Functioning Quotes

Public access to government information is a fundamental prerequisite to a functioning democracy. A democratic system is based on the notion that government legitimacy requires the consent of the governed. To be meaningful that consent must be informed. ~ John Podesta

As a matter of fact student riots of one sort or another, protests against the order that is, kicks against college and university management indicate a healthy growth and a normal functioning of the academic mind. ~ William Allen White

Isolating oneself into a narrowly defined victim group promotes a view of others as irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst, which eventually only leads to further alienation. Gangs, extremist political parties, and religious cults may provide solace, but they rarely foster the mental flexibility needed to be fully open to what life has to offer and as such cannot liberate their members from their traumas. Well-functioning people are able to accept individual differences and acknowledge the humanity of others. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Democracy functions insofar as individuals can participate meaningfully in the public arena, meanwhile running their own affairs, individually and collectively, without illegitimate interference by concentrations of power. Functioning democracy presupposes relative equality in access to resources - material, informational, and other - a truism as old as Aristotle. In theory, governments are instituted to serve their "domestic constituencies" and are to be subject to their will. A measure of functioning democracy, then, is the extent to which the theory approximates reality, and the "domestic constituencies" genuinely approximate the population. ~ Noam Chomsky

All that Lenin learned about business from the tales of his comrades who occasionally sat in business offices was that it required a lot of scribbling, recording, and ciphering. Thus, he declares that accounting and control are the chief things necessary for the organizing and correct functioning of society ... Here we have the philosophy of the filing clerk in its full glory. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

As I hope this list of "integration concerns" illustrates, not every identity threat comes from prejudiced people. Think about O'Connor on the Supreme Court before Ginsburg. Many of the contingencies she dealt with had little to do with prejudice among her fellow justices or her staff. Some of them may have been prejudiced, but her problems went beyond that: a Court that was dominated by male sensibilities and referents and that was less sensitive, in its functioning, to the perspectives of women; no critical mass of women with which to give her a sense of belonging on the Court; negative stereotypes about women in the larger society and in the legal world that were available for use in judging her work; the fact that her being the only woman on the Court made her the sole representative of her sex in each Court decision; and so on. O'Connor would have had to deal with these things even if there hadn't been an iota of sexism in any of the people she worked with. ~ Claude M. Steele

You may be trying to attain power in this world, then you start trying to attain power in that world. First you want to attain wealth in this world, then you try to attain wealth in that world. But you remain the same, and the mind and the functioning and the whole scheme remains the same: Attain! Reach! This is the ego trip. The achieving mind is the ego. ~ Rajneesh

I'm not a psychopath, I'm a high functioning sociopath. ~ Steven Moffat

The problem for me is not that Schwarzenegger is governor, but the extent to which even politicians who are not actors are functioning like actors. ~ Slavoj Zizek

When people are unable to integrate their traumatic memories, they seem to lose their capacity to assimilate new experiences as well. It is as if their personality stops at a certain points and cannot enlarge any more by the addition or assimilation of new elements. Unless they become aware of the split off elements and integrate them into a story that had happened in the past but was now over, they would experience a slow decline in their personal and professional functioning. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

If you fall into poverty, live that way without grumbling - then your poverty will not burden you. Likewise, if you are rich, live with your riches. All this is the functioning of Buddha-nature. In short, Buddha-nature has the quality of infinite adaptability. ~ Philip Kapleau

It takes tremendous energy to keep functioning while carrying the memory of terror, and the shame of utter weakness and vulnerability. While ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

I figure...

...that the people are now more deeply conscious than ever before in history of the existence and functioning principles of universal, inexorable physical laws; of the pervading, quietly counseling truth within each and every one of us; of the power of love; and--each man by himself--of his own developing, dynamic relationship with his own conception of the Almightiness of the All-Knowing.

...that our contemporaries just don't wear their faith on their sleeves anymore.

