Alvin Quotes & Sayings

As we become more mature we will learn to master the interplay between the past and the present and not be so self-conscious of our rejection or acceptance of tradition. We will not make the mistake that both rigid modernists and conservatives make, of confusing the quality of form with the specific forms themselves. — Alvin Lustig

Market design is about understanding the details of markets in sufficient detail so that we can help fix them when they are broken. — Alvin E. Roth

Change is the process by which the future invades our lives. — Alvin Toffler

The only country in which it is legal to buy and sell kidneys from living donor/sellers is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Legal markets were permitted there after the need for kidneys spiked during the Iran-Iraq War. — Alvin E. Roth

Kevin Keegan said if he had a blank sheet of paper, five names would be on it. — Alvin Martin

The Christian philosopher has a perfect right to the point of view and prephilosophical assumptions he brings to philosophic work; the fact that these are not widely shared outside the Christian or theistic community is interesting but fundamentally irrelevant. — Alvin Plantinga

Alvin's the coach. We must be the Clippers. And I must be Olowokandi. Nooooo! — Shaquille O'Neal

If Arsenal don't finish third, they might not finish in third place. — Alvin Martin

Any pitcher who throws at a batter and deliberately tries to hit him is a communist. — Alvin Dark

The words graphic designer, architect, or industrial designer stick in my throat, giving me a sense of limitation, of specialisation within the specialty, of a relationship to society and form itself that is unsatisfactory and incomplete. This inadequate set of terms to describe an active life reveals only partially the still undefined nature of the designer. — Alvin Lustig

By mid-summer only Ma Barker remained in Chicago, lost in her jigsaw puzzles. Karpis drove over to visit her one weekend and found she was doing surprisingly well. He and Dock took her to see a movie. To their horror, the film was preceded by a newsreel warning moviegoers to be on the lookout for Dillinger, Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, Karpis, and the Barkers. Karpis scrunched low in his seat as their pictures flashed on the screen. "One of these men may be sitting next to you," the announcer said. Karpis pulled his hat low over his forehead. — Bryan Burrough

A photographic portrait needs more collaboration between sitter and artist than a painted portrait. — Alvin Langdon Coburn

A library is a hospital for the mind. - Anonymous — Alvin Toffler

The creative process is not controlled by a switch you can simply turn on or off; it's with you all the time. — Alvin Ailey

My lasting impression of Truman Capote is that he was a terribly gentle, terribly sensitive, and terribly sad man. — Alvin Ailey

Love is the greatest religion that ever was or ever will be. — Alvin Conway

When it appeared that even the most passive-aggressive attempts would not work, Charlie resorted to the ultimate Beta Male Attack, which was to tolerate Alvin and Mohammed's presence, but to resent the hell out of them and drop snide remarks whenever he had the chance. — Christopher Moore

Individuals need life structure. A life lacking in comprehensible structure is an aimless wreck. The absence of structure breeds breakdown.
Structure provides the relatively fixed points of reference we need. That is why, for many people, a job is crucial psychologically, over and above the paycheck. By making clear demands on their time and energy, it provides an element of structure around which the rest of their lives can be organized. The absolute demands imposed on a parent by an infant, the responsibility to care for an invalid, the tight discipline demanded by membership in a church or, in some countries, a political party - all these may also impose a simple structure on life. — Alvin Toffler

The boys teach; the Scoutmaster tests. — Alvin Townley

One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we'll need a new definition. — Alvin Toffler

There are surprisingly few real students of the game in baseball; partly because everybody, my eighty-three year old grandmother included, thinks they learned all there was to know about it at puberty. Baseball is very beguiling that way. — Alvin Dark

To be who you are and become what you are capable of is the only goal worth living. — Alvin Ailey

Boy - before intense anxiety had crushed his chances for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and sent him into the awful mental decline in which he'd been made a vampire. — Anne Rice

There are two types of folk music: quiet folk music and loud folk music. I play both. — Dave Alvin

A fellow has to have faith in God above and Rollie Fingers in the bullpen. — Alvin Dark

