazed_and_confused

Life, People, Thinking

“People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to ﬁve without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There’s no villain, no ‘mean guy’ who wants them to live meaningless lives, it’s just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless. But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 8

People, Way, Guy, Understanding

“Models are used essentially for evaluation and prediction purposes as well as for the analysis and study of the different parts of the system so that the systems engineer or designer may arrive at sound engineering decisions regarding the system design.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), p. 113; As cited in: Alberto Ortiz (1992, p. 12-13)

Decision, Study, Parting

“The systems and controls developed at the armory were as critical to the development of what became known as the 'American System of Manufacturing' as the new metalworking machinery and machine tools.”

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (1918–2007) American historian

Source: The Visible Hand (1977), p. 75.

“A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused by enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy. The evidence of worth may be read from the extent and character of attention and indignation. […] the U. S. media’s practical definitions of worth are political in the extreme and fit well the expectations of a propaganda model. While this differential treatment occurs on a large scale, the media, intellectuals, and public are able to remain unconscious of this fact and maintain a high moral and self-righteous tone. This is evidence of an extremely effective propaganda system. […] The worth of a victim Popieluszko [Polish priest] is valued at somewhere between 137 and 179 times that of a victim in the U. S. client states, or, looking at the matter in reverse, a priest murdered in Latin America is worth less than a hundredth of a priest murdered in Poland.”

Edward S. Herman book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Source: Manufacturing Consent, with Noam Chomsky, 1988, pp. 37, 39.

People, Time, Reading

“It has also been said that your Education has been a failure no matter how much it has done for you, if it has failed to open your heart. Dr. Zakir Hussain, when Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh University, said, that the aim of Education was that students should become responsible citizens and not merely bundles of styles and sophistication like articles in a furniture shop – the product now being churned out lacks even that saving grace….. The old system may have produced 'snobs' what is being spewed out now are 'slobs'. The young student in Indian Schools is being smothered under a dead weight of books and notes dealing with a host of subjects imaginable and unimaginable. Busy cramming from morning till night and repeating parrot-like that he does not understand, he is fast becoming a literate moron. Initiative, leadership and education in the real sense of the term are encouraged only in a few public Schools.”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Teachers & Education

Books, Education, School, Imagination

“The government is committed to extending the coverage of social security in the country to ensure Malaysians from all walks of life are covered by a sustainable and affordable social security system.”

Wan Azizah Wan Ismail (1952) Malaysian politician

Wan Azizah Wan Ismail (2018) cited in " 90% of Malaysian workers do not have social security, says Wan Azizah https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2018/10/02/dr-wan-azizah-137mil-malaysian-workers-do-not-have-social-security/" on The Star Online, 2 October 2018

Life, Country

“[Magna Carta provided] “a system of checks and balances which would accord the monarchy its necessary strength, but would prevent its perversion by a tyrant or a fool.””

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Magna Carta and Man’s Quest for Freedom, JW.org http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102002924?q=Churchill&p=par Post-war years (1945–1955)

Fools

“Monopoly of one kind or another, indeed, seems to be the sole engine of the mercantile system.”

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

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter VII, Part Third, p. 684.

“It is not easy to determine what are the units of speech. Some would say speech sounds, others phonemes… The general opinion is, however, that words, not phones or phonemes or phoneme systems, are the units of speech.”

John Rupert Firth (1890–1960) English linguist

Source: Speech, 1930, p. 182-183; As cited in: Angela Senis (2016: 293)

“In the absence of social awareness and appreciation of the scientiﬁc objectivity among sufficiently large number of civil servants or political leaders, the need of validity has not yet been accepted in the ofﬁcial tatistical system in India. Ofcial statistics in India is treated as an integral part of the dministrative system which is regulated by the principle of authority. Approval of statistical estimates at a high level of authority is accepted as a bstitnte for validity in many ases there is continuing opposition to independent cross-hccks for the validity of the data. Ofﬁcials have the feeling that two independent estimates, which might differ would be confusing and, in fact unthinkable; therefore independent cross-checks in statistics should be eliminated.”

