Systems Quotes

we need to design our systems so that they are continually creating telemetry, widely ~ Gene Kim

One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just within or just beyond our reach; and software systems are perhaps the most intricate and complex of man's handiworks. The management of this complex craft will demand our best use of new languages and systems, our best adaptation of proven engineering management methods, liberal doses of common sense, and a God-given humility to recognize our fallibility and limitations. ~ Fred Brooks

Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it. ~ Edward Snowden

When Events are delivered to interested parties, in either local or foreign systems, they are generally used to facilitate eventual consistency. ~ Vaughn Vernon

The arms race between [predators] and [prey] is asymmetric, in which success on either side is felt as failure by the other side, but the nature of the success and failure on the two sides is very different. The two sides are 'trying' to do very different things. [Predators] are trying to eat [prey]. [Prey] are not trying to eat [predators], they are trying to avoid being eaten by [predators].
From an evolutionary point of view asymmetric arms races are more [likely] to generate highly complex weapons systems. ~ Richard Dawkins

The systems perspective tells us that we must look beyond individual mistakes or bad luck to understand important problems. ~ Peter Senge

I like computers. I like the Internet. It's a tool that can be used. But don't be misled into thinking that these technologies are anything other than aspects of a degenerate economic system. ~ Jerry Brown

To grant life more importance than it has is the mistake committed in sagging systems; as a consequence, no one is ready to sacrifice himself to defend them, and they collapse under the first blows perpetrated upon them. This is even more true of nations in general. Once they begin to hold life sacred, it abandons them, it ceases to be on their side. ~ Emil Cioran

Evolution is unobservable. It's based on blind faith in a few dry bones and on unreliable dating systems in which the gullible trust. Kids should be allowed to make up their own minds about this issue, and not be censored to 'one side is all we will let you hear.' ~ Ray Comfort

Going through all this nonsense to reach someone in charge, this was the first time she'd ever been treated like, well, a patient. With rules that defied all common logic; people employed to help you who are unable, really, to even hear you; the sense that the system's goal is only to keep trouble contained. It's ~ Victor LaValle

Europe was not born in the early Middle Ages. No common identity in 1000 linked Spain to Russia, Ireland to the Byzantine empire (in what is now the Balkans, Greece and Turkey), except the very weak sense of community that linked Christian polities together. There was no common European culture, and certainly not any Europe-wide economy. There was no sign whatsoever that Europe would, in a still rather distant future, develop economically and militarily, so as to be able to dominate the world. Anyone in 1000 looking for future industrialization would have put bets on the economy of Egypt, not of the Rhineland and Low Countries, and that of Lancashire would have seemed like a joke. In politico-military terms, the far south-east and south-west of Europe, Byzantium and al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), provided the dominant states of the Continent, whereas in western Europe the Carolingian experiment (see below, Chapters 16 and 17) had ended with the break-up of Francia (modern France, Belgium and western Germany), the hegemonic polity for the previous four hundred years. The most coherent western state in 1000, southern England, was tiny. In fact, weak political systems dominated most of the Continent at the end of our period, and the active and aggressive political systems of later on in the Middle Ages were hardly visible.

National identities, too, were not widely prominent in 1000, even if one rejects the association between nationalism and modernity made in much contemp ~ Chris Wickham

The level of corruption in a country is determined by the value systems of that country. ~ Sunday Adelaja

Of course, even without my help, other forces would keep the cosmos chugging along. Many different belief systems powered the revolution of the planets and stars. Wolves would still chase Sol across the sky. Ra would continue his daily journey in his sun barque. Tonatiuh would keep running on his surplus blood from human sacrifices back in the Aztec days. And that other thing - science - would still generate gravity and quantum physics or whatever. ~ Rick Riordan

Fictions are useful so long as they are taken as fictions. They are then
simply ways of "figuring" the world which we agree to follow so that
we can act in cooperation, as we agree about inches and hours, numbers
and words, mathematical systems and languages. If we have no
agreement about measures of time and space, I would have no way of
making a date with you at the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth
Avenue at 3 P.M. on Sunday, April 4. ~ Alan W. Watts

When the United States cannibalize dollars from the defensive business of the NSA, securing our communications, protecting our systems, patching zero-day vulnerabilities, and instead we're giving those dollars to be used for creating new vulnerabilities in our systems so that they can surveil us and other people abroad who use the same systems. ~ Edward Snowden

We have two programs dealing with bulletproof vests, two different systems of actually distributing bulletproof vests from the federal government. Two sets of applications, two different sets of personnel to approve those applications. ~ James Lankford

Voltaire rejects all systems, and suspects that "every chief of a sect in philosophy has been a little of a quack."

