Functions Quotes

It is possible for every human being to be blissful, if you are willing to pay a little attention to how this human mechanism functions. ~ Jaggi Vasudev

Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world. I realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good. ~ Edward Snowden

All over China, parents tell their children to stop complaining and to finish their quadratic equations and trigonometric functions because there are sixty-five million American kids going to bed with no math at all. ~ Michael Cunningham

We are nearer neighbors to ourselves than the whiteness of snow or the weight of stones are to us: if man does not know himself, how should he know his functions and powers? ~ Michel De Montaigne

When you cast doubt on some bodily function- you don't know how sensitive the body is to that kind of idea. ~ Ina May Gaskin

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

As the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial departments of the United States are co-ordinate, and each equally bound to support the Constitution, it follows that each must in the exercise of its functions be guided by the text of the Constitution according to its own interpretation of it. ~ James Madison

When a million little things go right, that's called success. Failure functions as the great leveler. When things don't go as planned, it's humbling. It's important to make mistakes along the way, or we would be impossible to live with. ~ Judy Frankel

Finally, the functionalist organization, by privileging progress (i.e. time), causes the condition of its own possibility
space itself
to be forgotten: space thus becomes the blind spot in a scientific and political technology. This is the way in which the Concept-city functions: a place of transformations and appropriations, the object of various kinds of interference but also a subject that is constantly enriched by new attributes, it is simultaneously the machinery and the hero of modernity. ~ Michel De Certeau

The secret to battling cancer, then, is to find means to prevent these mutations from occurring in susceptible cells, or to find means to eliminate the mutated cells without compromising normal growth. The conciseness of that statement belies the enormity of the task. Malignant growth and normal growth are so genetically intertwined that unbraiding the two might be one of the most significant scientific challenges faced by our species. Cancer is built into our genomes: the genes that unmoor normal cell division are not foreign to our bodies, but rather mutated, distorted versions of the very genes that perform vital cellular functions. And cancer is imprinted in our society: as we extend our life span as a species, we inevitably unleash malignant growth (mutations in cancer genes accumulate with aging; cancer is thus intrinsically related to age). If we seek immortality, then so, too, in a rather perverse sense, does the cancer cell. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Very important functions can be performed very wastefully and often are. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

That's why girls have boyfriends. So you have someone to take you to boring functions. ~ Cassandra Clare

There's no such thing as neutral education. Education either functions as an instrument to bring about conformity or freedom. ~ Paulo Freire

Pretending to be normal is draining and requires amazing amounts of energy and Xanax. In fact, I should probably charge money to all the normal people to simply not go to your social functions and ruin them. ~ Jenny Lawson

Improving some of the rules under which the Senate functions can begin to replace some of the bad habits Washington has developed with better ones. ~ Michael Bennet

Mythology is the study of whatever religious or heroic legends are so foreign to a student's experience that he cannot believe them to be true ... Myth has two main functions. The first is to answer the sort of awkward questions that children ask, such as: 'Who made the world? How will it end? Who was the first man? Where do souls go after death?' ... The second function of myth is to justify an existing social system and account for traditional rites and customs. ~ Robert Graves

So long as our untried senses and our naïve heart recognize themselves and delight in the universe of qualifications, they flourish with the aid and at the risk of the adjective, which, once dissected, proves inadequate, deficient. We say of space, of time, and of suffering that they are infinite; but infinite has no more bearing than beautiful, sublime, harmonious, ugly.... Suppose we force ourselves to see to the bottom of words? We see nothing - each of them, detached from the expansive and fertile soul, being null and void. The power of the intelligence functions by projecting a certain luster upon them, by polishing them and making them glitter; this power, erected into a system, is called culture - pryrotechnics against a night sky of nothingness. ~ Emil M. Cioran

Reading has as many functions as the human body, and ... not all of them are cerebral. ~ Anna Quindlen

Stress is a form of suffering. Look at your body and see what stress does to the body and its functions - what it does to the heart, the circulation, the immune system, the digestive function, the liver. ~ Eckhart Tolle

That females are capable of being just as vulgar about sexual and eliminatory functions as males. ~ David Foster Wallace

Every extension of the functions and power of the State beyond its primary duty of maintaining peace and justice should be scrutinized with jealous vigilance. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

It's one of the functions of the theater to shock and titillate and appall, apart from entertain and delight. ~ Jacki Weaver

