Quotes about system
page 54

“Real and major changes in religious or political power systems do not occur until substantial numbers of people realize the old systems are destructive, genocidal and beyond repair.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

Revolution by Number

People, Change

“No matter how good a system may be, it is of no use if the people do not want it. I believe that the intrinsic function of politics is to carry out the public will, if only on a probational basis, and to make sure it works well.”

Chun Doo-hwan (1931–2021) Korean politician and army general

1987

People

“Many individual immune systems will be compromised by the hardships of the Long Emergency and disease will seize the opportunities presented, as it always has. […] Millions of human beings are going to die.”

James Howard Kunstler book The Long Emergency

Source: The Long Emergency (2005), Chapter 5, p. 182.

Disease

“I have extensive management experience in crisis situations, accumulated experience, and knowledge in the security and defense system. I have experience in overcoming the economic crisis. The current dangers and the accumulated experience and knowledge practically coincide”

Robert Kocharyan (1954) second President of Armenia

Excerpts from 2021 keynote speech on formation of 'Armenia' alliance

Knowledge

“The criminal code is not an effective instrument
an administrative system that is flexible and efficient
The blunt instrument of imprisoning someone, putting them through a rigorous criminal trial, is probably not the right answer for enforcing rules against hate speech online in every instance.”

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith (1984) Canadian politician and lawyer (born 1984)

16 May 2019 https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/as-canadian-mps-weigh-how-to-police-online-hate-one-proposes-new-body-to-give-tickets-or-warnings-to-offenders

Hate

“A car would not be allowed to drive without crash tests - so there should be an obligation to penetration testing for IT systems.”

Peter Wilfahrt (1986) German author and entrepreneur

9. Cyber-Security-Day, Alliance for Cyber-Security, 06-16-2015.] Source: 9. Cyber-Security-Day https://www.allianz-fuer-cybersicherheit.de/Webs/ACS/DE/Netzwerk-Formate/Veranstaltungen-und-Austausch/Cyber-Sicherheits-Tage/Archiv-der-Termine/Agenda/cst_programm9_160615.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=1 German Alliance for Cyber-Security. Retrieved on 08-16-2021.

Cars

“I love space exploration; I think it is a great thing. What space exploration has done for mankind is to begin the process of realization that we are only one tiny centre in a huge solar system which itself is a tiny centre in a great galaxy, a fantastic Entity, which we call 'space.'”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1980)

Love, Thinking

“The inability to isolate software components from each other is the main reason why many popular programming languages cannot be used for making robust system software.”

Joe Armstrong (1950–2019) British computer scientist

page 32
Making Reliable Distributed Systems in the Presence of Software Errors

“We need to know why things fails. If we want to improve our system, we need to put that information into that system into logs or something.”

Joe Armstrong (1950–2019) British computer scientist

Faults, Scaling and Erlang concurrency

“Do we really need to hijack our attention systems every 10 seconds with a banner?”

Joe Armstrong (1950–2019) British computer scientist

The Forgotten Ideas in Computer Science

“I think we seem to have forgotten that things can be small. This way of decomposing systems into small things that I can reason about.”

Joe Armstrong (1950–2019) British computer scientist

The forgotten advantage of concurrent programming

Way, Thinking

“Molecules move not only from the brain to the endocrine system but also from the endocrine system, indeed, from all parts of the body to the brain.”

Richard Bergland neuroscientist

The Fabric of Mind (1985)

Parting

“Mankind is beginning to realize that it is not alone in the universe, not alone in the solar system.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1980)

Universe

“In general, we need to think about safety and healing as one system, because when we think about law enforcement on its own, and public health on its own, we’re not making the right investments relative to what actually delivers safety and health for our community members.”

Michelle Wu (1985) City Councilor in Boston, Massachusetts

23 September 2020 in "English transcription of Q&A with Mayoral Candidate Michelle Wu" https://thescopeboston.org/4785/uncategorized/english-transcription-of-qa-with-mayoral-candidate-michelle-wu/ in The Boston Scope 2020

Health, Law, Communication, Thinking

“We don't need to remake our health-care system or rebuild it from the ground up. We don't need to do very much. It's pretty simple, quite attainable. Just an added perspective and a change of pace.”

