Quotes & Sayings About Hierarchy

Don't you mean 'assclown'?" he looked amused.
"No," I said louder this time. "I mean asscrown. The crown on top of the asshat that covers the asshole of the assclown. The very zenith in the hierarchy of asses. — Michelle Hodkin

Because there was no pre-existing patrician elite, those successful in the new book industry could write very swiftly to the top of the social hierarchy. — Andrew Pettegree

The science fiction author, H.G. Wells was an avid supporter of eugenics and a believer in a hierarchy of the races. — A.E. Samaan

To dismiss basic contexts such as link colours, page layouts, navigation systems, and visual hierarchy as 'boring' or 'pedestrian' is akin to laughing at a car's steering wheel as unimaginative. — Jeffrey Veen

An untrained observer will see only physical labor and often get the idea that physical labor is mainly what the mechanic does. Actually the physical labor is the smallest and easiest part of what the mechanic does. By far the greatest part of his work is careful observation and precise thinking. That is why mechanics sometimes seem so taciturn and withdrawn when performing tests. They don't like it when you talk to them because they are concentrating on mental images, hierarchies, and not really looking at you or the physical motorcycle at all. They are using the experiment as part of a program to expand their hierarchy of knowledge of the faulty motorcycle and compare it to the correct hierarchy in their mind. They are looking at underlying form. — Robert M. Pirsig

If you feel dirty, insignificant or unloved, then rats are a good role model. They exist without permission, they have no respect for the hierarchy of society, and they have sex 50 times a day. — Banksy

There was no hierarchy of humanity.... And no one could strip me of my value and dignity, because no one had bestowed them- these things came into the world with me. — Charles M. Blow

Lateral trust among colleagues is as important as vertical trust within the hierarchy. — Andy Hargreaves

I had begun to grasp, in the past few weeks, one of the great and uncovenanted delights of Greece; a pre-coming of age present in my case: a direct and immediate link, friendly and equal on either side, between human beings, something which melts barriers of hierarchy and background and money and, except for a few tribal and historic feuds, politics and nationality as well... Existence, these glances say, is a torment, an enemy, an adventure and a joke which we are in league to undergo, outwit, exploit and enjoy on equal terms as accomplices, fellow-hedonists and fellow-victims. — Patrick Leigh Fermor

I don't think there should be a hierarchy of what is valid in the arts. — Seth Numrich

As the Laurel-wreathed boxes come down to Gamma, I think about how clever it really is. They won't let us win the Laurel. They don't care that the math doesn't work. They don't care that the young scream in protest and the old moan their same tired wisdoms. This is just a demonstration of their power. It is their power. They decide the winner. A game of merit won by birth. It keeps the hierarchy in place. It keeps us striving, but never conspiring.

Yet despite the disappointment, some part of us doesn't blame the Society. We blame Gamma, who receives the gifts. A man's only got so much hate, I suppose. And when he sees his children's ribs through their shirts while his neighbors line their bellies with meat stews and sugared tarts, it's hard for him to hate anyone but them. You think they'd share. They don't. — Pierce Brown

O latest born and loveliest vision far of all Olympus' faded hierarchy. — John Keats

Radheya has always been a rebel against caste and the social hierarchy,' her mother-in-law said, after a brief pause. 'He has constantly been cruelly reminded that as a sutaputra, he cannot aspire to more than he deserves, but he believes in his own worth. — Kavita Kane

An existence devoted to reading would have been his ultimate fulfillment, but it had not been given to him. He would have had to choose that path much earlier, to have known what he wanted to do...To have had a life plan. At first it had been interested to be recognized as a promising young banker, to climb the hierarchy, to have responsibilities and to earn a lot of money. Up until the day he had started to feel, dimly at first, then more and more clearly, that the man he had become was the absolute opposite of what he really was. Although the dichotomy weighed heavily on him, for a while the money he was earning was compensation enough, but then it could no longer make up for it. The gap between his ideal and his reality was too great. The weight turned into an anguish that was succeeded by the intolerable idea that he was wasting his life --or even that he had already wasted it. — Antoine Laurain

I think the writer's quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I'd have thought, slightly more risky. — Alan Bennett

The entire hierarchy of angels
can best be described as an endlessly vast sphere of beings,
who surround an unknowable centre-point, which is called God. — Malcolm Godwin

