Baran Quotes & Sayings

Writing a novel mimics what we bring to our journey of life. God is the great editor who purges the faulty, the awkward, and all the bits that are just plain wrong, so the optimal story can finally emerge. — Denise M. Baran-Unland

The process of technological development is like building a cathedral," remarked Baran years later. "Over the course of several hundred years new people come along and each lays down a block on top of the old foundations, each saying, 'I built a cathedral.'Next month another block is placed atop the previous one. Then comes along an historian who asks, 'Well, who built the cathedral?' Peter added some stones here, and Paul added a few more. If you are not careful, you can con yourself into believing that you did the most important part. But the reality is that each contribution has to follow onto previous work. Everything is tied to everything else. — Katie Hafner

The greatest damage done by advertising is precisely that it incessantly demonstrates the prostitution of men and women who lend their intellects, their voices, their artistic skills to purposes in which they themselves do not believe and that it teaches the essential meaninglessness of all creations of the mind; words, images and ideas. — Paul Baran

Many seemingly independent businessmen or craftsman are more or less well paid retainers of larger corporations, such as the cobbler, operating a United States shoe machine or an automobile dealer holding a license of the General Motors Corporation. — Paul A. Baran

Much if not all we know about the complex mechanism responsible for the development (and stagnation) of productive forces, and for the rise and decay of social organizations, is the result of the analytical work undertaken by Marx and by those whom he inspired. — Paul A. Baran

Indeed, I find it illuminating to consider to what extent our "classical conditions" for economic growth are satisfied in the current, monopolistic phase of capitalism. — Paul A. Baran

The process of writing is a process of learning; and much has become clearer to me in the attempt to transform my original rough notes into what I hope is an intelligible presentation. — Paul A. Baran

The alarm must be sounded because it is the economic and social system of capitalism and imperialism that prevents the urgently needed full mobilization of the potential economic surplus and the attainment of rates of economic advancement that can be secured with its help. — Paul A. Baran

Whatever market for manufactured goods emerged in colonial and dependent countries did not become the "eternal market" of these countries. Thrown wide open by colonization and by unequal treaties, it became an appendage of the "internal market" of Western capitalism. — Paul A. Baran

As Hegel well knew, the ascent of reason has never followed a straight line. — Paul A. Baran

Here is Senator Russell in a colloquy on the Senate floor with Senator Proxmire: There is something about preparing for destruction that causes men to be more careless in spending money than they would be if they were building for constructive purposes. Why that is so I do not know; but I have observed, over a period of almost thirty years in the Senate, that there is something about buying arms with which to kill, to destroy, to wipe out cities, and to obliterate great transportation systems which causes men not to reckon the dollar cost as closely as they do when they think about proper housing and the care of the health of human beings. — Paul A. Baran

Indeed, the "whole bourgeoisie" on whose behalf the government was acting as its "committee" was a composite of a vast multitude of businessmen appearing as a conglomeration of many different and divergent groups and interests. — Paul A. Baran

It has been estimated that even in the absence of net investment, the mere substitution of modern machinery for worn-out equipment in the United States would cause an annual productivity increase of approximately 1.5 percent. — Paul A. Baran

One would think that the record of already existing regulatory agencies is sufficiently eloquent in showing that it is Big Business that does the regulating rather than vice versa . — Paul A. Baran

The present Indian government, however, is neither able or willing to accept the challenge and to provide the leadership in breaking the resistance of urban and rural interests. — Paul A. Baran

Schumpter's daring and dashing entrepreneur is now a legendary figure from the distant past - if not from the mythology of capitalism - or is to be found only in the demimonde of business, founding new ice cream parlors or "deep freeze subscription clubs". — Paul A. Baran

We will soon be living in an era in which we cannot guarantee survivability of any single point. However, we can still design systems in which system destruction requires the enemy to pay the price of destroying n of n stations. If n is made sufficiently large, it can be shown that highly survivable system structures can be built. — Paul Baran

By elevating the dictum of the market to the role of the sole criterion of rationality and efficiency, economics denies even all "respectability" to the distinction between essential and non-essential consumption, between productive and unproductive labor, between actual and potential surplus. — Paul A. Baran

But when reason and the study of history began revealing the irrationality, the limitations, and the merely transitory nature of the capitalist order, bourgeois ideology as a whole and with it bourgeois economics began abandoning both reason and history. — Paul A. Baran

What do you do when you see a man masturbating at a salad baran actual salad shooterbut wait, I'm single, we're both at the salad bar, we have a lot in common. I like fresh produce, he likes to get fresh with produce. I like nuts on my salad, he likes to nut on his salad. — Alison Rosen

In fact, all the additional knowledge gained by an irrationally constituted society may but enlarge and enhance the powers of death and destruction. — Paul A. Baran

No one is ever as shocked and surprised as when the inevitable occurs. — Paul Baran

History has shown that there are very few mechanisms as effective at maintaining the status quo as a set of institutionalized regulations. Once set in regulatory concrete, reconsideration of the basic underlying assumptions is very difficult. While it will be an uphill fight to re-examine the basic underlying assumptions of any law or administrative rule, it is clearly not impossible. It will just take longer than if not so well institutionalized. — Paul Baran

If society has a technical need, that helps science forward more than ten universities. — Paul A. Baran

For it is no railways, roads, and power stations that give rise to industrial capitalism: it is the emergence of industrial capitalism that leads to the building of railways, to the construction of roads, and to the establishment of power stations. — Paul A. Baran

That the means of imperialist policy overshadow almost entirely its original ends has tremendous implications. — Paul A. Baran

The principal impact of foreign enterprise on the development of the underdeveloped countries lies in hardening and strengthening the sway of merchant capitalism, in slowing down and indeed preventing its transformation into industrial capitalism. — Paul A. Baran

To contribute to the emergence of a society in which development will supplant stagnation, in which growth will take the place of decay, and in which culture will put an end to barbarism is the noblest, and, indeed, the only true function of intellectual endeavor. — Paul A. Baran

I've ... learned that it's a hell of a lot easier to just build something than to try to convince somebody who doesn't believe it's possible. — Paul Baran