Victoria Sweet Physician

Slow Medicine: The Way to Healing (2017)

Health, Change

“The people strongly demand an end to the authoritarian system. It has become a stark reality that an authoritarian system can no longer maintain national unity, achieve economic development and preserve national security.”

Roh Tae-woo (1932–2021) Army general and President of South Korea

"Man In The News; A Traveler From Seoul: Roh Tae Woo" in The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/15/world/man-in-the-news-a-traveler-from-seoul-roh-tae-woo.html (15 September 1987)

People, Reality

“There are four billion people in the world. A world that has grown so complex and uncaring with systems and brutalization of individuals because of the inertia produced by those systems’ perpetuation of self, that merely to live is to be assaulted daily by circumstances.”

Harlan Ellison book Shatterday

The Man Who Was Heavily Into Revenge (1978), in Terry Carr (ed.), The Year's Finest Fantasy: Volume 2, p. 83 (originally published in Analog, August 1978)

People, World

“Despite the important gains of antiracist social movements over the last half century, racism hides from view within institutional structures, and its most reliable refuge is the prison system.”

Angela Davis Are Prisons Obsolete?

Source: Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), Chapter Five

“It is all true that we have got the same senses, but our systems and outputs cannot all be the same.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Sense

“The refraining of freedom of speech from the governmental system can cause its citizens to turn into narcissists in their free time.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Freedom, Time

“You can try to mix capitalism and socialism together, but you cannot be both at the same time! In the end, one system will always take over the other. Resulting in a true/false friendship.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Friendship, Time, Falseness

“There is no braking system on the boat. Either go forward or stop altogether.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Whatever you think or feel in your head, the body will follow. It is ready to take orders from the brain or the central nervous system.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Feeling, Thinking

“Charity is system-affirming. It does nothing about the root causes of poverty, criminalization, and racism. It just treats a few of the symptoms selectively. Social justice work is about making it so that no one is poor, homeless, targeted by police, deportable, or exploited.”

Dean Spade (1977) American activist

“Having a Cause” versus Living in a Life Centered in Radical Transformation

Justice

“To remake meat is how we solve climate change. Remaking meat is how we prevent the next pandemic. Remaking meat is how we take antibiotics out of the food system.”

Bruce Friedrich (1969) Member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

Quoted in Jonathan Kauffman, Meet the Innovator Behind the Plant-Based Meat Movement https://www.eatingwell.com/article/7905892/bruce-friedrich-plant-based-meat/, Eating Well Magazine, 2021

Food, Change

“Metaphysics intends to furnish dialectically only reference points; it offers − and this is its entire reason for being − a system of perfectly sufficient keys, through a language that cannot be other than indicative and elliptical.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[1991, Roots of the Human Condition, World Wisdom, 21, 0-941532-11-9]
Spiritual path, Metaphysics

“Payments made to, or extorted by, a corrupt bureaucracy can enable a socially chaotic system to function.”

Neil H. Jacoby (1909–1979) University professor and public servant

Source: Bribery and Extortion in World Business with Peter Nehemkis and Richard Eells (1977), p. 153

“The climate system takes decades to respond to changes in carbon emissions so decisions made now will affect future generations - for better or worse.”

Joanna Haigh (1954) British physicist

"Imperial climate experts respond to IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report" https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/161770/imperial-climate-experts-respond-ipccs-fifth/, Imperial College London (November 3, 2014)

Decision, Change, Future

“Ultimately the galaxy, indeed the sum of the universe in its entirety, was mostly nothing; average it all out and it made a pretty good vacuum. But within the foci of matter there were the systems, the stars and planets and habitats—what a cornucopia of life was there!”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Matter (2008), Chapter 10 “A Certain Lack” (p. 167)

Life, Star, Universe

“We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”

Mitch McConnell (1942) US Senator from Kentucky, Senate Majority Leader

2021, February

Justice, Country

“Now first of all I would like to talk about the question of different ideologies and social systems. We have to admit that among our Asian and African countries, we do have different ideologies and different social systems. But this does not prevent us from seeking common ground and being united.”

Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) 1st Premier of the People's Republic of China

Supplementary Speech at the Plenary Session of the Asian African-Conference (19 April 1955)

Question, Country

“The search for alien artefacts in the Solar System should be a perfectly legitimate branch of science ('exoarchaeology'?). Unfortunately, it has been largely discredited by claims that such evidence has already been found - and has been deliberately suppressed by NASA!”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

1990s, 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997), p. 97, Acknowledgements

Search, Science

“The reform of training, personnel system, scientific research and the management system of colleges and departments will strengthen the endogenous driving force for the healthy development of universities.”

Liu Yandong (1945) Chinese politician

Source: "刘延东强调：加快建设中国特色现代大学制度" http://www.gov.cn/guowuyuan/2013-08/23/content_2589585.htm (23 August 2017)

Universe, Training

“We need to respect the independent choices of model of technology management and of public policies made by countries, and their right to participating in the global technological governance system as equals.”

Wang Qishan (1948) Chinese politician

Source: "China’s Vice President Decries Technological Hegemony" in The Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-vice-president-urges-governments-to-address-their-domestic-problems-11548258999 (23 January 2019)

Country

“The immediacy of mystic experience simply means that we know God just as we know other objects. God is not a mathematical entity or a system of concepts mutually related to one another and having no reference to experience.”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

Source: The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Reconstruction_of_Religious_Thought/uCh14nl09jkC?hl=en (1930), p. 14

God, Mathematics

“[C]ollaboration between... divergent systems is possible... only as long as both are stable. ...International security is ...based upon the internal political and social security of each of the Great Powers.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, An Economist Looks At the Peace (1945)

“It's absolutely correct that climate and environmental movements should focus on systemic change and not on bamboo toothbrushes. It's mainly governments who control energy infrastructure. And yes governments should support community-owned energy initiatives.”

Carola Rackete (1988) German merchant navy captain

Source: Twitter https://twitter.com/CaroRackete/status/1274253317133271043 (20 June 2020)

Communication, Support, Change

“Let us stop this system of putting people in positions just because of the contacts they have. That is a major reason why we remain a poorly governed and undeveloped country.”

Grace Alele-Williams (1932–2022) mathematician

Source: https://guardian.ng/features/how-to-have-more-female-vice-chancellors-in-nigerian-varsities/Prof Grace Alele on allowing qualified people in position regardless of the gender.

People, Country

“To every woman rising above the tradition of silence, walking tall in a marginalized system…May we be them; may we know them, may we birth them… We’ve got the power?”

Ini Edo (1982) Nollywood actress

Source: https://abtc.ng/actress-ini-edos-motivational-words-to-all-women-will-melt-your-heart/

Birth, Silence

“Don’t passively accept contagions. Turn your mind into an immune system that intercepts invading ideas, assesses them, and destroys the bad ones.”

Guy P. Harrison (1963) American skeptic author

Idea

“We come together to mourn the lives lost to the same racist system that devalues Black lives and devalued the lives of Anthony and JoJo.”

Mark Ruffalo (1967) American actor

Source: 19 November 2021 tweet https://twitter.com/MarkRuffalo/status/1461807227476582407

“The new world we are attempting to create must destroy oppression of any type. The value of this new system will be determined by the status of the person who was low man on the totem pole.”

Frances M. Beal (1940) American activist

Source: "Black Women's Manifesto; Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female" (1969)

World, Personality

“British influence... is not exercised to impose an uncongenial foreign system upon a reluctant people. It is a force making for the triumph of the simplest ideas of honesty, humanity, and justice, to the value of which Egyptians are just as much alive as anybody else.”

Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner (1854–1925) British statesman and colonial administrator

Source: England in Egypt (1894 ed.), p. 407

People, Justice, Exercises, Idea

“We are now (December 2021) working hard to draft a new law that will provide a fair and sustainable solution to the payroll system in the public sector.”

Albin Kurti (1975) Prime Minister of Kosovo

Source: Albin Kurti (2021) cited in " Kosovo approves 2022 budget amid parliamentary disquiet https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/kosovo-approves-2022-budget-amid-parliamentary-disquiet/" on EURACTIV, 20 December 2021.

Law

“We are convinced that success for the transformation of food systems requires involvement, coordination and interconnectivity among different state and non-state stakeholders at domestic and international level.”

Carlos Agostinho do Rosário (1954) Prime Minister of Mozambique (2015-present)

Source: Carlos Agostinho do Rosário (2021) cited in: " Mozambique Seeks to Build Resilient Food Security https://allafrica.com/stories/202107020735.html" in All Africa, 2 July 2021.

Food, Success

“The permanent secretary is a fundamental tool in the country's public administration system, as he bears the mission to coordinate and manage, at technical and operational levels, the financial and administrative processes, human resources and assets of the ministry.”

Carlos Agostinho do Rosário (1954) Prime Minister of Mozambique (2015-present)

Source: Carlos Agostinho do Rosário (2021) cited in: " Mozambique: PM Swears Into Office New Permanent Secretaries https://allafrica.com/stories/202105050741.html" in All Africa, 5 May 2021.

Country

“Warring partisan tribes now define a dysfunctional system...”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

To End a Presidency (2018)

War

“I believe the landed interest should be the basis of our political and social system.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech in Shrewsbury (9 May 1843), quoted in Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume I, ed. T. E. Kebbel (1882), p. 55

“The principle of the feudal system, the principle which was practically operated upon, was the noblest principle, the grandest, the most magnificent and benevolent that was ever conceived by sage, or ever practised by patriot.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech in Shrewsbury (9 May 1843), quoted in Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume I, ed. T. E. Kebbel (1882), p. 51

“A congregation is supposed to assess a person's mental health during formation. It is a dangerous signal if a nun commits suicide at the slightest provocation. We have to reassess our system's effectiveness.”

Paul Antony Mullassery (1960)

Source: Young Nun´s Suicide Shocks The Church In Kerala https://www.ucanews.com/story-archive/?post_name=/2008/08/12/young-nuns-suicide-shocks-the-church-in-kerala&post_id=49014 (12 August 2008)

Health, Suicide, Personality

“But when the socialist and, even more, the syndicalist, began to propose his nostrums as medicine for the capitalist system, there appeared a diseased and corrupted form of socialism which found its neophytes in the oddest quarters.”

John Thomas Flynn (1882–1964) American journalist

Source: As We Go Marching (1944), p. 111

Disease, Appearance

“It is known that very distant nebulae, probably galactic systems like our own, show remarkably high receding velocities whose magnitude increases with the distance. This curious phenomenon promises to provide some important clues for the future development of our cosmological views. It maybe of advantage, therefore, to point out some of the principal facts which any cosmological theory will have to account for. Then a brief discussion will be given of different theoretical suggestions related to the above effect. Finally, a new effect of masses upon light will be suggested which is a sort of gravitational analogue of the Compton effect.”

Fritz Zwicky (1898–1974) Swiss astronomer

Source: Fritz Zwicky, [On the redshift of spectral lines through interstellar space, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 15, 10, 1929, 773–779, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC522555/] (quote from p. 773)

Light, Distant, Future

“Our work is about supporting survivors by providing resources for healing and action. If in the course of that process a perpetrator is held accountable for their actions - so be it. But our goal is not to ‘take down’ individuals it’s to dismantle systems that give them cover.”

