Baseline Quotes & Sayings

Don't congratulate yourself for baseline integrity. — Chris Johnson

The issue is the ethnocentric history that the New York task force, the Portland Baseline essayists, and other Afrocentric ideologues propose for American children. The issue is the teaching of bad history under whatever ethnic banner. Cn any historian justify the proposition that the five ethnic communities into which the New York state task force wishes to divide the country had equal influence on the development of the United States? Is it a function of schools to teach ethnic and racial pride? When does obsession with differences begin to threaten the idea of an overarching American nationality? — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

I imagine the field day we'd have with this in gender studies class. Our desks in a circle, we'd huddle forward and rant: So this is the baseline of femininity. The place where being bestowed certain chromosomes will ultimately take you. This is the dream that's been pounded into us. Find the guy. Find the dress. Or hell, maybe the other way around. The Disney Princesses told us so. But this isn't college. This is my job. — Anne Wagener

What basketball expresses is what jazz expresses. Certain cultural predispositions to make art. All African-American art has a substratum, or baseline, of improvisation and spontaneity. You find that in both basketball and jazz. — John Edgar Wideman

Technos and clerics have much in common. Both take a world that can't be fully understood and try to explain its fundamental properties.
Clerics postulate beliefs that can never be proven; they demand you accept these postulates as your Faith, which will guide your actions and thoughts. It's a top down way of thinking; start with the big picture and derive rules for living. Fundamental knowledge is static. Even the derived rules rarely change.
Technos work from the bottom up. They build a baseline of observations and formulate theories to explain these phenomena. Nothing is sacred; with new observations, theories are discarded or modified to fit the facts.
Technos and clerics; how could they not be in conflict?
Dan Ronco's Diary, 2016
— Dan Ronco

When we contextualize faithfully and skillfully, we show people how the baseline "cultural narratives" of their society and the hopes of their hearts can only find resolution and fulfillment in Jesus. — Timothy J. Keller

Instead of seeing all of this as God's extraordinary grace, we come to expect the comfort and joys that God gives us as the baseline, the measure of what we believe to be our due. When our comfort level drops below our expectations, we are shocked and angered, and even foolishly express our outrage to God Himself. — R.C. Sproul Jr.

We calculated the baseline requirement of diversity. — Andrew Miller

So I would hope they would develop some kind of habit that involves understanding that their life is so full they can afford to give in all kinds of ways to other people. I consider that to be baseline spirituality. — Susan Sarandon

The laughing, snuggling heap on the ground was her baseline. — Becky Chambers

We as women have so much cultural training (on top of whatever familial nurturing history we have) that pushes us to give nurture to everyone but our selves and to look for nurture from anyone but our selves. Practicing and developing our capacity to nurture our selves whenever we need nurturing is vital to our process of becoming more whole. Nurture from others can add on to and amplify what we do for our selves. But to take the very best care of our selves, self-nurturing is the essential baseline from which we must start. As — Robyn L. Posin

It's customary for the field team to take a break after a confirmed memetic incursion into baseline reality - in layman's terms, we're supposed to get some time off after we stop a fairy tale from rewriting a major metropolitan area into an evil, R-rated version of Disney World. New and improved! Now with extra incest and murder! — Seanan McGuire

There's actually a term for this - "hedonic adaptation." When good things happen, we bake them very quickly into our baseline expectations, — Dan Harris

Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder - just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing. Insisting on the humanity of terrorists is, in fact, critical to maintaining their profound responsibility for the evil they commit.
And, if they are human, then they must necessarily not be treated in an inhuman fashion. You cannot lower the moral baseline of a terrorist to the subhuman without betraying a fundamental value. — Andrew Sullivan

Just begged the question: If it took so long for one of the best hospitals in the world to get to this step, how many other people were going untreated, diagnosed with a mental illness or condemned to a life in a nursing home or a psychiatric ward? CHAPTER 30 RHUBARB By my twenty-fifth day in the hospital, two days after the biopsy, with a preliminary diagnosis in sight, my doctors thought it was a good time to officially assess my cognitive skills to record a baseline. — Susannah Cahalan