Below Every Tangled Hierarchy Lies An Inviolate Level — Douglas Hofstadter

One way or another, we spend our whole lives being conditioned into accepting some line or order, some position of domination or subjection. It's hard to unlearn such hierarchy, to undo such control. It's implicit. — Cliff James

Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome. — Stephen Jay Gould

For someone whose roots in America were strong but only inches deep, and who had no experience, such as a Catholic child might, of an awesome hierarchy that was real and felt, baseball was a kind of secular church that reached into every class and region of the nation and bound millions upon millions of us together in common concerns, loyalties, rituals, enthusiasms, and antagonisms. Baseball made me understand what patriotism was about, at its best. — Philip Roth

The great thing about fact-based decisions is that they overrule the hierarchy. — Jeff Bezos

I had to delegate authority to the people on my staff. That means you shave away the hierarchy. — Jurgen Klinsmann

A natural hierarchy is simply an order of increasing wholeness, such as: particles to atoms to cells to organisms, or letters to words to sentences to paragraphs. The whole of one level becomes part of the whole of the next. In other words, natural hierarchies are composed of holons. — Ken Wilber

In the absence of the great majority of guests, all manner of rumors came into the Shalimar Bagh, hooded and cloaked to shield themselves against the elements, and filled the empty places around the dastarkhans: cheap rumors from the gutter as well as fancy rumors claiming aristocratic parentage - an entire social hierarchy of rumor lounged against the bolsters, created by the mystery that enveloped everything like the blizzard. The rumors were veiled, shadowy, unclear, argumentative, often malicious. They seemed like a new species of living thing, and evolved according to the laws laid down by Darwin, mutating randomly and being subjected to the amoral winnowing processes of natural selection. The — Salman Rushdie

I'm much more convinced that the hierarchy comes from the monarchy, and that the hierarchy stays apart from the oligarchy. So the oligarchy is hurtful to the majority in Bolivia. — Evo Morales

The switch from ten-cylinder to eight-cylinder engines means that each manufacturer has to redevelop its power train. Not all will manage to successfully combine performance with reliability the first time around. That could shake things up a bit when it comes team hierarchy. — Michael Schumacher

The hierarchy of power is not the same as the hierarchy of value. A good human is higher than the animals on both scales; an evil human is high on the scale of power, but at the very bottom of the scale of values. — Wendell Berry

Fidelity is what cannot be bought or sold. It obeys a law and attaches itself to a necessity. Convenience can be calculated, but fides can only be established by the spontaneous act of a man who is capable of inner nobility. Fides means personality and hierarchy. — Julius Evola

To recreate a new aristocracy is the eternal task of every revolutionary project. — Guillaume Faye

There are five levels of the douche hierarchy: douche, douche bag, douche canoe, douche nozzle and right at the top, the king of it all, when the douche is displaying phenomenal amounts of doucheness, is a douche rocket. It's when someone is such a douche, like the KING of douches, they can no longer be described as a douche nozzle, they are ALL the levels of douchery put together, and douche rocked is used. — Christine Zolendz

I want to be clear that at this stage I am not making a judgment about whether a society of this kind really deserves to be characterized as "hypermeritocratic." It is hardly surprising that the winners in such a society would wish to describe the social hierarchy in this way, and sometimes they succeed in convincing some of the losers. — Thomas Piketty

What these [personality] tests tell employers about potential employees is hard to imagine since the 'right' answer should be obvious to anyone who has ever encountered the principle of hierarchy and subordination. Do I work well with others? You bet, but never to the point where I would hesitate to inform on them for the slightest infraction. Am I capable of independent decision making? Oh yes, but I know better than to let this capacity interfere with a slavish obedience to orders ... The real function of these tests, I decide, is to convey information not to the employer but to the potential employee, and the information being conveyed is always: You will have no secrets from us. We don't just want your muscles and that portion of your brain that is directly connected to them; we want your innermost self. — Barbara Ehrenreich

If you've given away a sense of your own destiny, you need enormous amounts of hierarchy and protection within the structure to make up for what you've given away. — David Whyte

Let me put it formally: If we ask what are the domains through which human beings achieve deep satisfactions in life - achieve happiness - the answer is that there are just four: family, vocation, community, and faith, with these provisos: Community can embrace people who are scattered geographically. Vocation can include avocations or causes. It is not necessary for any individual to make use of all four domains, nor do I array them in a hierarchy. I merely assert that these four are all there are. The stuff of life occurs within those four domains. — Charles Murray