It does little good to forecast the future of semiconductors or energy, or the future of the family (even one's own family), if the forecast springs from the premise that everything else will remain unchanged. For nothing will remain unchanged. The future is fluid, not frozen. It is constructed by our shifting and changing daily decisions, and each event influences all others. — Alvin Toffler

Slow thinkers are part of the game too. Some of these slow thinkers can hit a ball a long way. — Alvin Dark

A self-made man, if he is made at all, has already won the battle of life ... he has learned to resist. He has learned the value of money, and how to refuse to spend it. He has learned the value of time, and how the conversion of it into useful things will make of his life something worthwhile. He has learned to say no, to say no at the right time and then to stand by it. Without resistance, and the self-denial which it often imposes, there is no real happiness. In the quest for happiness man must learn that temptation resisted strengthens the mind and the soul. — Alvin R. Dyer

Science fiction is the sovereign prophylactic against future shock. — Alvin Toffler

Future shock is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time. — Alvin Toffler

If just a tiny fraction of the sums spent on scientific and technological research and innovation were devoted to labs for designing and testing new organizational and institutional structures, we might have a much broader range of options to head off the looming implosion. — Alvin Toffler

When you have God behind you, you can come out on top every time. — Alvin C. York

Each new machine or technique, in a sense, changes all existing machines and techniques, by permitting us to put them together into new combinations. The number of possible combinations rises exponentially as the number of new machines or techniques rises arithmetically. Indeed, each new combination may, itself, be regarded as a new super-machine. — Alvin Toffler

There was still no likelihood that we could make a living from dance. We were doing it because we loved it ... We realized how full we felt; we were surrounded by music and dancing and joy. — Alvin Ailey

The control of knowledge is the crux of tomorrow's worldwide struggle for power in every human institution. — Alvin Toffler

Never in my life had I so harshly judged any adult - not my parents, not even Alvin or Uncle Monty - nor had I understood till then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others. "Did you meet Mr. von Ribbentrop?" Now almost girlishly bashful, she replied, "I danced with Mr. von Ribbentrop." "Where? — Philip Roth

I noticed the bushes all around where I stood in my fight with the machine guns were all cut down. The bullets went over my head and on either side. But they never touched me. — Alvin C. York

Strangely enough, I wasn't into fast guitarists. I preferred Peter Green's subtle touch. I saw him with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers at the Marquee Club in London and was very impressed. He was the only guitarist I've ever seen to turn the volume control on his guitar down during a solo. — Alvin Lee

Maybe we could think of science as being like a nuclear chain reaction in which people and ideas bounce off each other, and if critical mass is reached, a new field is formed. — Alvin E. Roth

I had orders to report to Brigadier General Lindsey, and he said to me, "Well, York, I hear you have captured the whole damned German army." And I told him I only had 132. — Alvin C. York

No matter what you write or choreograph, you feel it's not enough. — Alvin Ailey

I don't think I could have thought of any place other than Stanford to leave Harvard for. — Alvin E. Roth

There are discoverable limits to the amount of change that the human organism can absorb. — Alvin Toffler

My solos are more tastefully conceived now. But I still get going in places. It's just that I build up to it now. I don't race off on a solo. I take my time. — Alvin Lee

Making dances is an act of progress; it is an act of growth, an act of music, an act of teaching, an act of celebration, an act of joy. — Alvin Ailey

Life tol'ably queer. You think you've got a grip on it, then you open your hands and you find there's nothing in them. — Alvin C. York

I wanted to be an Ailey dancer. I would watch Alvin Ailey videos over and over, and I'd picture myself doing that. I was obsessed with it. — Robert Battle

Is it a fact that those who believe in a Heavenly Father do so because or partly because their earthly fathers were inadequate? I doubt it. If it is a fact, however, it is of psychological rather than theological interest. It may help us understand theists, but it tells us nothing at all about the truth of their belief; to that it is simply irrelevant. — Alvin Plantinga

I always want more. — Alvin Ailey

ALVIN (controlled indignation): Why, you... you dirty... (Gradually acquiring control.) I usually restrain myself from brutal frankness, but you've asked for this; now you're gonna get it - (With slow, deliberate, emphatic articulation he devastates her with the ultimate insult). You - are not - the least - bit --- SEXY. — Valerie Solanas