Tarana Burke (1973) American civil rights activist

Source: [1017753906728890369, TaranaBurke, Our work is about supporting survivors by providing resources for healing and action., en, Burke, Tarana, Jul 13, 2018, https://twitter.com/TaranaBurke/status/1017753906728890369, 2022-01-25]

Support

“It is no exaggeration to say that if even five minutes a day were spent in mental and physical breath control, a person’s whole life would be made anew. For, besides the physical atoms of the air, such as carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, there are literally thousands of different radiations playing through the atmosphere, some of them infinitely subtle and powerful, which come from planets far outside our solar system! These can, and should, be drawn upon by us in correct breathing, specialized through our endocrine glands, and used in our most vital thinking and creative activities.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter XV The Essential Science of Breathing

Life, Thinking, Personality

“Spontaneous rallies were used as a pretext for provoking civil unrest. Religious radicals, criminals, outright thugs, looters and petty hooligans filled the streets as if on cue. Socio-economic and socio-political demands were put on the back burner, they were forgotten. Next followed the hot phase, and armed fighters, who were biding their time, took over. The main goal of these events became clear – to undermine the constitutional system, destroy governance institutions and seize power. It is obvious now that these armed activities were coordinated from a single centre, and the carefully planned operation entered its decisive phase.”

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev (1953) Kazakh politician

Source: Kassym-Jomart Tokayev (2022) cited in: " Don’t Ignore All Sides of Russian Messaging https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/dont-ignore-all-sides-of-russian-messaging" in The Cipher Brief, 18 January 2022.

Decision, Time

“Why from the plain truth should I shrink?
In woods men feel; in towns they think.
Yet, which is best? Thought, stumbling, plods
Past fallen temples, vanished gods,
Altars unincensed, fanes undecked,
Eternal systems flown or wrecked;
Through trackless centuries that grant
To the poor trudge refreshment scant,
Age after age, pants on to find
A melting mirage of the mind.
But feeling never wanders far,
Content to fare with things that are.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: At the Gate of the Convent (1885), "A Defence of English Spring", p. 58.

Men, God, Truth, Age

“Changin' laws an' legislatures ain't, as fur as I can see,
Goin' to make this world much better, unless somehow we can
Find a way to make a better an' a finer sort o' man.
The trouble ain't with statutes or with systems—not at all;
It's with humans jus' like we [are] an' their petty ways an' small.
We could stop our writin' law-books an' our regulatin' rules
If a better sort of manhood was the product of our schools.
For the things that we air needin' isn't writin' from a pen
Or bigger guns to shoot with, but a bigger type of men.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: All That Matters (1922), p.57 - The Need, from stanzas 1 (part) and 2.

Men, Books, World, School

“It’s absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety; indeed it cuts you off from your own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way television does.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 24

Life, People, Age, Way

“I fundamentally believe that disinformation becomes so easy to generate, because complexity overwhelms knowledge, that it's in people's interests, if you will, over the next decade, to build disinformation-generating systems. This is true for corporations, for marketing, for governments, and so forth."”

Eric Schmidt (1955) software engineer, businessman

Source: Eric Schmidt in dialogue with Julian Assange, June 2011 c.f When Google Met Wikileaks, p. 174

People, Knowledge

“Silly people, and there are many, not only in enemy countries, might discount the force of the United States. Some said they were soft, others that they would never be united. They would fool around at a distance. They would never come to grips. They would never stand bloodletting. Their democracy and system of recurrent elections would paralyse their war horizon to friend or foe. Now we should see the weakness of this numerous but remote, wealthy, and talkative people. But I had studied the American Civil War, fought out to the last desperate inch.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

The Second World War (1948–1953)
Source: The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Volume 3, (1950) p. 540

War, People, Fools, Democracy

“This is the miracle of abstract painting: it constructs the unlimited monumentality of a work that no longer has a foothold in the visible world, that ignores its rules and does not seek anything from it, neither aid nor sanction, and that emerges with the pure force and infinite certainty of life. Withdrawn from the weight of things and from the inertial systems in which things are held and have their limited possibilities circumscribed, the work of art proceeds from the imagination. To imagine is to posit something other than what is and what is there right in front of us -- something other than the world. To imagine is to posit life.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Books on Culture and Barbarism, Seeing the Invisible: On Kandinsky (1988)
Source: Michel Henry, Seeing the invisible: On Kandinsky, Continuum, 2009, p. 107

