Quotes & Sayings About Diffusion

The stupidity of a stupid man is exercised in a restricted field; the stupidity of an intelligent man has a much wider diffusion, and a far greater effect, aided as it is by the element of surprise. — Peter Ustinov

On the diffusion of education among the people rest the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions. — Daniel Webster

May I reach That purest heaven - be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony; Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty. Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in the diffusion ever more intense! So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world. — George Eliot

There are reasons for believing that the English increase will far surpass others, and that the diffusion of the United States will ultimately produce the general population of America. — Ezra Stiles

The absorption of oxygen and the elimination of carbon dioxide in the lungs take place by diffusion alone. There is no trustworthy evidence of any regulation of this process on the part of the organism. — August Krogh

In a large mass of muscle deprived of its circulation, the rate at which the recovery process can go on, after severe stimulation, depends on the rate at which oxygen can reach the fibres by diffusion. — Archibald Hill

Over and over, the effects of America's diffusion, and then of its efforts to adjust to that diffusion, seemed to reach the wealthy and advantaged as rewards, but hit the poor and disadvantaged as punishments. — Yuval Levin

Price mostly meanders around recent price until a big shift in opinion occurs, causing price to jump up or down. This is crudely modeled by quants using something called a jump-diffusion process model. Again, what does this have to do with an asset's true intrinsic value? Not much. Fortunately, the value-focused investor doesn't have to worry about these statistical methods and jargon. Stochastic calculus, information theory, GARCH variants, statistics, or time-series analysis is interesting if you're into it, but for the value investor, it is mostly noise and not worth pursuing. The value investor needs to accept that often price can be wrong for long periods and occasionally offers interesting discounts to value. — Nick Gogerty

Without an acquaintance with chemistry, the statesman must remain a stranger to the true vital interests of the state, to the means of its organic development and improvement; ... The highest economic or material interests of a country, the increased and more profitable production of food for man and animals, ... are most closely linked with the advancement and diffusion of the natural sciences, especially of chemistry. — Justus Von Liebig

This is an age of intellectual sauces, of essence, of distillation. We have conclusions without deductions, abridgments of history and abridgments of science without leading facts. We have animals for literature, Cabinet Encyclopaedias, Family Libraries, Diffusion Societies, and heaven knows what else! What is all this for? Not to add knowledge to the learned, but to tell points to the ignorant, without giving them the trouble to acquire the links. Oh! it is sad work. And the result will be injurious to all classes. — Benjamin Haydon

It belongs to American liberty to separate entirely from the political government the institution which has its object the support and diffusion of religion — Francis Lieber

How can we make the most of the opportunities afforded by the dynamism and the freedom set loose by America's postwar diffusion while mitigating its costs and burdens, especially for the most vulnerable among us? In — Yuval Levin

Political liberty is nothing else but the diffusion of power. — Lord Hailsham

Safe popular freedom consists of four things, the diffusion of liberty, of intelligence, of property, and of conscientiousness, and cannot be compounded of any three out of the four. — Joseph Cook

With today's fast films, you can light the way your eye sees the scene. You can abuse the film and create subtleties in contrast with light and exposure, diffusion and filters. That's what makes it an art. — Conrad Hall

Innumerable spirits and souls, when spread out through the same space, do not interfere with each other such that the diffusion of one would affect the diffusion of an infinity of others. — Giordano Bruno

The progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce, and the diffusion of education, than upon the labors of cabinets and foreign offices. — Richard Cobden

Density, complexity, and historical-semantic value that is so strong as to make politics possible ... Gramsci's insight is to have recognised that subordination, fracturing, diffusion, reproducing, as much as producing, creating, forcing, guiding, are necessary aspects of elaboration. — Edward Said

We consider ourselves to be free because no one in our society is allowed unlimited powerno leader, faction, party or 'class', no majority, no government, church, corporation, trade, or professional association or trade union. The secret of its freedom is that it is composed of a multitude of organisations in the constitution of the best of which is reproduced that diffusion of power which is characteristic of the whole. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

