Quotes about system (5397 quotes, page 34)

“Holland's and Kauffman's work, together with Dawkins' simulations of evolution and Varela's models of autopoietic systems, provide essential inspiration for the new discipline of artificial life, This approach, initiated by Chris Langton (1989, 1992), tries to develop technological systems (computer programs and autonomous robots) that exhibit lifelike properties, such as reproduction, sexuality, swarming, and co-evolution.”

Francis Heylighen (1960) Belgian cyberneticist

" Complex Adaptive Systems http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CAS.html" on: Principia Cybernetica Web, Nov. 12, 1996
Principia Cybernetica Web, 1999-2003

Life

“It is equally fatal for the spirit to have a system and to have none. One must thus decide to join the two.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

As quoted in Divine Madness : On Interpreting Literature, Music, and The Visual Arts Ironically (2002) by Lars Elleström, p. 50
Variant translations, of the paradoxical statement which begins in German with Es ist gleich tödlich für den Geist, ein System zu haben, und keins zu haben.:
It is equally fatal for the spirit, to have a system and not to have.
The Innovations of Idealism (2003) by Rüdiger Bubner, p. 193
It is equally fatal for the spirit to have a system and to have none. It will simply have to decide to combine the two.
As quoted in Friedrich Schlegel and the Emergence of Romantic Philosophy (2007) by Elizabeth Millán-Zaibert, p. 203
It is equally fatal for the spirit to have a system, and to have none. So the spirit must indeed resolve to combine the two.
As quoted in Hegel : Lectures on the History of Philosophy 1825-6 : Volume I, (2009) by Robert F. Brown, footnote, p. 59

“After earning the PhD degree and acquiring some relatively extensive experience in digital computers… It was time to leave the University. The result of an extensive search for the right job was a family move to Arlington Heights, Illinois, where it was a short commute to the Research Laboratories of the Pure Oil Company at Crystal Lake. I was given the title of Mathematical and Computer Consultant. The Labs were set in a beautiful campus, the professional personnel were eager to learn what I had to teach and to include me in many interesting projects where my knowledge and skills could be put to good use. I was encouraged to initiate my own program of research. I went to work with enthusiasm.
The corporate headquarters of Pure Oil were located in down town Chicago. Pure Oil had been trying to install an IBM 705 computer system for all their accounting needs including calculation of all data necessary for the management of exploration, drilling, refining and distribution of oil products and even royalties to shareholders in oil wells. Typical for those early days, the programming team was in deep difficulties and needed help; they lacked adequate resources and suitable training. The Executive Vice President of Pure Oil, when he heard that there was a computer expert already on the payroll at the Crystal Lake lab, ended our family blissful dream and I was reassigned to the down town office.”

A. Wayne Wymore (1927–2011) American mathematician

Systems Movement: Autobiographical Retrospectives (2004)

Family , Beauty , Dreams , Search

“The patent system was established to encourage inventors to disclose the details of their inventions. Its purpose was to help society rather than to help inventors. At the time, the life span of 17 years for a patent was short compared with the rate of advance of the state of the art. Since patents are an issue only among manufacturers, for whom the cost and effort of a license agreement are small compared with setting up production, the patents often do not do much harm. They do not obstruct most individuals who use patented products.”

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

1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)

Life , Art , Effort , Time

“The Labour Party has no objection whatever to the Germans practicing nazi-ism in Germany; that is their concern. We do not engage in any philisophic discussions with them about that system so long as they make no endeavour to foist it by force upon people outside their country. We stand for self-government. In the same way, we offer no opinions regarding the justification or non-justification of bolshevism in Russia; that is the concern of the Russian people. Their form of government is their own affair, just as our form of government is our affair. The Labour party believes in the right of peoples to govern themselves, and to enjoy a way of life which they themselves decide upon. We concede that right to Russia. We concede that right to Germany, and it is because we are claiming it for ourselves, and Germany denies it to us, that we are at war with Germany. (Speech to the Commonwealth House of Represenatives, 24 June 1941”

John Curtin

Hansard, page 286)

Life , War , People , Way

“The transformations initiated by a healthy vegan diet go well beyond physical health. For those who want it to be, a plant-based diet is also a potent political comment on our broken food system. … we're looking at a diet for which the ultimate beneficiary is the individual. Healthy veganism explicitly serves no corporate or industrial gods. In fact, it counters these interests. … If the prospect of simultaneously giving corporate food executives nightmares while achieving personal dietary empowerment -- not to mention lowering your carbon footprint and minimizing animal suffering -- has any appeal, then veganism is for you.”

James E. McWilliams (1968) American historian

"The Evidence for a Vegan Diet", in The Atlantic (18 January 2012) https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/01/the-evidence-for-a-vegan-diet/251498/.

God , Health , Food , Suffering

“Organic systems are adapted to unstable conditions, when problems and requirements for action arise which cannot be broken down and distributed among specialist roles within a clearly defined hierarchy. Individuals have to perform their special tasks in the light of their knowledge of the tasks of the firm as a whole. Jobs lose much of their formal definition in terms of methods, duties, and powers, which have to be re¬defined continually by interaction with others participating in a task. Interaction runs laterally as much as vertically. Communication between people of different ranks tends to resemble lateral consultation rather than vertical command. Omniscience can no longer be imputed to the head of the concern.”

Tom Burns (1913–2001) British sociologist

Source: The Management of Innovation, 1961, p. 5-6

People , Communication , Knowledge , Problem

“It is not enough that we have a guilty defendant. We must have an innocent system as well.”

John Ashcroft (1942) American politician

Source: Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice (2006), p. 107

“Slavery is a form of communism… The manner to which the change shall be made from the present form of society to that system of communism which we propose is very simple.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 324

Communication , Change

“Our moral and economic system is based on individual responsibility. It’s based on the idea that people have to live with the consequences of their decisions. This makes them more careful deciders. This means that society tends toward justice — people get what they deserve as much as possible.”

David Brooks (1961) American journalist, commentator and editor

David Brooks. "Money for Idiots," http://archive.li/EzXTi The New York Times, 19 February 2009.
2000s

People , Justice , Idea , Decision

“The Emancipation Proclamation had four enduring results. First, it gave force to the executive power to change conditions in the national interest on a broad and far-reaching scale. Second, it dealt a devastating blow to the system of slaveholding and an economy built upon it, which had been muscular enough to engage in warfare on the Federal government. Third, it enabled the Negro to play a significant role in his own liberation with the ability to organize and to struggle, with less of the bestial retaliation his slave status had permitted to his masters. Fourth, it resurrected and restated the principle of equality upon which the founding of the nation rested.”

