Failed Systems Quotes & Sayings

Chloe Honum's brilliant first book The Tulip-Flame traces an identity forming within radically divergent but interlocking systems: a family traumatized by the mother's suicide, a failed relationship, the practice of ballet, a garden-each strict, exacting. And with 'a crow's sky-knowing mind,' Honum in every case transfigures emotion by way of elegant language and formal restraint. Chloe Honum is 'one astounding flame' of a poet, and I predict a long-lasting one. — Claudia Emerson

But Ashla is a perversion," he went on, "for the dark has always preceded the light. The original idea was to capture the power of the Force and make it subservient to the will of sentient life. The ancients - the Celestials, the Rakata - didn't pronounce judgment on their works. They moved planets, organized star systems, conjured dark side devices like the Star Forge as they saw fit. If millions died in the process, so be it. The lives of most beings are of small consequence. The Jedi have failed to understand this. They are so busy saving lives and striving to keep the powers of the Force in balance that they have lost sight of the fact that sentient life is meant to evolve, not simply languish in contented stasis. — James Luceno

We must now view our problems as opportunities - historic opportunities to change the failed systems of the past and do what's right for our future. — Bob Riley

The super-EMP had greater effect than anyone could have predicted. Engines halted, turbines stilled, even laser systems failed. No air travel. No cell phones. We had plunged back into the early 1800s. -- Lucas Cole, REPUBLIC — Lucas Cole

When I initially read the script, it goes inside and comes out different things even without commenting on any stuff. And then, those pieces are taken out and then spread out through the movie. — A.R. Rahman

All systems have failed me. In five
minutes I'll be fine again for a while, but right now the inside of my head feels like Niagara
Falls without the noise, just this mist and churning and no real sense of where earth ends and
heaven begins. — Douglas Coupland

The whole point of building theoretical systems is to explain what humans know by pre-theoretical experience. That is the starting point for any philosophy. That is the data it seeks to explain. If it fails to explain the data of experience, then it has failed the test. It has been falsified. — Nancy Pearcey

As an element in human progress, the right of private property, in importance, has taken first and almost only place in the current systems of law and of political economy. While admitting its great importance, we cannot conceal the fact that the writers on those subjects have wholly failed to distinguish between its use and its abuse, or to recognize its rational and equitable limits. — Joshua K. Ingalls

To stabilize the nation's public-employee pension systems and to prevent federal taxpayers from being billed for failed pension funds, I have introduced the Public Employee Pension Transparency Act in Congress. — Devin Nunes

We spend a lot of time training and retraining. It's heartbreaking because our education system has failed all of us. And again you go to China, even Mexico, Brazil the education systems are valued - ours are not in this country at K-12 level. It's amazing how that change has transpired in my lifetime. — Douglas R. Oberhelman

Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun. — Kurt Vonnegut

The Universal Laws of Health Care Systems:

1. "No matter how good the health care in a particular country, people will complain about it"
2. "No matter how much money is spent on health care, the doctors and hospitas will argue that it is not enough"
3. "The last reform always failed — T.R. Reid

You exaggerate everything. You continually force the truth because you're always looking for something. — Jean-Paul Sartre

We can no more enjoy life by hoping for a future result than we can enjoy music by waiting for the final note. — Vernon Howard

When I was an adolescent in England, at school we had to read 'Death of a Salesman.' I remember feeling incredibly moved by the portrayal of these people and the idea with which Miller broached the whole subject of failure or failed systems, or the way that people are crushed by a system in which they find themselves. — Simon McBurney

Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today, these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems ... Whether we like it or not, the world is gravitating towards faith in the Almighty and justice and the will of God will prevail over all things. — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Certain countries long ago succeeded where the U.S. has failed in commercializing their air traffic control systems, putting them in the hands of private or quasi-private operators able to raise capital, charge fees, and invest in growth, free of meddling by congressional pork barons. You want a drone-friendly air traffic control system? This is the place to start. Our FAA isn't blindly anti-drone but simply marooned in a system that still needs thousands of eyeballs gazing at radar terminals and out of cockpit windshields. — Holman W. Jenkins Jr.

As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications. — Dave Parnas

Certainly, if we believe in democracy and democratic systems, when [Benazir Bhutto] failed to pass any legislation, really, at all in her first two years in government during her first term and in fact had a tenure that was marked not only by gross corruption but by human rights abuses, that should have been a time for people to say, "Well, OK, we've given you an opportunity and you haven't bettered the institutions, you haven't strengthened the democratic cause - we may not vote you back." — Fatima Bhutto

I just can't get with this idea that literature is a 12-step program. If someone wants to read a book to see good people get rewarded and the bad people get punished, essentially what they want is a fairy tale. — China Mieville

Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they'll have jobs and get enough money to buy things. — Philip Slater

Political systems must love poverty-they produce so much of it. Poor people make easier targets for a demagogue. No Mao or even Jiang Zemin is likely to arise on the New York Stock Exchange floor. And politicians in democracies benefit from destitution, too. The US has had a broad range of poverty programs for 30 years. Those programs have failed. Millions of people are still poor. And those people vote for politicians who favor keeping the poverty programs in place. There's a conspiracy theory in there somewhere. — P. J. O'Rourke

For children, most importantly, being in the garden is something magical. — Fritjof Capra