Life, World, Art, Imagination

“The belief that we can maintain current levels of consumption, especially of animal products, capitalist expansion, imperial wars, a reliance on fossil fuels and abject subservience to unfettered corporate power, which has solidified the worst income inequality in human history, is not a form of hope but suicidal self-delusion. We are not headed under the policies of the Biden administration and the global ruling elite for the broad sunlit uplands of a new and glorious future, but economic misery, vast climate migrations, waves of new and more virulent pandemics, of which COVID-19 is a mild precursor, along with irreversible ecological systems collapse and frightening forms of societal breakdown, authoritarianism and neofascism.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

Source: The Great Delusion https://scheerpost.com/2020/12/21/chris-hedges-the-great-delusion/. Scheerpost, December 21, 2020

War, Hope, History, Suicide

“It will be discovered that a system of exchange between peoples of goods and services will, when intelligently developed, gradually cancel out the need for buying and selling with money.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter VII The Council for Economics

Money, People, Intelligence

“The System is as fearful as it is vengeful.”

James Mason (neo-Nazi) book Siege

Siege: The Collected Writings of James Mason (1992)

Fear

“There are essentially two types of society: mixed economies with public checks and balances, and oligarchies that dismantle and privatize the state, taking over its monetary and credit system, the land and basic infrastructure to enrich themselves but choking the economy, not helping it grow.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

Source: The Destiny of Civilization https://michael-hudson.com/2022/05/the-destiny-of-civilization/, May 15, 2022

Help

“The one-party state is a marvelous instrument for a war of liberation but as a government system, in every country at every latitude, it has revealed the same defects; it represents only one point of view.”

Ahmed Ben Bella (1916–2012) First President of Algeria

"Ahmed Ben Bella: Revolutionary Internationalist " in CounterCurrents https://countercurrents.org/2020/11/ahmed-ben-bella-revolutionary-internationalist/ (11 March 2020)

War, Country

“If the folks back home could see me now, they’d know the surveillance system works.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy: Volume 2 (2022)

Home

“Fear is a great enemy of man. It is the enemy of his progress. It disturbs his peace and harmony. It sucks or saps his vitality and energy. It drains the nervous system of its reserve of energy. It produces weakness.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Conquest of Fear (c-1960)

Fear, Peace

“Well-designed security systems fail gracefully.”

Bruce Schneier (1963) American computer scientist

Airport Security Failure, Schneier, Bruce, 2006-03-14, Schneier on Security, 2022-06-31 https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/airport_securit_2.html, Human perception of reality, risk and terrorism

“We have a system of justice in this country that treats you much better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes.”

Bryan Stevenson (1959) American lawyer, social reformer and academic

We need to talk about an injustice https://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice|

Justice, Country, Wealth

“It is time that we acknowledge the legacy of systemic racism in our criminal justice system and work together to eliminate the racial disparities that endure to this day. Doing so serves all Americans.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2022, May 2022 Source: Executive Order on Advancing Effective, Accountable Policing and Criminal Justice Practices to Enhance Public Trust and Public Safety (May 25, 2022) https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2022/05/25/executive-order-on-advancing-effective-accountable-policing-and-criminal-justice-practices-to-enhance-public-trust-and-public-safety/

Justice, Time

“No country will allow its legislative structure, parliament or congress to be filled up by treasonists, foreign agents or proxies of foreign forces. The Hong Kong electoral system must therefore be protected from exploitation and from foreign interference.”

John Lee Ka-chiu (1957) Chief Executive-elect of Hong Kong

"Speech by CS at online side event on Hong Kong-related issues during 49th session of United Nations Human Rights Council" https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202203/16/P2022031600619.htm (16 March 2022)

Country

“The monetary belief, or the monetary myth, upon which a whole generation has been reared—that an injection of money into the system is the automatic cure for unemployment—has collapsed in the face of the experience of the past four or five years.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1971/nov/23/unemployment-1#column_1202 in the House of Commons (23 November 1971) 1970s

Money, Past

“Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil.”