The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgement. It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish. It establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates them and judges them. That is why, in all the mechanisms of discipline, the examination is highly ritualized. In it are combined the ceremony of power and the form of the experiment, the deployment of force and the establishment of truth. At the heart of the procedures of discipline, it manifests the subjection of those who are perceived as objects and the objectification of those who are subjected. The superimposition of the power relations and knowledge relations assumes in the examination all its visible brilliance. — Michel Foucault

In the tangled hierarchy sinner and saint, divine and diabolical, sacred and profane are different faces of our collective Being. Therefore angry activism driven by rage, however justified it seems, is really not going to work. I believe that the tangled hierarchy wants us to move to the next state of evolution and very strongly desires us to take that quantum leap of creativity. — Deepak Chopra

Benedict's spending down his energy was a function of his fighting against the Space/Information Age's relentless pressure on the concept of hierarchy, the restoration of which he had, following John Paul II, made a central part of the program that has come to be known as the reform of the reform. — Eugene Kennedy

The Father and His angelic hierarchy
That made the magnitude and glory there
Stood in the circuit of a needle's eye. — William Butler Yeats

Scientists are educated from a very early time and a very early age to believe that the greater scientist is the scientist who makes discoveries or theories that apply to the greatest ambit of things in the world. And if you've only made a very good theory about snails, or a very good theory about some planets but not about the universe as a whole, or about all the history of humankind, then you have in some sense accepted a lower position in the hierarchy of the fame of science as it's taught to you as a young student. — Richard Lewontin

Jesus picked up the conversation. As the crowning glory of creation, you were made in Our image, unencumbered by structure and free to simply 'be' in relationship with Me and one another. If you had trully learned to regard one another's concerns as significant as your own, there would be no need for hierarchy. — Wm. Paul Young

The bureaucracy is a circle from which one cannot escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge. The top entrusts the understanding of detail to the lower levels, whilst the lower levels credit the top with understanding of the general, and so all are mutually deceived. — Karl Marx

I no longer believe the conservative message that children are naturally selfish and destructive creatures who need civilizing by hierarchies or painful controls. On the contrary, I believe that hierarchy and painful controls create destructive people. And I no longer believe the liberal message that children are blank slates on which society can write anything. On the contrary, I believe a unique core self is born into every human being; the result of millennia of environment and heredity combined in an unpredictable way that could never happen before or again. — Gloria Steinem

Ireland is such a young society. The British were the ruling class up until they left about a hundred years ago, and we've been trying to work out what our class hierarchy is ever since. — Tana French

That that present, in the consecrated space at the very summit of the hierarchy of this world there exists a god
like, demonlike ruler whose power is so vast that it envelops the entire planet and transends all human understanding and religion - this is something I believe to be true beyond the shadow of a doubt. — Shunji Ohkura

Zen does not ask you to believe in anything you cannot confirm for yourself. It does not ask you to memorize any sacred words. It does not require you to worship any particular thing or revere any particular person. It does not offer any rules to obey. It does not give you any hierarchy of learned men whose profound teachings you must follow to the letter. It does not ask you to conform any code of dress. It does not ask you to allow anyone else to choose what is right for you and what is wrong. Zen is complete absence of belief. Zen is the complete lack of authority. Zen tears away every false refuge in which you might hide from the truth and forces you to sit naked before what is real. That's real refuge. — Brad Warner

I'm interested in things which suggest the world rather than express the personality ... The most conventional thing, the most ordinary - it seems to me that those things can be dealt with without having to judge them; they seem to me to exist as clear facts, not involving aesthetic hierarchy. — Jasper Johns

Feminism has both undone the hierarchy in which the elements aligned with the masculine were given greater value than those of the feminine and undermined the metaphors that aligned these broad aspects of experience with gender. So, there goes women and nature. What does it leave us with? One thing is a political mandate to decentralize privilege and power and equalize access, and that can be a literal spatial goal too, the goal of our designed landscapes and even the managed ones
the national parks, forests, refuges, recreation areas, and so on. — Rebecca Solnit

A Bluesman hates to be told what to do. Authority rankles him, inspires his rebellion, and plays to his need to self-destruct. A Bluesman doesn't take to having a boss unless he's on a chain gang (for the chain gang boss ranks below only a mean old woman and a sweet young thing in the hierarchy of the Blues Muse, followed closely by bad liquor, a dead dog, and the Man). — Christopher Moore

Cats are solitary hunters with only the vaguest concept of hierarchy and little desire to "please" anyone but themselves — David Brunner

