Infrastructure Quotes

I was standing amid floor-to-ceiling shelves of books in wonder and awe when my view of stories suddenly and forever changed. There were enormous piles of books lying in corners. Books covered the walls. Books even lined the staircases as you went up from one floor to the next. It was as if this used bookstore was not just a place for selling used books; it was like the infrastructure itself was made up of books. There were books to hold more books, stories built out of stories.

I was standing in Daedalus Books in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I had recently read Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a Book. I was alive with the desire to read. But at that particular moment, my glee turned to horror. For whatever reason, the truth of the numbers suddenly hit me. The year before, I had read about thirty books. For me, that was a new record. But then I started counting. I was in my early twenties, and with any luck I'd live at least fifty more years. At that rate, I'd have about 1,500 books in me, give or take.

There were more books than that on the single wall I was staring at.

That's when I had a realization of my mortality. My desire outpaced reality. I simply didn't have the life to read what I wanted to read.

Suddenly my choices in that bookstore became a profound act of deciding. The Latin root of the word decide - cise or cide - is to "cut off' or "kill." The idea is that to choose anything means to kill off other options you m ~ Justin Whitmel Earley

China is not only formidable, it is also aggressively building its own economic infrastructure. Just a few years from now, China will rival the U.S. and the European Union in global market power. It already has surpassed us in population. ~ Jo Ann Emerson

The emergence of one world consciousness must be accompanied with one world political infrastructures. ~ Bryant McGill

While the rich reap most of the benefits of technological development, the poor bear an unequal burden of dealing with the consequences of the resulting increased pollution. The poor continue to live in greatest proximity to the sources of pollution, the infrastructure and machinery of industry. They work in the most polluted and physically dangerous workplaces. And these same individuals, living and working closest to the sources of environmental catastrophe, are also the ones most lacking decent health care. ~ James H. Cone

Besides infrastructure, there is a huge opportunity in housing and urbanisation of cities - not only building new ones, but also renewing the infrastructure of old cities to make them more livable. This provides tremendous scope for large investments to fuel growth. ~ Jamshyd Godrej

Other than much needed infrastructure development, local administrations in Papua must encourage entrepreneurship and creativity. ~ Ciputra

For the vlogging channel, I wanted to build the infrastructure and build up all the personalities in a way that felt like weren't just forcing the audience to watch everyone we have. ~ Felicia Day

We believe we're moving out of the Ice Age, the Iron Age, the Industrial Age, the Information Age, to the participation age. You get on the Net and you do stuff. You IM (instant message), you blog, you take pictures, you publish, you podcast, you transact, you distance learn, you telemedicine. You are participating on the Internet, not just viewing stuff. We build the infrastructure that goes in the data center that facilitates the participation age. We build that big friggin' Webtone switch. It has security, directory, identity, privacy, storage, compute, the whole Web services stack. ~ Scott McNealy

We also wanted to change the story - change the approach to the 21st century on energy, on education, on transportation, on infrastructure, generally, and it laid the groundwork for that. And one of the reasons I'm doing this trip is not only to say what we did worked, but to say we should do more of this. ~ Joe Biden

Look at the commercial and industrial development that is going on along the 101. A lot of the infrastructure - the sewer lines and drainage that make development possible - was put in during the freeway construction. ~ David Schweikert

When it comes to solving problems of poverty, impact investing can act as a catalyst, but it is not a silver bullet. Successful businesses serving the poor need more than investment capital. They also need infrastructure to enable effective distribution, strong regulatory systems, access to markets, technical assistance as they scale up, and more ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

For every show that we do, anyone that rides public transit, bikes, or walk, we offer them a $5 voucher at the merch table. It gets people using the infrastructure in the area. Hopefully, the venues where we play will lobby city council and say, we need bike paths, sidewalk repair. That stuff affects so many people's lives. ~ Ben Sollee

From a business perspective, the question related to cities and sustainability is clear and compelling: can you have a healthy company in an unhealthy city? Arguably, no. Companies need healthy cities to provide reliable infrastructure, an educated and vital workforce, a vibrant economy, and a safe and secure environment to survive and thrive. Business executives have a lot to learn from cities, and a lot to contribute, and this book shows the way, chronicling the successes and the lessons learned about what it takes to make a city healthy, in every sense of the word. ~ Joel Makower

It may be true that encryption makes certain investigations of crime more difficult. It can close down certain investigative techniques or make it harder to get access to certain kinds of electronic evidence. But it also prevents crime by making our computers, our infrastructure, our medical records, our financial records, more robust against criminals. It prevents crime. ~ Matt Blaze

Infrastructure spending does not create immediate jobs, and more than half of those jobs will pull from the pool of the already employed. ~ Mark McKinnon

For infrastructure technology, C will be hard to displace. ~ Dennis Ritchie

Why are people so supportive of him [Osama bin Laden] in many countries? Hes been out in these countries for decades building roads, building schools, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. ~ Patty Murray

The wealthiest Americans often live as though they and their children had nothing to gain from investments in education, infrastructure, clean-energy, and scientific research. ~ Sam Harris

Today, the European Union is busy transferring aid. If they can build infrastructure in Spain, roads, highways ... why do they refuse to use the same aid to build the same infrastructure in our countries? ~ Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

America used to be a uniquely productive, low-cost place to do business. We had efficient infrastructure. We had limited regulation. We believed in the market. ~ Michael Porter

Having a scriptable infrastructure requires upfront work but can pay huge dividends in bringing new engineers onto your infra team, as well as helping in disaster-recovery scenarios. ~ Mike Krieger

I concentrated on a lot of things, so very few people saw me as an education governor, an infrastructure governor. ~ Mario Cuomo

There is a liberal bias. It's demonstrable. You look at some statistics. About 85 percent of the reporters who cover the White House vote Democratic, they have for a long time. There is a, particularly at the networks, at the lower levels, among the editors and the so-called infrastructure, there is a liberal bias. ~ Evan Thomas

The Houston Contractors Association is proud to endorse Council Member Oliver Pennington for re-election to Houston City Council. Council Member Pennington understands that infrastructure investment is crucial to protect the long-term economic vitality of our community. We strongly support his efforts on behalf of small businesses and the construction industry while demonstrating his commitment to sound management of the city's budget. ~ Jeffrey Nielsen

Our greater beastliness lies not in a penchant for brute force,but in our greater corruption, nihilism, and decadence; in our servitude to the
overwhelming systems we create; in the sociopathic rationalism we adopt to master natural forces and to compete with the machines we build;and in the scientistic idolatry that co-opts the religious impulse. Of course the ancients resorted more to brute force: they lacked the infrastructure to punish their enemies and victims in a safer, more
sophisticated fashion, with advanced legal regimes and mass-produced, maximum security prisons; with engineered propaganda for social conditioning; and with economic, cyber, and drone warfare. We channel our aggression with more sophisticated instruments, but the use of those instruments doesn't ennoble us. ~ Benjamin Cain

Uber, which raised $1.2 billion this month at a valuation of $40 billion, said in August it had sought a legal opinion and that its Seoul service obeys the law. Opposition to its operations is down to outdated regulations that precede smartphone and wireless technology, Allen Penn, the company's head of Asia, told reporters at the time. Paid transportation with unregistered vehicles is "clearly illegal activity," South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said later that month. The maximum penalty for Uber's alleged legal violation is a two-year prison sentence or a fine of nearly $20,000, Yonhap News reported Wednesday. ~ Anonymous

Americans all benefit from the physical and institutional infrastructure that has developed from the country's collective efforts over generations. ~ Joseph E. Stiglitz

When you are in the infrastructure sector, you've to work along with the government. ~ Gautam Adani

Things like water and sewage systems require states in a large-scale society, but states are also a good mechanism for dealing with health care, education, public transportation, and infrastructure. ~ Cynthia Kauffman

I think also people in states like Pennsylvania know that a lot of money and effort and time needs to be spent on knitting America back together, on the bridges and the roads and the infrastructure and the education. ~ Chris Matthews

The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich. ~ Robert Reich

Move fast with stable infrastructure. ~ Mark Zuckerberg

The main languages out of which web applications are built - whether it's Perl or Python or PHP or any of the other languages - those are all open source languages. So the infrastructure of the web is open source ... the web as we know it is completely dependent on open source. ~ Mitch Kapor

Our commitment should be to leave our environment in better shape than when we found it, our nation's fiscal house in better order, our public infrastructure in better repair, and our people better educated and healthier. To indulge in immediate gratification and exploitation is an insult to previous generations, who sacrificed for us, and thievery from the next generation, who depend on our virtue. ~ Eric Liu

As we get more transparent with data sets about infrastructure and systems management, I have a feeling we'll see big changes in how we think about complexity and our relationship to our actions. ~ Aaron Koblin

Isolated and unincorporated, North Gulfport lacked a basic infrastructure: flooding and contaminated drinking water were frequent problems. Although finally incorporated in 1994 - not long after the arrival of the first casino - many of North Gulfport's streets still lack curbs, sidewalks, and gutters. ~ Natasha Trethewey

Amazon makes money differently from a conventional publisher. It is an infrastructure player. ~ Nick Harkaway

Investment in infrastructure is a long term requirement for growth and a long term factor that will make growth sustainable. ~ Chanda Kochhar

The United States invests just 2.4 percent of GDP in infrastructure; whereas, Europe invests twice that amount. ~ Bernie Sanders

Corruption is worse than terrorism. Terrorists blow up existing infrastructure such as roads, airports and power plants. Corruption prevents such infrastructure from being created in the first place. Terrorists take innocent lives. Corrupt politicians prevent hospitals from being built, which means that innocent lives ~ Chetan Bhagat

Every zombie story is fundamentally about a breakdown of order, with the infrastructure intact. That infrastructure might be on fire, yes. ~ Patton Oswalt

Cities require connectivity rather than territory in order to drive their economic stability and growth. ~ James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute For Critical Infrastructure Technology

Because it is such a huge crisis, because it puts us on a firm science-based deadline, it's a once-in-a-century opportunity to build a better society and address raging inequality, create huge numbers of jobs, rebuild our public infrastructure. But, we can't do it unless we break every single rule in the free-market playbook. Which is why the worst people in the world all deny climate change. ~ Naomi Klein

Once we have the infrastructure in Africa, it should not be blocked by borders. ~ Jacob Zuma

A national investment bank can invest to provide us with the foundations of shared and ecologically sustainable growth: renewing the U.K.'s energy, digital and transport infrastructure which lags woefully behind other major economies. ~ Jeremy Corbyn

It is a mistake to think that Marxism is simply a type of interpretation that takes the economic "sequence" as that ultimately privileged code into which the other sequences are to be translated. Rather, for Marxism the emergence of the economic, the coming into view of the infrastructure itself, is simply the sign of the approach of the concrete. ~ Fredric Jameson

Every year the progress of advanced capitalist society makes our population consist of more and more isolates. This is because of the infrastructure of the economy, especially electronic communications. ~ Mary Douglas

Today's enterprise IT architecture is about integrating systems to meet business needs. Consequently, IT architects can't - and don't - live in a vacuum. To address that reality, Catalyst Conference 2006 will delve into strategic infrastructure technologies with the depth to which our clients have grown accustomed. With the larger number of Cross-Cutting Concerns sessions, we'll also clearly illustrate how these technologies relate to each other, and how roles, geographies, and business processes intersect within an enterprise. ~ Jamie Lewis

When you take a look at the transition from server software to Azure, what's going on in terms of cloud infrastructure, the company is absolutely the No. 1 company serving enterprise backbone needs, which is fantastic. It's making the migration to cloud. We started a good thing with Azure, and the company has made well more than two years of progress in terms of being able to compete with the right cost profile, margin structure, and innovation versus Amazon. ~ Steve Ballmer

For most of us, Facebook friends and Instagram followers are supplements to -- not surrogates for -- our social lives. As meaningful as the friendships we establish online can be, most of us are unsatisfied with virtual ties that never develop into face-to-face relationships. Building real connections requires a shared physical environment -- a social infrastructure. ~ Eric Klinenberg

Government is inevitably going to play a very significant role in infrastructure, and in a country with a federal system where vibrancy and economic health depend on interstate commerce, it's not going to be private enterprise or state governments that will give you things like an interstate highway system. ~ Norman Ornstein

We've got to get off oil. And it's possible. It'll take a dramatic shift in the way we think and how our infrastructure works, but we as Americans have proven time and again that we can tackle change head on. Yeah, it's a challenge, but it doesn't have to be a painful one. We just have to recalibrate our thinking on the subject. ~ Reid Scott

Taxes are how we pool our money for public health and safety, infrastructure, research, and services-from the development of vaccines and the Internet to public schools and universities, transportation, courts, police, parks, and safe drinking water. ~ Holly Sklar

If our country is serious about reducing our dependency on foreign oil, we need to get serious about mobilizing the infrastructure necessary to distribute and dispense the next generation of fuels. ~ Bart Gordon

Kenya doesn't have much of an infrastructure for hosting a film. ~ Ralph Fiennes

No matter what your political persuasion, you can find a guide that makes it quick, easy and painless to exercise your right to vote. Wanna know what a certain proposition put forth by a cadre of undisclosed billionaires which cuts funding for public education, arts and infrastructure means? Use the voting guide! ~ Steven Weber

Humanity's current demand for energy is fundamentally unsustainable. The only feasible choice is to conduct a massive downscaling of all economic, industrial, and political operations. A decentralized, autonomous, and locally-based energy infrastructure is ultimately the only sustainable option. ~ Stacy Pettigrew

IBM customers of any size can now rest assured that Double-Take, the most innovative, flexible and reliable data protection solution on the market, is proven to integrate easily into their IBM infrastructure. ~ Dan Jones

The infrastructure of power is human neurosoft compatible ROM. Authority instantiates itself as linear instruction pathways, genetic baboonery, scriptures, traditions, rituals, and gerontocratic hierarchies, resonant with the dominator ur-myth that the nature of reality has already been decided. If you want to find ICE, try thinking about what is blocking you out of the past. It certainly isn't a law of nature. Temporalization decompresses intensity, installing constraint. ~ Nick Land

To help producers serve larger institutional customers like schools and hospitals, USDA has helped fund new regional infrastructure like cold storage warehouses, commercial kitchens and local slaughter facilities. ~ Tom Vilsack

The United States is more reliant on the technical systems. We're more reliant on the critical infrastructure of the internet than any other nation out there. And when there's such a low barrier to entering the domain of cyber-attacks we're starting a fight that we can't win. ~ Edward Snowden

Infrastructure investment can boost economic growth and employment, and, in fact, it is fiscally neutral. ~ Lou Jiwei

If the United States is promoting the development of exploits, of vulnerabilities, of insecurity in this critical infrastructure, and we're not fixing it when we find it, instead we put it on the shelf so we can use it the next time we want to launch an attack against some foreign country. We're leaving ourselves at risk. ~ Edward Snowden

Do you know what the primary infrastructure of the United States actually is, ladies and gentlemen? It's freedom - freedom and liberty - and that infrastructure certainly does need some rebuilding. ~ Rush Limbaugh

The security of computers and the Internet is a horrible and dangerous mess. Every week we hear about breaches of databases of Social Security numbers and financial information and health records, and about critical infrastructure being insecure. ~ Matt Blaze

Infrastructure creates the form of a city and enables life to go on in a city, in a certain way. ~ Paul Goldberger

Many communities throughout the nation still do not have the communications infrastructure in place for first responders to communicate with one another during an emergency. ~ Susan Collins

When approved, the SAFE Port Act will make progress toward protecting the physical infrastructure of our seaports as well as our national economy which is so clearly dependent on the commercial shipping business. ~ Lucille Roybal-Allard

Drug manufacturers could afford to sell AIDS drugs in Africa at virtually any discount. The companies said they did not do so because Africa lacked the requisite infrastructure. ~ Barton Gellman

You and I come by road or rail, but economists travel on infrastructure. ~ Margaret Thatcher

This cyberwar will be a continuous marathon war that will only compound and hyper-evolve in stealth, sophistication and easy entry due to the accelerated evolution of "as a service" attack strategies for sale on the dark web. ~ James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute For Critical Infrastructure Technology

Consider all tabulation systems infected by bad actors until a third party, not affiliated with the manufacturer or election officials, proves they are secure. ~ James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute For Critical Infrastructure Technology

The fact is, America needs energy and new energy infrastructure, and the Keystone XL pipeline will help us achieve that with good stewardship. ~ John Hoeven

Productivity depends on many factors, including our workforce's knowledge and skills and the quantity and quality of the capital, technology, and infrastructure that they have to work with. ~ Janet Yellen

When companies are trying to find a state to locate a new business or factory, they look at a number of factors - including tax structure, employment base, infrastructure, education system, etc. One of the most important is a strong and sound health care system in the communities where employees will work and live. ~ Ronnie Musgrove

Start-up should focus on innovation not on building on infrastructure. Thanks to Google cloud service they can. ~ Urs Holzle

Keller had a professor in college who said that civilization was a matter of plumbing. That basically, the infrastructure for moving clean water in and filthy water out is what allowed people to congregate in large populations in permanent dwellings and create cities and cultures. Otherwise, people had to be nomads to literally escape their own shit. ~ Don Winslow

The emphasis of my government is to take advantage from the Chinese experience in the fields of agriculture, fisheries, energy, infrastructure, development, health and high efficiency irrigation. ~ Asif Ali Zardari

The government can access these funds but only following approval by the parliament to support our budget requirements and investments in infrastructure development, education, public health, and so on. ~ Jose Ramos-Horta

[Norm said,] 'To all those who argue this war is a mistake, I'd like to point out that we've removed from power one of history's most ruthless and belligerent tyrants. A man who cold-bloodedly murdered thousands of his own people. Who built palaces for his personal pleasure while schools decayed and his country's health care system collapsed. Who maintained one of the world's most expensive armies while he allowed his nation's infrastructure to crumble. Who channeled resources to his cronies and political allies, allowing them to siphon off much of the country's wealth for their own personal gain. ~ Ben Fountain

The cultural infrastructure was buckling and society's veil of sanity was slipping away, exposing its uncharitable Id. ~ Bobby Adair

Software development requires the cooperation of everyone on the team. Programmers are often called "developers," but in reality everyone on the team is part of the development effort. When you share the work, customers identify the next requirements while programmers work on the current ones. Testers help the team figure out how to stop introducing bugs. Programmers spread the cost of technical infrastructure over the entire life of the project. Above all, everyone helps keep everything clean. ~ Anonymous

Infrastructure is one of the core responsibilities of government and one that cannot be shortchanged by other controversial spending. I believe investment in infrastructure pays dividends for decades and is a wise investment of taxpayer dollars. ~ Douglas R. Oberhelman

Infrastructure projects create a lot of demand for material, services and manpower. It is a chain reaction; if the infrastructure growth slows down, it will hit overall demand. The supply side has to keep increasing to sustain growth. ~ Jamshyd Godrej

The Soviets are not just looking at Moscow, they have a very extensive program of not only research, development, they have built this radar net around the whole country. One of those radars has become infamous because it's a clear violation of the ABM Treaty. They have an infrastructure and they are well prepared to develop a nationwide defensive system. ~ Fred Ikle

As we try to compete in this global marketplace, we need to rebuild our infrastructure. We need to rebuild our schools. We need to make sure that teachers and first responders and veterans who are coming home from serving our country so proudly have jobs waiting for them. ~ Valerie Jarrett

First, our focus on security is on the infrastructure itself. So it is all about how you protect the network, the device, and the application that is riding on the server. ~ John W. Thompson

In many ways, we are the city that the New Deal built. Because that's who built all of our infrastructure. Before that, we were a hardscrabble town. ~ Michael Barnes