"The further I go, the more I am confirmed in the idea that systems of metaphysics are for philosophers what novels are for women."

"It is only charlatans who are certain. We know nothing of first principles. It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God formed the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will."

"Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one. ~ Will Durant

The best attitude to receive the Pope's teachings is to understand that he is a religious leader and the essence of his message comes from the Gospel, not from one ideology or another.And so, if our economic systems are not oriented toward the human person but only concerned with profits, he wants to confront the system and change it. This, by the way, is common to all the popes, it comes directly from the so-called social teachings of the church. ~ Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo

All political systems favour the powerful rich over the defenceless poor. ~ Gregory David Roberts

New video gaming systems are coming out that track every joint of your body. It's basically going to become a normal thing for us to allow Microsoft to put a three-dimensional camera on top of your television set looking at you, which sounds like a Big Brother scenario if ever I heard one, but, still, it's what we're going to allow. ~ Jesse Schell

[N]early every creationist debater will mention the second law of thermodynamics and argue that complex systems like the earth and life cannot evolve, because the second law seems to say that everything in nature is running down and losing energy, not getting more complex. But that's NOT what the second law says; every creationist has heard this but refuses to acknowledge it. The second law only applies to closed systems, like a sealed jar of heated gases that gradually cools down and loses energy. But the earth is not a closed system
it constantly gets new energy from the sun, and this (through photosynthesis) is what powers life and makes it possible for life to become more complex and evolve. It seems odd that the creationists continue to misuse the second law of thermodynamics when they have been corrected over and over again, but the reason is simple: it sounds impressive to their audience with limited science education, and if a snow job works, you stay with it. ~ Donald R. Prothero

The biggest public health challenge is rebuilding health systems. In other words, if you look at cholera or maternal mortality or tuberculosis in Haiti, they're major problems in Haiti, but the biggest problem is rebuilding systems. ~ Paul Farmer

I realized the place was awash in noise. The toneless systems, the jangle and skid of carts, the loudspeaker and coffee-making machines, the cries of children. And over it all, or under it all, a dull and unlocatable roar, as of some form of swarming life just outside the range of human apprehension. ~ Don DeLillo

There is no real person whose embodiment plays no role in meaning, whose meaning is purely objective and defined by the external world, and whose language can fit the external world with no significant role played by mind, brain, or body. Because our conceptual systems grow out of our bodies, meaning is grounded in and through our bodies. Because a vast range of our concepts are metaphorical, meaning is not entirely literal and the classical correspondence theory of truth is false. ~ George Lakoff

It is often said that Islam is an egalitarian religion. There is much truth in this assertion. If we compare Islam at the time of its advent with the societies that surrounded it - the stratified feudalism of Iran and the caste system of India to the east, the privileged aristocracies of both Byzantine and Latin Europe to the west - the Islamic dispensation does indeed bring a message of equality. Not only does Islam not endorse such systems of social differentiation; it explicitly and resolutely rejects them. The actions and utterances of the Prophet, the honored precedents of the early rulers of Islam as preserved by tradition, are overwhelmingly against privilege by descent, by birth, by status, by wealth, or even by race, and insist that rank and honor are determined only by piety and merit in Islam. ~ Bernard Lewis

A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships. ~ Stephen Covey

When you act, you're being asked to pretend in a very rigid, controlled environment. It's very un-childlike. So a lot of times, when you put kids in that situation, you hope they have a better support system outside of what they're doing to bring them back to reality at the end of the day and to keep them well-rounded. ~ Patton Oswalt

In the past, a blow to the international system's strongest power would have been welcomed by its rivals. In the wake of September 11, however, every significant government in the world declared its support for the United States. ~ Michael Mandelbaum