The world is not going into concentric blocs of power. It is actually going into a diffusion of power with more centres of decision-making than ever in human civilisation. That requires you to place yourself in far more hubs of power than ever before. — William Hague

We use committees for all the ulterior purposes for which they might have been designed: diffusion of executive responsibility, plausible deniability, misdirection, providing the appearance of activity without the substance, and protecting the guilty. — Charles Stross

Although mechanical energy is indestructible, there is a universal tendency to its dissipation, which produces throughout the system a gradual augmentation and diffusion of heat, cessation of motion and exhaustion of the potential energy of the material Universe — Lord Kelvin

Every one must understand that, whatever be the evil of slavery, it is not increased by its diffusion. Every one familiar with it knows that it is in proportion to its sparseness that it becomes less objectionable. Wherever there is an immediate connexion between the master and slave, whatever there is of harshness in the system is diminished. — Jefferson Davis

When I came to the Senate in 1997, the world was being redefined by forces no single country controlled or understood. The implosion of the Soviet Union and a historic diffusion of economic and geopolitical power created new influences and established new global power centers - and new threats. — Chuck Hagel

To conceive God as an all-powerful Person, or else, under the name of Christ, as a human person, is to exclude oneself from the true love of God. For this reason we must love the perfection of the heavenly Father even in the diffusion of sunlight. The divine and absolute model of that renunciation in us - which is obedience - is the creative and ordained principle of the universe, such is the fullness of being. — Simone Weil

Thus, it is suggested, a deeper understanding of the conditions affecting the speed and ultimate extent of an innovation's diffusion is to be obtained only by explicitly analyzing the specific choice of technique problem
which its advent would have presented to objectively dissimilar members of the relevant (historical) population of potential adopters. — Deirdre N. McCloskey

Nothing has contributed so much to the obscuring of Christian truth in the eyes of the heathen,
and has hindered so much the diffusion of Christianity through the world, as the disregard of [non-resistance] by men calling themselves Christians, and the permission of war and violence to Christians. — Leo Tolstoy

North America in 1492 was not a virgin wilderness but a network of Indigenous nations, peoples of the corn. The link between peoples of the North and the South can be seen in the diffusion of corn from Mesoamerica. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

If any preposterous bill were brought forward, for giving poor grubbing devils of authors a right to their own property I should like to say, that I for one would never consent to opposing an insurmountable bar to the diffusion of literature among the people ... — Charles Dickens

The political objective of universal capitalism is maximum individual autonomy, the separation of political power wielded by the holders of public office from economic power held by citizens, and the broad diffusion of privately owned economic power. — Louis O. Kelso

The necessary precondition for the birth of science as we know it is, it would seem, the diffusion through society of the belief that the universe is both rational and contingent. Such a belief is the presupposition of modern science and cannot by any conceivable argument be a product of science. One has to ask: Upon what is this belief founded? — Lesslie Newbigin

LTCM is now a classic case of "fat tails" in finance. Portfolio math mimics diffusion physics - a scattergram of the outcomes from trillions of small random movements maps smoothly onto a bell curve. In well-behaved markets, finance looks much the same. But markets are rarely well-behaved for long, and big deviations from the norm happen very frequently in finance - the finance bell curve, that is, has fat tails. When Russia defaulted on its sovereign bonds in 1998, it was a fat tail for LTCM, and it was on the wrong side of the trade, with very heavy leverage. — Charles R. Morris

There are two antagonistic elements of society in America," Seward had proclaimed, "freedom and slavery. Freedom is in harmony with our system of government and with the spirit of the age, and is therefore passive and quiescent. Slavery is in conflict with that system, with justice, with humanity, and is therefore organized, defensive, active, and perpetually aggressive." Free labor, he said, demands universal suffrage and the widespread "diffusion of knowledge." The slave-based system, by contrast "cherishes ignorance because it is the only security for oppression. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

The diffusion of taste is not the same thing as the improvement of taste. — William Hazlitt

The ancient codes were doubtless originally suggested by the discovery and diffusion of the art of writing. — Henry James Sumner Maine

Social and political life is a Society for the Diffusion of Mendacity . — Samuel Laman Blanchard

Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. — George Washington

The American people owe it to themselves, and to the cause of free Government, to prove by their establishments for the advancement and diffusion of knowledge, that their political Institutionsare as favorable to the intellectual and moral improvement of Man as they are conformable to his individual and social rights. — James Madison

Accumulation of power is as necessary as its diffusion, or rather more so. — Swami Vivekananda

But if the cow is purple, you'd notice it, OK? The thing that's going to decide what gets talked about, what gets done, what gets changed, what gets purchased, what gets built is, is it remarkable? And remarkable's a really cool word 'cause we think it just means neat, but it also means worth making a remark about, and that is the essence of where idea diffusion is going. — Seth Godin

Over a long period of time, the main force in favor of greater equality has been the diffusion of knowledge and skills. — Thomas Piketty

On the light side everyone thinks they are the most important, that their own understandings, or their group's understandings, are the key. There's a diversity of cultures and opinions, so there is competition, diffusion, and no single focus. — Carlos Barrios

Learning is not virtue but the means to bring us an acquaintance with it. Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. Let these be your motives to action through life, the relief of the distressed, the detection of frauds, the defeat of oppression, and diffusion of happiness. — Nathanael Greene

The principal mechanism for convergence at the international as well as the domestic level is the diffusion of knowledge. — Thomas Piketty

Writers who get written about become self-conscious. They develop a regrettable habit of looking at themselves through the eyes of other people. They are no longer alone, they have an investment in critical praise, and they think they must protect it. This leads to a diffusion of effort. The writer watches himself as he works. He grows more subtle and he pays for it by loss of organic dash. — Raymond Chandler

So far as laws and institutions avail, men should have equality of opportunity for happiness; that is, of education, wealth, power. These make happiness secure. An equal diffusion of happiness so far as laws and institutions avail. — Rutherford B. Hayes

In a government whose distinguishing characteristic should be a diffusion and equalization of its benefits and burdens the advantage of individuals will be augmented at the expense of the community at large. — Martin Van Buren

progress of the ethic of diffusion and liberalization has meant growing estrangement from precisely these prerequisites for human flourishing, especially among the least advantaged Americans. — Yuval Levin

The diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration. — Thomas Jefferson

Then overwhelmed by the sense of that unknown infinity, like one bewildered by a strange persecution, confronting the shadows of night, in the presence of that impenetrable darkness, in the midst of the murmur of the waves, the swell, the foam, the breeze, under the clouds, under that vast diffusion of force, under that mysterious firmament of wings, of stars, of gulfs, having around him and beneath him the ocean above him the constellations, under the great unfathomable deep, he sank, gave up the struggle, lay down upon the rock, his face towards the stars, humble, and uplifting his joined hands towards the terrible depths, he cried aloud, Have mercy. — Victor Hugo

The struggle to emerge out of the past, clean of memories; the inadequacy of our hearts to cut life into separate and final portions; the pain of this constant ambivalence and interrelation of emotions; the hunger for frontiers against which we might learn as upon closed doors before we proceed forward; the struggle against diffusion, new beginnings, against finality in acts without finality or end, in our cursedly repercussive being.. — Anais Nin

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty. — James Madison

The diffusion of a universalist culture and of a pedagogy of peace appears more than ever to be the path that we must follow for the salvation of all nations on earth. — Carlo Azeglio Ciampi

I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowlege among the people. no other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness. — Thomas Jefferson

Even the disappointing diffusion of a sheer curtain can suggest the most colorful bouquet of unspeakable secrets. — Chris Ware

Georges Sorel, to whom fascism is so much indebted, wrote at the beginning of our century that all great movements are compelled by 'myths.' A myth is the strongest belief held by the group, and its adherents feel themselves to be an army of truth fighting an army of evil. Some years earlier, in 1895, the French psychologist Gustav Le Bon had written of the 'conservatism of crowds' which cling tenaciously to traditional ideas. Hitler took the basic nationalism of the German tradition and the longing for stable personal relationships of olden times, and built upon them as the strongest belief of the group. In the diffusion of the 'myth' Hitler fulfilled what Le Bon had forecast: that 'magical powers' were needed to control the crowd. The Fuhrer himself wrote of the 'magic influence' of mass suggestion and the liturgical aspects of his movement, and its success as a mass religion bore out the truth of this view. — George L. Mosse