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

1960s, Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address (1962)

Change

“One insidious practice which sugar-coats the dose of Federal intrusion is the division of expense for public improvements or services between State and National treasuries. The ardent States-rights advocate sees in this practice a vicious weakening of the State system. The extreme federalist is apt to look upon it in cynical fashion as bribing the States into subordination. The average American, believing in our dual-sovereignty system, must feel that the policy of national doles to the States is bad and may become disastrous. We may go on yet for a time with the easy assumption that 'if the States will not, the Nation must'. But that way lies trouble. When the National Treasury contributes half, there is temptation to extravagance by the State. We have seen some examples in connection with the Federal contributions to road building. Yet there are constant demands for more Federal contributions. Whenever by that plan we take something from one group of States and give it to another group, there is grave danger that we do an economic injustice on one side and a political injury on the other. We impose unfairly on the strength of the strong, and we encourage the weak to indulge their weakness.”

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

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

Way , Feeling , Fashion , Strong

“It has been observed here this morning that we are called fanatics. Bless me! That is nothing. Who has not been called a fanatic who has discovered anything new in philosophy or science? We have all read of Galileo the astronomer who, contrary to the system of astronomy that had been received for ages before his day, taught that the sun, and not the earth, was the centre of our planetary system? For this the learned astronomer was called "fanatic," and subjected to persecution and imprisonment of the most rigorous character. So it has been with others who have discovered and explained new truths in science and philosophy which have been in opposition to long-established theories; and the opposition they have encountered has endured until the truth of their discoveries has been demonstrated by time. The term "fanatic" is not applied to professors of religion only…I will tell you who the real fanatics are: they are they who adopt false principles and ideas as facts, and try to establish a superstructure upon a false foundation. They are the fanatics; and however ardent and zealous they may be, they may reason or argue on false premises till doomsday, and the result will be false. If our religion is of this character we want to know it; we would like to find a philosopher who can prove it to us. We are called ignorant; so we are: but what of it? Are not all ignorant? I rather think so. Who can tell us of the inhabitants of this little planet that shines of an evening, called the moon? When we view its face we may see what is termed "the man in the moon," and what some philosophers declare are the shadows of mountains. But these sayings are very vague, and amount to nothing; and when you inquire about the inhabitants of that sphere you find that the most learned are as ignorant in regard to them as the most ignorant of their fellows. So it is with regard to the inhabitants of the sun. Do you think it is inhabited? I rather think it is. Do you think there is any life there? No question of it; it was not made in vain. It was made to give light to those who dwell upon it, and to other planets; and so will this earth when it is celestialized. Every planet in its first rude, organic state receives not the glory of God upon it, but is opaque; but when celestialized, every planet that God brings into existence is a body of light, but not till then. Christ is the light of this planet. God gives light to our eyes.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses, 13:271 (July 24, 1870)
1870s

Life , God , Truth , Age

“All I did in Chicago was to exercise my legal right to speak on my own behalf and I was given four years in jail as a result. But I think the most serious injustice perpetrated by the court system in America is the inability of a black man to get a jury of his peers.”

Bobby Seale (1936) American activist

Interview with The Guardian (February 1970)

Exercises , Thinking

“Besides, REAL computers have a rename() system call.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[7937@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

“The Chinese authorities think of artists as prostitutes. And in reality it’s true: in the Communist system artists just represent what the power structure seeks them to represent. It is prostitution.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2008

Thinking , Reality

“To prevent the starving peasants from fleeing to the towns an internal passport system was introduced and unauthorized change of residence was made punishable with imprisonment. Peasants were not allowed passports at all, and were therefore tied to the soil as in the worst days of feudal serfdom: this state of things was not altered until the 1970s. The concentration camps filled with new hordes of prisoners sentenced to hard labour. The object of destroying the peasants’ independence and herding them into collective farms was to create a population of slaves, the benefit of whose labour would accrue to industry. The immediate effect was to reduce Soviet agriculture to a state of decline from which it has not yet recovered, despite innumerable measures of reorganization and reform. At the time of Stalin’ s death, almost a quarter of a century after mass collectivization was initiated, the output of grain per head of population was still below the 1913 level; yet throughout this period, despite misery and starvation, large quantities of farm produce were exported all over the world for the sake of Soviet industry. The terror and oppression of those years cannot be expressed merely by the figures for loss of human life, enormous as these are; perhaps the most vivid picture of what collectivization meant is in Vasily Grossman’ s posthumous novel Forever Flowing.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

pg. 39
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume III: The Breakdown

Life , Death , World , Change

“I want to know, for example, why beauty exists," she [Gabrielle] said, "why nature continues to contrive it, and what is the link between the life of a lightning storm with the feelings these things inspire in us? If God does not exist, if these things are not unified into one metaphorical system, then why do they retain for us such symbolic power? Lestat calls it the Savage Garden, but for me that is not enough.”

Anne Rice book The Vampire Lestat

The Vampire Lestat (1985)

Life , God , Beauty , Feeling

“Anthropologists are interested in reconstructing the kinship system as it might have existed at the time of a proto-language. A kinship system can be regarded as composed of two correlated systems: a system of kinship terminology and a set of behaviors that are patterned in relation to the terminological system. We know of no way in which we can rigorously infer the kinds of behavior directly, but it is generally regarded as possible to reconstruct the terminology at least in part. If rigor can be introduced in the procedure of reconstructing kinship terminology, then a generalization of that rigorous procedure is lexical reconstruction.”

David Aberle (1918–2004) anthropologist

Isidore Dyen, ‎David F. Aberle (1974), Lexical Reconstruction: The Case of the Proto-Athapaskan Kinship System. p. 7

Way , Behavior , Time , Parting

“Apart from life and thought, there is no reason to regard one form of material distribution as in any respect superior to another. A solar system may be more interesting than its parent nebula; it may be more beautiful. But if there be none to unravel its intricacies or admire its splendours, in what respect is it better? Its constituent atoms are more definitely grouped, the groups move in assignable orbits; but why should the process by which these results have been achieved be regarded as other than one of purposeless change super-induced upon meaningless uniformity?”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Theism and humanism

Life , Beauty , Parent , Change

“I think the reason it’s cheaper is, first of all, we are a private entity and we have a very lean system in here. What we have been able to do here at SpaceX is to cherry-pick, you know, the top one or two percent and give them, you know, capital to execute well and a clear mission, which is low cost, reliable access to space, and no other constraints.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

Thinking

“Perhaps because so much of what the classical economists wrote about traditional systems of agricultural production was divorced from the seemingly more timeless remarks about pure theory, later readers have passed over such portions of their works in haste. … I argue that these interventionist recommendations were a significant element in the overall thrust of their works. Specifically, classical political economy advocated restricting the viability of traditional occupations in the countryside to coerce people to work for wages.”