Looking at a situation like the Israel-Palestine conflict, Americans are likely to react with puzzlement when they see ever more violent and provocative acts that target innocent civilians. We are tempted to ask: do the terrorists not realize that they will enrage the Israelis, and drive them to new acts of repression? The answer of course is that they know this very well, and this is exactly what they want. From our normal point of view, this seems incomprehensible. If we are doing something wrong, we do not want to invite the police to come in and try and stop us, especially if repression will result in the deaths or imprisonment of many of our followers. In a terrorist war, however, repression is often valuable because it escalates the growing war, and forces people to choose between the government and the terrorists. The terror/repression cycle makes it virtually impossible for anyone to remain a moderate. By increasing polarization within a society, terrorism makes the continuation of the existing order impossible.
Once again, let us take the suicide bombing example. After each new incident, Israeli authorities tightened restrictions on Palestinian communities, arrested new suspects, and undertook retaliatory strikes. As the crisis escalated, they occupied or reoccupied Palestinian cities, destroying Palestinian infrastructure. The result, naturally, was massive Palestinian hostility and anger, which made further attacks more likely in the future. The violence mad ~ Philip Jenkins

Xerox manages the infrastructure of E-ZPass for a large number of states. So when you say E-ZPass, and get some bill from E-ZPass, or call and ask a question about E-ZPass, you're talking to a Xerox person. ~ Ursula Burns

Accidental nuclear war between two superpowers may or may not happen in my lifetime, but if it does, it will obviously change everything. The climate change we're currently worrying about pales in comparison with nuclear winter, where a global dust cloud blocks sunlight for years, much like when an asteroid or supervolcano caused a mass extinction in the past. The 2008 economic turmoil was of course nothing compared to the resulting global crop failures, infrastructure collapse and mass starvation, with survivors succumbing to hungry armed gangs systematically pillaging from house to house. Do I expect to see this in my lifetime? I'd give it about 30%, putting it roughly on par with my getting cancer. Yet we devote way less attention and resources to reducing the risk of nuclear disaster than we do for cancer. And whereas humanity as a whole survives even if 30% get cancer, it's less obvious to what extent our civilization would survive a nuclear Armageddon. There are concrete and straightforward steps that can be taken to slash this risk, as spelled out in numerous reports by scientific organizations, but these never become major election issues and tend to get largely ignored. ~ Max Tegmark

In developing countries, lack of infrastructure is a far more serious barrier to trade than tariffs. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

Our marine terminals are invaluable commerce infrastructure, not only to our country but also for the many foreign manufacturers who sell primarily in the U.S. market. ~ Dana Rohrabacher

What the mayors care about is, 'How can I get money to invest in the infrastructure in my city? How do we put people back to work, lower the unemployment rate, provide for job training programs? How do we make class sizes smaller and make investments in our children from an education standpoint?' ~ Michael Nutter

With more than 67 percent of the Nation's freight moving on highways, economists believe that our ability to compete internationally is tied to the quality of our infrastructure. ~ Dennis Hastert

While America's infrastructure needs are substantial, there is no reason to delay completion of the highway bill. Every day of delay means jobs lost, investment opportunities missed and growth sacrificed. ~ John Engler

Our spending priorities are clearly in question when we are increasing bond indebtedness on pet projects such as museums while our infrastructure is allegedly failing. Mississippians are spending more on basic needs than ever. They don't need their state government making that worse. ~ Chris McDaniel

Got to build that business base and then you can fund all the things people want: education, health care, strong law enforcement, roads, bridges, infrastructure - all those things flow from that economic base. ~ John Hoeven

In an advanced industrial society it becomes almost impossible to seek, even to imagine, unemployment as a condition for autonomous, useful work. The infrastructure of society is arranged so that only the job gives access to the tools of production...Housework, handicrafts, subsistence agriculture, radical technology, learning exchanges, and the like are degraded into activities for the idle, the unproductive, the very poor, or the very rich. A society that fosters intense dependence on commodities thus turns its unemployed into either its poor or its dependents. ~ Ivan Illich

National and regional governments were committing vast resources into combating the biosphere breakdown. Social welfare, infrastructure administration, health care, and security - the fields government used to devote its efforts to - were all slowly being starved of tax money and sold off to private industry. It ~ Peter F. Hamilton