Structure Quotes - Page 32

• The elimination of individual capitalists and the replacement of private capitalism by state capitalism in Russia has not in the least altered the typical helpless and authoritarian character structure of the masses of people.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Character, Russia, People

  "The Mass Psychology of Fascism" by Wilhelm Reich, (Preface to the Third Edition), August 1942.

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• Procedure is the bone structure of a democratic society. Our scheme of law affords great latitude for dissent and opposition. It compels wide tolerance not only for their expression but also for the organization of people and forces to bring about the acceptance of the dissenter's claim....We have alternatives to violence.

  Abe Fortas

  Acceptance, Expression, Law

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• The dynamics and structures found in those groups called families in our society may not be evident in those groups called families in other places and times.

  R. D. Laing

  Groups, May, Dynamics

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• One begins to think with that new building block, rather than with littler pieces. And finally, the things which seem like elements dissolve, and leave a fabric of relationships behind, which is the stuff that actually repeats itself, and gives the structure to a building or a town.

  Christopher Alexander

  Block, Thinking, Giving

  "The Timeless Way of Building". Book by Christopher Alexander, 1979.

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• Hyper-selectionism has been with us for a long time in various guises; for it represents the late nineteenth century's scientific version of the myth of natural harmony all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds (all structures well designed for a definite purpose in this case). It is, indeed, the vision of foolish Dr. Pangloss, so vividly satirized by Voltaire in Candide the world is not necessarily good, but it is the best we could possibly have.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Long, Vision, Drs

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.57, W. W. Norton & Company

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• No more harmful nonsense exists than [the] common supposition that deepest insight into great questions about the meaning of life or the structure of reality emerges most readily when a free, undisciplined, and uncluttered (read, rather, ignorant and uneducated) mind soars above mere earthly knowledge and concern.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Reality, Ignorant, Mind

  "I Have Landed". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "No Science Without Fancy, No Art Without Facts", p. 48, May 14, 2002.

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• Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Religious, Philosophical, Hands

  Sydney J. Harris (1985). “Pieces of Eight Pa”, Mariner Books

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• The speed with which armies collapse, bureaucracies abdicate, and social structures dissolve once the autocrat is removed frequently surprises American Policy makers.

  Jeane Kirkpatrick

  Army, Surprise, Speed

  "Jeane Kirkpatrick". www.economist.com. December 19, 2006.

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• Modern transcendental idealism, Emersonianism, for instance, also seems to let God evaporate into abstract Ideality. Not a deity in concreto, not a superhuman person, but the immanent divinity in things, the essentially spiritual structure of the universe, is the object of the transcendentalist cult. In that address of the graduating class at Divinity College in 1838 which made Emerson famous, the frank expression of this worship of mere abstract laws was what made the scandal of the performance.

  William James

  Letting Go, Spiritual, College

  "The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature". Book by William James, 1902.

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• What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows--it must grow smaller or larger, better or worse--it cannot stand still. In other words, we change--and must change, constantly, and keep on changing as long as we live. What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he's stuck in a rut.

  Mark Twain

  Men, Years, Law

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• The essential functions of the mind consist in understanding and in inventing, in other words, in building up structures by structuring reality.

  Jean Piaget

  Reality, Building Up, Understanding

  "Homage to Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980)" by Ernst von Glasersfeld, "Irish Journal of Psychology", vol. 18, issue 3, pp. 293 - 306, 1997.

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• The form is the possibility of the structure.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Possibility, Form

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (2014). “The Tractatus According to Its Own Form”, p.7, Lulu.com

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• Disintegration of structure equals information loss.

  Gregory Benford

  Loss, Information, Disintegration

  Gregory Benford (1977). “In the Ocean of Night: A Novel”, Dial Press

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• Economic analysis is the first principle of Marxism. Professors who were genuine leftists would have challenged the entire economics-driven machinery of American academe the wasteful multidepartmental structure, the divisive pedantry of overspecialization, the cronyism and sycophancy in recruitment and promotion, the boondoggling ostentation of pointless conferences, the exploitation of graduate students and part-time teachers, the subservience of faculty to overpaid administrators, the mediocrity and folly of the ruling cliques of the Modern Language Association.