...that people have removed faith from their sleeves because they found out for themselves that faith is much too important for careless display. Now they are willing to wait out the days and years for the truthful events, encouraged individually from within; and the more frequently the dramatic phrases advertising love, patriotism, fervent belief, morals, and good fellowship are plagiarized, appropriated and exhibited in the show windows of the world by the propaganda whips for indirect and ulterior motives, no matter how meager the compromise--the more do people withdraw within themselves and shun taking issue with the nauseating perversions, though eternally exhibiting quiet indifference, nonchalance or even cultivating seemingly ignorant acceptance. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

If your brain does not receive sufficient stimulus, it might find something else to do - it daydreams, it wanders, it thinks about itself. If this goes on too long, it can affect your mind's normal functioning. Chronic boredom correlates with depression and attention deficits. ~ Deborah Blum

She smiled as though someone had just offered her, the oldest virgin in town, a fully functioning Kingsize Vibro vibrator and a deluxe inhibition bypass. ~ Andrew Barrett

If all the members of a team have synchronized their energy and they have all subordinated their egos to success of the team, then we have a functioning unit. If we have a lot of hotshots who want attention, you won't really play that well. ~ Frederick Lenz

One important aspect of the Gita which remains is that even though it presents to us some diverse paths as a way of life, such as action, devotion, knowledge and meditation, it does not impose any of these paths on an individual. Rather, it leaves the choice to the people, because the followers of all these paths are essential for the smooth functioning of the world, and any en masse inclination towards only one of them would jeopardize the society by causing an imbalance in its system. The Gita also recognizes that the path that one should follow is determined primarily by the free choice of man as well as his inherent nature, which can be interpreted as a genetic inheritance he is endowed with. ~ Nihar Satpathy

Science is showing us that there are neurological (brain) factors that contribute to self-control and willpower, along with learning and upbringing. And when these brain systems are functioning improperly or become damaged, normal levels of self-control and willpower are impossible. ~ Russell Barkley

It's more eerie to be alone in a city that's lit up and functioning than one that's a tomb. If everything were silent, one could almost pretend to be in nature. A forest. A meadow. Crickets and birdsong. But the corpse of civilization is as restless as the creatures that now roam the graveyards. ~ Isaac Marion

We are all functioning at a small fraction of our capacity to live fully in its total meaning of loving, caring, creating and adventuring. Consequently, the actualizing of our potential can become the most exciting adventure of our lifetime. ~ Herbert Otto Gille

Aid makes itself superfluous if it is working well. Good aid takes care to provide functioning structures and good training that enables the recipient country to later get by without foreign aid. Otherwise, it is bad aid. ~ Paul Kagame

Aiming at health, restoring health - that is a goal that is both morally important and limited, because it aims at the restoration of normal human functioning, which is an important part of human flourishing. ~ Michael Sandel

Remember, intelligence is not part of the mind. Intellect is, but intelligence is not; hence, the intellectual is full of mind but in life he behaves very unintelligently. He has a certain expertise, he is trained intellectually to, do a certain thing, his mind is functioning like a computer. But life is not one-dimensional, you cannot exhaust it in one expertise; it is multi-dimensional. ~ Rajneesh

For every five well-adjusted and smoothly functioning Americans, there are two who never had the chance to discover themselves. It may well be because they have never been alone with themselves. ~ Marya Mannes

Human beings are nothing but intellectually organized closely interconnected interestingly and independently functioning trillions of atoms. We manipulate these atoms by our thoughts. At the same time, thoughts are the byproducts of complex interactions of these intelligent atoms. ~ Debasish Mridha

It is for this reason that Jung may be right in assuming that energy is a universal concept applicable to psychic functioning as well as the physical universe. Jung then describes how energy has two attributes, intensity and extensity. Extensity of energy is not transferable from one structure to another without changing the structure; intensity of energy is. By extensity, Jung is referring to the quality of the energy. In other words, he is pointing out that there is "something" that travels from one place to another when an energy transformation occurs.

For example, a ball that is hit straight up carries with it energy continually undergoing transformation. It has kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy. The quantity of kinetic energy is continually transferring into potential energy as the ball rises. Thus at the top of its trajectory, the ball is momentarily at rest, i.e., with no kinetic energy, but with full potential energy. The evaluation of its quantities of energy is intensive but the qualities of kinetic and potential are extensive. The ball cannot transfer its kinetic quality into potential quality without changing its form by breaking up, for example, into parts.