I try to look at the evolution of these utopian claims. In the late '60s there was an assumption that the wealth generated by industry would be taxed and then put into social programs and it would provide a baseline of stability that would allow people to have the time for self-expression; and that social contract has eroded over the last four decades and now it's every person for themselves. — Astra Taylor

One Dilbert Blog reader noted that current research shows that happiness causes success more than success causes happiness. That makes sense to me. There's plenty of research about people having a baseline of happiness that doesn't vary much with circumstances. And given that happy people are typically optimistic, energetic, and fun to work with, I can see how happiness would lead to success. — Scott Adams

Properly Defining a Project's Initiation:

Projects start going bad at inception --- the customer's inception...

The problem is that these are initiatives rather than projects. Managers often fail to include the implementation professionals in these early meetings....stays close to the intended baseline...
people are enamored with technology...accept the limited information provided by sales material as definitive and ignore the hidden complexities in the implementation. As a result, during the inception of a project, customers use buzzwords and concepts they believe they understand and make assumptions about the idea's implementation. — Todd C. Williams

Under normal conditions people react to a threat with a temporary increase in their stress hormones. As soon as the threat is over, the hormones dissipate and the body returns to normal. The stress hormones of traumatized people, in contrast, take much longer to return to baseline and spike quickly and disproportionately in response to mildly stressful stimuli. The insidious effects of constantly elevated stress hormones include memory and attention problems, irritability, and sleep disorders. They also contribute to many long-term health issues, depending on which body system is most vulnerable in a particular individual. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Men with high baseline levels of testosterone marry less frequently, have more adulterous affairs, commit more spousal abuse, and divorce more often. — Helen Fisher

That means to push very heavy weight, repeatedly, and to constantly strive to elevate both your baseline numbers and the total weight lifted at the workout - until you start to reach a natural limit relative to your competitive goals. This will deliver improvements in strength and subsequent improvements in endurance performance, and also maximize the hormonal, anti-aging benefits of the workout. — Mark Sisson

There are spiritual gifts like mercy, faith, or generosity that enable people to set the standard, so to speak. But just because you don't have that spiritual gift doesn't mean you aren't held to any standard at all. Even if you aren't gifted in that way, you're still called to live mercifully, faithfully, and generously. You might not set the standard, but you need to meet the standard. There is a baseline that all of us are called to. When the opportunity presents itself, we need to show mercy, exercise faith, and give generously. In the same sense, all of us are called to take risks. If it doesn't involve risk, it doesn't exercise faith. — Mark Batterson

It's dangerous to accept crisis as your baseline. It gets harder and harder to see the anti-crises that are so requisite to happiness: the quiet times, the crucial pauses - like those in a poem. — Amity Gaige

Adam knew it was childish, but he rationalized it in this way: carelessly harming other people was a decent stand-in for baseline human interaction. — Warren Ellis

Life was not safe and nothing could make it so, neither fashionable dresses nor bank accounts. The baseline of human life was courage. — Paulette Jiles

What no tourist bumf will tell you is that this inlet is suffused with an atmosphere of ineffable sadness. Partly a trick of the light and climatic factors, partly also the lingering residue of an historical tragedy which still resonates through rock and water down seven generations of fretful commemorative attempts and dissonant historical hermeneutics. Now think of grey shading towards gunmetal across an achromatic spectrum; think also of turbid cumulus clouds pouring down five centimeters of rainfall above the national average and you have some idea of the light reflected within the walls of this inlet. This is the type of light which lends itself to vitamin D deficiency, baseline serotonin levels, spluttering neurotransmitters and mild but by no means notional depression. It is the type of light wherein ghosts go their rounds at all hours of the day. — Mike McCormack

The First Testament gives the baseline meaning to the gospel in the promise of God that will not be thwarted by anyone or anything. The New Testament gives us the fulfillment in the form of a person. These testaments are meant to be read in parallel, allowing each testament to illuminate the other. — Tobin Wilson