If the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results, then passion is a form of mental retardation- deliberately blunting our most critical cognitive functions.
- Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy ~ Ryan Holiday

The advantages of developing absorption concentration are not only that it provides a stable and receptive state of mind for the practice of insight meditation. The experience of absorption is one of intense pleasure and happiness, brought about by purely mental means, which thereby automatically eclipses any pleasure arising in dependence on material objects. Thus absorption functions as a powerful antidote to sensual desires by divesting them of their former attraction. ~ Analayo

The whole point of my article is that in ancient times, during its first three centuries, Christianity was revealed on earth only by the Church, and was only the Church. But when the pagan Roman state desired to become Christian, it inevitably so happened that, having become Christian, it merely included the Church in itself, but itself continued to be, as before, a pagan state in a great many of its functions. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It turns out that the very genes that turn on in cancer cells perform vital functions in normal cells. In other words, the very genes that allow our embryos to grow or our brains to grow, our bodies to grow, if you mutate them, if you distort them, then you unleash cancer. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

A leader has to know how the system functions - not just the system of government but the whole social and economic system, including business, the unions, and the universities. ~ Jean Chretien

Were our pupil's disposition so bizarre that he would rather hear a tall story than the account of a great voyage or a wise discussion; that at the sound of a drum calling the youthful ardour of his comrades to arms he would turn aside for the drum of a troop of jugglers; that he would actually find it no more delightful and pleasant to return victorious covered in the dust of battle than after winning a prize for tennis or dancing; then I know no remedy except that his tutor should quickly strangle him when nobody is looking or apprentice him to make fairy-cakes in some goodly town - even if he were the heir of a Duke - following Plato's precept that functions should be allocated not according to the endowments of men's fathers but the endowments of their souls. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Washington, like most scholarly Virginians of his time, was a Deist... Contemporary evidence shows that in mature life Washington was a Deist, and did not commune, which is quite consistent with his being a vestryman. In England, where vestries have secular functions, it is not unusual for Unitarians to vestrymen, there being no doctrinal subscription required for that office. Washington's letters during the Revolution occasionally indicate his recognition of the hand of Providence in notable public events, but in the thousands of his letters I have never been able to find the name of Christ or any reference to him.

{Conway was employed to edit Washington's letters} ~ Moncure D. Conway

Cities perform most functions in a very Industrial Age model. ~ Jennifer Pahlka

Love is a bug in the brain's electrical functions. ~ Hajime Kamoshida

In the long run, though, the greatest IT risk facing most companies is more prosaic than a catastrophe. It is, simply, overspending. IT may be a commodity, and its costs may fall rapidly enough to ensure that any new capabilities are quickly shared, but the very fact that it is entwined with so many business functions means that it will continue to consume a large portion of corporate spending. ~ Nicholas G. Carr

One of the functions of an organization, of any organism, is to anticipate the future, so that those relationships can persist over time. ~ Kevin Kelly

The celebrated Parisian doctor Professor Xavier Bichat developed a fully materialist theory of the human body and mind in his lectures Physiological Researches on Life and Death, translated into English in 1816. Bichat defined life bleakly as 'the sum of the functions by which death is resisted ~ Richard Holmes

The 90's map the decades to come – full of invisible technologies that will 'sub-contract' many of the functions of the central nervous system. ~ J.G. Ballard

Culture is being threatened when all worldly objects and things, produced by the present or the past, are treated as mere functions for the life process of society, as though they are there only to fulfill some need, and for this functionalization it is almost irrelevant whether the needs in question are of a high or a low order. ~ Hannah Arendt

He had a notebook. He took notes in it. It was always useful. And them Sybil, gods bless her, had brought him this fifteen-function imp which did so many other things, although as far as he could see at least ten of its functions consisted of apologizing for its inefficiency in the other five. ~ Terry Pratchett

The air, soil and water cumulatively degrade; the climates and oceans destabilize; species become extinct at a spasm rate across continents; pollution cycles and volumes increase to endanger life-systems at all levels in cascade effects; a rising half of the world is destitute as inequality multiplies; the global food system produces more and more disabling and contaminated junk food without nutritional value; non-contagious diseases multiply to the world's biggest killer with only symptom cures; the vocational future of the next generation collapses across the world while their bank debts rise; the global financial system has ceased to function for productive investment in life-goods; collective-interest agencies of governments and unions are stripped while for-profit state subsidies multiply; police state laws and methods advance while belligerent wars for corporate resources increase; the media are corporate ad vehicles and the academy is increasingly reduced to corporate functions; public sectors and services are non-stop defunded and privatized as tax evasion and transnational corporate funding and service by governments rise at the same time at every level. ~ John McMurtry