Now, as it happens, theology is actually a pitilessly demanding discipline concerning an immense, profoundly sophisticated legacy of hermeneutics, dialectics, and logic; it deals in minute detail with a vast variety of concrete historical data; over the centuries, it has incubated speculative systems of extraordinary rigor and intricacy, many of whose questions and methods continue to inform contemporary philosophy; and it does, when all is said and done, constitute the single intellectual, moral, spiritual, and cultural tradition uniting the classical, medieval, and early modern worlds. ~ David Bentley Hart

I couldn't use Nest because it doesn't operate with high-end HVAC systems. ~ Peter Barris

Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves. ~ Tim Berners-Lee

Whether we can somehow listen in on tree talk is a subject that was recently addressed in the specialized literature. Korean scientists have been tracking older women as they walk through forests and urban areas. The result? When the women were walking in the forest, their blood pressure, their lung capacity, and the elasticity of their arteries improved, whereas an excursion into town showed none of these changes. It's possible that phytoncides have a beneficial effect on our immune systems as well as the trees' health, because they kill germs. Personally, however, I think the swirling cocktail of tree talk is the reason we enjoy being out in the forest so much. At least when we are out in undisturbed forests.

Walkers who visit one of the ancient deciduous preserves in the forest I manage always report that their heart feels lighter and they feel right at home. If they walk instead through coniferous forests, which in Central Europe are mostly planted and are, therefore, more fragile, artificial places, they don't experience such feelings. Possibly it's because in ancient beech forests, fewer "alarm calls" go out, and therefore, most messages exchanged between trees are contented ones, and these messages reach our brains as well, via our noses. I am convinced that we intuitively register the forest's health. ~ Peter Wohlleben

Frankly, [the definition of woman] is a problem that the lesbians do not have because of a change of perspective. 'Woman' has meaning only in heterosexual systems of thought and heterosexual, economic systems. Lesbians are not women. ~ Monique Wittig

At 1.24 am on 26 April 1986 Chernobyl's Unit 4 reactor exploded after staff disabled safety systems and performed an ill-advised experiment to check – ironically enough – the reactor's safety. ~ Mark Lynas

Were you in the military?"
"Are you kidding me? I was in high school."
"High school," he said quietly. "You're American. And a civilian?"
"Uh, yes. An American civilian."
"Lovely. A straight answer. Keep it up. Did somebody train you?"
"No, nobody trained me. Unless you count the Rhode Island child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Why?"
Malachi held up his hand and ticked off the reasons with his fingers. "You stole a Guard's weapon. If I'm not mistaken, it belonged to a Gate Guard. Which means you managed to do it on your way into the city. You escaped Amid even after he had you in hand. You slashed his leg in just the right place, preventing him from chasing you. Under extreme duress, injured and cornered, you threw a knife and hit a target-"
"It's not like I hit something vital. ~ Sarah Fine

Putting this all together, it makes sense that WEIRD philosophers since Kant and Mill have mostly generated moral systems that are individualistic, rule-based, and universalist. That's the morality you need to govern a society of autonomous individuals. ~ Jonathan Haidt

I want students to understand specific technologies, but the real goal is that they should be able to reason about how systems work and be intelligently skeptical about technology so that, when they're running the world in a few years, they'll do a good job. ~ Brian Kernighan

I think as feminists we have a way of looking at problems that other people appear not to understand. To name names, the right and the
left appear not to understand what it is that feminists are trying to do. Feminists are trying to destroy a sex hierarchy, a race hierarchy, an
economic hierarchy, in which women are hurt, are disempowered, and in which society celebrates cruelty over us and refuses us the integrity of our own bodies and the dignity of our own lives.

... So feminists look at the society we live in and try to understand how we are going to fight male power. And in order to try to figure out
how we're going to fight it, we have to figure out how it's organized, how it works. How does it survive? How does it work itself out? How
does it maintain itself as a system of power?

... So feminists come along, and we say: Well, we are going to understand how it is that these people do what they do. We are going to
approach the problem politically. That means that we are going to try to isolate and describe systems of exploitation as they work on us, from our point of view as the people who are being hurt by them. It means that even though we're on the bottom and they're on the top, we are examining them for points of vulnerability. And as we find those points of vulnerability - and you might locate them anatomically, as well as any other way - we are going to move whatever muscles we have, from whatever positions we are in, ~ Andrea Dworkin

Let's begin with capitalism, a word that has gone largely out of fashion. The approved reference now is to the market system. This shift minimizes-indeed, deletes-the role of wealth in the economic and social system. And it sheds the adverse connotation going back to Marx. Instead of the owners of capital or their attendants in control, we have the admirably impersonal role of market forces. It would be hard to think of a change in terminology more in the interest of those to whom money accords power. They have now a functional anonymity. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

enough for the Republic - but the Empire is order from chaos. What we do here - and in thousands of systems just like this one - brings us closer to our ultimate goal." Sloane thought for a moment. "Perfection?" "Whatever the Emperor wants. ~ John Jackson Miller

Then if it is denied that the unity at that level is the interconnection of the plurality or dissimilarity of religions as of parts constituting a whole, rather that every one of the religions at the level of ordinary existence is not part of a whole, but is a whole in itself-then the 'unity' that is meant is 'oneness' or 'sameness' not really of religions, but of the God of religions at the level of transcendence (i.e. esoteric), implying thereby that at the level of ordinary existence (i.e. exoteric), and despite the plurality and diversity of religions, each religion is adequate and valid in its own limited way, each authentic and conveying limited though equal truth. The notion of a plurality of truth of equal validity in the plurality and diversity of religion is perhaps aligned to the statements and general conclusions of modern philosophy and science arising from the discovery of a pluraity and diversity of laws governing the universe having equal validity each in its own cosmological system. The trend to align modern scientific discovery concerning the systems of the universe with corresponding statements applied to human society, cultural traditions,and values is one of the characteristic features of modernity.

The position of those who advocate the theory of the transcendent unity of religions is based upon the assumption that all religions, or the major religions of mankind, are revealed religions. They assume that the universality and transcendence of e ~ Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas

Since 2001, people have been scared. There's been some really scary stuff that's been happening - 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, anthrax letters, D.C. sniper, global warming, global financial meltdown, bird flu, swine flu, SARS. I think people really feel like the system's breaking down. ~ Max Brooks

But there was a sense of something tipping out of balance. The times seemed out of joint. There was too much decadence. Too much intensity. Too much change. Too much happiness juxtaposed with too much misery. Too much wealth next to too much poverty. The world was becoming faster and louder, and the social systems were becoming as chaotic and fragmented as jazz scores. So there was a craving, in some places, for simplicity, for order, for scapegoats and for bully-boy leaders, for nations to become like religions or cults. It happened every now and then.
It seemed, in the 1930s, that the whole course of humanity was at stake. As it very often does today. Too many people wanted to find an easy answer to complicated questions. It was a dangerous time to be human. To feel or to think or to care. ~ Matt Haig

Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing, Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another; rather, it teaches us to abide with the fact that, in their own way, all things are true, and helps us, in the face of this terrifying knowledge, continually push ourselves in the direction of Open the Hell Up. ~ George Saunders

Artificial Intelligence is not just learning patterns from data, but understanding human emotions and its evolution from its depth and not just fulfilling the surface level human requirements, but sensitivity towards human pain, happiness, mistakes, sufferings and well-being of the society are the parts of the evolving new AI systems. ~ Amit Ray

The problem with trying to be relevant is it makes us copy what culture is already doing. To be relevant, you have to copy what is cool. So we put our mouths on the tailpipe of secular culture in hopes we can recycle some of it and use it for ourselves. The problem with this is that it automatically puts us ten to fifteen years behind culture because rather than setting the precedent, we are copying their systems. This is where we get a huge section of Christian apparel and coffee mugs that simply copy secular logos. My favorite is the shirt with the words "Holy Spirit" printed in the same font and logo as Sprite. Or the one with "A bread crumb and a fish" instead of Abercrombie and Fitch. We call it redeeming, but it's actually stealing. Making bad art is bad in and of itself, but if we are Christians, this takes on a whole other level of weight. Because we are called to mirror and reflect God, everything we do should give people a proper picture of who he is. ~ Jefferson Bethke

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

When I take my old copies of the phenomenologies of religion down from the shelf and thumb through their pages, I feel as if I were walking through the halls of abandoned buildings. My graduate school notes lie heavy in the margins, like scrawls of graffiti on the walls, attesting to the fact that human once contested these spaces. I wonder, each time I close one of these volumes and put it back on the shelf, whether the puff of dust that arises from its binding is not a reminder that systems are built to crumble, and the grander the system, the more spectacular the fall. ~ Malcom David Eckel

Of course, in principle, they're against it. We are the ones that keep asking them what they think about it. I think their basic concern is a land-based missile defense of Taiwan hooked into the American communications and other systems, which in effect would make Taiwan then an outpost of the United States. That is a concern they frequently express. A missile defense shield of the United States, while they may not like it, it is not a big obstacle to our relationship. ~ Henry A. Kissinger

In such systems, there is unquestioning respect for authority. Faith trumps evidence. But if indeed this is broadly the explanation for how co-operative behaviour has evolved and been maintained in human societies, it could be very bad news. Because although such authoritarian systems seem to be good at preserving social coherence and an orderly society, they are, by the same token, not good at adapting to change. ~ Robert May, Baron May Of Oxford

Although humans today remain more capable than machines for many tasks, by 2030 machine capabilities will have increased to the point that humans will have become the weakest component in a wide array of systems and processes. Humans and machines will need to become far more closely coupled, through improved human-machine interfaces and by direct augmentation of human performance ~ Werner J. A. Dahm

Arrested personal growth serves industrial "growth". By suppressing the nature dimension of human development (through educational systems, social values, advertising, nature-eclipsing vocations and pastimes, city and suburb design, denatured medical and psychological practices, and other means), industrial growth society engenders an immature citizenry unable to imagine a life beyond consumerism and soul-suppressing jobs. ~ Bill Plotkin

The reasons for food insecurity are many and varied. But part of the problem is the global farming systems. ~ Marcus Samuelsson

We decided that our first job was to help the schools serving the children from the very lowest income groups. Those families constitute the number one burden, the number one burden in this Nation on the school systems. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

There is a certain beauty and refinement that is often found in our world and it is expensive. It shouldn't necessarily be so. It is just the way our economic system is. ~ Frederick Lenz

Mr. Thomas, any scientist will tell you that in nature many systems appear to be chaotic, but when you study them long enough and closely enough, strange order always underlies the appearance of chaos. ~ Dean Koontz

Organisms are not billiard balls, propelled by simple and measurable external forces to predictable new positions on life's pool table. Sufficiently complex systems have greater richness. Organisms have a history that constrains their future in myriad, subtle ways. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

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

An optimist is somebody who thinks our various political and social systems, schools and churches, support groups and Boy Scout troops, jury trials and congressional committees, are on the up-and-up. That they are intended for the benefit of the members. The reality is that they are designed to keep everyone in line. ~ Jack McDevitt

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

The present struggle between the South and North is, therefore, nothing but a struggle between two social systems, the system of slavery and the system of free labour. The struggle has broken out because the two systems can no longer live peacefully side by side on the North American continent. It can only be ended by the victory of one system or the other. ~ Karl Marx

Systems awareness and systems design are important for health professionals, but they are not enough. They are enabling mechanisms only. It is the ethical dimensions of individuals that are essential to a system's success. Ultimately, the secret of quality is love. You have to love your patient, you have to love your profession, you have to love your God. If you have love, you can then work backward to monitor and improve the system. ~ Avedis Donabedian

First rule of complex systems," I said. "You can't tell friends from enemies. ~ Alastair Reynolds

When we look at a solid lump of iron or rock, we are 'really' looking at what is almost entirely empty space. It looks and feels solid and opaque because our sensory systems and brains find it convenient to treat it as solid and opaque. It is convenient for the brain to represent a rock as solid because we can't walk through it. 'Solid' is our way of experiencing things that we can't walk through or fall throug, because of the electromagnetic forces between atoms. 'Opaque' is the experience we have when light bounces off the surface of an object, and none of it goes through. ~ Richard Dawkins

Poverty alleviation occurs when the power of Christ's resurrection reconciles our key relationships through the transformation of both individual lives and local, national, and international systems. ~ Brian Fikkert

I think it's very healthy to use journalistic and legal techniques to investigate the evidence for and against Christianity and other faith systems. ~ Lee Strobel

I shall borrow two words used for a slightly different purpose by the great demographer Alfred Lotka to distinguish between the two systems of heredity enjoyed by man: endosomatic or internal heredity for the ordinary or genetical heredity we have in common with animals; and exosomatic or external heredity for the non-genetic heredity that is peculiarly our own - the heredity that is mediated through tradition, by which I mean the transfer of information through non-genetic channels from one generation to the next. ~ Peter Medawar

Lack of personal morality plus "politically correct" prohibition against judging others' behavior and naming immorality sets up a social environment receptive and vulnerable to a tyrannical government. A tyrannical government transforms every aspect of the cultural day-to-day lives of everyone under its control across all areas from the educational and penal systems to fine art and entertainment dictates right on down to housing regulations and food availabilities. ~ Alexandra York

I'm not here to disagree with people or try to change anyone's mind. I'm just here to accept and love others right where they are – no matter their belief systems or backgrounds. ~ Alaric Hutchinson

not in any single system, but in the stack of all systems, the accidental megasystem. It ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important. ~ Bill Gates

THE SIMPLE UNION

Listen to me, O friend.

Be thou a yogi, a monk, a priest,
A devout lover of God,
A pilgrim searching for Happiness, Bathing in holy rivers,
Visiting sacred shrines,
The occasional worshipper of a day,
A great reader of books, Or a builder of many temples -
My love aches for thee.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved.

This vain struggle,
This long toil,
This ceaseless sorrow,
This changing pleasure,
This burning doubt,
This burden of life,
All these will cease, O friend -
My love aches for thee.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved.

Have I pilgrimage the earth,
Have I loved the reflections,
Have I chanted, singing in ecstasy,
Have I donned the robe,
Have I put on ashes,
Have I listened to the temple bells,
Have I grown old with study,
Have I searched,
Was I lost?
Yea, much have I known -
My love aches for thee.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved,

O friend,
Wouldst thou love the reflection,
If I can give thee the reality?
Throw away thy bells, thine incense,
Thy fears and thy gods,
Set aside thy systems, thy philosophies.
Come,
Put aside all these.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved.

O friend,
The simple union is the best.

This is the way to the heart of the Beloved. ~ Anonymous

Sufficiently simple natural structures are predictable but uncontrollable, whereas sufficiently complex symbolic descriptions are controllable but unpredictable. ~ Howard Pattee

In practice, US officials seem to know better than to indulge in the patriotic myth that our constitution is the greatest system of government ever devised. ~ Matthew Yglesias

All life is a complex of systems. Some creatures perform as networks (like mycelia), some as superorganisms (like ants and bees), some as individuals that cooperate (like humans, ravens, and wolves). But all living beings, as far as we know, have some kind of subjectivity that connects them to other subjectivities. ~ Julie J. Morley

Although more than 500 million maritime containers move around the world each year, accounting for 90 per cent of international trade, only 2 per cent are inspected. Strengthening customs and immigration systems is essential. ~ Ban Ki-moon

In primates at least, infanticide seems to have been the crucial factor driving the evolution of monogamous mating systems. ~ Robin I.M. Dunbar

People and things don't stop our pain or heal us. In recovery, we learn that this is our job, and we can do it by using our resources: ourselves, our Higher Power, our support systems, and our recovery program. ~ Melody Beattie

Fortunately, historians are now beginning to recognise the historic role of Islam as a liberating force for peoples oppressed by the burdens of unjust social systems. ~ Aly Khan

The development of mathematics toward greater precision has led, as is well known, to the formalization of large tracts of it, so that one can prove any theorem using nothing but a few mechanical rules ... One might therefore conjecture that these axioms and rules of inference are sufficient to decide any mathematical question that can at all be formally expressed in these systems. It will be shown below that this is not the case, that on the contrary there are in the two systems mentioned relatively simple problems in the theory of integers that cannot be decided on the basis of the axioms. ~ Kurt Godel

We were happy a hundred years ago. We knew that there were exploiters and exploited, wealthy and poor, and we had a perfect idea of how to get rid of injustice; we would expropriate the owners and turn the wealth over to the common good. We expropriated the owners and we created one of the most monstrous and oppressive social systems in world history. And we keep repeating that in principle everything was all right, only some unfortunate accidents slipped in and slightly spoiled the good idea. Now let us start afresh ... ~ Leszek Kolakowski