Michael Perelman (1939) American economist

Source: The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation (2000), p. 3

People

“But if we can’t help our latent biases, we can help our behavior in response to those instinctive reactions, which is why we work to design systems and processes that overcome that very human part of us all. Although the research may be unsettling, it is what we do next that matters most.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Behavior , Help , Parting

“We live in the capitalist system, so-called because its dominated b the capitalist class. In this system the capitalists are the rulers and the workers the subjects. The capitalists are in a decided minority and yet they rule because of the ignorance of the working class.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

Working Class Politics (1910)

“Capitalism is too complicated a system for a newly independent nation. Hence the need for a socialistic society.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (1957), p. x.

“Undue enmity with enemies does not serve the interests of the system. Enemies must be dealt with wisely and prudently.”

Yousef Saanei (1937) Iranian grand ayatollah

Remarks on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/mar/15/20070315-111357-5226r/?page=all March 2007.
2007

“It is time to employ fractal geometry and its associated subjects of chaos and nonlinear dynamics to study systems engineering methodology (SEM). Systematic codification of the former is barely 15 years old, while codification of the latter began 45 years ago… Fractal geometry and chaos theory can convey a new level of understanding to systems engineering and make it more effective”

Arthur D. Hall (1925–2006) American electrical engineer

A.D. Hall III (1989) "The fractal architecture of the systems engineering method", in: Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part C: Applications and Reviews, IEEE Transactions on Volume 28, Issue 4, Nov 1998 Page(s):565 - 572

Understanding , Study , Time

“In fact, in the plantation areas conditions amounting to slavery were re‑established by the planters with the acquiescence of the Government. Some idea of the misery to which the population of these areas was reduced by this system of merciless exploitation in the interests of British capital may be gained from the Bengal Indigo Commission's Report and from some of the literature of the period. Nil Darpan or the Mirror of Indigo, a Bengali drama, created a sensation by throwing a little light on this dark corner of Britain's action in India, and the reaction in official circles was so great that a European missionary, Mr Long, who translated and published it in English, was fined and imprisoned. During the whole of this period, in fact till the rise of nationalism after the Great War, conditions in plantations were of a kind which showed the worst features of European relations with Asia.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

War , Literature , Idea , Light

“Oklahoma City bombing was done on purpose. Did you know the Federal Government blew up their own building to blame it on the militias and to get rid of some people that weren't cooperating with the system?”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Evolution: the Foundation for Communism, Nazism, Socialism, and the New World Order (2003)

People

“In a sense, the American Dream was foreigners could come to this country and, through hard work, they could be successful, make a new start, and realise and fulfil their dream despite their caste or their religion in their homelands. So Trump erected a system that denies them all of that. A system that sets castes, restricts religion, prohibits foreigners, and breaks all of the groundwork for small business, and for them to be able to do anything.”

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

Exclusive Interview with Aron Ra – Public Speaker, Atheist Vlogger, and Activist https://conatusnews.com/interview-aron-ra-past-president-atheist-alliance-america/, Conatus News (May 17, 2017)

Religion , Dreams , Business , Sense

“Model Driven Architecture is a style of enterprise application development and integration, based on using automated tools to build system independent models and transform them into efficient implementations.”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

Attributed to Grady Booch in: Tarek M. Sobh (2008) Advances in Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering. p. 457

“"Mean?" I said. "My dear girl, I am equally fond of man and beast alike. There is not the slightest drop of enmity in my system. After all, you can't be mean and still be a great writer."”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Girl

“The notion that human interaction could spontaneously and autonomously achieve a stable, orderly, self-sustaining form of equilibrium in the absence of government intervention—what François Quesnay and the first school of économistes dubbed un ordre naturel in the late 1750s—has facilitated a conception of the market as a self-regulating system that could only prosper by purging itself of the prejudicial meddling of governments and politics. In the face of this new conception of an orderly market, governance would be relegated outside that autonomous space, charged with the responsibility of policing and punishing those who deviate—those who do not see the natural laws or, in more technical jargon, who bypass the market.”

Bernard Harcourt (1963) American academic

Source: The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order (2011), p. 241

School , Law , Nature

“The goal of maximizing the welfare of all may be better achieved by an ethic that accepts our inclinations and harnesses them so that, taken as a whole, the system works to everyone's advantage.”

Peter Singer (1946) Australian philosopher

Source: The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (1981), Chapter 6, A New Understanding Of Ethics, p. 157

“Variant: If the American people knew the corruption in our money system there would be revolution before morning.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Attributed to Henry Ford by Charles Binderup (March 19, 1937), Congressional Record—House vol. 81, p. 2528. The quote is preceded by "It was Henry Ford who said, in substance, this," indicating that it was a paraphrase rather than an actual quote. Ford wrote at length in My Life and Work (1923) against the dominance of finance over industry, including a remark in Chapter XII, quoted above, which is very similar to the attributed statement.
Misattributed

Money , People

“Complexity theory began with an interest u how order spring from chaos. According to complexity theory, adaption is most effective in systems that are only partially connected. The argument is that too much structure creates gridlock, while too little structure creates chaos. A good example would be the traffic lights in a city. If there are no lights, traffic is chaotic. If there are too many lights, traffic stops. A moderate number of lights creates structure, but still allows drivers to adapt their routes in surprising ways in response to changing traffic conditions. Consequently, the key to effective change is to stay poised on this edge of chaos. Complexity theory focuses managerial thinking on the interrelationships among different parts of an organization and on the trade-off of less control for greater adaptation.”

Shona Brown (1960) businessperson

Source: Competing on the Edge, 1998, p. 14

Way , Spring , Thinking , Light

“In the writings of such "pagan" philosophers as Plutarch and Porphyry we find a humanitarian ethic of the most exalted kind, which, after undergoing a long repression during medieval churchdom, reappeared, albeit but weakly and fitfully at first, in the literature of the Renaissance, to be traced more definitely in the eighteenth century school of "sensibility." But it was not until after the age of Rousseau, from which must be dated the great humanitarian movement of the past century, that Vegetarianism began to assert itself as a system, a reasoned plea for the disuse of flesh-food.”

Henry Stephens Salt (1851–1939) British activist

The Humanities of Diet

Age , School , Food , Literature

“It is big government – it's a socialist utopia. And we need to address it as if it is a cancer. It must be cut out of the system because they cannot co-exist. And you don't cure cancer by – well, I'm just going to give you a little bit of cancer. You must eradicate it. It cannot co-exist. And we need big thinkers, and brave people with spines who can make the case – that can actually say to Americans: look it’s going to be hard – it’s going to be hard but it’s going to be okay. We’re going to make it.”

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

2010s, 2010

People

“I have said, and I believe, that potentially we have in this country a free enterprise system of radio and television which is superior to any other. But to achieve its promise, it must be both free and enterprising. There is no suggestion here that networks or individual stations should operate as philanthropies. But I can find nothing in the Bill of Rights or in the Communications Act which says that they must increase their net profits each year, lest the Republic collapse.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

RTNDA Convention Speech (1958)

Communication , Country

“In all engineering disciplines nowadays, software engineering excluded, there exists an established engineering process to develop a system, which is accompanied by a number of suited modeling description techniques. Software engineering, being a rather new field, has not as yet established any clear methodical guidance or a fully standardized modeling notation.”