Realistically, the last advice you want to hear when you are in a terrible mood is"Think of something happy." If you're experiencing genuine misfortune, you probably just need time and distance to recover.
For the truly bad moods, exercise, nutrition, sleep,and time are the smart buttons to push. Once you get back to your baseline level of happiness, you'll be in a better position to get the benefits of daydreaming. — Scott Adams

The mind always found its way back to baseline. — Will McIntosh

I really think the Bible is a baseline where all stories come from. All of the zillion stories in the Bible provide inspiration for everything. — Emmanuelle Chriqui

Saying "yes" [to sexual activity] is a pretty low baseline for sexual experience and I wanted to write about what was happening to girls after "yes." — Peggy Orenstein

Second, startups must attempt to tune the engine from the baseline toward the ideal. This may take many attempts. After the startup has made all the micro changes and product optimizations it can to move its baseline toward the ideal, the company reaches a decision point. That is the third step: pivot or persevere. — Eric Ries

If you ask me if I'm imagining it again, I'm going to punch you out, Dead Man Walking."
Michael raised his eyebrows and glanced at Eve. "He doesn't sound crazy."
"Er," she clarified, "crazier. He sounds like he's back to normal, which is baseline crazy. — Rachel Caine

We often gain awareness through a baseline comparison between now and next. — Sharon Weil

In any relationship that comes to an end, there's never just a baseline reason why. You say, 'Oh, I broke up with my girlfriend.' Someone says, 'Why?' You say, 'Well, you got three hours? And then maybe after I tell you my version, you've got to talk to her.' — Michael Rapaport

As a minimum, the following areas should be considered: The stakeholders. The budget. The future direction and current culture of the organisation. The baseline Architecture Landscape. The current processes used for change and operation of IT. The skills and capabilities of the people within the enterprise. — Kevin Lindley

Tomorrow we go back to normal?"
"Sure," Mab said. "It'll be like none of this happened. Except I'll still be pregnant, and you'll still be making dragons, and Glenda will still be pretending that Dreamland is Cancun, and Weaver will still own the only green velvet demon in captivity. Other than that, perfectly normal."
"I just meant no demons trying to kill us," Cindy said. "My baseline for normal is a lot lower than yours. — Jennifer Crusie

I didn't want to just rally at the baseline, even though that happened a lot. — Tracy Austin

The baseline is the same. Is Iran going to suspend enrichment activity? Is Iran going to return to the negotiations? Or is Iran going to continue, as we think they have, to stall and prevaricate and extend things in a meaningless way in order to avoid censure. — Joseph Adam Ereli

My heart belongs to the details. I actually always found them to be more important than the big picture. Nothing works without details. They are everything, the baseline of quality. — Dieter Rams

This radical stance of prioritizing love over law could be said to be the baseline of Jesus' exegetical method. It is absolutely central to how Jesus understood and interpreted Scripture. — Derek Flood

What he wasn't so good at was manipulating the internal states of other humans, getting them to see things his way, do things for him. His baseline attitude toward other humans wass that they could all just go fuck themselves and that he was not going to expend any effort whatsoever getting them to change the way they thought. This was probably rooted in a belief that hed been inculcated to him from the get-go: that there was an objective reality, which all people worth talking to could observe and understand, and that there was no point in arguing about anything that could be so observed and so understood. — Neal Stephenson

The one thing about being a dude and writing from a female perspective is that the baseline is, you suck. The baseline is it takes so long for you to work those atrophied muscles - for you to get on parity with what women's representations of men are. — Junot Diaz

Again, there is psychological risk in the robotic moment. Logan's comment about talking with the AIBO to "get thoughts out" suggests using technology to know oneself better. But it also suggests a fantasy in which we cheapen the notion of companionship to a baseline of "interacting with something." We reduce relationship and come to see this reduction as the norm. — Sherry Turkle

Steven wrote to me today, saying, 'Don't you feel like sticking your head out of the window and yelling, "I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!!!"' Yes, absolutely. Solidarity. Fear is always the same. Different worries with different scripts, but the same baseline fear. — Russell T. Davies

