Mobilize Quotes & Sayings

A titled leader relies heavily on positional power to get things done; a natural leader is able to mobilize others without the whip of formal authority. — Gary Hamel

I believe that religious witness should not mobilize public authority to impose a view where a decision is inherently private in nature or where people are deeply divided about whether it is ... Americans are plainly and persistently divided about abortion and the fiat of government cannot settle the issue as a matter of conscience or of conduct. — Edward Kennedy

Across the Jewish community, the MLK Shabbat Suppers are part of Repair the World's multi-year effort to mobilize Jews across the nation to serve as tutors, mentors, and college access coaches for public school children. — Lynn Schusterman

The two parts of technology that lower the threshold for activism and technology is the Internet and the mobile phone. Anyone who has a cause can now mobilize very quickly. — Howard Rheingold

Every campaign, Garry Wills once wrote, "taught Nixon the same lesson: mobilize resentment against those in power." History taught the same to many conservative and reactionary populist movements, whose real attitude to those in power and authority was one of a servile, envious, vicarious adoration. — Christopher Hitchens

I am more able to recognize when my mind has gotten itself into trouble and increasingly eager to mobilize the energy to rescue it. Concentration and mindfulness, as remedies to confusion, are either self-activating ... or at least reasonably available remedies to confusion. [pp. 17-18] — Sylvia Boorstein

In any case, fighting will not settle whether the claims were just or unjust. It will only settle which nation can mobilize and handle its fighting forces and its economic forces the better. — Rufus Jones

The U.S. public should not learn that "state policies are overwhelmingly regressive, thus reinforcing and expanding social inequality," though designed in ways that lead "people to think that the government helps only the undeserving poor, allowing politicians to mobilize and exploit anti-government rhetoric and values even as they continue to funnel support to their better-off constituents" - I'm quoting here from the main establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, not from some radical rag. — Noam Chomsky

I see this as the central issue of our time: how to find a substitute for war in human ingenuity, imagination, courage, sacrifice, patience ...
War is not inevitable, however persistent it is, however long a history it has in human affairs. It does not come out of some instinctive human need. It is manufactured by political leaders, who then must make a tremendous effort
by enticement, by propaganda, by coercion
to mobilize a normally reluctant population to go to war. — Howard Zinn

Most relationships are a blend of online and off-line interaction. Courtships take place via text. Political debates are sparked and social movements mobilize on websites. Why not focus on the positive - a celebration of these new exchanges? Because these are the stories we tell each other to explain why our technologies are proof of progress. We like to hear these positive stories because they do not discourage us in our pursuit of the new - our new comforts, our new distractions, our new forms of commerce. And we like to hear them because if these are the only stories that matter, then we don't have to attend to other feelings that persist - that we are somehow more lonely than before, that our children are less empathic than they should be for their age, and that it seems nearly impossible to have an uninterrupted conversation at a family dinner. We — Sherry Turkle

To be successful, you need to mobilize the energy of many others in your organization. If you do the right things, then your vision, your expertise, and your drive can propel you forward and serve as seed crystals. — Michael D. Watkins

E-mail, when it became mobile - what happened? Utilization of email went through the roof. Just pure Internet access and data - what happens when you mobilize it? Multiples. People are dependent upon broadband and as you mobilize it, they become even more dependent on broadband. — Randall L. Stephenson

I knew Pluto was popular among elementary schoolkids, but I had no idea they would mobilize into a 'Save Pluto' campaign. I now have a drawer full of hate letters from hundreds of elementary schoolchildren (with supportive cover letters from their science teachers) pleading with me to reverse my stance on Pluto. The file includes a photograph of the entire third grade of a school posing on their front steps and holding up a banner proclaiming, 'Dr. Tyson - Pluto is a Planet!' — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

To mobilize yourself, decide what you want, determine what will get you what you want, then act - do what will get you what you want most to achieve. — Nido R. Qubein

Therefore, mobilize vigor to attain what is unattained, to master what is unmastered, to realize what is unrealized. In this way your taking to the spiritual life will not be barren, but fruitful and ever-growing. (Samyutta Nikaya II.29) How — Anonymous

And let's just be honest, there is no such place called 'justice,' if by that we envision a finish line, or a point at which the battle is won and the need to continue the struggle over with. After all, even when you succeed in obtaining a measure of justice, you're always forced to mobilize to defend that which you've won. There is no looming vacation. But there is redemption in struggle. — Tim Wise

In their best moments they understood that they would become guilty of self-righteousness because their cause was just; they would become guilty of smugness as their cause moved successfully forward; they would become vicious and tribal as group confronted group; they would become more dogmatic and simplistic as they used propaganda to mobilize their followers; they would become more vain as their audiences enlarged; — David Brooks

Now, I'm a failed political consultant. But sometimes fiction has a way of capturing people's imagination in a way that non-fiction doesn't. Conservatives typically haven't written much fiction - specifically political thrillers - over the years to educate, inspire and mobilize people on issues of great import, but we ought to. — Joel C. Rosenberg