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893–1972) Indian scientist

Quote, Professor P.C. Mahalanobis and the Development of Population Statistics in lndia

Feeling, Parting

“Liberty once again must become more important to us than the desire for security and material comfort. Personal safety and economic prosperity can only come as the consequence of liberty. They cannot be provided by an authoritarian government… The foundation for a police state has been put in place, and it's urgent we mobilize resistance before it's too late… Central planning is intellectually bankrupt – and it has bankrupted our country and undermined our moral principles. Respect for individual liberty and dignity is the only answer to government force, force that serves the politically and economically powerful. Our planners and rulers are not geniuses, but rather demagogues and would-be dictators -- always performing their tasks with a cover of humanitarian rhetoric… The collapse of the Soviet system came swiftly and dramatically, without a bloody conflict… It came as no surprise, however, to the devotees of freedom who have understood for decades that socialism was doomed to fail… And so too will the welfare/warfare state fail… A free society is based on the key principle that the government, the president, the Congress, the courts, and the bureaucrats are incapable of knowing what is best for each and every one of us… A government as a referee is proper, but a government that uses arbitrary force to direct every aspect of society threatens freedom… The time has come for a modern approach to achieving those values that all civilized societies seek. Only in a free society do individuals have the best chance to seek virtue, strive for excellence, improve their economic well-being, and achieve personal happiness… The worthy goals of civilization can only be achieved by freedom loving individuals. When government uses force, liberty is sacrificed and the goals are lost. It is freedom that is the source of all creative energy. If I am to be your president, these are the goals I would seek. I reject the notion that we need a president to run our lives, plan the economy, or police the world… It is much more important to protect individual liberty and privacy than to make government even more secretive and powerful.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Video Address Announcing 2008 Presidential Exploratory Committee, February 19, 2007 http://blog.4president.org/2008/2007/02/ron_paul_video_.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPlPT4bncq8 2000s, 2006-2009

Love, Happiness, Secret, World

“For the average North Korean over the last two decades, the times of Kim Il Sung have often been seen as a lost era of order and stability, in which everyone could be sure that twice a month they would receive food rations sufficient for survival, and essentially free of charge. This was also a time when corruption was kept under control and was largely invisible, material inequality was also almost unnoticeable. Objectively speaking, it was Kim Il Sung’s policies that made the disaster of the 1990s unavoidable. But this had little impact on public perception, and he continues to be held in high esteem by many. Remarkably, such sentiments toward the late Generalissimo are even expressed by refugees – not usually known for their sympathies for the North Korean system and its embodiment, the Kim family. Thus, it is that Kim Il Sung remains venerated, and due to the luck of dying in time, has a remarkably good reputation in death. The opposite is very much the case with his unfortunate son, Kim Jong Il, who inherited power in 1994 and reigned for 17 turbulent years, till 2011.”

Andrei Lankov (1963) Russian academic

Kim Jong Un's Popularity, Explained (September 2015)

Death, Family, Food, Time

“I finished by saying that it struck me that all the ethical systems I was discussing were after the fact. That is, that people act as they are disposed to, but they like to feel afterwards that they were right and so they invent systems that approve of their dispositions.”

Alexei Panshin book Rite of Passage

Source: Rite of Passage (1968), Chapter 12 (p. 166).

People, Feeling

“When one is considering systems it's always wise to raise questions about the most obvious and simple assumptions.”

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

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach (1968), p. ix

Question

“Pestel was a very forceful person and quickly saw the power of system dynamics.”

Jay Wright Forrester (1918–2016) American operations researcher

Forrester (1989) The Beginning of System Dynamics http://leml.asu.edu/jingle/Web_Pages/EcoMod_Website/Readings/SD+STELLA/Forrester-Begin'g-SD_1989.pdf. Banquet Talk at the international meeting of the System Dynamics Society Stuttgart, Germany July 13, l989

Personality

“The Commons, faithful to their system, remained in a wise and masterly inactivity.”

James Mackintosh (1765–1832) British politician

Vindiciæ Gallicæ (1791).

Faith

“The areas traditionally concerned with such systems are: publishing in all its ramification, librarianship, bibliography, documentation, record management, archives and the like. Systematic study of the activities in all these areas has lead to increased recognition of their common features. They are all concerned with information systems, and their study may include in the wider field of 'information science and technology' (as the Americans put it) or 'informatics”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

as Soviet writers would have it
Preface: second paragraph
Information Systems (1973)

Study, Science

“The First Amendment provides the only kind of security system that can preserve a free government – one that leaves the way wide open for people to favor, discuss, advocate, or incite causes and doctrines however obnoxious and antagonistic such views may be to the rest of us.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

Concurring opinion, Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298 (1957).