Stop. You're going to make an excuse for not being normal and I have no interest in hearing that. Honestly, people always talk about 'normal' as though it is something to aspire to, but that's a load of crap. Normal isn't an achievement, it's a baseline. Normal is something you end up as if you never get around to doing something interesting. You — Patty Jansen

I was always raised on cowboy films, and then when I could start making choices about the movies I wanted to watch I found myself wanting to watch gangster films which were slightly more sophisticated than the baseline stuff that was in westerns. — Shia Labeouf

Usability is the baseline. Your values, aspirations, and dreams are what fills the space above. — Hillel Cooperman

The tasks that we studied varied considerably in their effects on the pupil. At baseline, our subjects were awake, aware, and ready to engage in a task - probably at a higher level of arousal and cognitive readiness than usual. — Daniel Kahneman

Maximum Sustained Power workouts are much less taxing on the cardio endurance component and instead focus on going for max power or going home. Literally, you end your mini-sets when you can't lift the heavy bar again due to accumulated fatigue. Or, in the case of vertical jumps or calibrated exercise equipment, you stop the set when you fall materially short of your baseline absolute power performance standard that you started the workout with. — Mark Sisson

My breast cancer was caught very early thanks to my doctor a wonderful woman named Elsie Giogi, who just recently passed away after practicing medicine into her 80's. At the time, she had suggested I go for a baseline mammogram before age 40 because I had fibrocystic breasts. The mammogram discovered a tiny tumor, and it was so small that they were able to take it out very easily. I had a lumpectomy. Unfortunately, they did miss a little of the cancer, and two years later I had a mastectomy. But hey, I'm here, I'm alive, and I'm going to live to be 100! — Kate Jackson

A substantial amount of research over the past decade has reinforced the idea that although internal happiness can deviate from its "resting state" in reaction to life events, it usually returns toward its baseline over time. — Dan Ariely

Insulate yourself ...
from anonymous angry people
Expose yourself to art you don't yet understand
Precisely measure the results that are important to you
Stay blind to the metrics that don't matter
Fail often
Ship
Lead, don't manage so much
Seek out uncomfortable situations
Make an impact on the people who matter to you
Be better at your baseline skills than anyone else
Copyedit less, invent more
Give more speeches
Ignore unsolicited advice — Seth Godin

Standardised tests cannot capture all, but on the other hand, students who are not capable of doing well on standardised tests are not well-equipped to thrive in today's world and so it's important for teachers to ensure that students gain the foundation necessary to meet the baseline educational standards these tests represent. — Wendy Kopp

Everyone uses the brain at every moment, but we use it unconsciously. We let it run in the background without realizing the power we have to reshape the brain. When you begin to exercise your power, the everyday brain, which we call the baseline brain, starts to move in the direction of super brain. — Deepak Chopra

The point of simple living, for me has got to be:
A soft place to land
A wide margin of error
Room to breathe
Lots of places to find baseline happiness in each and every day — Leo Babauta

We live by choice and by necessity. We choose the mechanisms that are essential to ensure satisfaction of our baseline survival. What labor we willingly endure in order to meet our minimalistic subsistence requirements and what activities we elect to pursue in order to mollify our desire for living joyfully and attain self-realization defines our essential self's core personality. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Right. Because he seemed like such a normal kid. And he is a normal kid, he is just what you'd expect a baseline male child to be like if Darth Vader were his doting father. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

The idea is to encourage men to go with their wives and screen. So, if the wife is going to go and do her screening, then the man can go and do his baseline screening, too. Men need to be aware of the health of their bodies, as well - prostate cancer and breast cancer are almost on the same level. — Olivia Newton-John

Need was Adam's baseline, his resting pulse. Love was a privilege. Adam was privileged; he did not want to give it up. He wanted to remember again and again how it felt. — Maggie Stiefvater

If you don't set a baseline standard for what you'll accept in life, you'll find it's easy to slip into behaviours and attitudes or a quality of life that's far below what you deserve. — Anthony Robbins