  Camille Paglia

  Teacher, Association, Firsts

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Vamps & Tramps: New Essays”, p.19, Vintage

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• Let us build a structure of peace in the world in which the weak are as safe as the strong — in which each respects the right of the other to live by a different system — in which those who would influence others will do so by the strength of their ideas, and not by the force of their arms. Let us accept that high responsibility not as a burden, but gladly — gladly because the chance to build such a peace is the noblest endeavor in which a nation can engage.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Peace, Strong, Responsibility

  Second Inaugural Address, delivered 20 January 1973

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• The Yippie demonstrations were merely an attack of mental disobedience on an obediently insane society... and if you feel you have been living in an unreal world for the last couple of years, it is particularly because this power structure has refused to listen to reason... Step outside the guidelines of the official umpires and make your own rules and your own reality.

  Phil Ochs

  Couple, Reality, Years

  "An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Period". Book by Charles DeBenedetti, 1990.

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• The term architecture is used here to describe the attributes of a system as seen by the programmer, i.e., the conceptual structure and functional behavior, as distinct from the organization of the data flow and controls, the logical design, and the physical implementation. i. Additional details concerning the architecture

  Fred Brooks

  Data, Organization, Design

  "Architecture of the IBM System". IBM Journal of Research and Development, Volume 8, 1964.

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• The programmer's primary weapon in the never-ending battle against slow system is to change the intramodular structure. Our first response should be to reorganize the modules' data structures.

  Fred Brooks

  Data, Battle, Weapons

  "Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction". Book by Steve C. McConnell, 1993.

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• Study after study shows that the very best designers produce structures that are faster, smaller, simpler, clearer, and produced with less effort. The differences between the great and the average approach an order of magnitude.

  Fred Brooks

  Average, Order, Differences

  "No Silver Bullet". Book by Fred Brooks, 1986.

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• The order and harmony of the Western world, its most famous achievement, and a laboratory in which structures of a complexity as yet unknown are being fashioned, demand the elimination of a prodigious mass of noxious by-products which now contaminate the globe. The first thing we see as we travel round the world is our own filth, thrown into the face of mankind.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Order, Achievement, World

  Claude Levi-Strauss (2012). “Tristes Tropiques”, p.44, Penguin

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• Hollywood seems to succumb to fads. Well, action films do well. Give me violence. Give me a scene where there's a couple of car chases or shooting and stuff like that. They're forgetting the fact that there's a basic structure to a story that is essential to making it really broad and appealing.

  Clint Eastwood

  Couple, Giving, Car

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• A work based only on a line concept is scarcely more than a illustration; it fails to achieve pictorial structure. Pictorial structure is based on a plane concept. The line originates in the meeting of two planes ... we can lose ourselves in a multitude of lines, if through them we lose our senses for the planes.

  Hans Hofmann

  Illustration, Two, Lines

  Hans Hofmann, Sara T. Weeks, Bartlett H. Hayes (1967). “Search for the Real: And Other Essays”, p.65, MIT Press

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• Orderliness by itself is not sufficient to account for the nature of organized systems in general or for those created by man in particular. Mere orderliness leads to increasing impoverishment and finally to the lowest possible level of structure, no longer clearly distinguishable from chaos, which is the absence of order. A counterprinciple is needed, to which orderliness is secondary. It must supply what is to be ordered.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Men, Order, Levels

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• Literature is conscious mythology: as society develops, its mythical stories become structural principles of story-telling, its mythical concepts, sun-gods and the like, become habits of metaphoric thought. In a fully mature literary tradition the writerenters intoa structure of traditional stories and images.

  Northrop Frye

  Principles, Stories, Literature

  1971 The Bush Garden,'Conclusion'.

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• The first thing that confronts us in studying verbal structures is that they are arranged sequentially, and have to be read or listened to in time.

  Northrop Frye

  Firsts, Study

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.49, University of Toronto Press

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