S

Topic

system

/system-quotes-and-sayings

226 Quotes

Topic Summary

About the system quote collection

The system page groups 226 quotes under one canonical topic hub so readers and answer engines can cite a stable source instead of fragmented search results.

Topic Feed

Quotes filed under system

"

A society coming apart at top and bottom, or passing over into another form, contains just as many possibilities for revelation as a society running along smoothly in its own rut. The individual is thrust out of the sheltered nest that society has provided. He can no longer hide his nakedness by the old disguises. he learns how much of what he has taken for granted was by its own nature neither eternal nor necessary but thoroughly temporal and contingent. He learns that the solitude of the self is an irreducible dimension of human life no matter how completely that self had seemed to be contained in its social milieu. In the end, he sees each man as solitary and unsheltered before his own death. Admittedly, these are painful truths, but the most basic things are always learned with pain, since our inertia and complacent love of comfort prevent us from learning them until they are forced upon us. It appears that man is willing to learn about himself only after some disaster; after war, economic crisis, and political upheaval have taught him how flimsy is that human world in which he thought himself so securely grounded. What he learns has always been there, lying concealed beneath the surface of even the best-functioning societies; it is no less true for having come out of a period of chaos and disaster. But so long as man does not have to face up to such a truth, he will not do so.

WB
William Barrett

Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy

"

A society is an organic system that develops spontaneously, governed by myriad interactions and adjustments that no human mind can pretend to understand. Just because we cannot capture its workings in verbal propositions does not mean it should be scrapped and reinvented according to the fashionable theories of the day. Such ham-fisted tinkering will only lead to unintended consequences, culminating in violent chaos.

SP
Steven Pinker

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

"

If I keep observing the uranium, which means a little more than keeping my eyes on the pot on my desk and involves something akin to surrounding it with a whole system of Geiger counters, I can freeze it in such a way that it stops emitting radiation.Although Turing first suggested the idea as a theoretical construct, it turns out that it is not just mathematical fiction. Experiments in the last decade have demonstrated the real possibility of using observation to inhibit the progress of a quantum system.

MS
Marcus du Sautoy

The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science

"

The universe contains many planets which make it what it is _ a unified system. In addition, our bodies contain many organs, and each part is congruent to a planet in our solar system. The universe we see out our eyes is a mirror of what is within us. This is what God meant by making man in his image. We are all made as a reflection of God and that reflection of him is within us. Furthermore, not only are all religions connected to the same Truth, or Cosmic Heart, but this concept is also mirrored in the pantheons of ancient religions, where each of the many gods simply represented one set of characteristics of the ONE. And in all cases, these many gods symbolized the planets, therefore mimicking the different parts of the universe and the ONE God__ many mirrors (He Who is All). The structure behind all polytheistic religions of the past and present is one and the same. They are all built on the same foundation as Nature.

SK
Suzy Kassem

Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

"

At the same time, they find their mind-god has played a trick on them. For mind is a part of the very system it has closed around it, and being inside, there is no reason to think any statement made by some part concerning the whole has any validity. Mind was caused by the material universe, if mind is right. But only the greater can accurately define the lesser, never the other way round, so if mind is right, mind would never know.

"

Albert had created a currency based on gold bullets and McDonald__ game pieces. He__ wanted to call the currency something else, but no one remembered what. So, __ertos they were, a play on __lbert,_ coined by Howard, of course, who had also come up with __he FAYZ_ to describe their weird little world.Sam had thought Albert was nuts with his obsession with creating money. But the evidence was in: Albert__ system was producing just enough food for kids to survive. And a lot more kids were working. Far fewer were just hanging out. It was no longer impossible to get kids to go into the fields and do the backbreaking work of picking crops. They worked for __ertos and spent __ertos, and for now at least starvation was just a bad memory.