One answer to why public interest in men's tennis has been on the wane in recent years is an essential and unpretty thugishness about the power-baseline style that's become dominant on the tour. Watch Agassi closely sometime ... he's amazingly absent of finesse, with movements that look more like a heavy-metal musician's than an athlete's ... what a top PBer really resembles is film of the old Soviet Union putting down a rebellion. It's awesome, but brutally so, with a grinding, faceless quality about its power that renders that power curiously dull and empty. — David Foster Wallace

I live inside my own skin. Anything that happens outside it doesn't change who I am. This isn't something I'm proud of; as far as I'm concerned, it's a bare minimum baseline requirement for calling yourself an adult human being, somewhere around the level of knowing how to do your own washing or change a toilet roll. All those idiots on the websites, begging for other people to pull their sagging puppet-strings, turn them real: they make me want to spit. — Tana French

While I know some women who are stunningly sanguine when they're pregnant, I dissolve into a total mess. What normally appears sturdy turns fragile: the economy, the climate, humanity's baseline social contract. — Lauren Groff

We employ our personality, what we know, think, and believe, in order to interpret the world, making self-understanding a critical act because it establishes the baseline for our philosophical and intellectual approach towards life. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I fought hard for such a framing at the Conference of the Parties 6 in The Hague in 2000, but was opposed not by the usual suspects - industrial interests and OPEC - but rather by those who were more "green" - World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, and European Green Party delegates. I was dumbfounded. Why didn't they want to support a plan to both keep carbon in the forests and get a double bonus of biodiversity protection? The debates were heated. I thought the argument against it - no baseline for additionality - was legitimate, but not an insurmountable obstacle. Baselines are negotiable, and protecting primary forests should at least have been on the agenda. The passion of the opponents seemed totally misplaced. One evening during COP 6, I went to the environment NGOs' tent for a reception. In this more informal setting, — Stephen H. Schneider

in human males, testosterone appears to promote behavior intended to dominate other people. This behavior can be expressed aggressively, even violently, as well as nonaggressively. Testosterone levels, even a single baseline measurement, correlate well with dominance behavior, that is, testosterone not only affects dominance behavior but also responds to it. — Randy J. Nelson

My baseline function is I'm usually really happy and optimistic. I think I really genuinely like being alive, and I've got a spring in my step - that's what I've been like all my life. — Jenny Slate

Rising seas create a higher baseline for future storm surges. The New York City Panel on Climate Change has projected that coastal waters may rise by two feet by 2050 and four feet by the end of the century. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Is it our task to force the biblical doctrine of God to answer to modern culture, or (is it our task) to address modern culture with the biblical doctrine of God? If modern culture-or any culture-establishes the baseline for the doctrine of God, such a doctrine will certainly bear little resemblance to the God of the Bible. — Albert Mohler

And when you're a weird and awkward and paranoid person at all times, CastieCon is the happiest place on the planet.
It's like, a baseline level of freakiness is expected here, right? So unless you're disemboweling goats in the vendor hall, no one gives a damn who you are or what you're doing. — J.C. Lillis

I read the papers online, and something usually piques my curiosity - that will then be the baseline of my research for the day. — Ben Schott

We transform the world, but we don't remember it. We adjust our baseline to the new level, and we don't recall what was there. — Daniel Pauly

Veganism must be the baseline if we are to have any hope of shifting the paradigm away from animals as things and toward animals as nonhuman persons. — Gary L. Francione

Discouraged?
As I was driving home from work one day, I stopped to watch a local Little League baseball game that was being played in a park near my home. As I sat down behind the bench on the first-baseline, I asked one of the boys what the score was.
"We're behind 14 to nothing," he answered with a smile.
"Really," I said. "I have to say you don't look very discouraged."
"Discouraged?" the boy asked with a puzzled look on his face. "Why should we be discouraged? We haven't been up to bat yet. — Jack Canfield

Honestly, people always talk about 'normal' as though it is something to aspire to, but that's a load of crap. Normal isn't an achievement, it's a baseline. Normal is something you end up as if you never get around to doing something interesting. — Joseph R. Lallo