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

1950s, The Birth of a New Nation (1957)

Freedom, Evil

“Our economic system puts us in a position where we can follow Christ's maxim, so impossible for you, to 'take no thought for the morrow.'”

Edward Bellamy book Equality

Equality (1897)

Christ

“Would it not have startled the old economists to hear that the secret of the most efficient system of wealth production was conformity on a national scale to the ethical idea of equal treatment for all embodied by Jesus Christ in the golden rule?”

Edward Bellamy book Equality

Equality (1897)

Secret, Idea, Christ, Wealth

“...the profit system, by its necessary nature, operated to stop limit and cripple production at the point where it began to be efficient.”

Edward Bellamy book Equality

Equality (1897)

Nature

“Our higher education system has to be a part of the economic recovery strategy.”

Gary Locke (1950) American politician

"Interview with Former Governor Gary Locke" https://greater-seattle.com/en/2020/06/11/interview-with-former-governor-gary-locke/ (11 June 2020)

Education, Parting

“The organizing system merely provides placeholders for all your oprn loops and options so your mind can... make the necessary intuitive, moment-to-moment strategic decisions.”

David Allen book Getting Things Done

Source: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (2001), Ch. 7

Decision

“I may say without exaggeration that this is a revolutionary approach; it is very painful, because this system of permission was the underpinning of the great bureaucratic system on all levels. And that democratic system, a corrupt one, it has been built for years and decades.”

Viktor Yanukovych (1950) Ukrainian politician who was the President of Ukraine

Source: [2011-06-21, В Страсбурге Янукович перепутал демократию с бюрократией, https://focus.ua/politics/190373, 2022-06-12, ФОКУС, ru]

Pain

“We've gone from a traditional system to a modern system that the population needs to learn about, and I believe that the role of the Church today is to educate for democracy.”

Basílio do Nascimento (1950–2021) Roman Catholic bishop of Baucau, East Timor

East Timor bishops prepare for first-ever Ad Limina visit http://www.archivioradiovaticana.va/storico/2014/03/15/east_timor_bishops_prepare_for_first-ever_ad_limina_visit/en1-781767 (15 March 2014)

Education, Democracy, Learning

“The common error lies in failing to recognize that apparent trends can be generated as by-products, or side consequences, of expansions and contractions in the amount of variation within a system, and not by anything directly moving anywhere.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Source: Full House (1996), Chapter 3, “Different Parsings, Different Images of Trends” (p. 33)

Error

“I decided to start with the reproductive system, not only because of its prurient interest but also because it seemed like the point of departure for all things.”

James Matisoff (1937) linguist

Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman (2003) (p.x)

Departure

“Every art, and every system, and in like manner every action and purpose aims, it is thought, at some good; for which reason a common and by no means a bad description of the good is, ‘that at which all things aim.’”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Bk I, Ch I
The Ethics Of Aristotle (Vol. I)

Art

“Dominance hierarchies had underlain every system ever realized so far, but at the same time democratic values had been always a hope and a goal, expressed in every primate’s sense of self, and resentment of hierarchies that after all had to be imposed, by force.”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 11, “Viriditas” (p. 483)

Hope, Sense, Time

“You conceive of science as nothing more than answers to questions?
As a system for generating answers.
And what is the purpose of that?
...To know.
And what will you do with your knowledge?
...Find out more.
But why?
I don’t know. It’s the way I am.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book Green Mars

Source: Green Mars (1993), Chapter 8, “Social Engineering” (p. 401)

Way, Question, Knowledge, Science

“Even if you want no state, or a minimal state, then you still have to argue it point by point. Especially since most minimalists want to keep exactly the economic and police system that keeps them privileged. That’s libertarians for you—anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book Green Mars

Source: Green Mars (1993), Chapter 7, “What Is to Be Done?” (p. 370)

“I am acutely aware that, as a judge in our system, I have limited power, and I am trying in every case to stay in my lane.”