Similarly there is a psychic extensive factor that is not transferable. Jung's concept of extensity and intensity are forerunners of David Bohm's concept of implicate and explicate order, about which I shall have more to say later. They are also forerunners of the conceptu ~ Fred Alan Wolf

When people asked about his schizophrenia, Eric, who didn't exactly flaunt his illness but wasn't ashamed of it, either, offered up the comparison of alcoholism. Not every drunk is a single bourbon away from skid row, just like every schizophrenic is not a tatty-haired, crazy-eyed gunman who delights in murdering alien-people from clock towers. There are functioning alcoholics just as there are functioning schizophrenics, individuals who work, maintain homes, and have hobbies, goals, and relationships like every other slob on the planet. ~ Vivian Barz

With such unpleasant associations tied to the schizophrenias, it is no wonder that I cling to the concept of being high-functioning. As in most marginalized groups, there are those who are considered more socially appropriate than others, and who therefore distance themselves from those so-called inappropriate people, in part because being perceived as incapable of success causes a desire to distance oneself from other, similarly marginalized people who are thought to be even less capable of success. ~ Esmé Weijun Wang

Thus, an inhibition center developed below what in humans is the temporal lobe, to turn off much of the functioning of the reptilian brain; and an activation center evolved in the pons to turn on the R-complex, but harmlessly, during sleep. ~ Carl Sagan

When I was out in the real world, functioning in everyday society, and someone would say "Time is just a construct," I would roll my eyes and continue to check errands off my To Do list. But I was wrong, and they were right. Time means nothing. Never is that more clear than in a hospital bed. ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid

[Robert Downey was being singled out for] selective prosecution. He's a sweet guy who never did harm to anyone except himself. He's been doing drugs for 20 years and functioning for 20 years, and in those 20 years there've been hundreds of people who've been getting high constantly and behaved very destructively and have not been arrested. Robert's real problem is he gets caught. ~ James Toback

It is possible to heal. It is even possible to thrive. Thriving means more than just an alleviation of symptoms, more than Band-Aids, more than functioning adequately. Thriving means enjoying a feeling of wholeness, satisfaction in your life and work, genuine love and trust in your relationships, pleasure in your body. ~ Ellen Bass

Congress is functioning the way the Founding Fathers intended-not very well. They understood that if you move too quickly, our democracy will be less responsible to the majority. ~ Barber Conable

He was one of the first people to complain about the increasing encroachment of the state into personal lives, but, actually, shouldn't there be a little more encroachment, when it came to things like this? Where was the protective fence, or the safety net? They made it hard for you to jump off bridges, or to smoke, to own a gun, to become a gynecologist. So how come they let you walk out on a stable, functioning relationship? They shouldn't. If this didn't work out, he could see himself become a homeless, jobless alcoholic within a year. And that would be worse for his health than a packet of Malboros. ~ Nick Hornby

Yoga is the study of the functioning of the body, the mind and the intellect in the process of attaining freedom. ~ Geeta Iyengar

If your body, if your mind, if your emotions, if your energies are not functioning the way you want them to, then this is the worst kind of slavery, because somebody else decides what should happen within you. If somebody else decides what should happen around you, that itself you call as slavery. But if someone decides what should happen within you, is it not a more horrible way of being a slave? But please see, the whole world is in this slavery. The only consolation is everybody is like this. ~ Jaggi Vasudev

Speaking of a future at most only decades away, an experimenter in intelligence control asserted, I foresee a time when we shall have the means and therefore, inevitably, the temptation to manipulate the behavior and intellectual functioning of all the people through environmental and biochemical manipulation of the brain. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

Vampires did this all the time, you remember. It was normal for them, it was their own unique take on resource conservation. They could have taught your kind a few things about restraint, if that absurd aversion to right-angles hadn't done them in at the dawn of civilization. Maybe they still can. They're back now, after all - raised from the grave with the voodoo of paleogenetics, stitched together from junk genes and fossil marrow steeped in the blood of sociopaths and high-functioning autistics. One of them commands this very mission. A handful of his genes live on in your own body so it too can rise from the dead, here at the edge of interstellar space. Nobody gets past Jupiter without becoming part vampire. ~ Peter Watts

