#stems

I don't value authority. I don't value the systems. I don't value patriarchal religion. I don't value the things that diminish you when you do tell the truth. So I'm not scared of the end result, and that is the biggest asset I have. ↗

— Susan Powter

#authority #biggest #diminish #end #end result

Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change ↗

— Frank Herbert

#systems #change

The Everglades was the only place on earth where alligators (broad snout, fresh water, darker skin) and crocodiles (pointy snout, salt water, toothy grin) lived side by side. It was the only home of the Everglades mink, Okeechobee gourd, and Big Cypress fox squirrel. It had carnivorous plants, amphibious birds, oysters that grew on trees, cacti that grew in water, lizards that changed colors, and fish that changed genders. It had 1,100 species of trees and plants, 350 birds, and 52 varieties of porcelain-smooth, candy-striped tree snails. It had bottlenose dolphins, marsh rabbits, ghost orchids, moray eels, bald eagles, and countless other species that didn't seem to belong on the same continent, much less in the same ecosystem. ↗

— Michael Grunwald

#ecosystems #environment #everglades #change

But as the Everglades continued to wither, a few of their colleagues began to wonder if conservation really should mean development more than preservation. These heretics did not believe that God had created man in order to 'improve' or 'redeem' nature; they found God's grace in nature itself. ↗

— Michael Grunwald

#ecology #ecosystems #everglades #preservation #nature

Man's striving for order, of which art is but one manifestation, derives from a similar universal tendency throughout the organic world; it is also paralleled by, and perhaps derived from, the striving towards the state of simplest structure in physical systems. ↗

— Rudolf Arnheim

#art #derived #derives #man #manifestation

I say we have not even had the decency to maintain the assets that our parents and grandparents built for us - our roads, our bridges, our wastewater systems, our sewer systems; by the way, those weren't Bolsheviks, those weren't socialists that built those things for us - much less build the infrastructure we need for the 21st century. ↗

— Michael Bennett

#assets #bolsheviks #bridges #build #built

We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet. In my view we have nothing to show for it. We haven't invested in our roads, our bridges, our waste-water systems, our sewer systems. We haven't even maintained the assets that our parents and grandparents built for us. ↗

— Michael Bennett

#assets #balance #bridges #built #debt

The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity. ↗

— Steven Biko

#birth #black #consciousness #country #dignity

A healthy Amtrak is an integral part of New York and the Nation's economy and transportation systems. ↗

— Tim Bishop

#economy #healthy #integral #nation #new

Systems are complex, so controlling an attack and achieving a desired level of damage may be harder than using physical weapons. ↗

— Dorothy Denning

#attack #complex #controlling #damage #desired