How terrifically dynamic is our time! We can mobilize all the spiritual, all the moral, all the political strength of Africa and Asia on the side of peace. Yes, we! We, the people of Asia and Africa! — Sukarno

Mankind will never win lasting peace so long as men use their full resources only in tasks of war. While we are yet at peace, let us mobilize the potentialities, particularly the moral and spiritual potentialities, which we usually reserve for war. — John Foster Dulles

To me, it's far more efficient to mobilize the imagination. It's far more efficient to hear a creaking step, for example, than to see the face of a monster, which usually looks ridiculous, and where you know that the blood is ketchup. — Michael Haneke

A government should not mobilize an army out of anger, military leaders should not provoke war out of wrath. Act when it is beneficial to do so, desist if not. Anger can revert to joy, wrath can revert to delight, but a nation destroyed cannot be restored to existence, and the dead cannot be restored to life. — Sun Tzu

A strategy would be how do we mobilize support for the remnants of the Syrian Free Army, and it might require combat troops to inspire an international effort. — Jeb Bush

The character truest to itself becomes eccentric rather than immovably centered, as Emerson defined the noble character of the hero. At the edge, the certainty of borders gives way. We are more subject to invasions, less able to mobilize defenses, less sure of who we really are, even as we may be perceived by others as a person of character. The dislocation of self from center to indefinite edge merges us more with the world, so that we can feel blest by everything. — James Hillman

My message to you all is of hope, courage and confidence. Let us mobilize all our resources in a systematic and organized way and tackle the grave issues that confront us with the grim determination and discipline worthy of a great nation. — Muhammad Ali Jinnah

The mistrust we have in our intuitive abilities leaves us, like sheep, extremely vulnerable. Our culture's present emphasis on the importance of intellect at the expense of instinctual knowing has rendered us defenseless. We have crippled ourselves in our hesitation to mobilize our instincts, even when to do so would save our lives. We — Adele Von Rust McCormick

As we make disciples and mobilize God's people for mission, the methodology we use must be congruent with the way of Jesus. We need to learn how to do family on mission. — Mike Breen

It is conventional to tell that constitutional story - of a republican failure ending in restoration - but to do so is to limit the significance of the 1640s to that single constitutional queston. There is much more to say, and to remember, about England's decade of civil war and revolution. Political and religious questions of fundamental importance were thrashed out before broad political audiences as activists and opportunists sought to mobilize support for their proposals. The resulting mass of contemporary argument is alluring to the historian since it lays bare the presumptions of a society very alient to our own. At the same time, by exposing those presumptions to sustained critical examination, this public discussion changed them. — Michael Braddick

Men have committed the greatest crime against women. Insidiously, violently, they have led them to hate women, to be their own enemies, to mobilize their immense strength against themselves, to be the executants of their virile needs. — Helene Cixous

The ability of the Malay political leadership through UMNO to mobilize Malay public opinion caught the British by surprise. A people who only a decade earlier had seemed docile and apathetic were suddenly making their views known through mass demonstrations. The strength and emotion of the Malay reaction convinced the British that they had miscalculated. The British sat down with the Malay political leadership to come up with an alternative to the Malayan Union. — Anonymous

Oil production affects gender relations by reducing the presence of women in the labor force. The failure of women to join the nonagricultural labor force has profound social consequences: it leads to higher fertility rates, less education for girls, and less female influence within the family. It also has far-reaching political consequences: when fewer women work outside the home, they are less likely to exchange information and overcome collective action problems; less likely to mobilize politically, and to lobby for expanded rights; and less likely to gain representation in government. This leaves oil-producing states with atypically strong patriarchal cultures and political institutions — Michael L. Ross

It is my hope that people today will see that, in another time, in another period, when we saw the need for people to speak up, to organize, to mobilize, and to do something about injustice, we came together. — John Lewis

Of course, man is also a weak creature with many bad qualities. And it depends on which of his qualities will in a certain social situation and in a certain climate prevail, which qualities will awaken. The totalitarian system was masterful in how it managed to mobilize all the bad qualities. — Judy Woodruff

Non-democratic regimes always need to mobilize their people against external enemies in order to maintain internal stability. — Natan Sharansky

A greater national focus on the criticality of educational equity is needed in order to mobilize the masses and invite everyone to be a part of the solution. Only when every person on the street realizes the role she can play in this movement, can we begin to change the conversations around education. — Shaheen Mistri

Because their shame is so much deeper and more agonizing, Extreme Narcissists will stop at nothing to avoid feeling it. In fact, almost everything they say and do is intended to avoid the experience of shame. The narcissistic defenses they mobilize against shame are so extreme and pervasive that they color everything about the person's personality, relationships, and behavior, creating a kind of shell or armor against the threat of shame. — Joseph Burgo