People, Way

“Much of my criticism of religion comes about when I see it not only affirming the system of normalcy but teaching folks how to live there comfortably. It just increases our “stuckness” in the old world. As does a lot of poor psychotherapy. Cheap religion teaches us how to live successfully in a sick system.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (1999), p. 132

World, Religion

“The history of philosophical system is the picture gallery of reason.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist

Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 68
Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy (1839)

History

“In much of precolonial Nigeria, and indeed Africa, ethnic nations organized people within communities into peer groups and trained them, from babyhood to old age, to serve their communities. When successful, this system provided all members of a community not only with a sense of belonging but also with a vehicle for helping to shape the community's direction and pace of change. In this system, people knew they were entitled to help resolve any issue that affected the community.
This sense of entitlement grows out of a series of rituals that begin the day a child is born. When a baby is born, after the first few seconds, it lets out a yelp, which announces its arrival, and which is met by expressions of joy. Among the Yoruba, the arrival is acknowledged with a naming ceremony where parents give names that express rich meaning and hopes for the baby. When I arrived, my parents named me Hafsat Olaronke, which means the treasured one and honor is being cared for. For my parents, they saw in me one who would be cherished and who would bring honor to her community. Many in other parts of the world are impressed when they discover my name's meanings, but the truth is that most African names have beautiful meanings.”

Hafsat Abiola (1974) Nigerian human rights, civil rights and democracy activist

Architects of Peace (2000)

People, Truth, Age, World

“You could not have evolved a complex system like a city or an organism - with an enormous number of components - without the emergence of laws that constrain their behavior in order for them to be resilient.”

Geoffrey West (1940) British physicist

2010s Source: Ben Lillie. " The sameness of organisms, cities, and corporations: Q&A with Geoffrey West http://blog.ted.com/qa-with-geoffrey-west/." at blog.ted.com. July 26, 2011.

Law, Behavior

“The preservation of the principle of the full accountability of the Executive to the Congress is an essential part of our republican system. In actual practice the effectiveness of this accountability is often obstructed and obscured, and sometimes is defeated by the processes of diffusion, processes which are at work, not only in the Executive Branch but in the Congress itself.”

Louis Brownlow (1879–1963) American mayor

Source: Administrative management in the government of the United States. 1937, p. 43

Parting

“From a Dataist perspective, we may interpret the entire human species as a single data-processing system, with individual humans serving as its chips. If so, we can also understand the whole of history as a process of improving the efficiency of this system through four basic methods:”

Yuval Noah Harari book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

History, Understanding

“Rammstein is an award-winning music-based German-teaching system for American goths.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

lecture performance at Mueumsquartier, Vienna, 2016

Music

“It's not necessarily against a system that it collapses, because most systems do collapse in the end. That’s a part of the wheel of life - systems do collapse. So I’m to some extent slightly inclined to forgive capitalism for being about to collapse. I mean there are lots of fine things, lots of love affairs and the like which have come to a sticky end. On the other hand, it is quite an accusation - quite hard for it to live down - that it's going to destroy the entire planet with it.”

David Fleming (1940–2010) British activist

Interview, November 4th, 2010 http://www.darkoptimism.org/2016/10/14/by-popular-demand-david-flemings-interviews/

Love, Life, Forgiveness, Parting

“The name philosopher, which meant originally 'lover of wisdom,' has come in some strange way to mean a man who thinks it is his business to explain everything in a certain number of large books. It will be found, I think, that in proportion to his colossal ignorance is the perfection and symmetry of the system which he sets up; because it is so much easier to put an empty room tidy than a full one.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

As quoted by A. D'Abro, The Evolution of Scientific Thought from Newton to Einstein https://archive.org/details/TheEvolutionOfScientificThought (1927)

Wisdom, Books, Way, Lovers

“Concepts like those of organization, wholeness, directiveness, teleology, control, self-regulation, differentiation, and the like are alien to conventional science. However, they pop up everywhere in the biological, behavioral, and social sciences and are, in fact, indispensable for dealing with living organisms or social groups. Thus, a basic problem posed to modem science is a general theory of organization. General Systems Theory is, in principle, capable of giving exact definitions for such concepts.”