There's a problem with the hierarchical orientation, though. When the numbers get too big, the thing breaks down. A pecking order can hold only so many chickens. — Steven Pressfield

To us, the argument for material well-being might seem uncontroversial. But in the eighteenth century, material prosperity was frequently condemned as "luxury" by religious and civic moralists. It was not a morally neutral word but a pejorative one, connoting not comfort but excess, the possession of nonnecessities. The notion of luxury was intricately connected with the existence of a recognized social hierarchy: what was necessary for those of high status was regarded as excessive for those of low status. Luxury meant the enjoyment of material goods not appropriate to one's station in life. Critics of luxury saw it as confounding social ranks. P. 40 — Jerry Z. Muller

Purchasing power is a license to purchase power. The old proletariat sold its labour power in order to subsist; what little leisure time it had was passed pleasantly enough in conversations, arguments, drinking, making love, wandering, celebrating and rioting. The new proletarian sells his labour power in order to consume. When he's not flogging himself to death to get promoted in the labour hierarchy, he's being persuaded to buy himself objects to distinguish himself in the social hierarchy. The ideology of consumption becomes the consumption of ideology. — Raoul Vaneigem

Together we can build the people's Church, a true Church. Not just a hierarchy, or a building, but a real change inside people. — Rigoberta Menchu

As a general rule, when something gets elevated to apple-pie status in the hierarchy of American values, you have to suspect that its actual monetary value is skidding toward zero. Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent. Same thing with work: would we be so reverent about the 'work ethic' if it wasn't for the fact that the average working stiff's hourly pay is shrinking, year by year ... — Barbara Ehrenreich

In the early 2000s, people expected that anonymity on the Internet would be positive for the development of democracy in South Korea. In a Confucian culture like South Korea's, hierarchy can block the free exchange of opinions in face-to-face situations. The web offered a way around that. — Kim Young-ha

In general, dividing literature into prose and poetry began with the appearance of prose, for only in prose could such a division be expressed. By its nature, by its essence, art is hierarchical, automatically, and in this hierarchy, poetry stands above prose. If only because poetry is older. Poetry really is a very strange thing, because it belongs to a troglodyte as well as to a snob. It can be produced in the Stone Age and in the most modern salon, whereas prose requires a developed society, a developed structure, certain established classes, if you like. Here you could start reasoning like a Marxist without even being wrong. The poet works from the voice, from the sound. For him, content is not as important as is ordinarily believed. For a poet, there is almost no difference between phonetics and semantics. Therefore, only very rarely does the poet give any thought to who in fact comprises his audience. That is, he does so much more rarely than the prose writer. — Joseph Brodsky

We live in a global village, Neel, where billions of voices babble simultaneously, and in this village a new hierarchy is being established, a new caste-system is being created. Only this time, it is money that sets the tone. Whoever has the most money buys the biggest loudspeaker and is the neo-Brahmin of this new world order. If the ninety-year-old neo-Brahmin on the other side of the earth is terrified of antibiotic resistant flesh-eating bacteria, we must think twice before offering treatment to a twenty-four-year old here. These are the new rules of our global village. — Anirban Bose

There tends to be this hierarchy of film and television, and theater is somewhere else in its own milieu. However, as actors, yes, we love to do theater because it's our story. Nobody can edit it, the curtain goes up, and it's ours for two hours or three, or whatever. And we tell it. — Tim DeKay

The great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights ... not only for acquiescence in poverty, inequality, exploitation and oppression, but also for enthusiastic justifications for slavery, persecution, abandonment of small children, torture, and genocide ... Moreover, religion enshrined hierarchy, authority, and inequality ... It was the age of equality that brought about the disappearance of such religious appurtenances as the auto-da-fe and burning at the stake. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

When it comes to creative inspiration, job titles and hierarchy are meaningless. — Ed Catmull

When there is no type hierarchy you don't have to manage the type hierarchy. — Rob Pike

Within the gendered institution of prostitution, race and class create a hierarchy with indigenous women at its lowest point. — Melissa Farley

The world is not flat, and PCs are not, in the hierarchy of human needs, in the first five rungs. — Bill Gates

We can believe in hierarchy. We can believe the universe was made just for us. Hierarchy and a major sense of entitlement are not insurmountable problems. The problem occurs when we treat those whom we believe lie beneath us as slaves. Religion once sustained human slavery. It was wrong then. When it blindly sanctions the slavery of every nonhuman animal, it is wrong now. — Cass R. Sunstein