Forming an Adam's apple requires testosterone, and that usually means functioning testicles. When we look up at a billboard in Times Square featuring a man with a large Adam's apple, we are essentially being shown a demonstration of testicular aptitude. "Buy this product," the ad is saying, "and you'll have good testicles. ~ James Hamblin

Iraq is a country that has been invaded. It's not a failing state that you want to help. It's a country that was functioning good or bad, with a horrible dictator, but you have invaded. ~ Lakhdar Brahimi

A properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Function and man appear synonymous because the function can only be pointed toward by being the function. There is no being except in a mode of being. [ ... ] Both scholar and Christian are functioning in identical ways, just under different metaphor, and both are evading the mechanics of being. ~ Joseph Chilton Pearce

Our current society is designed to achieve growth of industrial output and redistributing its
spoils. Future society must expand upon today's society's way of functioning; its institutions must be geared towards achieving more psychological goals. More goals of the soul. ~ Hanzi Freinacht

In a democracy, in a functioning democracy, what would be happening is that popular organizations, unions, political groupings, others would be developing their programs, putting them forth, insisting that their representatives implement those programs. ~ Noam Chomsky

Of all the virtues related to intellectual functioning, the most passive is the virtue of knowing the right answer. Knowing the right answer requires no decisions, carries no risks, and makes no demands. It is automatic. It is thoughtless ~ Eleanor Duckworth

Art isn't and shouldn't be responsible. If it is, it isn't functioning as art. ~ Stephen Graham Jones

The implausible, well-nigh-miraculous functioning anarchy that we know as New York is adorned with every excellence of Western art. It is a city of manifold suggestions, which ministers to every ambition, engenders a thousand talents, nurtures ingenuity and experimentation. ~ Ibn Warraq

...their relationship was a point of near-constant discussion in Night Vale, all of their imperfections and faults, which made them individuals worth loving. They had built those faults into the usual messy, comfortable, patched-up, beautiful structure that any functioning long-term relationship ended up being. ~ Joseph Fink

Calculated acts of sabotage requires a large network or culture of saboteurs, which indicates why the Russian sabotage did not work: rather than functioning together as a cohesive, machine-like system they permitted each other their own individual pace for operating. ~ Anonymous

Wisdom is not just knowing fundamental truths, if these are unconnected with the guidance of life or with a perspective on its meaning. If the deep truths physicists describe about the origin and functioning of the universe have little practical import and do not change our picture of the meaning of the universe and our place within it, then knowing them would not count as wisdom. ~ Robert Nozick

The origin of the word fail means to stop functioning. So as long as you haven't stopped, you haven't failed. ~ Toni Sorenson

The Law of Attraction ensures that you start attracting more of what you want into your life instead of what you don't want or instead of what always has been. The highest functioning people never even put their energy on what is if they don't like what is. That's an important difference, because most people who have a lot of "problems" in their life are constantly talking about them and focusing on them, so they just keep attracting more of those circumstances into their lives because that's where their thoughts are. ~ Wayne Dyer

With body, mind, and spirit functioning perfectly as a coordinated whole, what else could reasonably be expected other than an active, alert, disciplined person? ~ Joseph Pilates

With me, illusions are bound to be shattered. I am here to shatter all illusions. Yes, it will irritate you, it will annoy you - that's my way of functioning and working. I will sabotage you from your very roots! Unless you are totally destroyed as a mind, there is no hope for you. ~ Osho

The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society. ~ H.L. Mencken

What economic calculation requires is a monetary system whose functioning is not sabotaged by government interference. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

That part of his body was simply uncontrollable, apparently functioning in accordance to a single law of nature: She existed
he got a hard-on. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Wisdom keeps the world functioning. Get learning. Get wisdom. ~ Anonymous

Market bashers ... might understand the claim that in some particular field, markets required no intervention
though they'd be skeptical
but the notion that, on general principle, complex systems ran themselves just fine without benign intervention seemed like it could only be the product of a quasi-religious faith ... Of course, this gets things almost precisely backwards. It is the idea that all order must be explained by a functioning mind at the helm, not its denial, that has the closet affinity to the religious instinct. ~ Julian Sanchez