The clergy, with a few honorable exceptions, have in all modern countries been the avowed enemies of the diffusion of knowledge, the danger of which to their own profession they, by a certain instinct, seem always to have perceived. — Henry Thomas Buckle

[T]he more technology develops the diffusion of information (and notably of images), the more it provides the means of masking the constructed meaning under the appearance of the given meaning. — Roland Barthes

Looking from afar - from present to past, from exile to homeland, from island back to mainland, mountain-top at lowland - results notin vision's diffusion but in its sharpening; not in memory's dispersal but in it's plenishment. — Robert Macfarlane

But at sunset the clouds gathered again, bringing an earlier night, and the snow began to fall straight and steadily from a sky without wind, in a soft universal diffusion more confusing than the gusts and eddies of the morning. It seemed to be a part of the thickening darkness, to be the winter night itself descending on us layer by layer. — Edith Wharton

Conventions of generality and mathematical elegance may be just as much barriers to the attainment and diffusion of knowledge as may contentment with particularity and literary vagueness ... It may well be that the slovenly and literary borderland between economics and sociology will be the most fruitful building ground during the years to come and that mathematical economics will remain too flawless in its perfection to be very fruitful. — Kenneth E. Boulding

The party should stand for a constantly wider diffusion of property. That is the greatest social and economic security that can come to free men. It makes men free. — Jeffrey H Reiman

The main force pushing toward reduction in inequality has always been the diffusion of knowledge and the diffusion of education. — Thomas Piketty

In 1778, Jefferson presented to the Virginia legislature "A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge," in which he argued that all forms of government could degenerate into tyranny. The best way of preventing this, he wrote, is "to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large." The study of history could serve as an especially effective bulwark, allowing the people to learn how to defeat tyranny from past examples. Jefferson would return again and again to the importance of education in a democracy. — Fareed Zakaria

The luminosity below me seemed confined directly to the area to be lighted; there was no diffusion of light upward or beyond the limits the lamps were designed to light. This was effected, I was told, by lamps designed upon principles resulting from ages of investigation of the properties of light waves and the laws governing them which permit Barsoomian scientists to confine and control light as we confine and control matter. The light waves leave the lamp, pass along a prescribed circuit and return to the lamp. There is no waste nor, strange this seemed to me, are there any dense shadows when lights are properly installed and adjusted, for the waves in passing around objects to return to the lamp, illuminate all sides of them. The — Edgar Rice Burroughs

A self-conscious society will therefore endeavor to limit sect forming by providing for the widest possible diffusion of secular knowledge. — Edward Alsworth Ross

The widespread diffusion of nuclear weapons would make many nations able, and in some cases also create the pressure, to aggravate an on-going crisis, or even touch off a war between two other powers for purposes of their own. — Herman Kahn

The logic of all this seems to be that it is all right for young people in a democracy to learn about any civilization or social theory that is not dangerous, but that they should remain entirely ignorant of any civilization or social theory that might be dangerous on the ground that what you don't know can't hurt you ... a complete denial of the democratic principle that the general diffusion of knowledge and learning through the community is essential to the preservation of free government. — Carl L. Becker

Certainly, one of the greatest achievements of the human intellectual spirit was the Arabic Translation Movement. Over the course of about 100 years, virtually the entire Greek Scientific and philosophical corpus was either translated or summarized into Arabic (McGinnis, 10). — Jon McGinnis

One of the principal obstacles to the rapid diffusion of a new idea lies in the difficulty of finding suitable expression to convey its essential point to other minds. Words may have to be strained into a new sense, and scientific controversies constantly resolve themselves into differences about the meaning of words. On the other hand, a happy nomenclature has sometimes been more powerful than rigorous logic in allowing a new train of thought to be quickly and generally accepted. — Arthur Schuster