Bernhard Rumpe (1967) German computer scientist

Source: Executable Modeling with UML. A vision or a Nightmare (2002), p. 697

“Of the so-called global theories the one initially stated and defined by Bertalanffy in 1947 under the title of "general systems theory" has taken hold… Since then he has refined, modified and applied his concepts, established a society for general systems theory and published a General Systems Yearbook. Many social scientists but only a handful of psychiatrists studied, understood or applied systems theory. Suddenly, under the leadership of Dr. William Gray of Boston, a threshold was reached so that at the 122nd annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in 1966 two sessions were held at which this theory was discussed and regular meetings for psychiatrists were ensured for future participation in and development of this "Unified Theory of Human Behavior."”

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

If there be a third revolution (i.e. after the psychoanalytic and behavioristic), it is in the development of a general theory.
Grinker, Helen MacGill Hughes (ed.) (1967) Towards a Unified Theory of Human Behaviour. 2e ed. New York, Basic Books. p. ix; cited in: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968) General System Theory. p. 7

Behavior , Study , Future

“On Earth one of the things that a large proportion of the locals is most proud of is this wonderful economic system, which, with a sureness and certainty so comprehensive one could almost imagine the process bears some relation to their limited and limiting notions of either thermodynamics or God, all food, comfort, energy, shelter, space, fuel, and sustenance gravitates naturally and easily away from those who need it most and towards those who need it least. Indeed, those on the receiving end of such largesse are often harmed unto death by its arrival, though the effects may take years and generations to manifest themselves.”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

“State of the Art” (p. 136)
Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991)

Death , God , Food , Imagination

“I believe it has required a long series of accepted observations for us to have arrived at this idea, now so natural in appearance, that the modifications produced within our nervous system are the only states of which we can have a direct consciousness; and as experimental demonstration is always limited, there can be no absolute certainty that things never happen otherwise, that we never go outside ourselves, and that neither our consciousness nor our nervous influx can exteriorise itself, shoot beyond our material organs, and travel afar in pursuit of objects in order to know or to modify them.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Source: The Mind and the Brain, 1907, p. 17

Travel , Idea , Nature , Appearance

“I think I was born to dance. That’s what my grandmother told me. So it was always in my system.”

Vyjayanthimala (1936) Indian actress, politician & dancer

In There's no slowing down for Vyjayanthimala, 28 August 2013, 12 January 2014, New Indian Express http://www.newindianexpress.com/entertainment/tamil/Theres-no-slowing-down-for-Vyjayanthimala/2013/08/28/article1755083.ece,

Thinking , Dance

“No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels. Broadly, we can afford to sink those sorts of knowledge which continue to be true regardless of changes in the environment, but we must maintain in an accessible place all those controls of behavior which must be modified for every instance. The economics of the system, in fact, pushes organisms toward sinking into the unconscious those generalities of relationship which remain permanently true and toward keeping within the conscious the pragmatic of particular instances.”

Gregory Bateson book Steps to an Ecology of Mind

Source: Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), p. 143, as cited in: Lawrence S. Bale (1992) " Gregory Bateson’s Theory of Mind: Practical Applications to Pedagogy http://www.narberthpa.com/Bale/lsbale_dop/gbtom_patp.pdf". November 1992. p. 20

Behavior , Knowledge , Change

“[The construal of context as a semiotic construct accompanies the construal of language as a metafunctionally organized system because of the realizational relationship between the two. And it is this relationship which helps to explain how language is learned:]
It is this that enables, and disposes, the child to learn the lexicogrammar: since the system is organized along functional lines, it relates closely to what the child can see language doing as he observes it going on around him.”

Michael Halliday (1925–2018) Australian linguist

Source: 1970s and later, Learning How to Mean--Explorations in the Development of Language, 1975, p. 122 cited in: M.A.K. Halliday, Jonathan Webster (2006) The Language of Early Childhood. p. 289.

Learning , Help

“From the invention of the cotton-gin slavery became a progressive system — not passively tolerated as in process of extinction, but actively striving for development and extension. It became a conscious political power. It made no offensive professions. It still deprecated itself as an evil, so difficult to deal with, and, with an adroit allusion to Ham and Onesimus, it smoothed the ecclesiastical conscience of the country and only asked to be let alone. And it was let alone. The War of 1812, and the consequent commercial confusion and renewed devotion to trade, held the country torpid upon the subject. If anybody looked at slavery inquisitively, it folded its hands demurely upon its breast and said, 'I am such a dreadful thing! How unfortunate that I should exist! What can be done with me? Just please to let me alone, that is all I want. A leper, you see; a miserable leper!”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

War , Evil , Country

“Within the past ten years there have appeared with increasing frequency books, articles, conferences, and monograms dealing with system engineering, system analysis, system design, the systems approach, the design of systems, system theory, and problems of systems engineering. The number of publications and the stature of their authors does not allow the dismissal of the subject as a passing fad. The breadth of engineering activity involved in even a cursory examination of recent publications is of interest… It is therefore obvious that whatever Systems Engineering may or may not be, it is non-sectarian and encompasses activities that are of concern in all phases of engineering. On the other hand undergraduate college offerings akin to Systems Engineering are rather limited and even graduate programs are not extensive.”

Allen B. Rosenstein (1920–2018) American systems engineers

Source: Systems engineering and Modern Engineering Design (1965), p. 1.

Books , Problem , Appearance , Past

“The fundamental tenet of the Védántí school, to which in a more modern age the incomparable Sancara was a firm and illustrious adherent, consisted, not in denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but, in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending, that it has no essence independent of mental perception, that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms, that external appearances and sensations are illusory, and would vanish into nothing if the divine energy, which alone sustains them, were suspended but for a moment; an opinion which Epicharmus and Plato seem to have adopted, and which has been maintained in the present century with great elegance, but with little publick applause; partly because it has been misunderstood, and partly because it has been misapplied by the false reasoning of some unpopular writers, who are said to have disbelieved in the moral attributes of God, whose omnipresence, wisdom, and goodness are the basis of the Indian philosophy… [N]othing can be farther removed from impiety than a system wholly built on the purest devotion; and the inexpressible difficulty, which any man, who shall make the attempt, will assuredly find in giving a satisfactory definition of material substance, must induce us to deliberate with coolness, before we censure the learned and pious restorer of the ancient Véda; though we cannot but admit, that, if the common opinions of mankind be the criterion of philosophical truth, we must adhere to the system of Gotama, which the Bráhmens of this province almost universally follow.”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

II. pp. 238-239
"On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" (1794)

Wisdom , God , Truth , Age

“For these anticipations determine the behaviour of the economic subjects and consequently those changes in the whole price system which during a period actually occur as a result of the actions of individuals.”