Real time functioning should have the PM and the CMs of the states working in tandem. The Federal structure is important in letter and spirit, it is our strength ~ Narendra Modi

Self-censorship as a result of intimidation or social pressures, sometimes referred to as "political correctness", constitutes a serious obstacle to the proper functioning of democracy. It is important to hear the views of all persons,including the "silent majority", and to give heed to the weaker voices. ~ Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

In the past, a great library was the result of librarians functioning as guardians of culture, tending and caring, selecting and recommending works that maintained and nurtured a cultural heritage. ~ David Gerrold

The public execution did not re-establish justice; it reactivated power. In the seventeenth century, and even in the early eighteenth century, it was not, therefore, with all its theatre of terror, a lingering hang-over from an earlier age. Its ruthlessness, its spectacle, its physical violence, its unbalanced play of forces, its meticulous ceremonial, its entire apparatus were inscribed in the political functioning of the penal system. ~ Michel Foucault

There is another connection between infancy and dreams: both are followed by amnesia. When we emerge from either state, we have great difficulty remembering what we have experienced. In both cases, I would suggest, the left hemisphere of the neocortex, which is responsible for analytic
recollection, has been functioning ineffectively. ~ Carl Sagan

And now the great loose brain was disintegrating. The components of the brain which had worked so beautifully and efficiently in the skull case of the rocket ship firing through space were dying one by one; the meaning of their life together was falling apart. And as a body dies when the brain ceases functioning, so the spirit of the ship and their long time together and what they meant to one another was dying. ~ Ray Bradbury

The urgency of the global situation is such that the foundation work of activating the totality of humankind via the Global Cooperative Forum must happen now, so that, during the next few years, there can be global conversion of all systems to a right functioning in the context of the total system. ~ Adi Da

According to this new evidence, most of our thinking (including our moral judgment) is not a pristinely rational process in the traditional sense, and therefore reasoning is not a bloodless, emotionless, purely formal logical process. Instead, we need an intact and functioning emotional apparatus in order for our reason to have any possibility of operating appropriately in a given situation. ~ Mark Johnson

The exercises of practical life are formative activities, a work of adaptation to the environment. Such adaptation to the environment and efficient functioning therein is the very essence of a useful education. ~ Maria Montessori

To have a functioning body and not to use it is like having 20/20 vision and never opening your eyes. ~ Bill Phillips

The Pathe & Mullen (1997) sample almost unanimously reported deterioration in mental and physical well-being as a consequence of the harassment. (..) These victims often described a preoccupation with their stalker, one commenting: "I think I've become as obsessed as the stalker himself". (..) Whenever stalking victims present it is essential to assess their suicide potential and continue to monitor this. (..) Victims of stalking often respond to cognitive-orientated psychological therapies because stalking breaches previously held assumptions about their safety. The belief of victims in their strength and resilience and their confidence in the reasonable and predictable nature of the world are frequently shattered, to be replaced with feelings of extreme vulnerability and an expectation of pervasive danger and unpredictable harm. Cognitive therapies attempt to restructure these morbid perceptions of the world that threaten the victim's adaptation and functioning. (..) Avoidance can respond to behavioural therapies such as prolonged exposure and stress inoculation, which aim to assist victims to gradually resume abandoned activities and manage the associated anxiety. ~ Julian Boon

Pappa, just stop and think for a minute. Is this really what you want?"
"Hmm. What I want?" (he pronounces it 'vat I vant'). "Of course to father such a child would be not straightforward. Technically it may be possible…"
The thought of my father having sex with this woman makes my stomach turn.
"…Snag is, hydraulic lift no longer fully functioning. But maybe with Valentina…"
He is lingering over this procreation scenario too much for my taste. Looking at it from different angles. Trying it for size, as it were. "…what do you think? ~ Marina Lewycka

what does 'functioning normally' mean?" I asked.
"Being able to face the past. Having a normal sex life. Not lying awake all night in fits of anxiety."
"Oh. Are most people able to face the past and have normal sex lives?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I think they are," she said. "Anyway, if anyone is, it should be me. Deep down I have a talent for well-being. I can feel it."
I nodded. I thought she had it, too, a talent for well-being. ~ Elif Batuman

