Hierarchic Quotes & Sayings

The story," the intruder said, settling back in the chair. "Once upon a time, over the gravity well and far away, there was a magical land where they had no kings, no laws, no money and no property, but where everybody lived like a prince, was very well-behaved and lacked for nothing. And these people lived in peace, but they were bored, because paradise can get that way after a time, and so they started to carry out missions of good works; charitable visits upon the less well-off, you might say; and they always tried to bring with them the thing that they saw as the most precious gift of all; knowledge; information; and as wide a spread of that information as possible, because these people were strange in that they despised rank, and hated kings ... and all things hierarchic — Iain M. Banks

The administrative and hierarchic aspects seem to be crucial in the evolution of belief systems. The truth is first revealed to all men, but very quickly individuals appear claiming sole authority and a duty to interpret, administer and, if need be, alter this truth in the name of the common good. To this end they establish a powerful and potentially repressive organisation. This phenomenon, which biology shows us is common to any social group, soon transforms the doctrine into a means of achieving control and political power. Divisions, wars and break-ups become inevitable. Sooner or later, the word becomes flesh and the flesh bleeds. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

A woman's uniqueness is her greatest appeal to a man - and his greatest challenge. — Edwin Louis Cole

We must ever mandate the principle that the people of this continent alone have the right to decide their own destiny. — James K. Polk

While originating in acts of imagination, orthodoxies paradoxically seek to control the imagination as a means of maintaining their authority. The authenticity of a person's understanding is measured according to its conformity with the dogmas of the school. While such controls may provide a necessary safeguard against charlatanism and self-deception, they also can be used to suppress authentic attempts at creative innovation that might threaten the status quo. The imagination is anarchic and potentially subversive. The more hierarchic and authoritarian a religious institution, the more it will require that the creations of the imagination conform to its doctrines and aesthetic norms. Yet — Stephen Batchelor

The Hierarchic Qualm: The sword kills. But the arm moves the sword. Is the arm to blame for murder? No. The mind moves the arm. Is the mind to blame? No. The mind has sworn an oath to duty, and that duty moves the mind, as written by the Throne. So it is that a servant of the Throne is blameless. — Seth Dickinson

Theoretically, great opportunities lay ahead of a young man of energy in that day and place, but Carl Miller had been incapable of establishing either with his superiors or his subordinates the reputation for approximate immutability which is essential to success in a hierarchic industry. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Szeth could feel the Light's warmth, its fury, like a tempest that had been injected directly into his veins. The power of it was invigorating but dangerous. It pushed him to act. To move. To strike. — Brandon Sanderson

It was no longer cancer. But the clock. — Rachel Van Dyken

In short, self-rule is workable only when a people are self-sufficient enough to reject the hierarchic system as it stands. — Eric Robert Morse

Parents, first and foremost, it is important to ... understand and recognise the activities your child is naturally gravitating towards. It's important also to ensure that your child likes what he or she is doing. I believe in exposing children to as many hobbies and extracurricular activities as possible. — Viswanathan Anand

The core of the anarchist tradition, as I understand it, is that power is always illegitimate, unless it proves itself to be legitimate. So the burden of proof is always on those who claim that some authoritarian hierarchic relation is legitimate. If they can't prove it, then it should be dismantled. — Noam Chomsky

Nothing is yours. It is to use. It is to share. If you will not share it, you cannot use it. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Harmony crab-walked back. "You're the only one left, Reed. You were right. It was a trap. Michael is a sadist. We leave now, or I'll shoot you on sight next time I see you as one of Bill's brainwashed dolls. — Kim Harrison

The Catholic Church then owed its popularity to the widespread popular skepticism which saw in the republic and in democracy the loss of all order, security, and political will. To many the hierarchic system of the Church seemed the only escape from chaos. Indeed, it was this, rather than any religious revivalism, which caused the clergy to be held in respect.39 As a matter of fact, the staunchest supporters of the Church at that period were the exponents of that so-called "cerebral" Catholicism, the "Catholics without faith," who were henceforth to dominate the entire monarchist and extreme nationalist movement. Without believing in their other-worldly basis, these "Catholics" clamored for more power to all authoritarian institutions. This, indeed, had been the line first laid down by Drumont and later endorsed by Maurras.40 — Hannah Arendt

Who would you be if you weren't facing all these difficulties?" I heard back from the depths of my soul, "She would not be who she was created to be, just like you would not be who you are without your own struggles. — Melissa Ohden

At the very least, if I have not - yet- chosen to end your life, I refuse to allow any of my kin to forever deprive me of my prerogative to do so. — Michelle Sagara West

God's job ain't to make our lives easier, it's to make us better souls by the lessons He gives us. — Susan Crandall

The Telephone will democratize hierarchic relations. — Ithiel De Sola Pool

In the final analysis the hierarchic pattern is nothing like the straightforward witness for organic evolution that is commonly assumed. There are facets of the hierarchy which do not flow naturally from any sort of random undirected evolutionary process. If the hierarchy suggests any model of nature it is typology and not evolution. How much easier it would be to argue the case for evolution if all nature's divisions were blurred and indistinct, if the systema naturalae was largely made up of overlapping classes indicative of sequence and continuity. — Michael Denton

[D]iscipline consists in this, that the men who undergo the instruction and have followed it for a certain time are completely deprived of everything which is precious to a man-of the chief human property, rational freedom-and become submissive, machine-like implements of murder in the hands of their organized hierarchic authorities. — Leo Tolstoy

The power of theocrasy or exercise of government rule over the masses by a hierarchy of priests or adepts rested on its dual system of teaching, namely : Exoterism and Esoterism, the former a code of discipline of the thought and mode of life of the masses; the latter the hierarchic school wherein were trained the chosen adepts destined to safeguard the rules imposed upon the people by the high priests, — Edith Starr Miller

I don't think I've ever referred to any girl I dated as my girlfriend. I think that would freak me out. Even the girl that I dated for two years in college I don't think I ever referred to her as my girlfriend."
"How would you introduce her?" I asked.
"I'm just going to say her name," he said. — Daniel Amory

The great mistake in dealing with this opposition is to search for a proper measure between two extremes. What one should do instead is to bring out what both extremes share: the fantasy of a peaceful world where the agonistic tension of sexual difference disappears, either in a clear and stable hierarchic distinction of sexes or in the happy fluidity of a desexualized universe. And it is not difficult to discern in this fantasy of a peaceful world the fantasy of a society without social antagonisms, in short, without class struggle. — Slavoj Zizek

We often behave as though Jesus is only interested in saving and loving a romanticized version of ourselves, or an idealized version of our mess of a world, and so we offer to him a version of our best selves. With our Sunday school shoes on, we sing songs about kings and drummers at his birth, perhaps so we can escape the Herod in ourselves and in the world around us. But we've lost the plot if we use religion as the place where we escape from difficult realities instead of as the place where those difficult realities are given meaning. — Nadia Bolz-Weber