Informational Quotes & Sayings

And in an age when the girls were clearly gaining the upper hand on men in the Battle of the Sexes, men could do with some help from Pet Spirits & Dead Men's Oil.
For unlike Milesians, Malesians could not send girls to be sacrificed to the Gods.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

For just as the Milesians believed in Oracles, Malesians believed in Bomohs. Malesian Bomohs or Dukuns, just as the Sibyls, went into convulsions or ecstatic trances to proclaim the wishes of the Gods. But Malesian Bomohs did more. They claimed to be able to capture Spirits which they kept as pets. And these pet spirits could be sold or hired out to clients, to perform minor supernatural feats or miracles.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

Only the great warriors fall down from their horses; one would not fall who rides a donkey cart. — Waheed Ibne Musa

The stories leaders and others tell, few of which are true, are a lousy foundation on which to base any sort of science, and we know how to accomplish behavioral change and the importance of priming, informational saliency, and social networks. Producing inspiration and other good feelings doesn't last very long. — Jeffrey Pfeffer

There's little need to invest in the comprehensive instrumentation of the urban fabric with sensors, device controllers or informational displays when people themselves are already equipped with something that can act in all of these roles. — Adam Greenfield

How can a democratic discourse exist in a corporate owned informational system? Who, for example, possesses freedom of speech in such a society? — Herbert Schiller

Moreover, like eyes and arms, the fundamental structures of the mind (and the informational capacities they support) aren't acquired through experience: the pioneering ethologists realized that behavior in general must be understood in the light of evolution, and this same conviction is held by the new wave of cognitive ethologists. Whatever else may be said, we expect to find that many (if not all) of the critical properties of animal minds are - like motor patterns - intrinsic traits of an organism that are adaptive consequences of evolution. — Raymond Coppinger

Democracy functions insofar as individuals can participate meaningfully in the public arena, meanwhile running their own affairs, individually and collectively, without illegitimate interference by concentrations of power. Functioning democracy presupposes relative equality in access to resources - material, informational, and other - a truism as old as Aristotle. In theory, governments are instituted to serve their "domestic constituencies" and are to be subject to their will. A measure of functioning democracy, then, is the extent to which the theory approximates reality, and the "domestic constituencies" genuinely approximate the population. — Noam Chomsky

Language is not primarily informational but revelatory. The Holy Scriptures give witness to a living voice sounding variously as Father, Son and Spirit, addressing us personally and involving us personally as participants. This text is not words to be studies in the quiet preserves of a library, but a voice to be believed and loved and adored in workplace and playground, on the streets and in the kitchen. Receptivity is required. — Eugene H. Peterson

The thing that excites me about these informational technologies is I think we are going to be able to use virtual reality to show each other the insides of our own heads. — Terence McKenna

I think it's weird that the news cedes so much ground to Wikipedia. That isn't true in other informational sectors. — Ezra Klein

All of my books really do look at that to degrees of difference. Technically, I do enjoy the flashback! But not just for informational material. — Chang-rae Lee

And thus, the men won the Battle of the Sexes in Milesian times, so that from the Golden Age of Athens until the Golden Age of Rome, when all citizens were free to speak & vote at the State Assemblies, only women, barbarians & slaves were excluded.[INTRO] — Nicholas Chong

The bombs disrupted molecular structures. The cocktails included the distribution of nanotechnology to help to speed up the recovery of the earth - nanotechnology that promotes the self-assembly of molecules. The nanotechnology, speed up by DNA, which is an informational material but also excellent at the self-assembly of cells, made our fusing stronger. And the nanotechnology that hit the humans trapped in rubble or scorched land helped them to regenerate. — Julianna Baggott

I am here because libraries and museums are singular and important institutions with unique contributions to make to our nation. But more importantly, I am here as an advocate for children and families, for healthy communities, for economic development, for scholars and researchers, for individuals who seek educational and informational resources throughout their lives. — Robert Cecil Martin