The founders understood that democracy would inevitably evolve into a system of legalized plunder unless the plundered were given numerous escape routes and constitutional protections such as the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, election of senators by state legislators, the electoral college, no income taxation, most governmental functions performed at the state and local levels, and myriad other constitutional limitations on the powers of the central government. ~ Thomas DiLorenzo

A certain amount of taxes is of course indispensable to carry on essential government functions. Reasonable taxes for this purpose need not hurt production much. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Design is ... above all an effort to improve reality ... I always try to begin with considerations of its function ... I ask myself, who needs it, which materials best suit its functions and so on ... ~ Gianfranco Frattini

A book is a machine to think with, but it need not, therefore, usurp the functions either of the bellows or the locomotive. ~ Ivor A. Richards

To make an Army work you have to have every man in it fitted into a fear ladder ... The Army functions best when you're frightened of the man above you, and contemptuous of your subordinates. ~ Norman Mailer

Individual freedom is a Jewish idea, but it's one of the functions of Christianity to make this idea universal. ~ Michael Novak

Designers provide ways into - and out of - the flood of words by breaking up text into pieces and offering shortcuts and alternate routes through masses of information. ( ... ) Although many books define the purpose of typography as enhancing the readability of the written word, one of design's most humane functions is, in actuality, to help readers avoid reading. ~ Ellen Lupton

Corruption, embezzlement, fraud, these are all characteristics which exist everywhere. It is regrettably the way human nature functions, whether we like it or not. What successful economies do is keep it to a minimum. No one has ever eliminated any of that stuff. ~ Alan Greenspan

Chia decided to change the subject. "What's your brother like? How old is he?" "Masahiko is seventeen," Mitsuko said. "He is a 'pathological - techno - fetishist - with - social - deficit," ' this last all strung together like one word, indicating a concept that taxed the lexicon of the ear-clips. Chia wondered briefly if it would be worth running it through her Sandbenders, whose translation functions updated automatically whenever she ported. "A what?" "Otaku," Mitsuko said carefully in Japanese. ~ William Gibson

Latent brain functions can be enabled by force majeure
when we are facing the weirdness of an unknown reality. ~ Toba Beta

Childhood is a complex dialectical process characterized by periodicity, unevenness in the development of different functions, metamorphosis or qualitative transformation of one form into another, intertwining of external and internal factors, and adaptive processes which overcome impediments that the child encounters. ~ Lev S. Vygotsky

Technology represents intelligence systematically applied to the problem of the body. It functions to amplify and surpass the organic limits of the body; it compensates for the body's fragility and vulnerability ... ~ Shoshana Zuboff

After Harding's death, the taciturn vice president, Calvin Coolidge, moved into the White House. In contrast to his predecessor's political cronyism and outgoing style, Coolidge personified austere rectitude. As vice president "Silent Cal" often sat through official functions without uttering a word. A dinner partner once challenged him by saying, "Mr. Coolidge, I've made a rather sizable bet with my friends that I can get you to speak three words this evening." Responded Coolidge icily, "You lose. ~ James A. Henretta

In serious Victorian fiction, as in Shakespearian tragedy, melodrama normally functions as metaphor. The author finds a vivid equivalent for a reality too elaborate or too extended to be briefly depicted. ~ Ian Gregor

The knowledge that there is a part of the psychic functions that are out of conscious reach, we did not need to wait for Freud to know this! ~ Jacques Lacan

Work hard to foster high levels of trust across the organization by stifling political battles, encouraging high-status people to admit and learn from mistakes, and not blaming or punishing those who come forward for help after good-effort failures. Create opportunities and spaces for people across disciplines and functions to interact informally and frequently. And use meetings or training sessions to teach people throughout the organization how to seek, find, give, and receive help effectively. ~ Anonymous

The great mass of women throughout history have been confined to the cultural level of animal life in providing the male with sexual outlet and exercising the animal functions of reproduction and care of the young. ~ Kate Millett

