Decentralization Quotes

• The automobile, both a cause and an effect of this decentralization, is ideally suited for our vast landscape and our generally confused and contrary commuting patterns.

  Brock Yates

  Confused, Confusion, Car

  91 Copy quote

• True progress lies in the direction of decentralization, both territorial and functional, in the development of the spirit of local and personal initiative, and of free federation from the simple to the compound, in lieu of the present hierarchy from the centre to the periphery.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Lying, Simple, Progress

  Peter Kropotkin (2012). “Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings”, p.286, Courier Corporation

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• Many people believe that decentralization means loss of control. That's simply not true. You can improve control if you look at control as the control of events and not people. Then, the more people you have controlling events - the more people you have that care about controlling the events, the more people you have proactively working to create favorable events - the more control you have within the organization, by definition.

  Wilbur L. Creech

  Leadership, Believe, Mean

  37 Copy quote

• The real trick in highly reliable systems is somehow to achieve simultaneous centralization and decentralization.

  Karl E. Weick

  Real, Achieve, Centralization

  54 Copy quote

• All my economic ideas as developed over twenty-five years can be summed up in the words: agricultural-industrial federation. All my political ideas boil down to a similar formula: political federation or decentralization.

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  Years, Ideas, Political

  "The principle of federation". Book by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, 1863.

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• Haiti is always talking about decentralization and nothing has been so obvious, perhaps a weakness, as the centralized nature of Haitian society as being revealed by the earthquake. I mean, they lost all these medical training programs because they didn't have them anywhere else.

  Paul Farmer

  Mean, Talking, Earthquakes

  "Q&A: Dr. Paul Farmer and Ophelia Dahl on recovery efforts in Haiti". Interview with Molly Hennessy-Fiske, latimesblogs.latimes.com. January 29, 2011.

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• Its true that contemporary technology permits decentralization, it also permits centralization. It depends on how you use the technology.

  Noam Chomsky

  Technology, Use, Permit

  Interview with Jegan Vincent de Paul, chomsky.info. August 15, 2012.

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• One of the vices of the virtue of decentralization is that people don't share ideas.

  Dorothy Nevill

  Business, Ideas, People

  28 Copy quote

• Khadi mentality means decentralization of the production and distribution of the necessaries of life.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Mean, Distribution, Productions

  Mahatma Gandhi, Judith M. Brown (2008). “The Essential Writings”, p.169, Oxford University Press

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• The struggle between centralization and decentralization is at the core of American history.

  Anthony Gregory

  Struggle, American History, Centralization

  12 Copy quote

• Many individuals and organization units contribute to every large decision, and the very problem of centralization and decentralization is a problem of arranging the complex system into an effective scheme.

  Herbert Simon

  Organization, Decision, Problem

  17 Copy quote

• As we all learned from the sorry experience of state-sanctioned bureaucracies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, decentralization in education is crucial to both freedom and excellence.

  Jerry Brown

  Sorry, Europe, Excellence

  "Jerry Brown Blasts Teacher Unionization Bill / Charter schools' self-determination at stake, he says" by Rick DelVecchio, www.sfgate.com. May 22, 1999.

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• From the time I first understood economic principles, I was always concerned also that any system be operated on an efficient basis, which meant decentralization because knowledge is not concentrated anywhere. It's based on motivation, and so these are the advantages of, say, the cautious case for capitalism, that the market system is efficient.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Motivation, Firsts, Principles

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

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• The economic borderlines of our world will not be drawn between countries, but around Economic Domains. Along the twin paths of globalization and decentralization, the economic pieces of the future are being assembled in a new way. Not what is produced by a country or in a country will be of importance, but the production within global Economic Domains, measured as Gross Domain Products. The global market demands a global sharing of talent. The consequence is Mass Customization of Talent and education as the number one economic priority for all countries

  John Naisbitt

  Education, Country, Our World

  9 Copy quote

• I would consider a socialism a mixture of the minimum of centralization necessary for a modern industrial state, and a maximum of decentralization.

  Erich Fromm

  Mixtures, Socialism, Modern

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

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• American federalism was the embodiment of political tolerance and decentralization - the expression of the liberal conviction that society can manage itself and needs no central plan.

  Llewellyn Rockwell

  Expression, Political, Tolerance

  10 Copy quote

• The Hacker Ethic: Access to computers--and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works--should be unlimited and total.
  Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!
  All information should be free.
  Mistrust authority--promote decentralization.
  Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
  You can create art and beauty on a computer.
  Computers can change your life for the better.

  Steven Levy

  Art, Hands, Yield

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• American airstrikes...create risks, especially if our intelligence there is rusty. The crucial step, and the one we should apply diplomatic pressure to try to achieve, is for Maliki to step back and share power with Sunnis while accepting decentralization of government. If Maliki does all that, it may still be possible to save Iraq. Without that, airstrikes would be a further waste in a land in which we've already squandered far, far too much.

  Nicholas D. Kristof

  Military, Government, Land

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• I learned that [Trotskyism] were no different from the Stalinists, and they expelled me, which is the typical Marxist-Leninist way of dealing with dissenters. From that point on, I migrated by the 1950s into anarchism, increasingly emphasizing decentralization. Also, I made the all-important step of bridging my social philosophy with ecology. I did that in 1952 and went on to write a whole series of books developing an anarcho-ecological approach.

  Murray Bookchin

  Philosophy, Book, Writing

  4 Copy quote