I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man. — Thomas Jefferson

Knowledge is not simply another commodity. On the contrary. Knowledge is never used up. It increases by diffusion and grows by dispersion. — Daniel J. Boorstin

The very greatest genius, after all, is not the greatest thing in the world, any more than the greatest city in the world is the country or the sky. It is the concentration of some of its greatest powers, but it is not the greatest diffusion of its might. It is not the habit of its success, the stability of its sereneness. — Leigh Hunt

Internal improvement and the diffusion of knowledge, so far as they can be promoted by the constitutional acts of the Federal Government, are of high importance. — Andrew Jackson

Wealth and speed are what the world admires, what each pursues. Railways, express mails, steamships and every possible facility for communications are the achievement in which the civilized world view and revels, only to languish in mediocrity by that very fact. Indeed, the effect of this diffusion is to spread the culture of the mediocre. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

If dictatorship is the concentration of power, freedom consists in its diffusion. — Lord Hailsham

We stand in the shadow of Jefferson who believed that a society founded upon the rule of law and liberty was dependent upon public education and the diffusion of knowledge. — Matt Blunt

The history of mankind before his birth must be viewed as a preparation for his coming, and the history after his birth as a gradual diffusion of his spirit and progress of his kingdom. — Philip Schaff

In terms of the Internet, it's like humanity acquiring a collective nervous system. Whereas previously we were more like a [?], like a collection of cells that communicated by diffusion. With the advent of the Internet, it was suddenly like we got a nervous system. It's a hugely impactful thing. — Elon Musk

We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It is said that knowledge is power, and the like. Methinks there is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. — Henry David Thoreau

It is hard to tell which is worse; the wide diffusion of things that are not true, or the suppression of things that are true. — Harriet Martineau

The psychological consequences of this spread of white culture have been out of all proportion to the materialistic. This world-wide cultural diffusion has protected us as man had never been protected before from having to take seriously the civilizations of other peoples; it has given to our culture a massive universality that we have long ceased to account for historically, and which we read off rather as necessary and inevitable. — Ruth Benedict

The joy resulting from the diffusion of blessings to all around us is the purest and sublimest that can ever enter the human mind, and can be conceived only by those who have experienced it. Next to the consolations of divine grace, it is the most sovereign balm to the miseries of life, both in him who is the object of it, and in him who exercises it. — Beilby Porteus

The most feared situation is to end up inadvertently in the wrong place at the wrong time and get blamed. Yet this is exactly what happens in a structure that systematically diffuses responsibility. It is because managers fear blame-time that they diffuse responsibility; however such a diffusion inevitably means that someone, somewhere is going to become a scapegoat when things go wrong. — Robert Jackall

I'm not doing anything wrong, I'm not obstructing anyone's access. When I have a crowd I make sure that the crowd makes room for people. I'm an artist who cares about the cultural fabric of New York City. I care about New York as a harbor for street culture - and I care about street culture as a base-level populist diffusion of ideas. And I believe in making those ideas accessible to everyone. — Kalan Sherrard

To no circumstance is the wide diffusion of error in the world more owing than to our habit of adopting conclusions from insufficiently established data. An indispensable preliminary, then, in every investigation, is to get at facts. Until these are arrived at, every opinion, theory, or system, however ingeniously framed, must necessarily rest upon an uncertain basis. — Christian Nestell Bovee

In these days the invention of printing, and the diffusion of knowledge, render historical calumnies a little less dangerous: truth will always prevail in the long run, but how slow its progress! — Napoleon Bonaparte

Whenever somebody asks me to define what a hero is, I remember Latane and Darley's experiment, staging epileptic fits in front of one, two, or three observers. A solitary observer will help immediately if he's going to help at all, but the larger the crowd the longer the delay. It's the Bystander Effect: the wider the diffusion of responsibility, the greater the impulse to let someone else go first. The hero goes first. — Marion G. Harmon

The present age has witnessed an extraordinary increase of a thinking public, by the facilities afforded to the diffusion of reading; the former happy resignation to ignorance begins to make way for a state of half-enlightenment, and few persons are willing to remain in the condition in which their birth has placed then. — Friedrich Schiller