Comedy today is not what it was years ago. It's always changing, in particular to female comics. No longer are certain subjects considered to be a male preserve. Women can talk about sexuality and their bodily functions and it can be very, very entertaining. It's changed the impact of comedy acting. ~ Patrick Stewart

Modern problems proliferate and remain unsolved because we spend so much time trying to deal with societal and world problems without first dealing with family and community problems. If we organized for normal families and communities - if these two groups provided the functions they are designed for - world problems would diminish and fade out in two or three generations. ~ Ralph Borsodi

A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses ... : this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wiresto the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ. ~ Jean Baudrillard

My hand is entirely the implement of a distant sphere. It is not my head that functions but something else, something higher, something somewhere remote. I must have great friends there, dark as well as bright. They are all very kind to me. ~ Paul Klee

A city grows like an organism. It is a structure of living and working together a mix of functions. ~ Jaime Lerner

Nevertheless, the ultimate business of philosophy is to preserve the force of the most elemental words in which Dasein expresses itself, and to keep the common understanding from levelling them off to that unintelligibility which functions in turn as a source of pseudo-problems. ~ Martin Heidegger

Naomi and Turner, even Ronnie, they all see this is as black and white. Good guys verses bad guys. But I learned a long time ago that the world only functions in shades of gray. ~ C.M. Stunich

No matter how shut in we are by weather, by physical handicaps or by such mental conditions as we manufacture for ourselves, we are still free people as long as the mind functions, the imagination is stirred and the desire to reach out, to experience, feel and know, is with us; as long as the heart beats and with it the pulses of love, interest, and empathy for and with other people. ~ Faith Baldwin

To discover and to teach are distinct functions; they are also distinct gifts, and are not commonly found united in the same person. ~ John Henry Newman

The wilderness once offered men a plausible way of life," the doctor said. "Now it functions as a psychiatric refuge. Soon there will be no wilderness." He sipped at his bourbon and ice. "Soon there will be no place to go. Then the madness becomes universal." Another thought. "And the universe goes mad. ~ Edward Abbey

When the mind's eye rests on objects illuminated by truth and reality, it understands and comprehends them, and functions intelligently; but when it turns to the twilight world of change and decay, it can only form opinions, its vision is confused and its beliefs shifting, and it seems to lack intelligence. ~ Plato

My laptop helps me carry on my business functions and stay in touch with my executives when I'm abroad. ~ Lucio Tan

Not having insurance not only destroys your life, it destroys your fiscal life. It breaks up marriages. You cannot functions anywhere unless you have good health. ~ Charles B. Rangel

Chemistry is not destiny, certainly. But these scientists have demonstrated that the most reliable way to produce an adult who is brave and curious and kind and prudent is to ensure that when he is an infant, his hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functions well. And how do you do that? It is not magic. First, as much as possible, you protect him from serious trauma and chronic stress; then, even more important, you provide him with a secure, nurturing relationship with at least one parent and ideally two. That's not the whole secret of success, but it is a big, big part of it. ~ Paul Tough

It is in this mutual dependence of the functions and the aid which they reciprocally lend one another that are founded the laws which determine the relations of their organs and which possess a necessity equal to that of metaphysical or mathematical laws, since it is evident that the seemly harmony between organs which interact is a necessary condition of existence of the creature to which they belong and that if one of these functions were modified in a manner incompatible with the modifications of the others the creature could no longer continue to exist. ~ Georges Cuvier

If the human intellect functions, it is actually in order to solve the problems which the man's inner destiny sets it. ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

If the human being is condemned and restricted to perform the same functions over and over again, he will not even be a good ant, not to mention a good human being. ~ Norbert Wiener

Some conservatives have expressed outrage that the views of professors are at odds with the views of students, as if ideas were entitled to be represented in proportion to their popularity and students were entitled to professors who share their political or social values. One of the more important functions of college that it exposes young people to ideas and arguments they have not encountered at home is redefined as a problem. ~ Ellen Willis

Each age needs its own language for understanding enduring truths…The ancient world didn't have much of what we call reality; they lived, instead, by the slender threads. We have gained ego reality but have lost the mystical and religious functions that should guide our lives. ~ Robert A. Johnson

Why is it that men reduce themselves to one-liners and bad movie quotes whenever they get into a fight?" said Parker. "Is there some kind of script they're supposed to follow when they get to this point? Or does the raging testosterone just shut down their higher brain functions? ~ Matt Forbeck

English has a single verb "to be," which occurs in a variety of contexts. The Guyanese have three verbs for the same set of functions. Or rather two verbs plus what we linguists call a "zero form," a verb that is "not phonologically realized" and looks to the layman like nothing at all:

I am hungry = me hongry.
The boy is laze = di bai lazy.

This is typically what happens when the predicate is an adjective. If it's a noun, you get yet another a:

I am captain = me a kyapn.

However, if the predicate is an expression indicating location, de must be used:

I am in Georgetown = me de a Jarjtong.

If there is no predicate (as in Descartes' "I think, therefore I am") then the meaning must be the same as "exist," and again de is used:

God is/exists - Gad de. ~ Derek Bickerton

Most of the complexity of a human neuron is devoted to maintaining its life-support functions, not its information-processing capabilities. Ultimately, we will be able to port our mental processes to a more suitable computational substrate. Then our minds won't have to stay so small. ~ Ray Kurzweil

The neurons in the gut are so innumerable that scientist are now calling the totality of them "the second brain"...

In fact, recent research is revaling that our second brain may not be second at all. It can act independently from the main brain and control many functions without the brain's input. ~ David Perlmutter

Principles are laws that are established by the creator or the manufacturer by which a product functions. If you violate those laws, then you produce malfunction, which is what we call failure. If you obey those laws and align yourself with those laws, then you are guaranteed success. ~ Myles Munroe

White people need to listen, to pause so that people of color can clearly articulate both the disappointment they've endured and what it would take for reparations to be made. Too often, dialogue functions as a stall tactic, allowing white people to believe they've done something heroic when the real work is yet to come. ~ Austin Channing Brown

Man has to pick up the use of his functions as he goes along- especially the function of Love. ~ E. M. Forster

The main functions of intelligence, that of inventing solutions and that of verifying them, do not necessarily involve one another. The first partakes of imagination; the second alone is properly logical. ~ Jean Piaget

ALL things in Nature work silently. They come into being and possess nothing. They fulfil their functions and make no claim. ~ Laozi

The secret to the city is integration. Every area of the city should combine work, leisure and culture. Separate these functions and parts of the city die. ~ Jaime Lerner

That the sole object and only legitimate end of government is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and when the government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppression. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

So long as man is protected by madness - he functions - and flourishes. ~ Emile M. Cioran

I agree that we should work and prolong the functions of life as far as we can, and hope that Death may find me planting my cabbages, but indifferent to him and still more to the unfinished state of my garden. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Sometimes it takes having differences, not understanding one another, and even being a little bit irritated by and bored with one another, to remind us that the church is a family and not a club. At its best, this family dynamic of the local church functions as God's fertile soil for growing us beyond mere tolerance toward true expressions of love and unity. ~ Scott Sauls

(There is, however, one thing about which all the prophecies seem to agree: the messiah is a human being, not divine. Belief in a divine messiah would have been anathema to everything Judaism represents, which is why, without exception, every text in the Hebrew Bible dealing with the messiah presents him as performing his messianic functions on earth, not in heaven.) ~ Reza Aslan

It was supposed that the pearl buyers were individuals acting alone, bidding against one another for the pearls the fishermen brought in. And once it had been so. But this was a wasteful method, for often, in the excitement of bidding for a fine pearl, too great a price had been paid to the fisherman. This was extravagant and not to be countenanced. Now there was only one pearl buyer with many hands, and the men who sat in their offices and waited for Kino knew what price they would offer, how high they would bid, and what method each one would use. And although these men would not profit beyond their salaries, there was excitement among the pearl buyers, for there was excitement in the hunt, and if it be a man's function to break down a price, then he must take joy and satisfaction in breaking it as far down as possible. For every man in the world functions to the best of his ability, and no one does less than his best, no matter what he may think about it. Quite apart from any reward they might get, from any word of praise, from any promotion, a pearl buyer was a pearl buyer, and the best and happiest pearl buyer was he who bought for the lowest prices. ~ John Steinbeck

While making racism bad seems like a positive change, we have to look at how this functions in practice. Within this paradigm, to suggest that I am racist is to deliver a deep moral blow - a kind of character assassination. Having received this blow, I must defend my character, and that is where all my energy will go - to deflecting the charge, rather than reflecting on my behavior. In this way, the good/bad binary makes it nearly impossible to talk to white people about racism, what it is, how it shapes all of us, and the inevitable ways that we are conditioned to participate in it. If we cannot discuss these dynamics or see ourselves within them, we cannot stop participating in racism. The good/bad binary made it effectively impossible for the average white person to understand - much less interrupt - racism. ~ Robin DiAngelo

One of the main functions of an analogy or model is to suggest extensions of the theory by considering extensions of the analogy, since more is known about the analogy than is known about the subject matter of the theory itself ... A collection of observable concepts in a purely formal hypothesis suggesting no analogy with anything would consequently not suggest either any directions for its own development. ~ Mary Hesse

Not Locke, nor Hume, nor Smith, nor Burke, could ever have argued, as Bentham did, that "every law is an evil for every law is an infraction of liberty." Their argument was never a complete laissez faire argument, which, as the very words show, is also part of the French rationalist tradition and in its literal sense was never defended by any of the English classical economists. They knew better than most of their later critics that it was not some sort of magic but the evolution of "well-constructed institutions," where the "rules and principles of contending interests and compromised advantages" would be reconciled, that had successfully channeled individual efforts to socially beneficial aims. In fact, their argument was never antistate as such, or anarchistic, which is the logical outcome of the laissez faire doctrine; it was an argument that accounted both for the proper functions of the state and for the limits of state action. ~ Friedrich A. Hayek

The Heartbleed problem can be blamed on complexity; all Internet standards become festooned with complicating option sets that no one person can know in their entirety. The Heartbleed problem can be blamed on insufficient investment; safety review for open source code is rarely funded, nor sustainable when it is. The Heartbleed problem can be blamed on poor planning; wide deployment within critical functions but without any repair regime. ~ Dan Geer

In Hilbert space, the classical states are just in one corner of the room, quantum attention functions are in the middle, and they are the matrix of cosmic functions that can collapse any other quantum wave function and transform the non-classical states into classical states in the Hilbert space. ~ Amit Ray

The danger of abusing the discovery of the truth value of imagination for retrogressive tendencies is exemplified by the work of Carl Jung. More empathically than Freud, he has insisted on the cognitive force of imagination. According to Jung, phantasy is 'undistinguishably' united with all other mental functions, it appears 'now as primeval, now as the ultimate and most audacious synthesis of all capabilities.' Phantasy is above all the 'creative activity out of which flow the answers to all answerable questions'; it is 'the mother of all possibilities, in which all mental opposites as well as the conflict between internal and external world are united.' Phantasy has always built the bridge between the irreconcilable demands of object and subject, extroversion and introversion. The simultaneously retrospective and expectant character of imagination is thus clearly stated: it looks not only back to an aboriginal golden past, but also forward to still unrealized but realizable possibilities. ~ Herbert Marcuse

Once it's no longer accepted that something is wrong, all the laws in the world will avail you naught. The law functions as a formal embodiment of a moral code, not as a free-standing substitute for it. ~ Mark Steyn

He who is desireless, self-reliant, independent and free of bonds functions like a dead leaf blown about by the wind of causality . ~ Ashtavakra Gita

Altogether, these observations suggest that several processes contribute to psychotic experience: the loss of familiarity with the world, hypothetically associated with noisy information processing; increased novelty detection mediated by the hippocampus; associated alterations of prefrontal cortical processing, which have reliably been associated with impairments in working memory and other executive functions; increased top-down effects of prior beliefs mediated by the frontal cortex that may reflect compensatory efforts to cope with an increasingly complex and unfamiliar world; and finally disinhibition of subcortical dopaminergic neurotransmission, which increases salience attribution to otherwise irrelevant stimuli. Furthermore, increased noise of chaotic or stress-dependent dopamine firing can reduce the encoding of errors of reward prediction elicited by primary and secondary reinforcers, thus contributing to a subjective focusing of attention on apparently novel and mysterious environmental cues while reducing attention and motivation elicited by common and natural and social stimuli. ~ Andreas Heinz

I see no reason in morality, why literature should not have as one of its intentions the arousing of thoughts of lust. It is one of the effects, perhaps one of the functions of literature to arouse desire, and I can discover no grounds for saying that sexual pleasure should not be among the objects of desire which literature presents to us, along with heroism, virtue, peace, death, food, wisdom, God, etc. ~ Lionel Trilling