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

1950s, "General systems theory," 1956

Behavior, Problem, Science

“It is the slow, but steady movement of the lower classes along the scale of the class system. But it has been very very slow. It took 2000 years. But it is something which is going on, and something which is almost spectacular in certain sectors today -assertion of the backward classes, of scheduled castes, of women.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Shri K. R. Narayanan President of India in Conversation with N. Ram on Doordarshan and All India Radio

Women

“The grammar of Panini is one of the most remarkable literary works that the world has ever seen, and no other country can produce any grammatical system at all comparable to it, either for originality of plan or analytical subtlety.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Sir Monier Monier-Williams in: Indian Wisdom https://books.google.co.in/books?id=CgBAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA172, W. H. Allen & Company, 1876, p. 172.

World, Country

“The Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown.”

Nouriel Roubini (1958) American economist

"RGE Conference Call on the Economic and Financial Outlook... and why the Treasury TARP bailout is flawed," http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-monitor/253762/rge_conference_call_on_the_economic_and_financial_outlookand_why_the_treasury_tarp_bailout_is_flawed RGE Monitor (2008-09-26).

Money

“In complex systems cause and effect are often not closely related in either time or space. The structure of a complex system is not a simple feedback loop where one system state dominates the behavior. The complex system has a multiplicity of interacting feedback loops. Its internal rates of flow are controlled by nonlinear relationships. The complex system is of high order, meaning that there are many system states (or levels). It usually contains positive-feedback loops describing growth processes as well as negative, goal-seeking loops. In the complex system the cause of a difficulty may lie far back in time from the symptoms, or in a completely different and remote part of the system. In fact, causes are usually found, not in prior events, but in the structure and policies of the system.”

Jay Wright Forrester (1918–2016) American operations researcher

Source: Urban dynamics (1969), p. 9

Lie, Behavior, Time, Parting

“…1776 is a very significant year. and this is not just because the American Revolution began. Watt's patent of the steam engine… Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations… the failure of the French to reorganize their political system occurred in 1776, and so forth. …The destruction of communities, the destruction of religion and the frustration of emotions were greatly intensified by the Industrial Revolution: railroads, factories, growth of cities, technological revolution in the countryside and in the growing of food and so forth.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Religion, Food, Communication, Failure

“Also, we need to give importance to value systems to promote innovation. We need to develop an ecosystem of innovation and technology will arrive soon. Of the 140 nations rated for innovation, India stood at a lowly 66. We need new ways of doing things and new ways of thinking. We cannot be doing the same things. Jugaad (a temporary solution) is one of them. The atmosphere itself should encourage innovation.”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

Quoted in "We need to have an instinct for self-preservation: C N R Rao".

Way, Thinking

“It is desperately hard these days for an average child to grow up to be a man, for our present organized system does not want men. They are not safe.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 14.

Men

“I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over nonreligion… That's a possible way to run a political system. The Europeans run it that way… And if the American people want to do it, I suppose they can enact that by statute. But to say that's what the Constitution requires is utterly absurd.”

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

Speech at Colorado Christian University, quoted in Valerie Richardson, "Scalia defends keeping God, religion in public square" http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/1/justice-antonin-scalia-defends-keeping-god-religio/ (), The Washington Times. 2010s

People, Religion, Way, Thinking

“Our first objective in undertaking the experimental program described here has been to gain some understanding of what goes on in long sequences of plays of Prisoner's Dilemma. We have attempted to gain this understanding by postulating a system going through a sequence of states and by attempting to formulate some mathematical models from which the dynamics of the system could be deduced. Once such a model is found, its parameters, properly interpreted, become the key terms in the emerging psychological theory. This strategy can be deemed successful, if the parameters so discovered are independent of the process itself, if they suggest further investigation, and if the further investigations, in turn, lead to a more inclusive theory.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Source: 1960s, Prisoner's dilemma: A study in conflict and cooperation (1965), p. 185

Mathematics, Understanding, Success

“The view from complexity claims that we cannot know complex things completely… modest positions are inescapable… We can increase the knowledge we have of a certain [complex] system, but this knowledge is limited… The fact that our knowledge is limited is not a disaster, it is a condition for knowledge. Limits enable knowledge.”