Gunnar Myrdal (1898–1987) Swedish economist

Source: Monetary Equilibrium (1939), p. 121

Change

“A breakdown of management into its basic functions — development, production and marketing — revealed that the character of the functions, their chronological sequence, the closeness with which they had to be integrated and their relative importance to the success and survival of the business, all depended upon the system of techniques in the firm concerned.”

Joan Woodward (1916–1971) British sociologist

Source: Management and technology, Problems of Progress Industry, 1958, p. 21-22

Business , Success , Dependency

“Myth is the system of basic metaphors, images, and stories that in-forms the perceptions, memories, and aspirations of a people; provides the rationale for its institutions, rituals and power structure; and gives a map of the purpose and stages of life.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 21

Life , People , Memory

“The presidential debates should offer the American people an opportunity to evaluate the candidates for president and make an informed choice about the future direction of the nation. The debate commission should respect the two-party system, but should not be used as a vehicle for stifling dissent and silencing voices when many voters conclude the two-party system makes them choose the "lesser of two evils."”

Brent Budowsky (1952) American journalist

Why Libertarian Gary Johnson must be included in debates (August 11, 2016)

People , Silence , Evil , Future

“We want the world socialist system to be a well-knit family of nations, building and defending the new society together, and mutually enriching each other with experience and knowledge, a family, strong and united, which the people of the world would regard as the prototype of the future world community of free nations.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Cited in the Future of Society http://leninist.biz/en/1973/FS375/5.3-Main.Historical.Stages.of.the.Communist.Formation

People , World , Family , Communication

“The younger you are, the easier it will be for you to adapt to a new lifestyle or to a new profession. The older you are, the more difficult it is. The thing to watch out for is, being eaten by the system. So if you look at our politicians now, you will see that the older ones have a harder time letting go. And when that happens, they lose their usefulness. The younger ones can handle change, and they can accept losing a position.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

"Who's afraid of People Power", Philippine Graphic, 31 January 2005, p. 33, ISSN 119-206X.
2005

Change , Time

“By a state of a system is meant any well-defined condition or property that can be recognised if it occurs again. Every system will naturally have many possible states.”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

Source: An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956), Part I: Mechanism, p. 25

Nature

“What is this free enterprise system? It is the law of the jungle applied to economics. It is the law of every man for himself, as the elephant said when he was dancing among the chickens. That is not a bad philosophy if, like the hon. member for York - Sunbury, you happen to be in the elephant class, but it is likely to be depressing if you are a farmer or worker, and belong in the chicken group. Free enterprise means unrestricted competition; the race to the swift and the battle to the strong; nature red in tooth and claw.”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

Budget Debate, House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, March 22, 1943.

Law , Nature , Strong , Dance

“We must establish the ecological bounds on human activity. We must tackle the systemic inequalities which undermine social progress. We must fix the illiterate economics of relentless growth […] A different economics is achievable. A better and fairer social logic lies within our grasp.”

Tim Jackson book Prosperity Without Growth

Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow, 2017 edition, Routledge, page 227.
Prosperity Without Growth

“The elder Herschel, directing his wonderful tube towards the sides of our system, where stars are planted most rarely… was enabled with awe struck mind to see suspended in the vast empyrean astral systems, or, as he called them, firmaments, resembling our own. Like light cloudlets to a certain power of the telescope, they resolved themselves, under a greater power, into stars, though these generally seemed no larger than the finest particles of diamond dust. The general forms of these systems are various; but one at least has been detected as bearing a striking resemblance to the supposed form of our own. The distances are also various… The farthest observed by the astronomer were estimated by him as thirty-five thousand times more remote than Sirius, supposing its distance to be about twenty thousand millions of miles. It would thus appear, that not only does gravitation keep our earth in its place in the solar system, and the solar system in its place in our astral system, but it also may be presumed to have the mightier duty of preserving a local arrangement between that astral system and an immensity of others, through which the imagination is left to wander on and on without limit or stay, save that which is given by its inability to grasp the unbounded.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 6-7

Imagination , Star , Light , Appearance

“The ascription of an unconscious intentional phenomenon to a system implies that the phenomenon is in principle accessible to consciousness.”

John Rogers Searle (1932) American philosopher

A statement of the author’s “connection principle.”
"Consciousness, Explanatory Inversion, and Cognitive Science," The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13, 4 (December 1990): 585-696.

“We brought those cases because we realized that the truth is the engine of our judicial system. We didn't get the straight story, and we had to - had to - act.”

Patrick Fitzgerald (1960) American lawyer

Cheney Aide Charged With Lying in Leak Case New York Times (October 29, 2005) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/29/politics/29leak.html?pagewanted=all

Truth

“Both of our (Mainland China and Taiwan) legal and governance systems were built following the 'one China' structure. That is why cross-strait relations are not state-to-state relations and there is no room for Taiwanese independence.”

Lien Chan (1936) former Chairman of the Kuomintang

Source: Lien Chan (2018) cited in " Lien Chan says no room for Taiwanese independence in talks with Xi Jinping http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2018/07/14/2003696647" on Taipei Times, 14 July 2018

“When we put our central nervous system outside us we returned to the primal nomadic state.”

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

1990s and beyond, "The Agenbite of Outwit" (1998)

“Modern monopolist capitalism on a world-wide scale — imperialist wars are absolutely inevitable under such an economic system, as long as private property in the means of production exists.”

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

Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)

War , World

“The situation also gave U. N. Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali a chance to start the U. N.'s disegagement from Bosnia, something he had long wanted to do. After a few meetings with him, I concluded that this elegant and subtle Egyptian, whose Coptic family could trace its origins back over centuries, had disdain for the fractious and firty peoples of the Balkans. Put bluntly, he never liked the place. In 1992, during his only visit to Sarajevo, he made the comment that shocked the journalists on the day I arrived in the beleaguered capital: "Bosnia is a rich man's war. I understand your frustration, but you have a situation here that is better than ten other places in the world. … I can give you a list." He complained many times that Bosnia was eating up his budget, diverting him from other priorities, and threatening the whole U. N. system. "Bosnia has created a distortion in the work of the U. N.", he said just before Srebrenica. Sensing that our diplomatic efforts offered an opportunity to disengage, he informed the Security Council on September 18 that he would be ready to end the U. N. role in the forme Yugoslavia, and allow all key aspects of implementation to be placed with others. Two days later, he told Madeleine Albright that the Contact Group should create its own mechanism for implementation - thus volunteering to reduce the U. N.'s role at a critical moment. Ironically, his weakness simplified our task considerably.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), pp. 174-175

War , People , World , Family

“He [Cobden] said that the great mass of the labouring classes, the unskilled labouring class, were in a condition which permanently was one disgraceful to the Government of the country…The system of protection had produced nothing but misery to the labouring population of this country, and until it was removed misery would continue to be their inheritance. He would meet the opponents of free trade with this simple proposition—they could not benefit the condition of the mass of the people of this country but by the admission of more food.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1845/jun/10/repeal-of-the-corn-laws in the House of Commons (10 June 1845).
1840s

People , Food , Country

“The sudden recent rise to prominence of cybernetics was due, immediately, to World War II. There existed then a series of problems which had not previously been met. The main one was that of range-finding for anti-aircraft guns in high-speed aerial warfare. The older systems involved human computers and these, with manually controlled locators, were wholly inadequate for the job in hand. The essence of the process involved was to track and predict the direction, velocity, and height of enemy aircraft. The human being's part in the operation was much too slow and inaccurate, and there were people available with machines already developed to do the job adequately; these machines were, of course, computing machines.”

Frank Honywill George (1921–1997) British psychologist

Source: The Brain As A Computer (1962), p.18

War , People , World , Problem

“Roll on, ye Stars! exult in youthful prime,
Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time;
Near and more near your beamy cars approach,
And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach; —
Flowers of the sky! ye too to age must yield,
Frail as your silken sisters of the field!
Star after star from Heaven's high arch shall rush,
Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush,
Headlong, extinct, to one dark center fall,
And Death and Night and Chaos mingle all!
— Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form,
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
And soars and shines, another and the same.”

Erasmus Darwin book The Botanic Garden

The Botanic Garden (1791), Part i.

Death , Youth , Age , Cars

“Design bugs are often subtle and occur by evolution with early assumptions being forgotten as new features or uses are added to systems.”

Fernando J. Corbató (1926–2019) American computer scientist

Source: On Building Systems That Will Fail (1991), p. 78

“All of the people telling you that you can't have the country you want, are the same people telling you that I wouldn't be standing here tonight. No longer can we rely on those elites in media, and politics, who will say anything to keep a rigged system in place.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, July, 2016 Republican National Convention (21 July 2016)

People , Country

“Classification in documentation is a tool for selection. It is essentially a 'finding system' for subject items… It is an artificial language, designed as a tool to aid in the selection of information from a store in response to search questions. The classification serves to standardise subject description, so that the description of a subject used by indexer and inquirer are more likely to coincide, thus maximising the probability of finding all items relevant to an inquiry.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Classification and indexing in science (1958), Chapter 1: The need for classification, p. 12-13.

Search , Question

“The physicist … engages in complex and difficult calculations, involving the manipulating of ideal, mathematical quantities that, at first glance, are wholly lacking in the music of the living world and the beauty of the resplendent cosmos. It would seem as if there exists no relationship between these quantities and reality. Yet these ideal numbers that cannot be grasped by one's senses, these numbers that only are meaningful from within the system itself, only meaningful as part of abstract mathematical functions, symbolize the image of existence.”

Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–1993) American theologian

Source: Halakhic Man (1983), p. 83

World , Beauty , Music , Mathematics

“There is something radically wrong, [the anarchist] declares, in a system of society that functions and maintains its existence by the impetus of violence and force. He sees nothing praiseworthy in political society which has recourse to periodic wars, or need of jails, gallows and bludgeons--and it is because he is aware that these brutal weapons are the instruments of every government and State that he works for their destruction. … Unlike the politician, he does not regard dishonesty, brutality and avariciousness as natural characteristics of human nature, but as the inevitable consequences of coercion and frustration engendered by artificial law, he believes that these social evils are best eradicated not by greater penalties and further legislation, but by the free development of the latent forces of solidarity and sympathetic understanding which government and law so ruthlessly suppress. … Freedom will be possible when people understand and desire it--for man can only rule where others subserviently obey. Where none obey, none has power to rule.”

George Nicholson (1760–1825) British anarchist and author

"The simplicity of anarchism" in Freedom, 1955. Reprinted in What Is Anarchism?: An Introduction by Donald Rooum, ed. (London: Freedom Press, 1992, 1995) pp. 39-40.

War , People , Law , Penalty

“We have 6,000 kids every day drop out in this country. And they don't drop out because they're dumb. They drop out because they're bored to death. They're in a 19th century education system in a 21st century world. If we really are serious, then, first of all, we make sure that we build the curriculum around their interests, rather than just push them into something they don't care. Second thing, unleash weapons of mass instruction. I'm a passionate, ardent supporter of having music and art in every school for every student at every grade level.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Republican presidential candidate debate, Johnston, Iowa, 2007-12-12
Republican Debates

Death , World , Education , School

“‘ Don Camillo, the system of teaching Christian charity by knocking people over the head is one that doesn’ t appeal to me,’ the Lord answered severely.”

Giovannino Guareschi (1908–1968) Italian journalist, cartoonist and humorist

Horses of a Different Colour
Don Camillo and the Prodigal Sun (1952)

People

“This paper introduces a concept of organizational ecology. This refers to the organizational field created by a number of organizations, whose interrelations compose a system at the level of the field as a whole. The overall field becomes the object of inquiry, not the single organization as related to its organization-set. The emergence of organizational ecology from earlier organization theory is traced and illustrated from empirical studies. Its relevance to the task of institution-building, in a world in which the environment has become exceedingly complex and more interdependent, is argued.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Eric Trist, "A concept of organizational ecology." Australian journal of management 2.2 (1977): 161-175. p. 161; abstract

World , Study

“The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside. The aim of this chapter is to provide an outside view—a lens—that I call a system of profound knowledge. It provides a map of theory by which to understand the organizations that we work in. The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding of the system of profound knowledge. The individual, transformed, will perceive new meaning to his life, to events, to numbers, to interactions between people. Once the individual understands the system of profound knowledge, he will apply its principles in every kind of relationship with other people. He will have a basis for judgment of his own decisions and for transformation of the organizations that he belongs to.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993)

Life , People , Understanding , Knowledge

“Hans Haacke's "Visitor's Profile" encouraged visitors to interact with a computer by inputting personal information, which was then tabulated to output statistical data on the exhibition's audience. Such demographic research - as art - opened up a critical discourse, following Foucault and others, on the exclusivity of cultural institutions and their patrons, revealing the myth of public service as a thin veneer justifying the hierarchical values that reify extant social relations. Similarly, "Interactive Paper Systems" by Sonia Sheridan, engaged museum-goers in a creative exchange with the artist and 3M's first commercially available color photocopying machine, dissolving conventional artist-viewer-object relations. In "The Seventh Investigation (Art as Idea as Idea)" Joseph Kosuth utilized multiple forms of mass media and distribution (a billboard, an newspaper advertisement, a banner, and a museum installation) to question the conceptual and contextual boundaries between art, philosophy, commerce, pictures, and texts.”

Edward A. Shanken (1964) American art historian

Edward A. Shanken. " The House That Jack Built: Jack Burnham's Concept of "Software" as a Metaphor for Art http://www.artexetra.com/House.html" in Leonardo Electronic Almanac 6:10 (November, 1998)

Art , Color , Idea , Question

“Every presentation of philosophy, whether oral or written, is to be taken and can only be taken in the sense of a means. Every system is only an expression or image of reason, and hence only an object of reason, an object which reason—a living power that procreates itself in new thinking beings—distinguishes from itself and posits as an object of criticism. Every system that is not recognized and appropriated as just a means, limits and warps the mind for it sets up the indirect and formal thought in the place of the direct, original and material thought.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist

Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 67
Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy (1839)

Thinking , Sense

“I foresee a universal information system (UIS), which will give everyone access at any given moment to the contents of any book that has ever been published or any magazine or any fact. The UIS will have individual miniature-computer terminals, central control points for the flood of information, and communication channels incorporating thousands of artificial communications from satellites, cables, and laser lines. Even the partial realization of the UIS will profoundly affect every person, his leisure activities, and his intellectual and artistic development. … But the true historic role of the UIS will be to break down the barriers to the exchange of information among countries and people.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), The Human Rights Movement (1969-1979)

People , Books , Communication , Universe

“In our analysis of complex systems (like the brain and language) we must avoid the trap of trying to find master keys. Because of the mechanisms by which complex systems structure themselves, single principles provide inadequate descriptions. We should rather be sensitive to complex and self-organizing interactions and appreciate the play of patterns that perpetually transforms the system itself as well as the environment in which it operates.”

Paul Cilliers (1956–2011) South African philosopher

Source: Complexity and Postmodernism (1998), p. 107

“Everyone knows how compromised the idea of bureaucracy as a meritocratic system is. The first criterion of loyalty to any organization is therefore complicity. Career advancement is not based on merit but on a willingness to play along with the fiction that career advancement is based on merit, or with the fiction that rules and regulations apply to everyone equally, when in fact they are often deployed as an instrument of arbitrary personal power. … As whole societies have come to represent themselves as giant credentialized meritocracies, rather than as systems of predatory extraction, we bustle about, trying to curry favor by pretending we actually believe it to be true.”

David Graeber book The Utopia of Rules

The Utopia of Rules (2015)

Idea , Personality , Loyalty

“I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)

Books , World , Soul

“Prior to all overturns of XX century, without an exception, Russian opposition has accused authorities in "transferring funds to abroad". And in all cases in turned out to be void propaganda — from 1914-1917 to 1991. And money were transferred later, after the revolution, under brands of "people's power" and "won democracy". The only real way of plundering through "transfer of funds" is change of political system, which would transform into zeroing of all governmental promissory notes. As soon as Russia will become "Other Russia", all the property will turn out to be transferred, "nobody's". And people will be informed, that "previous power has eaten all".”

Gleb Pavlovsky (1951) Russian political scientist

Money , People , Way , Democracy

“How is it that one way of seeing the world becomes so widely shared that institutions, technologies, production systems, buildings, cities, become shaped around that way of seeing?”

Donella Meadows (1941–2001) American environmental scientist, teacher, and writer

Page 169.
Thinking in systems: A Primer (2008)

World , Way

“[A way] one could repair Social Security... [would be to] gradually increase the retirement age. This does have a certain logic to it: the average American's life expectancy has risen by more than ten years since Social Security was created. Increasing the retirement age by even one or two years would help get the system closer to sustainability.”

Mitt Romney book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness

Source: No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, 2010, Chapter 6, pgs. 158 - 159

Life , Age , Way , Help

“The fundamental, all-pervasive cause of world instability is the destruction of communities by the commercialization of all human relationships and the resulting neuroses and psychoses. The technological acceleration of transportation, communication and weapons systems is now creating power areas wider than existing political structures.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

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

World , Communication

“The IMF and World Bank are still appalling, and now the World Trade Organisation too. All over the world people die unnecessarily because of the international financial system. Every year the international financial system kills more people than World War II. But at least Hitler was mad.”

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

NME, 15 April 2000
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20000529082432/http://www.nme.com/newsdesk/20000411113543.html

War , People , World , Madness

“Whenever I go anywhere I find persons in humble situations who smile at me and wish me well. I smile back and wish them well. It is because at some time or other I have tipped them. To me the system has never been an annoyance but a delightful opportunity for the exercise of tact and judgment.”

Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816) American politician

Bohemian San Francisco, Its Restaurants and Their Most Famous Recipes—The Elegant Art of Dining http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9464/pg9464.html, 1914, by Clarence E. Edwords
1810s

Smile , Exercises , Time , Personality

“The further institutional designers try to move along the continuum toward explicit proactive systems that force integration in exclusionary and racist societies, the more they will learn about how much redesign of ethnic antipathy is feasible in them.”

Ian Shapiro (1956) American political theorist

"The State of Democratic Theory" in The Democracy Sourcebook (2003) edited by Robert Dahl, Ian Shapiro, and José Antonio Cheibub.

Learning

“An explanation of the "institutional approach" to economic theory is a plea for a particular kind of theory. It is possible to come upon the same object from different angles; but more often those who take different routes chance upon different things. The "institutional approach" doubtless has some importance because it is a happy way to acceptable truth, but its significance lies in its being the only way to the right sort of theory. An appeal for "institutional economics" implies no attack upon the truth or value of other bodies of economic thought, but it is a denial of the claims of other systems of thought to be "economic theory." This, however, is no pointless struggle in method to be carried on by breaking syllogisms over concepts and by engaging in polemics over niceties in statement. On the contrary, it involves the very nature of the problems which the theorist should set himself; its real issue is over what economic theory is all about.”

Walton Hale Hamilton (1881–1958) Yale Law Professor

Source: The Institutional Approach to Economic Theory, 1919, p. 309: Introduction

Truth , Way , Nature , Problem

“Just as organic species evolve toward the use of greater densities of a wider variety of free-energy sources in their environment, so human societies develop to access, store, and use in greater densities larger quantities of free energy through the ongoing improvement of their technologies. As a consequence societies, the same as natural systems, tend to grow larger in size, develop more intricate relations among their diverse components, and create more massive and flexible modes of interaction among them.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: Evolution: the general theory (1996), p. 125.

Nature

“Management is a set of processes that can keep a complicated system of people and technology running smoothly. The most important aspects of management include planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing, controlling, and problem solving. Leadership is a set of processes that creates organizations in the first place or adapts them to significantly changing circumstances. Leadership defines what the future should look like, aligns people with that vision, and inspires them to make it happen despite the obstacles.”

John P. Kotter (1947) author of The heart of Change

Source: Leading Change, 1996, p. 25; cited in: avid M. Boje, Bernard Burnes, John Hassard (2012), The Routledge Companion to Organizational Change, p. 140

People , Problem , Change , Future

“It is always easy to blame the state and the men in uniform. But Islamic terror essentially does not emanate from uniforms and state power, but from a belief system which even the ordinary people have been fed. That is why a lot of Islamic terror never gets recorded by human-rights organizations like Amnesty International. A Christian Pakistani friend complained to me that Amnesty had not spoken out against the religious persecutions in his homeland, even when these are a grim and undeniable reality. The fact is that much of this persecution and discrimination is not ordered by the state (the type of culprit with which Amnesty is familiar), but is a spontaneous attitude among sections of the Muslim population, egged on by nothing except the omnipresent Islamic doctrine.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Negationism in India, (1992)

Men , People , Reality

“It is a fundamental and deplorable error by which we in this country have confused education with the acquisition of knowledge…. Amount of knowledge is in itself not of first importance, but to make the best use of what we know. The easy assumption of our educationists that we have only to supply the mind with a smattering of facts in each department of knowledge and the mind can be trusted to develop itself and take its own suitable road is contrary to science, contrary to human experience…. Much as we have lost as a nation, we have always preserved our intellectual alertness, quickness and originality; but even this last gift is threatened by our University system, and if it goes, it will be the beginning of irretrievable degradation and final extinction.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Early 1900s, Centenary Edition of Sri Aurobindo's works (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1972) 3.125-127
India's Rebirth

Education , Error , Knowledge , Universe

“We seek the support of all political groups and protection of the government, which is also our government, in our struggle. For too many years we have been treated like the lowest of the low. Our wages and working conditions have been determined from above, because irresponsible legislators who could have helped us, have supported the rancher's argument that the plight of the Farm Worker was a "special case." They saw the obvious effects of an unjust system, starvation wages, contractors, day hauls, forced migration, sickness, illiteracy, camps and sub-human living conditions, and acted as if they were irremediable causes. The farm worker has been abandoned to his own fate — without representation, without power — subject to mercy and caprice of the rancher. We are tired of words, of betrayals, of indifference. To the politicians we say that the years are gone when the farm worker said nothing and did nothing to help himself. From this movement shall spring leaders who shall understand us, lead us, be faithful to us, and we shall elect them to represent us. We shall be heard.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

The Plan of Delano (1965)

Fate , Faith , Spring , Understanding

“Our goal should be to cool the planet in ways that reinforce and restore the resilience of its natural systems.”

Alex Steffen (1968) American writer and futurist

Way , Nature

“In the languor of disease and the weariness of old age, the pleasures of the vain and empty distinctions of greatness disappear. To one, in this situation, they are no longer capable of recommending those toilsome pursuits in which they had formerly engaged him. In his heart he curses ambition, and vainly regrets the ease and the indolence of youth, pleasures which are fled for ever, and which he has foolishly sacrificed for what, when he has got it, can afford him no real satisfaction. In this miserable aspect does greatness appear to every man when reduced either by spleen or disease to observe with attention his own situation, and to consider what it is that is really wanting to his happiness. Power and riches appear then to be, what they are, enormous and operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniencies to the body, consisting of springs the most nice and delicate, which must be kept in order with the most anxious attention, and which, in spite of all our care, are ready every moment to burst into pieces, and to crush in their ruins their unfortunate possessor. …
But though this splenetic philosophy, which in time of sickness or low spirits is familiar to every man, thus entirely depreciates those great objects of human desire, when in better health and in better humour, we never fail to regard them under a more agreeable aspect. Our imagination, which in pain and sorrow seems to be confined and cooped up within our own persons, in times of ease and prosperity expands itself to every thing around us. We are then charmed with the beauty of that accommodation which reigns in the palaces and economy of the great; and admire how every thing is adapted to promote their ease, to prevent their wants, to gratify their wishes, and to amuse and entertain their most frivolous desires. If we consider the real satisfaction which all these things are capable of affording, by itself and separated from the beauty of that arrangement which is fitted to promote it, it will always appear in the highest degree contemptible and trifling. But we rarely view it in this abstract and philosophical light. We naturally confound it, in our imagination with the order, the regular and harmonious movement of the system, the machine or economy by means of which it is produced. The pleasures of wealth and greatness, when considered in this complex view, strike the imagination as something grand, and beautiful, and noble, of which the attainment is well worth all the toil and anxiety which we are so apt to bestow upon it.
And it is well that nature imposes upon us in this manner. It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Chap. I.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part IV

Pain , Health , Pleasure , Youth

“Both the law of inertia and the law of gravitation contain a numerical factor or a constant belonging to matter, which is called mass. We have thus two definitions of mass; one by the law of inertia: mass is the ratio between force and acceleration. We may call the mass thus defined the inertial or passive mass, as it is a measure of the resistance offered by matter to a force acting on it. The second is defined by the law of gravitation, and might be called the gravitational or active mass, being a measure of the force exerted by one material body on another. The fact that these two constants or coefficients are the same is, in Newton's system, to be considered as a most remarkable accidental coincidence and was decidedly felt as such by Newton himself. He made experiments to determine the equality of the two masses by swinging a pendulum, of which the bob was hollow and could be filled up with different materials. The force acting on the pendulum is proportional to its active mass, its inertia is proportional to its passive mass, so that the period will depend on the ratio of the passive and the active mass. Consequently the fact that the period of all these different pendulums was the same, proves that this ratio is a constant, and can be made equal to unity by a suitable choice of units, i. e., the inertial and the gravitational mass are the same. These experiments have been repeated in the nineteenth century by Bessel, and in our own times by Eötvös and Zeeman, and the identity of the inertial and the gravitational mass is one of the best ascertained empirical facts in physics-perhaps the best. It follows that the so-called fictitious forces introduced by a motion of the body of reference, such as a rotation, are indistinguishable from real forces…. In Einstein's general theory of relativity there is also no formal theoretical difference, as there was in Newton's system…. the equality of inertial and gravitational mass is no longer an accidental coincidence, but a necessity.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

p, 125
"The Astronomical Aspect of the Theory of Relativity" (1933)

Law , Time , Dependency

“The control objects model functionality that is not naturally tied to any other object… We do not believe that the best (most stable) systems are built by only using objects that correspond to real-life entities, something that many other object-oriented analysis and design techniques claim… Behavior that we place in control objects will, in other methods, be distributed over several other objects, making it hard to change this behavior.”

Ivar Jacobson (1939) Swedish computer scientist

Source: Object-Oriented Software Engineering: A Use Case Driven Approach (1992), p. 133 as cited in: " Object Oriented Software Engineering: A Use Case Driven Approach Ivar Jacobson, et al. (1992) http://tedfelix.com/software/jacobson1992.html", Book review by Ted Felix on tedfelix.com, 2006.

Life , Behavior , Nature , Change

Quotes about system page 34

Quotes about system
page 34