Perhaps the main basis for the claim that quantum mechanics is weird is the existence of what Einstein called 'spooky action at a distance'. These effects are not only 'spooky' but are also absolutely impossible to achieve within the framework of classical physics. However, if the conception of the physical world is changed from one made out of tiny rock-like entities to a holistic global informational structure that represents tendencies to real events to occur, and in which the choice of which potentiality will be actualized in various places is in the hands of human agents, there is no spookiness about the occurring transfers of information. The postulated global informational structure called the quantum state of the universe is the 'spook' that does the job. But it does so in a completely specified and understandable way, and this renders it basically non-spooky. — Paul Davies

In early 2013, one of the largest high-frequency traders, Virtu Financial, publicly boasted that in five and a half years of trading it had experienced just one day when it hadn't made money, and that the loss was caused by "human error." In 2008, Dave Cummings, the CEO of a high-frequency trading firm called Tradebot, told university students that his firm had gone four years without a single day of trading losses. This sort of performance is possible only if you have a huge informational advantage. — Michael Lewis

into her bed purely for informational — Cathryn Fox

Once you've identified people who can be both mentors and sponsors, you need to make contact. Don't hesitate to introduce yourself to a potential ally at an event or in the elevator and say you admire her work. If the person is spearheading a committee or drive, volunteer to be on it. You can also request an informational interview. You could say something such as I've heard so much about your work [or latest venture] and would love to know more about it. — Kate White

Although we don't tend to think of libraries as media technologies, they are. The public library is, in fact, one of the most important and influential informational media ever created - and one that proliferated only after the arrival of silent reading and movable-type printing. A community's attitudes and preferences toward information take concrete shape in its library's design and services. [ ... ] The library provides, as well, a powerful symbol of our new media landscape: at the center stands the screen of the Internet-connected computers; the printed word has been pushed to the margins. — Nicholas Carr

In addition to fines, violators of decency standards could be required to air public service announcements serving educational and informational needs of children. — Charles W. Pickering

The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm. — Florence Nightingale

If a kid is being bullied at school, my advice to them is to punch the bully in the face. The government can create as many boards, commissions, and informational sessions on sensitivity that it wants. The fact is, we still have bullies, and we still have victims who are trained not to stand up for themselves. — Joe Wurzelbacher

Different groups are differentially vulnerable to advertising; and their vulnerability varies not so much with the character or quantity of advertisements as with the informational resources they can claim by age, education, station in life, and government guarantees of consumer protection. — Michael Schudson

The greater informational levels of the voters, their decreasing inhibitions in expressing disagreement, and their greater preference for Jeffersonian direct involvement, all make the need for a 'permanent campaign' to sell a president's policies all the more crucial. — Dick Morris

The language of chemistry simply does not mesh with that of biology. Chemistry is about substances and how they react, whereas biology appeals to concepts such as information and organisation. Informational narratives permeate biology. — Paul Davies

I would say we must win the information war against ISIS. Every war we have ever been involved in has had a propaganda informational aspect to it. — Marco Rubio

Technologies of the soul tend to be simple, bodily, slow and related to the heart as much as the mind. Everything around us tells us we should be mechanically sophisticated, electronic, quick, and informational in our expressiveness - an exact antipode to the virtues of the soul. It is no wonder, then, that in an age of telecommunications - which, by the way, literally means "distant connections" - we suffer symptoms of the loss of soul. We are being urged from every side to become efficient rather than intimate. — Thomas Moore

In my opinion, further consideration of those views will help us find a way out of the current impasse, and reveal to us the kinds of buildings and cities required by the informational society. — Kenzo Tange

The physical structure of the Internet presents a suggestive story about the concentration of power - it contains "backbones" and "hubs" - but power on the Internet is not spatial but informational; power inheres in protocol. The techno-libertarian utopianism associated with the Internet, in the gee-whiz articulations of the Wired crowd, is grounded in an assumption that the novelty of governance by computer protocols precludes control by corporation or state. But those entities merely needed to understand the residence of power in protocol and to craft political and technical strategies to exert it. In 2006, U.S. telecommunications providers sought to impose differential pricing on the provision of Internet services. The coalition of diverse political interests that formed in opposition - to preserve "Net Neutrality" - demonstrated a widespread awareness that control over the Net's architecture is control of its politics. — Samir Chopra

Language is not made to be believed but to be obeyed, and to compel obedience newspapers, news, proceed by redundancy, in that they tell us what we 'must' think, retain, expect, etc. language is neither informational nor communicational. It is not the communication of information but something quite different: the transmission of order-words, either from one statement to another or within each statement, insofar as each statement accomplishes an act and the act is accomplished in the statement — Gilles Deleuze

Jealousy & Zeal were the split personalities of Zelos. Just as Eros & Himeros were uncoupled in the Big Bang, so were Jealousy & Zeal. Zelos[Jealousy] remained as part of Eros[Love] whilst Zelos[Zeal] found himself reborn through the descendants of Uranus & Gaea as a son of Styx & Pallas, & accordingly, as a brother of Nike[Victory], Cratos[Power & Strength] & Bia[Force & Violence], all four being in the entourage of Zeus. After Nike combined with Athena to form "Pallas Athena", Zelos[Zeal] merged with Zelos[Jealousy] as part of Eros[Love].Zelos[Jealousy], as part of Love was responsible for the relentless jealousy of Hera who zealously persecuted all her husband's paramours & their children![GLOS] — Nicholas Chong

While there are certainly informational spillovers as ideas move from person to person, it is hard to see why in most instances they are not priced. Although it is possible to imagine examples such as the wheelbarrow where an idea cannot be used without revealing the secret, relatively few ideas are of this type. For copyrightable creations such as books, music, plays, movies and art, unpriced spillovers obviously play little role. A book, a CD or a work of art must be purchased before it can be used, and the creator is free to make use of his creation in the privacy of his home without revealing the secret to the public at large. Similarly with movies or plays. In all cases, the creation must effectively be purchased before the "secret" is revealed. — Michele Boldrin

I live on my phone: I have a bunch of news and informational apps on there. — Warren Ellis

But this same dilemma comes up again and again in our own lives, and often we don't choose so wisely. The inverted-U curve reminds us that there is a point at which money and resources stop making our lives better and start making them worse. — Malcolm Gladwell

I had some idea of what I was supposed to say back: Now, I know you don't mean that, when I knew that he did. Or, I love you anyway, young man, like it or not. But I had an inkling that it was following just these pat scripts that had helped to land me in a garish overheated room that smelled like a bus toilet on an otherwise lovely, unusually clement December afternoon. So I said instead, in the same informational tone, "I often hate you, too, Kevin," and turned heel. So — Lionel Shriver

Books are no longer read but eaten, not made of paper but of some informational substance, fully digestible, sugar-coated. — Stanislaw Lem

There are three different kinds of scripting: functional, informational and emotional. — Jay Sankey

It's increasingly clear that governments, major corporations, banks, universities and other such bodies view the defense of their secrets as a desperate matter of institutional survival, so much so that the state has gone to extraordinary lengths to punish and/or threaten to punish anyone who so much as tiptoes across the informational line. — Matt Taibbi

Never believe all that you hear.
Always verify the original source of information. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Speech as known to us was unnecessary. A fragment of a sentence amounted almost to a long-winded redundancy. A gesture, a grunt, the curve of a facial line
even a significantly timed pause yielded informational juice. — Isaac Asimov

Too few people in computer science are aware of some of the informational challenges in biology and their implications for the world. We can store an incredible amount of data very cheaply. — Sergey Brin

It's a product of the fractal laws that govern the world at an informational level. There is no deeper truth. — Terence McKenna

Few intellectual tyrannies can be more recalcitrant than the truths that everybody knows and nearly no one can defend with any decent data (for who needs proof of anything so obvious). And few intellectual activities can be more salutary than attempts to find out whether these rocks of ages might crumble at the slightest tap of an informational hammer. — Stephen Jay Gould

Technological considerations are of great importance to architecture and cities in the informational society. — Kenzo Tange

Money is what fueled the industrial society. But in the informational society, the fuel, the power, is knowledge. One has now come to see a new class structure divided by those who have information and those who must function out of ignorance. This new class has its power not from money, not from land, but from knowledge. — John Kenneth Galbraith

You want failures to be small and informational. Silicon Valley does very well. It knows how to use failure as a tool for improvement. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Three important characteristics of propaganda are that ( l ) it is intentional and purposeful, designed to incite a particular reaction or action in the target audience; (2) it is advantageous to the propagandist or sender which is why advertising, public relations, and political campaigns are considered forms of propaganda; and (3) it is usually one-way and informational (as in a mass media campaign), as opposed to two-way and interactive communication. — Nancy Snow

People have trouble discarding things that they could still use (functional value), that contain helpful information (informational value), and that have sentimental ties (emotional value). When these things are hard to obtain or replace (rarity), they become even harder to part with. — Marie Kondo

Content is the emotional and informational bridge between commerce and consumer. — Jay Baer

I have analyzed the peculiarity of cultural capital, which we should in fact call informational capital to give the notion its full generality, and which itself exists in three forms, embodied, objectified, or institutionalized. — Pierre Bourdieu

Storing genes, vulnerable informational systems, in the immediate vicinity of the mitochondrial respiratory chains, which leak destructive free radicals, is equivalent to storing a valuable library in the wooden shack of a registered pyromaniac. — Nick Lane

I honestly believe that in this day and age of informational ubiquity and nanosecond change, teamwork remains the one sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped. — Patrick Lencioni

I can see no practical application of molecular biology to human affairs ... DNA is a tangled mass of linear molecules in which the informational content is quite inaccessible. — Frank Macfarlane Burnet

To be memorable and to have dramatic impact, informational detail must function actively within the dynamic of a story. — Tim O'Brien

Digital messages and images matter less than their instantaneous delivery; the shock effect always wins out over the consideration of the informational content. — Paul Virilio

We do not inherit the Earth from our parents. We borrow her from our children. — Keith David Henry

As the unexpected becomes ordinary, the spotlight shifts once again to land where your brain thinks it will get more informational bang for the attentional buck. — Greg Carlson

The emergent properties of my computer have existence not because they inhere in the component parts that compose them. They do so because those component materials are related to one another by careful design to work together as a single system in order to produce those properties. The visual, informational, and computational abilities of my computer are new realities, yet not present in the sum total of the inputs of which my computer is constituted. It is only through their systemic relationships that those amazing abilities have being. The novel reality takes existence not through the parts but through their relationships and interactions. Reality is thus significantly constituted through relationality, not merely composition. — Christian Smith

...the mental probabilistic map in one's mind is so geared toward sensational that one would realize informational gains by dispensing with the news. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

In the old days, a liberal and a conservative (a "dove" and a "hawk," say) got their data from one of three nightly news programs, a local paper, and a handful of national magazines, and were thus starting with the same basic facts (even if those facts were questionable, limited, or erroneous). Now each of us constructs a custom informational universe, wittingly (we choose to go to the sources that uphold our existing beliefs and thus flatter us) or unwittingly (our app algorithms do the driving for us). The data we get this way, pre-imprinted with spin and mythos, are intensely one-dimensional. — George Saunders

It was informational. About how to perform oral sex on men. You know, one man teaching another. It was really fascinating and I've always wondered about the techniques he discussed - ow. Ow! You're squeezing a little hard, Van Holtz."
...
"Well, if you're willing to be my test subject - ack! — Shelly Laurenston

I'm funding a new business with money I would have given away in the first place. And I'm starting a responsible business and I'm educating the consumer about chemistry that is totally sustainable - not just from a production point of view, but it also helps sustain the human psyche and physical body - based on informational, energetic matter. — Horst Rechelbacher

We have created a culture of reading poverty in which a vicious cycle of aliteracy has the potential to devolve into illiteracy for many students. By allowing students to pass through our classrooms without learning to love reading, we are creating adults (who then become parents and teachers) who don't read much. They may be capable of reading well enough to perform academic and informational reading, but they do not love to read and have few life reading habits to model for children. — Donalyn Miller

The informational density of the inner planets is visibly converging on Avogadro's number of bits per mole, one bit per atom, — Charles Stross

There is a mountain range behind the town, called the Sierra de Sangre de Cristo. It means the 'Blood of Christ Mountains' in Spanish. — Douglas Preston

All of my main characters are based on my friends and people I met during High School and College. — Dana Journey