Paul Cilliers (1956–2011) South African philosopher

Paul Cilliers (2005: 263) as quoted in: Vikki Bell (2007) Culture and Performance: The Challenge of Ethics, Politics and Feminist Theory. p. 8

Knowledge

“India has been a cauldron of dreams, ideas and aspirations of the humankind and this is a distinctive character of India, and India in that sense represents the world in miniature. If a system can succeed in India, it will indicate the possibility of such success in the world as a whole.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Shri K. R. Narayanan President of India in Conversation with N. Ram on Doordarshan and All India Radio

World, Dreams, Idea, Sense

“Hereafter follows the “unity without difference,” For the love of God Is not only to be considered as flowing out With all good and drawing in into unity, But it is also above all distinction In essential enjoyment according to The bare essence of the Divinity. And for this reason enlightened people Have found within themselves An essential inward gazing Above reason and without reason, And an enjoyable inclination Surpassing all modes (methods or systems) And all essence, Sinking away from themselves Into a modeless abyss of fathomless beatitude, Where the Trinity of the divine Persons Possess their nature in essential unity.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

Love, God, People, Nature

““Are you sharpness personified?”
Khouri poured herself a few final sips of coffee and then left the rest of it on the stove for when she got back. Coffee was her only vice, one acquired in her soldiering days on the Edge. The trick was to reach a knife-edge of alertness, but not be so buzzing that she could not point the weapon without shaking.
“I think I’ve reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level, if that’s what you mean.””

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 2 (p. 27).

Coffee, Thinking

“No area of life will be free from this concept in the future. That means that people will recognize the social organism, and they must think within this context. They must not only think about schools but also about the legal system and economic structures. They must always think through the entire social organism…”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

1970's, Every Man an Artist: Talks at Documenta 5', 1972

Life, People, School, Thinking

“Organizational design often focuses on structural alternatives such as matrix, decentralization, and divisionalization. However, control variables (e. g., reward structures, task characteristics, and information systems) offer a more flexible approach. The purpose of this paper is to explore these control variables for organizational design. This is accomplished by integration and testing of two perspectives, organization theory and economics, notably agency theory. The resulting hypotheses link task characteristics, information systems, and business uncertainty to behavior vs. outcome based control strategy. These hypothesized linkages are examined empirically in a field study of the compensation practices for retail salespeople in 54 stores. The findings are that task programmability is strongly related to the choice of compensation package. The amount of behavioral measurement, the cost of measuring outcomes, and the uncertainty of the business also affect compensation. The findings have management implications for the design of compensation and reward packages, performance evaluation systems, and control systems, in general. Such systems should explicitly consider the task, the information system in place to measure performance, and the riskiness of the business. More programmed tasks require behavior based controls while less programmed tasks require more elaborate information systems or outcome based controls.”

Kathleen M. Eisenhardt American economist

Source: "Control: Organizational and economic approaches," 1985, p. 134; Article abstract

Behavior, Business, Study

“You can still fulfil your traditional obligations but the contradiction in the system between the communal approach and the free market approach needs to be addressed.”

Mahendra Chaudhry (1942) Fijian politician

Interview with Fiji Live, 22 August 2005

Communication

“Systems philosophy brings forth a reorganization of ways of thinking. It creates a new worldview, a new paradigm of perception and explanation, which is manifested in integration, holistic thinking, purpose-seeking, mutual causality, and process-focused inquiry.”

Béla H. Bánáthy (1919–2003) Hungarian linguist and systems scientist

Source: Systems Design of Education (1991), p. 31-32

Way, Thinking

“Wikis work best in environments where you're comfortable delegating control to the users of the system.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Exploring with Wiki

“Postulate 1. All chance systems of causes are not alike in the sense that they enable us to predict the future in terms of the past.
Postulate 2. Constant systems of chance causes do exist in nature.
Postulate 3. Assignable causes of variation may be found and eliminated.”

Walter A. Shewhart (1891–1967) American statistician

Source: Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product,1931, p. 8

Nature, Sense, Chance, Past

“Language is a system of conventional signs that can be voluntarily produced at any time.”

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) German psychologist

Hermann Ebbinghaus, quoted in: Geza Revesz, The Origins and Prehistory of Language, London 1956. footnote p. 126

Time

“What we deplore is not that the gate of western knowledge was thrown open to Indians, but that such knowledge was imported to India at the sacrifice of our own cultural heritage. What was needed was a proper synthesis between the two systems and not neglect, far less destruction, of the Indian base.”