If I hadn't been inside of Biosphere 2 and really lived a biological life-support system, I definitely would not be involved in life-support systems for space. ~ Jane Poynter

What worlds are there herein? I'll tell you. In these seas of fragrant waters, numerous as atoms in unspeakably many buddha-fields, rest an equal number of world systems. Each world system also contains an equal number of worlds. Those world systems in the ocean of worlds have various resting places, various shapes and forms, various substances and essences, various locations, various entryways, various adornments, various boundaries, various alignments, various similarities, and various powers of maintenance. ~ Thomas Cleary

God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of humans are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then, with the quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!
And, now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works. ~ Frederic Bastiat

While many different animal species have nervous systems that enable anticipation of events - for example, learning that a flashing light is associated with a reward in a conditioned learning experiment - planning for the future seems to be a prefrontal invention. ~ Daniel J. Siegel

UTC Aerospace Systems has a couple of million dollars of content on every single aircraft that gets delivered. That's the chutes, the electric system, rotors, etc. ~ Louis R. Chenevert

The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature ~ Oscar Wilde

There is no structural organization of society which can bring about the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth since all systems can be perverted by the selfishness of man. The Malvern Manifesto: Drawn up by a Conference of the Province of York, January 10, 1941; signed for the Conference by Temple, then Archbishop of York . ~ William Temple

My school was 17 years as a player and another 16 watching more games probably than any coach has - all over the world, all systems. I couldn't go to school and write it down for people who are far less experienced, telling me what to do and how to do it. ~ Andy Gray

VI was predecessor to hundreds of word processing systems. By now, Unix folks see it as a bit stodgy - it hasn't the versatility of Gnu-Emacs, nor the friendliness of more modern editors. Despite that, VI shows up on every Unix system. ~ Clifford Stoll

The Swedish system is best understood not in terms of socialism, but in terms of Rousseau," he continued. "Rousseau was an extreme egalitarian and he really hated any kind of dependence--depending on other people destroyed your integrity, your authenticity-- therefore the ideal situation was one where every citizen was an atom separated from all the other atoms.... The Swedish system's logic is that it is dangerous to be dependent on other people, to be beholden to other people. Even to your family. ~ Michael Booth

The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological-social-psychological-economic system . We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite. Our persistent, intractable global problems arise directly from this mismatch. ~ Donella Meadows

Meaningful progress toward social justice cannot be made in sclerotic education systems that put adults' job security before children's civil rights. ~ Arthur C. Brooks

One American in seven has no coverage, and one in three younger than sixty-five will lose coverage at some point in the next two years. These are people who aren't poor or old enough to qualify for government programs but whose jobs aren't good enough to provide benefits either. ~ Atul Gawande

In the case of composite colour, an infinity of systems must be obtained for maxima infinitely slight and with an infinity of interval values separating them - that is to say, the whole thickness of the sensitive layer is occupied in continuous manner by these maxima. ~ Gabriel Lippmann

None of our competitors have ever made two systems that run the same software. ~ Trip Hawkins

All important architecture of the last century was strongly influenced by political systems. Look at the Soviet system, with its constructivism and Stalinism, Weimer with its Modern style, Mussolini and the Nazis and Albert Speer's colossal structures. Today's architecture is subservient to the market and its terms. The market has supplanted ideology. Architecture has turned into a spectacle. It has to package itself and no longer has significance as anything but a landmark. ~ Rem Koolhaas

There is no alternative to action, and that requires faith. The issue is how we are to mold for ourselves a belief system that is worthy of life. ~ Naguib Mahfouz

As different as Emily Dickinson's parents' life in America seems from that of Sitaram Gawande's in India, both relied on systems that shared the advantage of easily resolving the question of care for the elderly. There was no need to save up for a spot in a nursing home or arrange for meals-on-wheels. It was understood that parents would just keep living in their home, assisted by one or more of the children they'd raised. In contemporary societies, by contrast, old age and infirmity have gone from being a shared, multigenerational responsibility to a more or less private state - something experienced largely alone or with the aid of doctors and institutions. How did this happen? How did we go from Sitaram Gawande's life to Alice Hobson's? ~ Atul Gawande

We cannot ignore the disparity in resources that continue to plague many of our school systems, especially those serving predominantly inner-city minority and impoverished children. ~ Diane Watson