Positive emotions are not trivial luxuries, but instead might be critical necessities for optimal functioning. ~ Barbara Fredrickson

George feels a kind of patriotism for the freeways. He is proud that they are so fast, that people get lost on them and even sometimes panic and have to bolt for safety down the nearest cutoff. George loves the freeways because he can still cope with them; because the fact that he can cope proves his claim to be a functioning member of society. He can still get by. ~ Christopher Isherwood

There is a "continual dance between intellect and emotions, feeling and reason, which is essential to the proper functioning and maintenance of both."15 In a sense we do have two different ways of knowing the world and interacting with it, the rational and the emotional. This distinction roughly approximates to the folk distinction between heart and head; "knowing something is right in your heart is a different order of conviction, somehow a deeper kind of certainty, than thinking so with your rational mind."16 There is a steady gradient in the ratio of rational to emotional control over the mind; the more intense the feeling, the more dominant the emotional mind becomes and more ineffectual the rational. ~ Ken Robinson

He was trying to make us think about how life is hard and people suffer in all sorts of ways without our adding to their suffering to satisfy our sense of vengeance, but I sort of don't think that the quote holds up in the real world, where literature and schooling and philosophy and morality don't exist, because Asher and Linda and so many other culpable people seem to be fine - functioning exceptionally well within the world even - while I'm under a disgusting bridge about to put a hole in my skull. ~ Matthew Quick

Every human being has both sets of forces within him. One set clings to safety and defensiveness out of fear, tending to regress backward, hanging on to the past, afraid to grow away from the primitive communication with the mother's uterus and breast, afraid to take chances, afraid to jeopardize what he already has, afraid of independence, freedom and separateness. The other set of forces impels him forward toward wholeness of Self and uniqueness of Self, toward full functioning of all his capacities, toward confidence in the face of the external world at the same time that he can accept his deepest, real, unconscious Self. ~ Abraham H. Maslow

The prevention of death and disability, the relief of pain and suffering, the restoration of functioning: these are the aims of health care. Beyond its tangible benefits, health care touches on countless important and in some ways mysterious aspects of personal life and invest it with significant value as a thing in itself. ~ Martin Gulliford

The City is, in terms of its basic functioning, a far-off country of which we know little. ~ John Lanchester

Self-preservation was a basic directive, but there wasn't a robot functioning that prioritized it at the top of the list. Like biologicals all robots were seeking a purpose. Autos and drones were lucky enough to have that built into them. A bot had to find his own way and I'd figured out that functioning for function's sake was pointless. The real question was finding a directive worth getting scrapped for. ~ A. Lee Martinez

In addition, there are huge benefits to communal effort in and of itself. By definition, all organizations consist of people working together. Focusing on the team leads to better results for the simple reason that well-functioning groups are stronger than individuals. Teams that work together well outperform those that don't. And success feels better when it's shared with others. So perhaps one positive result of having more women at the top is that our leaders will have been trained to care more about the well-being of others. My hope, of course, is that we won't have to play by these archaic rules forever and that eventually we can all just be ourselves. We ~ Sheryl Sandberg

Let us then repeat and firmly fix this main point: the evil, the root evil, of that to which the term Capitalism has come to be applied, is neither its functioning for profit nor its dependence upon legally protected private property; but the presence of a Proletariat, that is of men possessing political freedom, but dispossessed of economic freedom, and existing in such large numbers in any community as to determine the tone of all that community. ~ Hilaire Belloc

The Chinese have certain advantages. The fact that it's a single party government. But I do believe in the long run the fact that India is a functioning democracy committed to the rule of law. Our system is slow to move but I'm confident that once decisions are taken they are going to be far more durable. ~ Manmohan Singh

We should picture the instrument that carries our mental functioning as resembling a compound microscope or photographic apparatus. ~ Sigmund Freud

Capital, which, in its objectified or embodied forms, takes time to accumulate and which, as a potential capacity to produce profits and to reproduce itself in identical or expanded form, contains a tendency to persist in its being, is a force inscribed in the objectivity of things so that everything is not equally possible or impossible. And the structure of the distribution of the different types and subtypes of capital at a given moment in time represents the immanent structure of the social world, i.e. , the set of constraints, inscribed in the very reality of that world, which govern its functioning in a durable way, determining the chances of success for practices. ~ Pierre Bourdieu

To get Windows 10 reliable, I had to lobotomise the installed software and USB devices. ~ Steven Magee

Oxygen plays a pivotal role in the proper functioning of the immune system. We can look at oxygen deficiency as the single greatest cause of all diseases. ~ Stephen Levine

In a well-functioning democracy, the state constitution is considered more important than God's holy book, whichever holy book that may be, and God matters only in your private life. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

There are buoyant powers of healing at work in the world that do not depend on us, that we need not finance or keep functioning and that are not at our disposal. ~ Walter Brueggemann

Every part of the brain plays a crucial role in the construction of something magnificent which we call "mind". But if we observe closely, the mind doesn't exactly exist as one distinct process or entity or system. It's rather an illusion. We can understand this better if we see the mind as a nation. Think of the nation you live in. Is there really any such thing as a "nation"! A nation is simply the collection of activities of a group of people inside an imaginary border. Likewise, mind is the collection of activities of a group of neurons inside the skull. And just like in a nation, when a few neurons malfunction, others can slowly learn to take their place. But when an entire group of neurons in a specific brain region malfunctions, it can impede in the proper functioning of the mind, just like when a huge number of people in an entire state or district stop working, it can affect the functioning of the entire nation. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The only person I ever hurt was myself and even that I did to the minimum. If you can do that and you're still functioning, you're the luckiest person in the world. ~ Sammy Davis Jr.

The clinical hallmark of manic-depressive illness is its recurrent, episodic nature. Byron had this in an almost textbook manner, showing frequent and pronounced fluctuations in mood, energy, sleep patterns, sexual behavior, alcohol and other drug use, and weight (Byron also exhibited extremes in dieting, obsession with his weight, eccentric eating patterns, and excessive use of epsom salts). Although these changes in mood and behavior were dramatic and disruptive when they occurred, it is important to note that Byron was clinically normal most of the time; this, too, is highly characteristic of manic-depressive illness. An inordinate amount of confusion about whether someone does or does not have manic-depressive illness stems from the popular misconception that irrationality of mood and reason are stable rather than fluctuating features of the disease. Some assume that because an individual such as Byron was sane and in impressive control of his reason most of the time, that he could not have been "mad" or have suffered from a major mental illness. Lucidity and normal functioning are, however, perfectly consistent with-indeed, characteristic of-the phasic nature of manic-depressive illness. This is in contrast to schizophrenia, which is usually a chronic and relatively unrelenting illness characterized by, among other things, an inability to reason clearly. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

I'm a high-functioning basket case. ~ Lia Riley

Anybody with a functioning brain cannot not know that something is wrong. ~ Barbara Demick

[M]any females would, even assuming complete economic equality between the sexes, prefer residing with males or peddling their asses on the street, thereby having most of their time for themselves, to spending many hours of their days doing boring, stultifying, non-creative work for somebody else, functioning as less than animals, as machines, or, at best - if able to get a "good" job - co-managing the shitpile. What will liberate women, therefore, from male control is the total elimination of the money-work system, not the attainment of economic equality with men within it. ~ Valerie Solanas

Everything - the uncanny clarity of my vision, the clearness of my thoughts as pure conceptual flow - suggested higher, not lower, brain functioning. ~ Eben Alexander

You can use and see the power of words contributing towards your success, and this comes from having an empowering belief system. Living and functioning from an empowering belief system is the spring board for making your success more deliberate. ~ Archibald Marwizi

If a child hasn't been given spiritual values within the family setting, they have no familiarity with the values that are necessary for the just and peaceful functioning in society. ~ Eunice Baumann-Nelson Ph.D PENOBSCOT

During this period (of technological confinement / [and language]) the human mind has been placed in its narrowest confines it has experienced since consciousness emerged from its Paleolithic phase. Even the most primitive tribes have a larger vision of the universe, of our place and functioning within it, a vision that extends to celestial regions of space and to interior depths of the human in a manner far exceeding the parameters of our world of technological confinement. ~ Thomas Berry

You don't die when your body stops functioning. You die when your name is uttered for the last time in the world. ~ Abhijit Naskar