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

Speech delivered at Gurkula Visvavidyalaya Convocation on 25th April 1943.

Knowledge

“From the beginning, the forces of light and the forces of darkness have polarized the field of organizational analysis, and the struggle has been protracted and inconclusive. The forces of darkness have been represented by the mechanical school of organizational theory — those who treat the organization as a machine. This school characterizes organizations in terms o£ such things as:
:* centralized authority
:* clear lines of authority
:* specialization and expertise
:* marked division of labor
:* rules and regulations
:* clear separation of staff and line
The forces of light, which by mid-twentieth century came to be characterized as the human relations school, emphasizes people rather than machines, accommodations rather than machine-like precision, and draws its inspiration from biological systems rather than engineering systems. It has emphasized such things as:
:* delegation of authority
:* employee autonomy
:* trust and openness
:* concerns with the "whole person"
:* interpersonal dynamics
The forces of darkness formulated their position first, starting in the early part of this century. They have been characterized as the scientific management or classical management school…”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Source: 1970s, "The short and glorious history of organizational theory", 1973, p. 3

People, School, Light, Parting

“Usually it is easier to obtain estimates for budget proportions and Engel elasticities than for elasticities with respect to price. By making certain want independence assumptions, the elasticities with respect to price can be deduced from the knowledge of budget proportions and Engel elasticities. In this connection the concept of the flexibility of the marginal utility of money is essential. A system of formulae decribing these relations is given.”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Ragnar Frisch. " A complete scheme for computing all direct and cross demand elasticities in a model with many sectors http://econ.ucdenver.edu/beckman/Research/readings/frisch-demand-econometrica.pdf." Econometrica 27.2 (1959): 177-196. 1940-60s

Money, Knowledge

“But it has been necessary, for the benefit of the social order, to convert religion into a kind of police system, and hence hell. Oriental or Greek Christianity is predominantly eschatological, Protestantism predominantly ethical, and Catholicism is a compromise between the two, although with the eschatological element predominating.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IV : The Essence of Catholicism

Religion, Hell

“I’m here at Sandown Racecourse in Surrey. They’re expecting fifteen thousand people here today and half a million pounds to be exchanged in cash. I’m here because I’ve developed a guaranteed system for winning at the horses. This system allows me to predict twenty four hours in advance, quite openly, which horse will win in big, high profile races. Now to prove this, six weeks ago I took a woman, a random member of the public and I told her which horse was going to win in a certain race. It did win, she was intrigued. I then did it again and again and again and she started to bet larger and larger amounts of money. Now today that woman has scraped together every last penny that she can find and she’s risking it all on one final race. Is it really possible to accurately predict the winner of a horse race again and again and again? I’m going to tell you exactly how that’s done. Welcome to The System.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Derren Brown: The System (2008)

Money, People, Horse

“Artificial Life [AL] is the study of man-made systems that exhibit behaviors characteristic of natural living systems. It complements the traditional biological sciences concerned with the analysis of living organisms by attempting to synthesize life-like behaviors within computers and other artificial media. By extending the empirical foundation upon which biology is based beyond the carbon-chain life that has evolved on Earth, Artificial Life can contribute to theoretical biology by locating life-as-we-know-it within the larger picture of life-as-it-could-be.”

Christopher Langton (1949) American computer scientist

Source: Artificial Life (1989), p.1

Life, Behavior, Nature, Study

“General Systems Theory, as originally intended by Von Bertalanffy, is an ideal framework for the modeling of a business enterprise. Work, in its most civilized form should enrich, empower and emancipate. Thus we must continue to find ways to support work as a humanistic, not mechanistic endeavor. We must continue to seek out new models of business that support and enhance the individual as well as the collective whole. Given all this new technology, we need new institutions for handling it.”

Anthony Stafford Beer (1926–2002) British theorist, consultant, and professor

Beer (1974) Designing Freedom. House Of Anansi Press, Toronto cited in: B. Dawson (2007) "Bertalanffy Revisited: Operationalizing A General Systems Theory Based Business Model Through General Systems Thinking, Modeling, And Practice", In: Proceedings of the 51st Annual Meeting of the ISSS, 2007.

Way, Business, Support