Ketanji Brown Jackson (1970) United States District Judge

Jackson responding during Q&A on Day 2 of the hearings, or March 22nd https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/03/14/2022/the-nomination-of-ketanji-brown-jackson-to-be-an-associate-justice-of-the-supreme-court-of-the-united-states-day-2, as quoted in "Ketanji Brown Jackson vows to ‘stay in lane’ on Supreme Court: As lawmakers questioned the nominee, Jackson asserted her commitment to neutrality on the bench and defended her history as a judge and public defender." https://www.courthousenews.com/ketanji-brown-jackson-vows-to-stay-in-lane-on-supreme-court/ Courthouse News Service. (March 22, 2022) Senate confirmation hearings (March 2022)

“The disappearance of a world divided into antagonistic systems is related to profound internal transformations in post-socialist countries. I am convinced of the need to establish the most favourable regime possible for those countries’ integration into the international community.”

Leonid Kuchma (1938) Second president of Ukraine

Speech at the 50th session of the United Nations General Assembly (excerpts) (1995)

World, Communication, Country

“It is time for everyone finally to realize that sustainable development is not only necessary for maintaining the existing security systems at the global, regional and national levels, but is also an objective condition for the existence and development of our entire civilization.”

Leonid Kuchma (1938) Second president of Ukraine

Speech at the 49th session of the United Nations General Assembly (excerpts) (1994)

Time

“It is sad for us to report this, but the clock has been turned back and California agriculture, with the exception of a handful of contracts that we still hold, we now have the labor contractor, the crew leader system back again, we now have child labor back again.”

Dolores Huerta (1930) American labor leader

1974 speech, in Voices of Multicultural America: Notable Speeches Delivered by African, Asian, Hispanic and Native Americans, 1790-1995 by Deborah Gillan Straub

Sadness

“There are no indecipherable writings, any writing system produced by man can be read by man.”

Yuri Knorozov (1922–1999) Soviet and Russian mesoamericanist (1922-1999)

Epigraphic Atlas of Petén Phase 1 http://cemyk.org/pages/en/publications-projects.php

Reading

“This is the threat to our lives. We all face it. We all operate in our society in relation to a system. Now is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes? … If the person doesn't listen to the demands of his own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program, you're going to have a schizophrenic crack-up. The person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life and it's not the one the body's interested in at all. And the world's full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Episode 1, Chapter 12
The Power of Myth (1988)

Life, People, World, Heart

“The real intolerance for my immune system is fake people.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: La vera intolleranza per il mio sistema immunitario sono le persone false.
Source: prevale.net

People

“The Earth is nothing but phlegm spat out by the Sun, and our immediate solar system a whirlwind of boulders. There is no "delicate balance".”

A.E. Samaan

Source: From a "Race of Masters" to a "Master Race": 1948 to 1848

Sun

“A system that does not provide space and opportunity to be evaluated, tested, checked, and criticized will only become authoritarian. It has a tendency to follow its own will and oppose the thoughts of others.”

Titon Rahmawan

“The ironic fact about our education system is that even those who study to be smart often don't get the flickering flame of wisdom from what they learn.”

Titon Rahmawan

Wisdom, Education, Study, Learning

“When you follow your emotional guidance system with the awareness that your inner compass can be ‘faulty’ you will be able to question yourself in the spirit of curiosity and the desire to be totally aware… You will ask yourself WHY something feels good to do.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Feeling, Question

This quote waiting for review.

“The corporatization of education thus produces a silent paradox: increasingly organized systems coexist with increasingly less educated communities.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: Cuando la escuela dejó de pensar. By José Baroja. (2026b, mayo 25). Le Monde Diplomatique. https://www.lemondediplomatique.cl/cuando-la-escuela-dejo-de-pensar-por-jose-baroja.html

Education, Communication

Quotes about system page 54

Quotes about system
page 54