While I still did not know what self- actualization that sat on the top level of the pyramid meant, I could believe
that if I knew I would be able to say something positive about it as well in
my life. — Vann Chow

I can't learn everything in a few months, Charles. Magic came first. Stupid hierarchy of egotistical penises had to take a backseat."
"Penises don't have egos. And what about the women in command? They can be pretty damn bitchy."
"The women have bigger balls than you do, Charles. Let's get focused."
Kind of a dick thing to say. — K.F. Breene

The original languages didn't even have he and she. They didn't have concepts of masculine and feminine. People were people. And the whole idea was that we were in a circle together, not in a hierarchy together. — Gloria Steinem

I've always run by the hierarchy of 'If not funny, interesting. If not interesting, hot. If not hot, bizarre. If not bizarre, break something. — Jon Stewart

Sexism is the foundation on which all tyranny is built. Every social form of hierarchy and abuse is modeled on male-over-female domination. — Andrea Dworkin

True progress lies in the direction of decentralization, both territorial and functional, in the development of the spirit of local and personal initiative, and of free federation from the simple to the compound, in lieu of the present hierarchy from the centre to the periphery. — Peter Kropotkin

There is an air of grace and tradition The South takes pride in upholding. When all hell is breaking loose, southerners face the world with a smile. All anger, resentment, and feelings of hierarchy only flutter in bits of passive aggressive, light-hearted gossip. In southern culture, it is a cardinal sin to utter a single word without a sweet layer of sugarcoating. — Maggie Young

Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it by maltreating those they think rank below. I've read that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks. — Paul Graham

It is rightly said that we all are equal. The only thing that puts us in a hierarchy is our effort. — Varun Bhat

Aboriginal Okinawan Karate was traditionally taught in modest home Dojos, in small informal groups (sole purpose of teachings revolved around life preservation), in A closely tied supportive environment; unlike main island modern Japanese version with rivalry and competition, instructed in large groups belonging to even larger organizations with pseudo-militaristic hierarchy — Soke Behzad Ahmadi

It is a truth widely recognized that tyranny stems from the consent of the governed as much as democracy does. — Eric Robert Morse

The aim of every hierarchy is always to imitate God so as to take on His form ... the task of every hierarchy is to receive and to pass on undiluted purification, the divine light, and the understanding which brings perfection. — Maximus The Confessor

In the hierarchy of man's activities, eating was the lowest. Eating had become the object of a cult, but in fact it was but the preliminary to other, utterly contemptible motions. It occurred to him that he wanted to perform one of these too. — Elias Canetti

Have you ever looked inside one of those things [computers]? It's a whole hierarchy of angels- all on slats. And those little tubes-those are miracles. — Joseph Campbell

The Minnesota Republican hierarchy didn't want me to run against their incumbent in 2000; they didn't know who I was. And once many party bigwigs did get to know me, they weren't sure that I could win the seat. — Michele Bachmann

A second possible approach to general systems theory is through the arrangement of theoretical systems and constructs in a hierarchy of complexity, roughly corresponding to the complexity of the "individuals" of the various empirical fields ... leading towards a "system of systems." ... I suggest below a possible arrangement of "levels" of theoretical discourse ... (vi) ... the "animal" level, characterized by increased mobility, teleological behavior and self-awareness ... — Kenneth E. Boulding

The strength of a human being is in one's hierarchical level, characterised by say separation from physiological needs upwards. — Priyavrat Thareja

To be an effective organisation, the structure of the organisation must be willing to adapt to a network model, leaving the old hierarchy model behind. We see the efficacy of the network model daily in many areas of our lives, and this greatly challenges the old from-top-to-down hierarchical model that many organisations have a hard time letting go of. But I suppose at the end of the day, it is a matter of survival. Simply put, in order to survive, one must adapt and to adapt today, means to take on a more networked approach to doing things in organisations, groups, companies and even in society as a whole (including politics). So in other words, in order for society in all of its forms from big to small, to move forward strongly, it must adapt to a framework that sees itself as a network rather than a hierarchy. — C. JoyBell C.