There'll be a man on the moon before Gaylord Perry hits a home run. — Alvin Dark

In this business, life is one long fund-raising effort. — Alvin Ailey

The Giants were supposed to have a new motto, 'Shut up and deal.' — Alvin Dark

One of the processes of your life is to constantly break down that inferiority, to constantly reaffirm that I Am Somebody. — Alvin Ailey

When first asked if he would grant an interview with TIME, Greene responded by asking a question of his own: 'Does the candidate get paid? — Michael Scherer

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. — Alvin Toffler

One of the worst things about racism is what it does to young people. — Alvin Ailey

Alvin was an explorer, and all explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them greater happiness than the quest. — Arthur C. Clarke

Now, I'm for interracial marriage. I'm for same-sex marriage. I'm the one that introduced the bill to have same-sex marriage. I don't care who marry who. If a man meet a little mule and he wanna get married to the little mule, as long as he and the little mule get along all right, that's fine with me. It doesn't bother me any kind of way. — Alvin Holmes

Idea-assassins rush forward to kill any new suggestion on the grounds of its impracticality, while defending whatever now exists as practical, no matter how absurd. — Alvin Toffler

Change is not merely necessary to life - it is life. — Alvin Toffler

I began to learn a lot of chords and rhythms. It was a bit boring at the time but came in very handy later on. — Alvin Lee

It is my hope that photography may fall in line with all the other arts and with her infinite possibilities, do things strange and more fascinating than the most fantastic dreams. — Alvin Langdon Coburn

To survive, to avert what we have termed future shock, the individual must become infinitely more adaptable and capable than ever before. We must search out totally new ways to anchor ourselves, for all the old roots - religion, nation, community, family, or profession - are now shaking under the hurricane impact of the accelerative thrust. It is no longer resources that limit decisions, it is the decision that makes the resources. — Alvin Toffler

Learn the rules well. Then forget them." ~ Basho — Alvin Alexander

Rational behavior ... depends upon a ceaseless flow of data from the environment. It depends upon the power of the individual to predict, with at least a fair success, the outcome of his own actions. To do this, he must be able to predict how the environment will respond to his acts. Sanity, itself, thus hinges on man's ability to predict his immediate, personal future on the basis of information fed him by the environment. — Alvin Toffler

Reason is the power or capacity whereby we see or detect logical relationships among propositions. — Alvin Plantinga

I'm not conscious of the speed ... it's not my motive ... my motive is displaying a voice through the fingerboard ... it can get to the point where I don't have control over what I am playing ... I never end the gig until I can't sing anymore — Alvin Lee

He saw us play a few times in fact. I did this song called I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes, and Jimi loved it. He paid me a huge compliment when he told me that he was thinking of doing something similar himself! — Alvin Lee

Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock. — Alvin Toffler

In describing today's accelerating changes, the media fire blips of unrelated information at us. Experts bury us under mountains of narrowly specialized monographs. Popular forecasters present lists of unrelated trends, without any model to show us their interconnections or the forces likely to reverse them. As a result, change itself comes to be seen as anarchic, even lunatic. — Alvin Toffler

But lack of evidence, if indeed evidence is lacking, is no grounds for atheism. No one thinks there is good evidence for the proposition that there are an even number of stars; but also, no one thinks the right conclusion to draw is that there are an uneven number of stars. The right conclusion would instead be agnosticism. — Alvin Plantinga

My feelings about myself have been terrible. — Alvin Ailey

I'm attracted to long-legged girls with long arms and a little head. — Alvin Ailey

Freedom of expression is no longer a political nicety, but a precondition for economic competitiveness. — Alvin Toffler

COIL would very much like to see the creation of a newsgroup for minimal musics. We enjoy a wide spectrum of such musics, from La Monte Young, Alvin Lucier, Arvo Part, Nurse With Wound's Solilique For Lilith,The Dream Syndicate (orig.concept not the newer group who plundered the name) to Synus, Earth and so on.and on and on. Some new so called ambient musics fall between genres and so between newsgroups: some of our own music has certainly been deeply inspired by and informed by such musics,from Partch to Subotnic. — John Balance

