Quotes about system
page 40

“Government of the United States was made by men of all races and colors, not for white men, but for the refuge and defense of man. If it does not rest upon the natural rights of man, it rests nowhere. If it does not exist by the consent of governed then any exclusion is possible, and it is a shorter step from an exclusive white man's government to an exclusively rich white man's government, than it is from a system for mankind to one for white men. The spirit which excludes some men today because they are of a certain color, may exclude others tomorrow because they are of a certain poverty or a certain church or a certain birthplace. There is no safety, no guarantee, no security in a prejudice.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

If we build strong and long, we must build upon moral principle.
1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Men, Color, Nature, Strong

“Contingency theories dominate scholarly studies of organization behavior, design, performance, planning and management strategy. While they vary widely in subject matter, they have the common proposition that an organizational outcome is the consequency of a "fit" or match between two or more factors. "Fit" is the key concept in this proposition, and the core problem common to contingency theories is not defining this term clearly. This paper examines three ways to define and test this concept of fit: Selection, Interaction, and Systems approaches. A critical discussion of these three approaches will clarify much of the current confusion in the literature on contingency theories, and suggest ways that future theorizing and research can become more systematic and constructive.”

Andrew H. Van de Ven (1945) American business theorist

Andrew H. Van de Ven and Robert Drazin (1984). The Concept of Fit in Contingency Theory http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA152603. No. SMRC-DP-19). Minneapolis: Minnesota University Minneapolis Strategic Management Research Center.

Way, Behavior, Literature, Problem

“We spend the vast bulk of money in the health, welfare, and education systems in the later years of life. Yet it is in the earliest years that life chances are moulded and set.”

Bob Rae (1948) Canadian politician

Source: The Three Questions - Prosperity and the Public Good (1998), Chapter Six, The Second Question: Health, Education, and the Democratic Economy, p. 124

Life, Money, Health, Education

“The irony of scientific progress is that in solving human problems it creates problems that are not humanly soluble. Science has given humans a kind of power over the natural world achieved by no other animal. It has not given humans the ability to remodel the planet according to their wishes. The Earth is not a clock that can be wound up and stopped at will. A living system, the planet will surely rebalance itself. It will do so, however, without any regard for humans.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Sweet Morality (p. 212)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

World, Nature, Problem, Science

“[Abraham Lincoln believed that] [t]he only reason people do not succeed in a capitalist environment is because they are improvident, they are lazy, they are good for nothing, or they experience some incredible turn of bad luck—that’s why "better luck next time." That may seem like vanishingly small consolation to people who’ve just come through a depression, but for Lincoln, that kind of hardship paled beside slavery. Slavery says that there is a category of people that can never be allowed to rise, that cannot improve themselves no matter how hard they try because they will always be slaves. It’s very much the classic disjuncture between the Enlightenment and feudalism. Feudalism talks about people being born with status, and everyone comes into this world equipped with a status. This status is either free or slave, serf or nobility, elect or damned, whatever. For the Enlightenment people come into this world armed with rights, and the ideal political system is the system that allows them to realize those rights, to use those rights in the freest and most natural fashion possible.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Interview with Tom Mackaman (2013)

Bad luck, People, World, Fashion

“This army has built up a system of political work which essential for the people's war and is aimed at promoting unity in its own ranks, unity with the friendly armies and unity with the people and at disintegrating the enemy forces and ensuring victory in battle.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Coalition Government (1945)

War, People, Victory

“There is widespread belief throughout the free world that, but for American nuclear superiority, Europe would already have been reduced to satellite status and the Iron Curtain would have reached the Atlantic and the Channel. Unless a trustworthy and universal agreement upon disarmament, conventional and nuclear alike, can be reached and an effective system of inspection is established and is actually working, there is only one sane policy for the free world in the next few years. That is what we call defence through deterrents. This we have already adopted and proclaimed. These deterrents may at any time become the parents of disarmament, provided that they deter. To make our contribution to the deterrent we must ourselves possess the most up-to-date nuclear weapons, and the means of delivering them.”

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

Speech https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1955-03-01/debates/ae81a20b-68e7-42d0-8cbb-d9589f53fc0d/Defence#1896 in the House of Commons (1 March 1955) Post-war years (1945–1955)

World, Parent, Universe, Time

“At the most elemental level, reality evanesces into something called Schröedinger's Wave Function: a mathematical abstraction which is best represented as a pattern in an infinite-dimensional space, Hilbert Space. Each point of the Hilbert Space represents a possible state of affairs. The wave function for some one physical or mental system takes the form of, let us say, a coloring in of Hilbert Space. The brightly colored parts represent likely states for the system, the dim parts represent less probable states of affairs.”

Rudy Rucker (1946) American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

Source: The Sex Sphere (1983), p. 133-134

Color, Mathematics, Reality, Parting

“[M]any quite frankly fought to protect slavery, which laid on the survivors of the rebel armies an incubus to which few were willing to admit in alter years. More than just one out of three Confederates whose campfires dotted South Mountain in the June dusk owned slaves… [T]hey brought slaves with them on campaign to tend to the menial jobs… The slave system had invested them with an instinctive impulse for domestic dictatorship; they could brawl, stab, and shoot, in and out of race tracks and saloons, and still assume that they were God's natural aristocrats.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

Source: 2010s, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (2013), p. 15

God, Mountain, Nature

“Most of our beliefs about complex organizations follow from one or the other of two distinct strategies. The closed-system strategy seeks certainty by incorporating only those variables positively associated with goal achievement and subjecting them to a monolithic control network. The open-system strategy shifts attention from goal achievement to survival and incorporates uncertainty by recognizing organizational interdependence with environment. A newer tradition enables us to conceive of the organization as an open system, indeterminate and faced with uncertainty, but subject to criteria of rationality and hence needing certainty.”

James D. Thompson (1920–1973) American sociologist

Source: Organizations in Action, 1967, p. 13 (in 2011 edition)

“While it is becoming increasingly obvious that the fundamental architecture of a system has a profound Influence on the quality of its human factors, the vast majority of human factors studies concern the surface of hardware (keyboards, screens) or the very surface of the software”

Lewis M. Branscomb (1926) physicist and science policy advisor

command names, menu formats
L.M. Branscomb, J.C. Thomas (1984) "Ease of use: a system design challenge". in: IBM Systems Journal. Vol 23.3, Sept 1984. Pages 224-235

Study

“We can create the appearance of knowledge, the illusion of knowing how to grapple with a problem. Far too many educational systems have done exactly that. The result is generations of mouthpieces who can pour forth approved responses to programmed stimuli that contribute nothing to rational discussion. Dogma is for those who only wish to be comfortable. Catechisms are for cowards; commandments, for control freaks who have so little respect for their species that they are driven to appeal to a higher power to keep everyone in line.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 21 (p. 193)

Education, Knowledge, Problem, Appearance

“Adrian Slywotzky believes the Internet will overturn the inefficient push model of supplier-customer interaction. He predicts that in all sorts of markets, customers will use choiceboards—interactive, on-line systems that let people design their own products by choosing from a menu of attributes, prices, and delivery options. And he explores how the shifting role of the customer—from passive recipient to active designer—will change the way companies compete.”

Adrian Slywotzky (1951) American economist

Adrian J. Slywotzky, Clayton M. Christensen, Richard S. Tedlow, Nicholas G. Carr (2000) "The future of commerce." Harvard Business Review Vol 78.1. p. 39-53. ( abstract http://hbr.org/product/future-of-commerce-hbr-onpoint-enhanced-edition/an/4681-PDF-ENG).

People, Way, Change

“We don't have a health care system. We have a health care maze. And we don't have a health care crisis. We have a health crisis. Eighty percent of the $2 trillion we spend on health care in this country is spent on chronic disease. If we don't change the health of this nation by focusing on prevention, we're never going to catch up with the costs no matter what plan we have. … And we've got a situation with 10,000 baby boomers a day signing up for Social Security, going into the Medicare system. And I just want to remind everybody when all the old hippies find out that they get free drugs, just wait until what that's going to cost out there.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

Republican Presidential Debate, 2007-10-21, quoted in [The Republican Debate on Fox News Channel, 2007-10-21, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/us/politics/21debate-transcript.html?pagewanted=9, 2011-03-01]
Republican Debates

Health, Disease, Change, Waiting

“In all my works.... I have always had recourse to one never-varying method. It consists in making the delineation of the objects represented heavily dependent on a system of necessities which itself looks strange. These necessities are sometimes due to the inappropriate and awkward character of the material used, sometimes to some strange obsessive notion [frequently changed for another]. In a word, it is always a matter of giving the person who is looking at the picture a startling impression that a weird logic has directed the painting of it, a logic to which the delineation of every object is subjected, is even sacrificed, in such a peremptory way that, curiously enough, it forces the most unexpected solutions, and, in spite of the obstacles it creates, brings out the desired figuration.”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Quote of Dubuffet, in Peter Selz and Jean Dubuffet: The work of Jean Dubuffet, The Museum of Modern art, New York, 1962
1960-70's

Way, Change, Painting, Dependency

“The ideal system engineer is an engineer thoroughly versed in his field but conversant with and knowledgeable of other fields. You have to have the capability and desire to become a 'six-month expert'… You've got to want to become a generalist, too.”

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

Source: Mathematicians are useful (1971), p. 1

Knowledge

“I'd do some things differently if I were writing this book from scratch today. I would be more nuanced in the history sections. I'd be less inclined to see everyone at "Self-development Stages Six and Seven" as the cat's meow. Above all, perhaps, I would emphasize that some of what I call "monolithic institutions" are evolving (i. e., are being shoved by us) in a positive direction today – so I'd bend over backward to encourage immersion as well as resistance. We need transformers everywhere, inside "The System" as well as outside it. But even with such "flaws" (mainly the flaws of youth), I think New Age Politics is still the best single expression of the new politics as a coherent, systemic, integral whole.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Page 17.
New Age Politics: Our Only Real Alternative (2015)

Books, Youth, Age, History

“Leiderman thought it was not enough that the government dropped charges. He wanted the criminal justice system to recognize Gonzalez’s innocence affirmatively. There is such a thing as a declaration of factual innocence, he explained to Gonzalez. A judge can grant it. It is exceedingly rare – so rare that many cops and lawyers go a career without seeing one. It means not just that prosecutors couldn’t make a case against you, but that you didn’t do the crime. The case remained on the docket of Ventura County Superior Court Judge Patricia Murphy, who had earlier ordered Gonzalez held without bail. Leiderman petitioned the judge, trying not to get his client’s hopes up. He laid out the case, pointing out the holes in West’s story and the numerous alibi witnesses. Prosecutors did not want Gonzalez declared innocent. They knew a jury wouldn’t convict him but said they couldn’t be positive of his innocence. [ ] Ventura County’s chief assistant district attorney, later explained their reasoning: The attack West described was “improbable, but it wasn’t physically impossible.””

Jay Leiderman (1971) lawyer

In January 2009, nearly a year after Gonzalez’s arrest, Leiderman called him excitedly: The judge had sided with them. Gonzalez was soon holding a certified copy of the judge’s order declaring him factually innocent.
As stated in, A Man Falsely Accused of Rape and Kidnap. http://jayleiderman.com/blog/jay-leiderman-quoted-part-5/

Justice, Hope

“It is a shameful sign of our arrogance that our history departments have almost no Chinese history in them, our literature courses almost no Chinese literature, our philosophy departments almost none of the great Chinese systems of philosophy. And our religious schools have been the most arrogant of all.
This ignorant arrogant mind has become fixed in its patterns. It is the pattern which considers anything not American to be inferior — unless it be English.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

"China and the Federal Union" an address at the Federal Union organization, New York City (April 1942) http://www.english.upenn.edu/Projects/Buck/excerpt-fu.html

School, History, Literature

“I come from a world of conservative Christian thought. I've absorbed Christianity with my mother's milk. So it must be obvious that certain… archetypes, aren't they called? — stick in one's mind, and that certain lines, certain courses of events, certain ways of behaving, become adequate symbols for what goes on in the Christian system of ideas. … I keep myself supplied with my own angels and demons…”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

Torsten Manns interview.
Bergman on Bergman (1970)

World, Angels, Way, Idea

“We may usefully think of the language faculty, the number faculty, and others as 'mental organs,' analogous to the heart or the visual system or the system of motor coordination and planning. There appears to be no clear demarcation line between physical organs, perceptual and motor systems and cognitive faculties in the respects in question.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Source: Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s, Rules and Representations (1980), p. 4.

Question, Thinking, Appearance, Heart

“Let me remind you that science is not necessarily wisdom. To know, is not the sole nor even the highest office of the intellect; and it loses all its glory unless it act in furtherance of the great end of man's life. That end is, as both reason and revelation unite in telling us, to acquire the feelings and habits that will lead us to love and seek what is good in all its forms, and guide us by following its traces to the first Great Cause of all, where only we find it pure and unclouded.
If science be cultivated in congruity with this, it is the most precious possession we can have— the most divine endowment. But if it be perverted to minister to any wicked or ignoble purpose — if it even be permitted to take too absolute a hold of the mind, or overshadow that which should be paramount over all, the perception of right, the sense of Duty — if it does not increase in us the consciousness of an Almighty and All-beneficent presence, — it lowers instead of raising us in the great scale of existence.
This, however, it can never do but by our fault. All its tendencies are heavenward; every new fact which it reveals is a ray from the origin of light, which leads us to its source. If any think otherwise, their knowledge is imperfect, or their understanding warped, or darkened by their passions. The book of nature is, like that of revelation, written by God, and therefore cannot contradict it; both we are unable to read through all their extent, and therefore should neither wonder nor be alarmed if at times we miss the pages which reconcile any seeming inconsistence. In both, too, we may fail to interpret rightly that which is recorded; but be assured, if we search them in quest of truth alone, each will bear witness to the other, — and physical knowledge, instead of being hostile to religion, will be found its most powerful ally, its most useful servant. Many, I know, think otherwise; and because attempts have occasionally been made to draw from astronomy, from geology, from the modes of the growth and formation of animals and plants, arguments against the divine origin of the sacred Scripture, or even to substitute for the creative will of an intelligent first cause the blind and casual evolution of some agency of a material system, they would reject their study as fraught with danger. In this I must express my deep conviction that they do injury to that very cause which they think they are serving.
Time will not let me touch further on the cavils and errors in question; and besides they have been often fully answered. I will only say, that I am here surrounded by many, matchless in the sciences which are supposed so dangerous, and not less conspicuous for truth and piety. If they find no discord between faith and knowledge, why should you or any suppose it to exist? On the contrary, they cannot be well separated. We must know that God is, before we can confess Him; we must know that He is wise and powerful before we can trust in Him, — that He is good before we can love Him. All these attributes, the study of His works had made known before He gave that more perfect knowledge of himself with which we are blessed. Among the Semitic tribes his names betoken exalted nature and resistless power; among the Hellenic races they denote his wisdom; but that which we inherit from our northern ancestors denotes his goodness. All these the more perfect researches of modern science bring out in ever-increasing splendour, and I cannot conceive anything that more effectually brings home to the mind the absolute omnipresence of the Deity than high physical knowledge. I fear I have too long trespassed on your patience, yet let me point out to you a few examples.
What can fill us with an overwhelming sense of His infinite wisdom like the telescope? As you sound with it the fathomless abyss of stars, till all measure of distances seems to fail and imagination alone gauges the distance; yet even there as here is the same divine harmony of forces, the same perfect conservation of systems, which the being able to trace in the pages of Newton or Laplace makes us feel as if we were more than men. If it is such a triumph of intellect to trace this law of the universe, how transcendent must that Greatest over all be, in which it and many like it, have their existence! That instrument tells us that the globe which we inhabit is but a speck, the existence of which cannot be perceived beyond our system. Can we then hope that in this immensity of worlds we shall not be overlooked? The microscope will answer. If the telescope lead to one verge of infinity, it brings us to the other; and shows us that down in the very twilight of visibility the living points which it discloses are fashioned with the most finished perfection, — that the most marvellous contrivances minister to their preservation and their enjoyment, — that as nothing is too vast for the Creator's control, so nothing is too minute or trifling for His care. At every turn the philosopher meets facts which show that man's Creator is also his Father, — things which seem to contain a special provision for his use and his happiness : but I will take only two, from their special relation to this very district. Is it possible to consider the properties which distinguish iron from other metals without a conviction that those qualities were given to it that it might be useful to man, whatever other purposes might be answered by them. That it should. be ductile and plastic while influenced by heat, capable of being welded, and yet by a slight chemical change capable of adamantine hardness, — and that the metal which alone possesses properties so precious should be the most abundant of all, — must seem, as it is, a miracle of bounty. And not less marvellous is the prescient kindness which stored up in your coalfields the exuberant vegetation of the ancient world, under circumstances which preserved this precious magazine of wealth and power, not merely till He had placed on earth beings who would use it, but even to a late period of their existence, lest the element that was to develope to the utmost their civilization and energy migbt be wasted or abused.
But I must conclude with this summary of all which I would wish to impress on your minds—* that the more we know His works the nearer we are to Him. Such knowledge pleases Him; it is bright and holy, it is our purest happiness here, and will assuredly follow us into another life if rightly sought in this. May He guide us in its pursuit; and in particular, may this meeting which I have attempted to open in His name, be successful and prosperous, so that in future years they who follow me in this high office may refer to it as one to be remembered with unmixed satisfaction.”

Thomas Romney Robinson

Robinson in his 1849 adress, as quoted in the Report of the Nineteenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science https://archive.org/stream/report36sciegoog#page/n50/mode/2up, London, 1850.

Love, Life, Wisdom, Men

“[Systems should be classified] on the basis of the types of inputs with which they must cope.”

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

Source: System Engineering (1957), p. 299; As cited in: Thomas C. Ford (2008) Interoperability Measurement. p. 146

“Ultimately there are but three systems of ethics, three conceptions of the ideal character and the moral life. One is that of Buddha and Jesus, which stresses the feminine virtues, considers all men to be equally precious, resists evil only by returning good, identifies virtue with love, and inclines in politics to unlimited democracy. Another is the ethic of Machiavelli and Nietzsche, which stresses the masculine virtues, accepts the inequality of men, relishes the risks of combat and conquest and rule, identifies virtue with power, and exalts an hereditary aristocracy. A third, the ethic of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, denies the universal applicability of either the feminine or the masculine virtues; considers that only the informed and mature mind can judge, according to diverse circumstance, when love should rule, and when power; identifies virtue, therefore, with intelligence; and advocates a varying mixture of aristocracy and democracy in government. It is the distinction of Spinoza that his ethic unconsciously reconciles these apparently hostile philosophies, weaves them into a harmonious unity, and gives us in consequence a system of morals which is the supreme achievement of modern thought.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961)
A - F

Love, Life, Men, Hostility

“…the question now was…whether that beautiful fabric [the English constitution]…was to be maintained in that freedom…for which blood had been spilt; or whether we were to submit to that system of despotism, which had so many advocates in this country.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Speech in the House of Commons (24 April 1780), reprinted in J. Wright (ed.), The Speeches of the Rt. Hon. C. J. Fox in the House of Commons. Volume I (1815), p. 261.
1780s

Beauty, Question, Freedom, Country

“The strength of capitalism does not lie in the neoclassical idea of stability, but in its ability to unleash this creative energy. like a chaotic mathematical system, it is capable of producing surprise.”

David Orrell (1962) Canadian mathematician

Source: The Other Side Of The Coin (2008), Chapter 6, At Rest Versus In Motion, p. 194

Lie, Mathematics, Idea

“The whole intent of Perl 5's module system was to encourage the growth of Perl culture rather than the Perl core.”

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

[199705101952.MAA00756@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“If anyone believes that the enforcement of laws will be stopped if I am done away with, that they are more than wrong, because I am not the system. The system will keep on functioning and no one will get amnesty by getting one or two state officials out of the way.”

Zoran Đinđić (1952–2003) Serbian politician

Politika, 20.02.2003.