Any government, whether it is a democracy, a dictatorship, a communistic or free enterprise bureaucracy, will fall when its hierarchy reaches an intolerable state of maturity. — Laurence J. Peter

And it was true that if you categorized people by which Disney character they were, then Jonah would always be Bambi. Motherless, graceful, unobtrusive. Ethan
Jiminy Cricket, the annoying little conscience ... just look at Ash. In the Disney hierarchy she was Snow White ... He paused to wonder which Disney character Jules was, and realized that Disney did not make women or girls or woodland animals that were like her. — Meg Wolitzer

some British settlers of colonial America carried across the sea Puritan, biblical, scientific, and Aristotelian rationalizations of slavery and human hierarchy. — Ibram X. Kendi

found on other Unix-like systems. The design is actually specified in a published standard called the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. — William E. Shotts Jr.

It's not only the myths surrounding chess. Chess itself is a myth, you know? A game of hierarchy, of war. It's a story that people have been using to explain complex concepts for eons. Mathematics, yes. Geometry. Business. Philosophy. Even love. — Skye Warren

Legislators have a formal set of responsibilities to work together, but there's no hierarchy. — Barney Frank

If the derived class isn't going to adhere completely to the same interface contract defined by the base class, inheritance is not the right implementation technique. Consider containment or making a change further up the inheritance hierarchy. — Steve McConnell

Obedience had never been deemed a pure virtue among the Tiste Andii. To follow must be an act born of deliberation, of clear-eyed, cogent recognition that the one to be followed has earned the privilege. So often, after all, formal structures of hierarchy stood in place of such personal traits and judgements. A title or rank did not automatically confer upon the one wearing it any true virtue, or even worthiness to the claim. Nimander — Steven Erikson

Significant change might require those who are now high in the hierarchy to move downward many steps. This seems to them undesirable and is resisted. — Carl Sagan

Families could often trace their lineage back several centuries. Their livelihood was earned from drum playing, a service considered to be dis-respectable. As members of a low caste, the drummers were forbidden to build decent houses. There were allowed to build wattle and daub huts, and to live rent-free on their patrons' properties. The right to own the country's land was restricted in this manner, a vicious condition that arose through tradition and was reinforced by law. Patterns of financial power and political hierarchy existed hand in hand. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

I require a hierarchy of priorities after protecting Shira and Malkah and the small felines. — Marge Piercy

There's a really rough and relatively consistent hierarchy of concerns. My musical interests come first and principally my fascination with how notes and rhythms interlock. Then comes the technical side like programming, instruments and designing instruments. Next is production and mixing and beyond that I start to care less. — Squarepusher

The past has given us much too many bad answers for us not to see that the mistakes were in the questions themselves. There is no need to choose between the fetishism of spontaneity and the organization control; between the "come one, come all" of activist networks and the discipline of hierarchy; between acting desperately now and waiting desperately for later; between bracketing that which is to be lived and experimented in the name of paradise that seems more and more like a hell the longer it is put off and flogging the dead horse of how planting carrots is enough to leave this nightmare. — The Invisible Committee

His lack of condemnatory zeal gave him a reputation in the religious hierarchy that ensured he would always remain a humble teacher in a backwater town. — Richard K. Morgan

The brain processes meaning before detail. Providing the gist, the core concept, first was like giving a thirsty person a tall glass of water. And the brain likes hierarchy. Starting with general concepts naturally leads to explaining information in a hierarchical fashion. You have to do the general idea first. And then you will see that 40 percent improvement in understanding. — John Medina

Creator and Sustainer. Men are to make their own mistakes and successes. Each man is to work out his salvation (or damnation) in fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). Other men are to sit in judgment over him only when he commits public evil. They are not to command him as imitation gods. They are not to issue comprehensive commands and monitor him constantly. That is God's job, not man's. Thus, God's hierarchy produces social freedom. It relieves mankind from any pretended autonomy from God's total sovereignty. Men are not to seek to create predestinating hierarchies. They can leave their fellow men alone, so long as God's institutional laws are obeyed in public. — Gary North

I don't think that many performers necessarily want to see their audience empowered. I think a lot of performers, no different from priests, need the hierarchy. Modern, celebrity-driven entertainment turns the stage into an altar, and so many celebrities refuse to be removed from those altars once they manage to ascend. They will not be taken down - the Goddess is offended ... As a storyteller in the old tradition, you held an important place at the circle. Your position was fluid, not necessarily permanent, but it demanded that you respected the others witnessing your performance as much as they respected you. All storytellers, all troubadours worth their salt knew their myths. — Tori Amos

In large organizations the dilution of information as it passes up and down the hierarchy, and horizontally across departments, can undermine the effort to focus on common goals. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi