Mechanism Quotes - Page 23

• What appear to us to be causal explanations are in fact just stories—descriptions of what happened that tell us little, if anything, about the mechanisms at work.

  Duncan J. Watts

  Stories, Littles, Facts

  Duncan J. Watts (2011). “Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer”, p.27, Crown Business

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• People are like houses. They could open their doors. You could walk through their rooms and touch the objects hidden in their corners. But something--the structure, the wiring, the invisible mechanism that kept the whole thing standing--remai ned invisible, suggested only by the fact of its existing at all.

  Lauren Oliver

  Doors, People, House

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• For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which to-day determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.

  Max Weber

  Cells, Order, Everyday

  The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism ch. 5 (1920) (translation by Talcott Parsons)

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• And I think to be in NATO for the countries of our region, it means more guarantees for us, it means more responsibility for our common security, but it means fulfillment of all standards of civilized world, like protection of human rights and democratic mechanisms.

  Aleksander Kwasniewski

  Country, Responsibility, Mean

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• It was clear: I was sick. I never used to dream. They say in the old days it was the most normal thing in the world to have dreams. Which makes sense: Their whole life was some kind of horrible merry-go-round of green, orange, Buddha, juice. But today we know that dreams point to a serious mental illness. And I know that up to now my brain has checked out chronometrically perfect, a mechanism without a speck of dust.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Dream, Orange, Dust

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (1993). “We: New Edition”, p.46, Penguin

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• In other words, the market is not a weighing machine, on which the value of each issue is recorded by an exact and impersonal mechanism, in accordance with its specific qualities. Rather should we say that the market is a voting machine, whereon countless individuals register choices which are the product partly of reason and partly of emotion.

  Benjamin Graham

  Issues, Choices, Voting

  Benjamin Graham (1962). “Security Analysis: Principles and Technique”

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• Certainty and similar states of ‘knowing what we know’ arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason.

  Robert A. Burton

  Like Love, Knowing, Brain

  Robert A. Burton, M.D., M.D. (2008). “On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not”, p.7, Macmillan

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• No one ever thinks they’re awful, even people who really actually are. It’s some sort of survival mechanism.

  Emily St. John Mandel

  Thinking, People, Survival

  Emily St. John Mandel (2014). “Station Eleven: A novel”, p.110, Vintage

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• A general flat minimum-wage law for all industry is permissible, but I do not think that it is a particularly wise method of achieving the end. I know much better methods of providing a minimum for everybody. But once you turn from laying down a general minimum for all industry to decreeing particular and different minimum for different industries, then, of course, you make the price mechanism inoperative, because it is no longer the price mechanism which will guide people between industries and trades.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Wise, Thinking, Law

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• Seeing is metamorphosis, not mechanism.

  James Elkins

  Metamorphosis, Seeing

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• In the 19th century the anatomy of the eye was known in great detail and the sophisticated mechanisms it employs to deliver an accurate picture of the outside world astounded everyone who was familiar with them.

  Michael Behe

  Eye, Details, World

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• I gained direct knowledge of the life of the poor in big towns: I have lived the narrowing mechanism of its conditioning and feared it.

  Ella Maillart

  Literature, Towns, Poor

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• What frightened me was the logic of the world; in it lay the foretaste of something incalculably powerful. Its mechanism was incomprehensible, and I could not possibly remain closeted in that windowless, bone-chilling room. Though outside lay the sea of irrationality, it was far more agreeable to swim in its waters until presently I drowned.

  Osamu Dazai

  Powerful, Sea, Water

  Osamu Dazai (1973). “No Longer Human”, p.67, New Directions Publishing

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• It is indeed paradoxical that, while the apologists of capitalism usually consider the 'price mechanism' to be the great advantage of the capitalist system, price flexibility proves to be a characteristic feature of the socialist economy.

  Michal Kalecki

  Socialist Economy, Advantage, Characteristics

  Michal Kalecki (1971). “Selected Essays on the Dynamics of the Capitalist Economy 1933-1970”, p.97, CUP Archive

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• What's wrong with creative block? Might it not just be that periods--even extended ones--of productive hiatus are essential mechanisms of gestation designed to help us attain higher standards in our pursuit of creative excellence?

  Alexi Murdoch

  Block, Gestation Period, Creative

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• Everything you stand for, believe in, experience and aspire to is the result of thought. And thought is destructive because it is nothing more than a protective mechanism, programmed to protect its own interests at all costs.

  U.G. Krishnamurti

  Believe, Cost, Results

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• I see God in the instruments and the mechanisms that work reliably, more reliably than the limited sensory departments of
  the human mechanism.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Instruments

  "No More Secondhand God".

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• Supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Would Be, World, Endeavor

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1869). “Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus”, p.11

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• When you're out in the desert, you can't believe the amount of stars. Are you busy as a bee? Do not even have time for fun? Do your friends advise you to buy essay writing example? Do not hesitate! Come after the advice of clever men and make a correct choice! We've sent mechanisms out there, and they haven't found anything. They've found different colors of sand, and rings, and gasses, but nobody's shown me anything that makes me feel secure in what happens afterward. All I really believe in is this moment, like right now.

  Eddie Vedder

  Stars, Clever, Fun

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• I don't know if it is a spiritual, physiological or psychological phenomenon, but I believe now more than ever that singing is a universal, built-in mechanism designed to cultivate empathy and compassion.

  Eric Whitacre

  Spiritual, Believe, Compassion

  FaceBook post by Eric Whitacre from Nov 20, 2012

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• I could always make people around me laugh. It was more of a defense mechanism more than anything else, because I was a pretty shy guy.

  Tim Hawkins

  People, Laughing, Guy

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• Sitting quietly, doing nothing, not knowing what is next and not concerned with what was or what may be next, a new mind is operating that is not connected with the conditioned past and yet perceives and understands the whole mechanism of conditioning. It is the unmasking of the self that is nothing but masks - images, memories of past experiences, fears, hopes, and the ceaseless demand to be something or become somebody.

  Toni Packer

  Memories, Past, Self

  Toni Packer (1995). “The Work of This Moment”, Tuttle Publishing

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• You know the Model of your Car. You know just what its powers are. You treat it with a deal of care, Nor tax it more than it will bear. But as to self — that's different. Your mechanism may be bent, Your carbureter gone to grass, Your engine just a rusty mass. Your wheels may wobble and your cogs Be handed over to the dogs, And on you skip, and skid, and slide, Without a thought of things inside. What fools indeed we mortals are To lavish care upon a Car, With ne'er a bit of time to see About our own machinery!

  John Kendrick Bangs

  Dog, Self, Car

  John Kendrick Bangs (1920). “The Cheery Way: A Bit of Verse for Every Day”

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• It's the doctors duty to activate and reactivate the body's own healing mechanism.

  Charlotte Gerson

  Healing, Doctors, Body

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• It appears that with the deadline for exile come and gone, Saddam Hussein has chosen to make military force the ultimate weapons inspections enforcement mechanism. If so, the only exit strategy is victory, this is our common mission and the world's cause.

  John F. Kerry

  Military, Iraq, Victory

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