Law, Way

“In the sixteenth century, Europe was like a bucking bronco. The attempt of some groups to establish a world-economy based on a particular division of labor, to create national states in the core areas as politico-economic guarantors of this system, and to get the workers to pay not only the profits but the costs of maintaining the system was not easy. It was to Europe's credit that it was done, since without the thrust of the sixteenth century the modern world would not have been born and, for all its cruelties, it is better that it was born than that it had not been.
It is also to Europe's credit that it was not easy, and particularly that it was not easy because the people who paid the short-run costs screamed lustily at the unfairness of it all. The peasants and workers in Poland and England and Brazil and Mexico were all rambunctious in their various ways. As R. H. Tawney says of the agrarian disturbances of sixteenth-century England: 'Such movements are a proof of blood and sinew and of a high and gallant spirit… Happy the nation whose people has not forgotten how to rebel.'
The mark of the modern world is the imagination of its profiteers and the counter-assertiveness of the oppressed. Exploitation and the refusal to accept exploitation as either inevitable or just constitute the continuing antinomy of the modern era, joined together in a dialectic which has far from reached its climax in the twentieth century.”

Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019) economic historian

Wallerstein (1974) The Modern World-System, vol. I, p. 233.

Happiness, People, World, Way

“Democracy is a form of leading state in which the right and power in the hands of the people as a permanent. To ensure that the right and power is in the hands of people permanently, it must have a system to ensure the balance of power between citizens with its representatives.”

Khem Veasna (1971) Cambodian politician

Multi-Parties political platform (25 June 2013)

People, Democracy

“They are beautiful monsters… And when they live in a network of peace and hope, when they trust the world and their deepest hungers are fulfilled, then within that system, that delicate web, there is joy. That is what we live for, to bind the monsters together, to murder their fear and give birth to their beauty.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Wyrms (1987).

Hunger, World, Fear, Peace

“In string theory one studies strings moving in a fixed classical spacetime. …what we call a background-dependent approach. …One of the fundamental discoveries of Einstein is that there is no fixed background. The very geometry of space and time is a dynamical system that evolves in time. The experimental observations that energy leaks from binary pulsars in the form of gravitational waves—at the rate predicted by general relativity to the… accuracy of eleven decimal places—tell us that there is no more a fixed background of spacetime geometry than there are fixed crystal spheres holding the planets up.”

Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist

"Loop Quantum Gravity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

Study, Time, Dependency

“Come on, Rahotep. How do you think Royal Envoy Nakht gets his information about events in the north, and in the war? The army has its intelligence, and the palace has its own, too. The days when an invasion or an attack took place and no one heard about it for months are long gone. This war’s all about speed and information, and you can be sure Nakht has a very efficient system. The problem is, each system is always trying to infiltrate the other. And there’s always the danger of spies.”

Nick Drake (poet) (1961) British writer

ibid
The Rahotep series, Book 3: Egypt: The Book of Chaos (2011)

War, Intelligence, Problem, Thinking

“Political economy came into being as a natural result of the expansion of trade, and with its appearance elementary, unscientific huckstering was replaced by a developed system of licensed fraud, an entire science of enrichment.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Die Nationalökonomie entstand als eine natürliche Folge der Ausdehnung des Handels, und mit ihr trat an die Stelle des einfachen, unwissenschaftlichen Schachers ein ausgebildetes System des erlaubten Betrugs, eine komplette Bereicherungswissenschaft.
Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy (1844)

Fraud, Nature, Appearance, Science

“The defeat of Nazi Germany signified the victory of progress over reaction, humanity over barbarism and the victory of socialism over imperialist obscurantism. This victory opened the road for advancing the revolutionary struggle of the working class, a national liberation movement on an unprecedented scale and the destruction of the shameful colonial system.”

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

Cited in Behind the Scenes of Third Reich Diplomacy http://leninist.biz/en/1984/BSTRD194/8-Conclusion

Victory

“[Wicked problems are] social problems which are ill formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision-makers with conﬂicting values, and where the ramiﬁcations in the whole system are thoroughly confusing.”

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

Source: 1960s - 1970s, Guest editorial: Wicked problems (1967), p. 141 cited in: John Mingers (2011) "Introduction to the Special Issue: Teaching Soft O.R., Problem Structuring Methods, and Multimethodology" in Informs, Vol. 12, No. 1, September 2011, pp. 1–3

Problem, Decision

“One such evolutionary system, or ridge, encompasses panhuman emotional faculties, or affective "programs." These include the basic, or primary, emotions that Darwin first identified: surprise, fear, anger, joy, sadness, disgust, and perhaps contempt. Certain reactions characteristic of the neurophysiology of surprise and fear are already evident in reptiles, and the other primary emotions are at least apparent in monkeys and apes. Then there are the secondary, mostly "social" emotions, such as anxiety, grief, guilt, pride, vengeance, and love. These may be unique to humans-hence, at the lower level in our evolutionary mountain landscape and somewhat more liable to cultural manipulation and variation than the primary, "Darwinian" emotions. Thus, only humans seek revenge or redemption across lifetimes and generations, whatever the cost, although the nature of the deeds that trigger insult or remorse may vary considerably across societies, and the means to counter them may range even wider.”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 11
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

Love, Sadness, Fear, Mountain

“Men are the dominant sign-using animals. Animals other than man do, of course, respond to certain things as signs of something else, but such signs do not attain the complexity and elaboration which is found in human speech, writing, art, testing devices, medical diagnosis, and signaling instruments. Science and signs are inseparably interconnected, since science both presents men with more reliable signs and embodies its results is systems of signs. Human civilization is dependent upon signs and systems of signs, and the human mind is inseparable from the functioning of signs - if indeed mentality is not to be identified with such functioning.”

Charles W. Morris (1903–1979) American philosopher

Source: "Foundations of the Theory of Signs," 1938, p. 1 (1971:17), Lead paragraph first chapter

Men, Art, Science, Animals

“A selective process goes on, whereby systems attract and keep those people whose attributes are such as to make them adapted to life in the system: Systems attract systems-people.”

John Gall (1925–2014) American physician

Source: General systemantics, an essay on how systems work, and especially how they fail..., 1975, p. 66

Life, People

“Economists of the modern school will no doubt protest that I have said nothing of the use of budget deficits or surpluses for the control of the economy in general. I doubt if such techniques would ever be appropriate in Hong Kong's exposed economic position; and I think they are certainly not appropriate at present, when in strict orthodoxy they would suggest the need to plan for a very substantial surplus "to take the heat out of the economy". Although we have in fact run substantial surpluses in recent years we have not done so with deflationary effect because we have not removed them from the economy but have left them inside the Colony's banking system to continue to work for the economy. $500 million or 55% of reserves are so held at present.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

February 26, 1964, page 47.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

School, Thinking

“In the year 1910 we were beset by an accumulation of grave issues—rapidly becoming graver. … It was becoming evident to discerning eyes that the Party and Parliamentary system was unequal to coping with them. … The shadow of unemployment was rising ominously above the horizon. Our international rivals were forging ahead at a great rate and jeopardising our hold on the foreign trade which had contributed to the phenomenal prosperity of the previous half-century, and of which we had made such a muddled and selfish use. Our working population, crushed into dingy and mean streets, with no assurance that they would not be deprived of their daily bread by ill-health or trade fluctuations, were becoming sullen with discontent. Whilst we were growing more dependent on overseas supplies for our food, our soil was gradually going out of cultivation. The life of the countryside was wilting away and we were becoming dangerously over-industrialised. Excessive indulgence in alcoholic drinks was undermining the health and efficiency of a considerable section of the population. The Irish controversy was poisoning our relations with the United States of America. A great Constitutional struggle over the House of Lords threatened revolution at home, another threatened civil war at our doors in Ireland. Great nations were arming feverishly for an apprehended struggle into which we might be drawn by some visible or invisible ties, interests, or sympathies. Were we prepared for all the terrifying contingencies?”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

War Memoirs: Volume I (London: Odhams, 1938), p. 21.
War Memoirs

Life, War, Health, Alcohol

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

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

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

Problem, Animals

“The work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be, it was how you got a productive economy.
But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power, but of story. If their employees came home with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing.
The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them. People who couldn't live without story…had to look somewhere outside of work for a feeling that they were part of a story, which I guessed was why Sæculars were so concerned with sports, and with religion. How else could you see yourself as part of an adventure?”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Erasmas theorizing why others are joining his journey, Part 7, "Feral"
Anathem (2008)

Money, People, Religion, Feeling

“All these Wall Street lawyers are running the system according to Buckminster Fuller. After World War II they took most of the money out of the United States, they drained the blood out of the United States and put it abroad, overseas capital…. Fuller calls it Lawyer Capitalism, the lawyers run the show. Tax laws are the key. In the postwar years, tax law allowed US capital to go abroad…. It all fled the country and stayed abroad and America changed tremendously…. We became a world power, yet a rapacious one, with capitalists really doing a major theft of our money…. Nixon took us off the Gold standard in 1972 because America went bankrupt…. All these recessions in the 70’s, 80’s…. My father got wiped out on Wall Street.”

Oliver Stone (1946) American film director, screenwriter, and producer

Wall Street DVD Director’s Commentary (2000)

Money, War, World, Law

“The world has actually been wired together by digital communications systems for a century and a half. Nothing that has happened during that time compares in its impact to the first exchange of messages between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan in 1858. That was so impressive that a mob of celebrants poured into the streets of New York and set fire to City Hall.”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

"Mother Earth Mother Board," cover story in Wired, 4.12 (1996)

World, Communication, Time

“For a long time, people have been trying to characterize or define the notion of system. After all, “systems” are supposed to be what System Theory is about. The results so far have been contradictory and unsatisfactory. This confusion at the foundations has led many to conclude that there is no such thing as a "system" and hence to deny that System Theory is about anything. Even those most sympathetic to the notion have difficulties at this level. The very founders of System Theory did not try to say what a system was; and as for System Theory, they characterized it only obliquely, by saying it comprised all studies of interest to more than one discipline. They thereby begged the entire question.”

Robert Rosen (1934–1998) American theoretical biologist

Source: "Some comments on systems and system theory," (1986), p. 1

People, Question, Study, Time

“Capitalism is a system in which many scarce resources are owned privately, and decisions about allocating them are a private prerogative. Democracy is a system through which people as citizens may express preferences about allocating resources that they do not privately own. Hence the perennial question of political theory and of practical politics concerns the competence of these two systems with regard to each other. Is it possible for governments to control a capitalist economy? In particular, is it possible to steer the economy against the interests and preferences of those who control productive wealth?”

Adam Przeworski (1940) Polish-American academic

Adam Przeworski and Michael Wallerstein, The American Political Science Review (Mar., 1988)

People, Democracy, Question, Decision

“Considering enterprises as "open socio-technical systems" helps to provide a more realistic picture of how they are both influenced by and able to act back on their environment. It points in particular to the various ways in which enterprises are enabled by their structural and functional characteristics (“system constants”) to cope with the “lacks” and “gluts” in their available environment.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Source: Organizational choice, (1963), p. 6

Way, Help

“It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

F154
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

Effort, Learning, Indifference

“[The smallest bacterium] is so much more like people than Stanley Miller’s mixtures of chemicals, because it already has these system properties. So to go from a bacterium to people is less of a step than to go from a mixture of amino acids to that bacterium.”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

Cited in the book: Is There a Creator Who Cares About You?

People

“In other words, we have to stop this beaver woman before she's gnawn apart every welfare system we've got in our country.”

Mona Sahlin (1957) Swedish politician

Mona Sahlin about the leader of Centerpartiet, Maud Olofsson, in the Swedish radio program Ekot, September 10, 2006.

Country

“(About gay cruising) My gays had to school me, and they said there's a whole system and a language to the tapping. One tap means you're a top, two means you're a bottom….. I don't know, it's very elaborate. Very elaborate.”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Straight To Hell (2007)

School

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

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

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

People, Way, Learning, Science

“Market exchange requires a combination of both state and customary institutions. For any developed system of commodity exchange there must be a legal system inscribing and protecting rights to individual or corporate property. There must be a body of contract law with criteria for distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary transfers of goods and services, and courts to adjudicate in such matters. However, the evolution of law is not simply a matter of legislative construction; a great deal of law grows out of custom and precedent. Property and contract law are not exceptions. Consequently, the existence of property and exchange is tied up with a number of legal and other institutions, e. g. government, political system, and common societal values.”

Geoffrey Hodgson (1946) British economist

Source: Economics and Institutions, 1988, p. 150

Law

“Even the widespread resort to shifting cultivation with burning and light hoeing was not as childish as the first European colonialists supposed. That simple form of agriculture was based on a correct evaluation of the soil potential, which was not as great as initially appears from the heavy vegetation; and when the colonialists started upsetting the thin topsoil the result was disastrous. The above remarks show that when an outsider comes into a new ecological system, even if he is more skilled he does not necessarily function as effectively as those who have familiarized themselves with the environment over centuries; and the newcomer is likely to look more ridiculous if he is too arrogant to realize that he has something to learn from the “natives.””

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 63.

Light, Learning, Appearance

“Having destroyed the social power of the nobility and the guildmasters, the bourgeois also destroyed their political power. Having raised itself to the actual position of first class in society, it proclaims itself to be also the dominant political class. This it does through the introduction of the representative system which rests on bourgeois, and these bourgeois deputies, by using their right to refuse to vote taxes, choose a bourgeois government.”

Friedrich Engels book Principles of Communism

Principles of Communism (1847)

“In the "Alexandrian" explanation described above, the multiple from which evolution emerges is both secondary and sinful from its origin: it represents in fact (an idea that smacks of Manicheanism and the Hindu metaphysical systems) broken and pulverized unity. Starting from a very much more modern and completely different point of view, let us assert, as our original postulate, that, the multiple (that is, non-being, if taken in the pure state) being the only rational form of a creatable (creabile) nothingness, the creative act is comprehensible only as a gradual process of arrangement and unification, which amounts to accepting that to create is to unite. And, indeed, there is nothing to prevent our holding that union creates. To the objection that union presupposes already existing elements, I shall answer that physics has just shown us (in the case of mass) that experientially (and for all the protests of "common sense") the moving object exists only as the product of its motion.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

pp. 193–195 https://archive.org/stream/ChristianityAndEvolution/Christianity_and_Evolution#page/n191/mode/2up Christianity and Evolution (1969)

Idea, Sense

“What a horrible system we had. How blind we were.”

Hans Frank (1900–1946) German war criminal

To Leon Goldensohn, July 20, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

“Democracy is essentially a political system that recognizes the equality of humans before the law.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Address to Constituent Assembly, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/education/bsa/citizenship_merit_badge/eisenhower_citizenship_quotations.pdf (8 August 1946) 1940s

Law, Democracy

“With the subsequent strong support from cybernetics, the concepts of systems thinking and systems theory became integral parts of the established scientific language, and led to numerous new methodologies and applications -- systems engineering, systems analysis, systems dynamics, and so on.”

Fritjof Capra (1939) American physicist

Source: The Web of Life (1996), p. 46.

Support, Thinking, Strong, Parting

“I cannot think of a system of law that dehumanizes & degrades women more than Islamic Law.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) Dutch feminist, author

7 News Sydney, (April 4, 2017)

Women, Law, Thinking

“The present is distinguished from every precenn hvjh vding age by an universal ardour of enterprise in arts and manufactures. Nations convinced at length that war is always a losing game, have converted their swords and muskets into factory implements, and now contend with each other in the bloodless but still formidable strife of trade. They no longer send troops to fight on distant fields but fabrics to drive before them those of their old adversaries in arms, and to take possession of a foreign mart. To impair the resources of a rival at home, by underselling his wares abroad, is the new belligerent system, in pursuance of which every nerve and sinew of the people are put upon the strain.”

Andrew Ure (1778–1857) Scottish doctor and chemist

Source: The Philosophy of Manufactures, 1835, p. vii; Preface, lead paragraph

War, People, Age, Art

“Protocols:
these coppers for its own need without additional interest.
So long as loans were internal the Goyim only shuffled their money from the pockets of the poor to those of the rich, but when we brought up the necessary person in order to transfer the loans into the external sphere, all the wealth of States flowed into out cash boxes….
We shall so hedge about our system of accounting that neither the ruler nor the most insignificant public servant will be in a position to divery even the smallest sum from its destination without detection or to direct it in another direction except that which will be once fixed in a definite plan of action.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Money, Personality, Wealth, Box

“The relative stability of the system is… largely determined by its capacity to adjust to the demands of the actors affected by changing political and environmental conditions.”

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

p, 125
War and Change in World Politics (1981)

Change

“As I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 1, ch. 4
Jean Louise (Scout) Finch
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

School, Help, Cheating

“Emergence is not really mysterious, although it may be complex. Emergence is brought about by the interactions between the parts of a system. The galloping horse illusion depends upon the persistence of the human retina/brain combination, for instance. Elemental gases bond in combination by sharing outer electrons, thereby altering the appearance and behavior of the combination. In every case of emergence, the source is interaction between the parts — sometimes, as with the brain, very many parts — so that the phenomenon defies simple explanation.”

Derek Hitchins (1935) British systems engineer

Source: Advanced Systems Thinking, Engineering and Management (2003), p. 25

Behavior, Appearance, Horse, Parting

“Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven’t had capitalism. A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It’s not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding mergers, acquisitions, and stock sales, along with wage controls, price controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts to the military-industrial complex, and a foreign policy controlled by corporate interests and overseas investments. Add to this centralized federal mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare. This is not capitalism!”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Has Capitalism Failed? http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2002/cr070902.htm (July 9, 2002). 2000s, 2001-2005

Money, Education

“Gender is the remaining caste system that still cuts deep enough, and spreads wide enough, to be confused with the laws of nature. To uncover the difference between what is and what could be, we may need the “Aha!” that comes from exchanging subject for object, the flash of recognition that starts with a smile, the moment of changed viewpoint that turns the world upside down.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Moving Beyond Words (1994)

World, Law, Smile, Nature

“I don’t work with people. I don’t recruit agents. What I do is I put systems to work for the United States. And I’ve done that at all levels from — from the bottom on the ground all the way to the top.”

Edward Snowden (1983) American whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor

nbcnews.com http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/edward-snowden-interview/naive-gravely-mistaken-analysts-rebut-snowden-claims-n117101 2014

People, Way

“For reasons mathematical, psychological, and sociological, it is a good idea to use a money management system that is relatively forgiving of estimation errors.”

William Poundstone (1955) American writer

Part Six, Blowing Up, Survival Motive, p. 296-297
Fortune's Formula (2005)

Money, Error, Mathematics, Idea

“It is the system of great landed estates which invented and sustains the trafficking of whites and blacks who sell and buy men. … It is this system which in the colonies gives the blacks of our plantations only a blow with a whip and a morsel of bread.”

François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period

C'est la grande propriété qui a inventé et soutient le trafic des blancs et des noirs qui vend et achète les hommes... C'est elle qui dans les colonies donne aux nègres de nos plantations plus de coup de fouet que de morceau de pain.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 19, 27082 2892-7]
On property

Men

“The prevailing situation of criticism… has given rise to a cult of professional expertise whose effect in general is pernicious. For the intellectual class, expertise has usually been a service rendered, and sold, to the central authority of society. This is the trahison des clercs of which Julien Benda spoke in the 1920s. Expertise in foreign affairs, for example, has usually meant the legitimization of the conduct of foreign policy and, what is more to the point, a sustained investment in revalidating the role of experts in foreign affairs. The same sort of thing is true of literary critics and professional humanists, except that their expertise is based upon noninterference in what Vico grandly calls the world of nations but which prosaically might just as well be called “the world.” We tell our students and our general constituency that we defend the classics, the virtues of a liberal education, and the precious pleasures of literature even as we also show ourselves to be silent (perhaps incompetent) about the historical and social world in which all these things take place…. Humanists and intellectuals accept the idea that… cultural types are not supposed to interfere in matters for which the social system has not certified them.”

Edward Said (1935–2003) Professor of English and literature

The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983), pp. 2-3

Pleasure, World, Education, Literature

“It takes powers which are permanent—this is not a temporary provisions Bill—and cover all fuels. I welcome the Bill because it will enable a Labour Government to do all they want under Labour's programme for Britain…It will give us the power to control all the oil companies, all the multi-nationals, to fix their prices and their distribution systems; and under these powers every other fuel and its use, including the chemical industry, will be brought within the control of the Government of the day. This will include road transport and private transport.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech in the House of Commons (26 November 1973) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1973/nov/26/fuel-and-electricity-bill on the Conservatives' Fuel and Electricity (Control) Bill 1970s

“We must remember that machines do not, as in the capitalist system, compete with workers or enslave workers. Workers must view machines as the liberators of their force. Machines are placed at the service of workers as soon as the exploitation of man by man stops. And that is what we are striving for: we are trying to turn machines into liberating instruments of peasants, so they will have more time for leisure, so they will have more time to study, to develop in every sense, to achieve the most important thing we must achieve: individuals developed to the full, this is the aim we are all struggling for.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Speech at the National Sugar Plenary Meeting in Camagüey, February 9, 1963 Ernesto Che Guevera. Escritos y discursos. Op. cit., vol. 7.
On Automation (1963)

Sense, Study, Time

“No online cipher is safe, simply because if they don't have the key they'll come across and get it from you. Assuming they didn't already implant it in the system”

William Binney former U.S. intelligence official and cryptoanalyst; whistleblower

source: William Binney - 'The Government is Profiling You' - video lecture at MIT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB3KR8fWNh0

“We consider the notion of "system" as an organising concept, before going on to look in detail at various systemic metaphors that may be used as a basis for structuring thinking about organisations and problem situations.”

Robert L. Flood (1959) British organizational scientist

Source: Creative Problem Solving (1991), p. 2.

Problem, Thinking

“The House will forgive me for quoting five democratic questions that I have developed during my life. If one meets a powerful person—Rupert Murdoch, perhaps, or Joe Stalin or Hitler—one can ask five questions: what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you? Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199798/cmhansrd/vo981116/debtext/81116-27.htm#81116-27_spnew6 in the House of Commons (16 November 1998) 1990s

Life, Quotes, Exercises, Forgiveness

“He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him; he could not imagine a greater deterrent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it at demand.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 5 (p. 127)

Imagination, Nature, Learning

“Bill Manders: We have domestic enemies. We have home-born homegrown enemies in our system. And I for one think we have some of those enemies in our own, in the walls of the Senate and the Congress.
Sharron Angle: Yes. I think you're right, Bill.”

Sharron Angle (1949) Former member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007

interview with talk radio host Bill Manders, 2009-10-21
Greg
Sargent
Sharron Angle agrees with radio host who says we have "domestic enemies" within Congress
2010-08-24
The Plum Line
Washington Post
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/08/sharron_angle_agrees_we_have_d.html

Home, Thinking

“I really do think that the two-party system is broken. I don’t think Democrats are able to balance a checkbook these days. That’s it’s all about bigger government and higher taxes. And then Republicans with, I think, the social agenda. Look, whatever your social inclinations are just don’t force it on me. And I think the Republican Party has gotten really extreme in that category.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

2016

Thinking

“Acosta: What the President is proposing here does not sound like it's in keeping with American tradition when it comes to immigration. The says, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." It doesn't say anything about speaking English or being a computer programmer. Aren't you trying to change what it means to an immigrant coming into this country if you're telling them you have to speak English? Can't people learn to speak English when they get here?
Miller: Well, first of all, right now it's a requirement to be you have to speak English, so the notion that speaking English wouldn't be a part of the immigration system would actually be very ahistorical. Secondly, I don't want to get off into a whole thing about history here, but the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of liberty enlightening the world, it's a symbol of American liberty lighting the world. The poem that you're referring to was added later, is not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty.”

Stephen Miller (1985) political advisor for policy

2010s

People, World, History, Light

“A great system of internal improvement is being inaugurated in our midst, which fostered and encouraged, as it should be, will make Oregon, in the not distant future, one of the finest and most prosperous States in the Republic.”

George Lemuel Woods (1832–1890) American politician

George Lemuel Woods (September 1870) Governor George L. Woods - Governor's Message, 1870 http://records.sos.state.or.us/ORSOSWebDrawer/Recordpdf/6777834. Oregon State Archives, Oregon Secretary of State. Source: Message of Gov. George L. Woods to the Legislative Assembly, Fifth Regular Session, September 1870, Salem, Oregon, W.A. McPherson, State Printer, 1870.

Distant, Future

“… If a distant galaxy is moving relative to us, its entire spectrum is Doppler-shifted in frequency. Its spectral lines are displaced relative to those of stationary light sources. Thanks to this effect, we know that distant galaxies recede from the solar system at speeds proportional to their distances from us. That's the effect that told us of the expanding universe, and of its birth, long ago, in the Big Bang.”

Sheldon L. Glashow (1932) American theoretical physicist

Source: From Alchemy to Quarks (1994), p. 385

Birth, Light, Universe, Distant

“Gradually… during the second half of the nineteenth century, the uncomfortable feeling of dislike of the action at a distance, which had been so strong in Huygens and other contemporaries of Newton, but had subsided during the eighteenth century, began to emerge again, and gained strength rapidly.
This was favoured by the purely mathematical transformation (which can be compared in a sense with that from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican system), replacing Newton's finite equations by the differential equations, the potential becoming the primary concept, instead of the force, which is only the gradient of the potential. These ideas, of course, arose first in the theory of electricity and magnetism or perhaps one should say in the brain of Faraday.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932)

Feeling, Mathematics, Idea, Sense

“The idea that nuclear weapons deter anyone is laughable and horrific. We have the greatest chance ever to rid the world of nuclear weapons now, yet the consensus in this country is apparently that we need to maintain three Trident systems and possibly build a fourth at a total cost of more than £23 billion.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1991/nov/01/foreign-affairs-and-defence in the House of Commons (1 November 1991). 1990s

World, Idea, Chance, Country

“I think Leopard is a much better system [than Windows Vista] … but OS X in some ways is actually worse than Windows to program for. Their file system is complete and utter crap, which is scary.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

[linux.conf.au conference, http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/torvalds-pans-apples-os-x/2008/02/05/1202090393959.html, 2008-02-05]
2000s, 2008

Way, Thinking

“It’s imperative we have a system that’s accessible for every single American, that’s affordable for every single American, that incentivizes and provides the highest quality health care that the world knows, and provides choices to patients so they are the ones selecting who is treating them, when, where, and the like.”

Tom Price (U.S. politician) (1954) former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services; former Congressman of Georgia

Tom Price on Healthcare: ‘Imperative We Have a System that Provides Choices’ http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/01/24/tom-price-on-healthcare-imperative-we-have-a-system-that-provides-choices/ (January 24, 2017)

Health, World

“If you want to be served you must draw the distinction between those who want to serve you and those who don't, and if the electors of South Lancashire and of the country generally are contented to allow this method of expenditure to go on, this Continental system of feeding the desires of classes and portions of the community at the expense of the whole—it is idle for you to satisfy yourselves with vague and general promises. … If that is to be the system on which public finance is to be administered you must be prepared to resign all hopes of remission of taxation, even in good years, and in bad years you must look for a steady augmentation of the income-tax.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Leigh, Lancashire (20 October 1868), quoted in The Times (21 October 1868), p. 11.
1860s

Hope, Communication, Drawing, Country

“Let’s hope that no system of theory of systems will ever eliminate the other systems – that no approach will be promoted to a dogma, and no group of scientists will become the high priests. Shouldn’t we rather let a hundred flowers bloom…?”

Gerald M. Weinberg (1933–2018) American computer scientist

Weinberg (1976) cited in: Slawomir Sztaba (2010) "Economy and Sociology. The Likely Directions of Cooperation.". In: WFES. Vol 1, nr.1 2010. p. 218

Hope, Flowers

“[T]he space defined by an autopoietic system is self-contained and cannot be described by using dimensions that define another space. When we refer to our interactions with a concrete autopoietic system, however, we project this system on the space of our manipulations and make a description of this projection.”

Humberto Maturana (1928) Chilean biologist and philosopher

Source: Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living (1980), p. 89.

“Cells are required to stick precisely to the point. Any ambiguity, any tendency to wander from the matter at hand, will introduce grave hazards for the cells, and even more for the host in which they live. Minor inaccuracies may cause reactions in which neighboring cells are recognized as foreign, and done in. There is a theory that the process of aging may be due to the cumulative effect of imprecision, a gradual degrading of information. It is not a system that allows for deviating.”

Lewis Thomas book The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

"Information"
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)

Age

“I yield to no one in my detestation of Bolshevism, and of the revolutionary violence which precedes it. … But my hatred of Bolshevism and Bolsheviks is not founded on their silly system of economics, or their absurd doctrine of an impossible equality. It arises from the bloody and devastating terrorism which they practice in every land into which they have broken, and by which alone their criminal regime can be maintained. … Governments who have seized upon power by violence and by usurpation have often resorted to terrorism in their desperate efforts to keep what they have stolen, but the august and venerable structure of the British Empire … does not need such aid. Such ideas are absolutely foreign to the British way of doing things.”

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

Speech in the House of Commons, July 8, 1920 "Amritsar" http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/churchill/am-text.htm Early career years (1898–1929)

Way, Idea, Effort

“Systems at each level of integration function as wholes with respect to their parts and parts with respect to higher level wholes.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: Introduction to Systems Philosophy (1972), p. 67.

Parting

“I would pinpoint 1958 as a special time in my career. I had for some years been working with the Classification Research Group in London, and in 1957 we had held a small but successful conference to which Jesse Shera, Gene Garfield and others had come from the USA. In 1958 I published my first book, Classification and Indexing in Science, and attended the International Conference on Scientific Information in Washington. This was my first visit to the USA - I flew in a US Army transport plane with, John O'Connor and Desmond Bernal. The experience of attending the conference, and of other visits I paid at that time, led to the writing of my second book, On Retrieval System Theory…”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Brian Campbell Vickery (1999) " New Information Vistas http://faculty.libsci.sc.edu/bob/ISP/vickery2.htm".

Books, Science, Time, Success

“Scott London: How did you begin to explore the connection between management and science?
Meg Wheatley: I didn't have an interest in the new science. I had a realization that in my profession — which was vaguely labeled "organizational change," "organizational development," or "management consulting" in general — none of us knew how organizations change. When I talked to other consultants, I noticed that if we had an organizational change effort that was successful, it felt like a miracle to us.
I realized with a great start one day that we weren't even geared up for success. It didn't matter that we didn't know how to change organizations. We were all professionals who didn't hope to achieve what we were selling or suggesting to clients. The field was really moribund.
At the same time — and this is the serendipity of life — I had a friend and educator whom I had worked with for many years who said casually one day "Meg, if you're interested in systems thinking, you should be reading quantum physics." He didn't know where I was in my despair over my professional failings. But I said, "Okay, give me a book list."”

Margaret J. Wheatley (1941) American writer

He gave me ten titles. I read eight of those and I was off. I always credit him with that casual, helpful comment that changed my life. Scott London (2008) " The New Science of Leadership: An Interview with Margaret Wheatley http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/wheatley.html" in Quantum21. management journal, Spring 2008.

Life, Books, Education, Hope

“Since the realities we presently know are already simulated (let us momentarily assume) on biological signal-processing systems with highly-finite quantitative specifications, there is no reason to confidently anticipate that an ‘artificial’ reality simulation would be in any way distinguishable.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Statistical Mentality" https://web.archive.org/web/20110718052233/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/index.php/article/detail/522/statistical-mentality (2011)

Way, Confidence, Reality

“I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-human-centipede-2010 of The Human Centipede (5 May 2010) Reviews, No star rating

World, Star, Time

“My fifth principle is…to acknowledge the equal rights of all nations. You may sympathize with one nation more than another. Nay, you must sympathize in certain circumstances with one nation more than another. You sympathize most with those nations, as a rule, with which you have the closest connection in language, in blood, and in religion, or whose circumstances at the time seem to give the strongest claim to sympathy. But in point of right all are equal, and you have no right to set up a system under which one of them is to be placed under moral suspicion or espionage, or to be made the constant subject of invective. If you do that, but especially if you claim for yourself a superiority, a pharisaical superiority over the whole of them, then I say you may talk about your patriotism if you please, but you are a misjudging friend of your country, and in undermining the basis of the esteem and respect of other people for your country you are in reality inflicting the severest injury upon it.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in West Calder, Scotland (27 November 1879), quoted in W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971), pp. 116-117.
1870s

People, Religion, Reality, Time

“Creative insight is not the final link in a chain of reasoning. If it were that, it would not strike us as inspired in its origin. Intuition is not the end, but part of an ever-developing and ever-dynamic process of realization. There is continual system of “checks and balances” between intuition and the logical method of discursive reasoning. Cognitive intuitions are not substitutes for thought, they are challenges to intelligence. Mere intuitions are blind while intellectual work is empty. All processes are partly intuitive and partly intellectual. There is no gulf between the two.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Intelligence, Parting

“To cope with this difficulty [of limited capacity], even a mechanical recognition system must have some way to select portions of the incoming information for detailed analysis.”

Ulric Neisser (1928–2012) American psychologist

Source: Cognitive Psychology, 1967, p. 94

Way

Quotes about system page 40

Quotes about system
page 40