#system

The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#science #systems #imagination

The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#school #system #truth #life

I content myself with the fact that the general system of our trade is a system of selfishness, is not dictated by the high sentiments of human nature much less by the sentiments of love and heroism but is a system of distrust not of giving, but of taking advantage. ↗

— Joshua Ferris

#system #love

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

Now I have very little respect for the electoral system in the United States. I could have respected it in the early days, when the country was small and we had small population. The system that we have in the United States was set up at a time when the total population was the population of Tennessee. We've stretched it to try to make it work for different kind of problems and in stretching and adapting it, we've lost its meaning. We still have the form but not the meaning. There's a lot of things that we have to look at critically that might have been useful at one time that are no longer useful I think there's some good in everything. There's some bad in everything. But there's so little good in some things that you know for practical purposes they're useless. They're beyond salvation. There's so much good in some things, even though there's bad, that we build on that. ↗

— Myles Horton

#electoral-system #facades #politics #progress #change

Beyond the queues, the vacancy screens listed jobs in a multitude of languages. Invariably, they were low-paid and short-term dead-ends. Nearby, people in headphones sat at a bank of machines: the blind and the illiterate force-fed with ‘opportunities’ by soothing machine voices. On the far wall, in large print, a poster declared: BEGGARS CANNOT BE CHOOSERS. ↗

— Mark Cantrell

#science-fiction #social-justice #totalitarian-system-mechanisms #unemployment #welfare

It's important that we invest in America - literally. The terrorists wanted to destroy our economy, and we can't let our system fall apart. We also have to invest in one another. ↗

— Madeleine Albright

#america #another #apart #destroy #economy

Linux has never been about quality. There are so many parts of the system that are just these cheap little hacks, and it happens to run. ↗

— Theo de Raadt

#been #cheap #hacks #happens #just

I was very much a product of the public-school system. There was only one other kid in my class who had parents not involved in the stock market or law. ↗

— Daniel Radcliffe

#had #i #involved #kid #law

Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. ↗

— George Ryan

#because #capricious #death #death penalty #i