In education, we need to begin paying attention to matters routinely ignored. We spend long hours trying to teach a variety of courses on, say, the structure of government or the structure of the amoeba. But how much effort goes into studying the structure of everyday life - the way time is allocated, the personal uses of money, the places to go for help in a society exploding with complexity? We take for granted that young people already know their way around our social structure. In fact, most have only the dimmest image of the way the world of work or business is organized. Most students have no conception of the architecture of their own city's economy, or the way the local bureaucracy operates, or the place to go to lodge a complaint against a merchant. Most do not even understand how their own schools - even universities - are structured, let alone how much structures are changing under the impact of the Third Wave. — Alvin Toffler

Suppose we concede that if I had been born of Muslim parents in Morocco rather than Christian parents in Michigan, my beliefs would be quite different. [But] the same goes for the pluralist ... If the pluralist had been born in [Morocco] he probably wouldn't be a pluralist. Does it follow that ... his pluralist beliefs are produced in him by an unreliable belief-producing process? — Alvin Plantinga

The mere fact that a belief is unpopular at present (or at some other time) is interesting from a sociological point of view but evidentially irrelevant. — Alvin Plantinga

My opportunity to design school choice systems began in 2003 with a phone call from Jeremy Lack at the New York City Department of Education. He knew of my work on the medical match and wondered if similar efforts might help reorganize the dysfunctional, congested system then used to match students to high schools. — Alvin E. Roth

There is not one iota of history as we know it in the entire Bible! — Alvin Boyd Kuhn

The Lord taught me to love everybody, but the last ones I learned to love were the sportswriters. — Alvin Dark

I always want to have more dancers in my company. — Alvin Ailey

We used to play the underground clubs like the UFO, and Middle Earth, and they were great because they would have on things like a poet, string quartets, and then a rock band! It was kinda cool! — Alvin Lee

I write and record all the time; it's my hobby and my passion. — Alvin Lee

Never in history has distance meant less. — Alvin Toffler

I'd love to change the world, but I don't know what to do — Alvin Lee

Everything in dancing is style, allusion, the essence of many thoughts and feelings. The abstraction of many moments. — Alvin Ailey

Science fiction is held in low regard as a branch of literature, and perhaps it deserves this critical contempt. But if we view it as a kind of sociology of the future, rather than as literature, science fiction has immense value as a mind-stretching force for the creation of the habit of anticipation. Our children should be studying Arthur C. Clarke, William Tenn, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury and Robert Sheckley, not because these writers can tell them about rocket ships and time machines but, more important, because they can lead young minds through an imaginative exploration of the jungle of political, social, psychological, and ethical issues that will confront these children as adults. — Alvin Toffler

I've always been interested in using mathematics to make the world work better. — Alvin E. Roth

The Second Wave Society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. You combine those things with standardization, centralization, concentration, and synchronization, and you wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy. — Alvin Toffler

I wish I could get all the discourteous drivers on a ship and sail them away and make sure it's a really horrible, wavy journey and when they get to where they're going, keep them there. — Alvin Martin

If we do not learn from history, we shall be compelled to relive it. True. But if we do not change the future, we shall be compelled to endure it. And that could be worse. — Alvin Toffler

In America the government took the land from the Indians and then established laws protecting private property. — Alvin Francis Poussaint

It turns out that a Nobel is also followed by other recognitions, and perhaps the most unexpected of these is that the Japan Karate Association in Tokyo has now made me an honorary 7th-degree black belt, something that, given my athletic abilities, is even more unimaginable than being an Economic Sciences Laureate. — Alvin E. Roth

I really like working. I can't think of a job I didn't like. I was in an Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, which is not my idea of folk art; but I really enjoyed making it, and everyone was really nice. — Jenny Slate

Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it. — Alvin Toffler

Often people expect I have some touching personal story about kidney disease, but it's actually the mathematics that led me to it. — Alvin E. Roth

If industrialism, with its faster pace of life, has accelerated the family cycle, super-industrialism now threatens to smash it altogether. — Alvin Toffler

They knew that it was not their faith that validated Christ's resurrection, as many of today's modern theologians teach and preach, but that it was his physical resurrection that validated their faith. — Alvin J. Schmidt