Discipline and keen insight had once again served Lincoln most effectively. By regulating his emotions and resisting the impulse to strike back at Chase when the circular first became known, he gained time for his friends to mobilize the massive latent support for his candidacy. Chase's aspirations were crushed without Lincoln's direct intrusion. He had known all along that his treasury secretary was no innocent, but by seeming to accept Chase's word, he allowed the secretary to retain some measure of his dignity while the country retained his services in the cabinet. Lincoln himself would determine the appropriate time for Chase's departure. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

When you can, avoid sitting, or even open up a direct attack. Set your phone or watch timer to go off every hour so that you get up out of your chair, mobilize for a minute or two, and then (if you have to go back to sitting) sit down with your butt and stomach muscles turned on and engaged. — Kelly Starrett

One of the greatest resources people cannot mobilize themselves is that they try to accomplish great things. Most worthwhile achievements are the result of many little things done in a single direction. — Nido Qubein

The basis of successful relief in national distress is to mobilize and organize the infinite number of agencies of self help in the community. That has been the American way. — Herbert Hoover

The museum spreads its surfaces everywhere, and becomes an untitled collection of generalizations that mobilize the eye. — Robert Smithson

We lose eight children and teenagers to gun violence every day. If a mysterious virus suddenly started killing eight of our children every day, America would mobilize teams of doctors and public health officials. We would move heaven and earth until we found a way to protect our children. But not with gun violence. — Elizabeth Warren

Communication accompanies social transactions and can instruct or stultify, mobilize or intimidate, but it is no substitute for production, collaboration and fight. — Mario Bunge

When I think about the history of the SS United States, I wonder if she has something to teach us about the history of the church. The church, like the SS United States, has been designed for battle. The purpose of the church is to mobilize a people to accomplish a mission. Yet we seem to have turned the church as troop carrier into the church as luxury liner. We seem to have organized ourselves, not to engage in battle for the souls of peoples around the world, but to indulge ourselves in the peaceful comforts of the world. — David Platt

Leadership is not about sitting and presiding, it's about a going somewhere. To be buoyant, you must not only ignite passion around a common quest, you must also mobilize your team to take a journey with you toward a common destination, or what I call a "real ambition." — Kevin Allen

When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope. — Henri Nouwen

Once you reach people on an authentic emotional level, they will reward your faith in them with their belief in you, and they will mobilize to get the job done. — Kevin Allen

The old concept of chronological, orderly, symmetrical development of character died when it was discovered that the unconscious motivations are entirely at odds with fabricated conventions. Human beings do not grow in perfect symmetry. They oscillate, expand, contract, backtrack, arrest themselves, retrogress, mobilize, atrophy in part, proceed erratically according to experience and traumas. Some aspects of the personality mature, others do not. Some live in the past, some in the present. Some people are futuristic characters, some are cubistic, some are hard-edged, some geometric, some abstract, some impressionistic, some surrealistic! — Anais Nin

If the business community and political elite want to go to war they find it easy to mobilize domestic consent. — Edward S. Herman

Allowing the war-prone individuals, bent on evil, to gain power in governments must be one of the most significant reasons that wars erupt. Individuals with prowar inclinations are naturally aggressive and seek power over others. As Friedrich Hayek argued in his book The Road to Serfdom, "the worst get on top." The power seekers also convince themselves that they are superior to average people and have a moral responsibility to use force to mold the world as they see fit. The propaganda is that war is for the sake of "goodness and righteousness." Isabel Paterson described it in her book The God of the Machine as "the humanitarian with a guillotine." Those who are more prone to peace tend to be complacent and to not resist the propaganda required to mobilize otherwise peaceful people to fight and die for the lies told and the false noble goals proposed by the self-appointed moral leaders. — Ron Paul

Once the rudiments of loyalty are in place, the ambitious have been inclined to work with them to promote their own political advancement, and they have availed themselves of the symbols of loyalty to mobilize popular support for their own personal ends. — Michael Waller

At first happiness might seem like just desserts for biological fitness (more accurately, the states that would have led to fitness in the environment in which we evolved). We are happier when we are healthy, well-fed, comfortable, safe, prosperous, knowledgeable, respected, non-celibate, and loved. Compared to their opposites, these objects of striving are conducive to reproduction. The function of happiness would be to mobilize the mind to seek the keys to Darwinian fitness. When we are unhappy, we work for the things that make us happy; when we are happy, we keep the status quo. The problem is, how much fitness is worth striving for? — Steven Pinker

I stressed that I did not want to be treated like a hero. I was only one member of the revolutionary masses who had fulfilled his duty towards his country. It was easy to write, rant, and mobilize people using the internet. The real heroes of this revolution were the people who had died and been injured. — Wael Ghonim

Talking about peoples lived experiences is a powerful way to mobilize them. We can create new rules. — Celinda Lake

If you take a guy like a Barack Obama, who's raised millions of dollars from the most donors in the history of this nation, it suggests that there's a deep and profound hunger for a new politics to come forth. And a guy like him has been able to mobilize that and to reach certain parts of the hip-hop generation. — Michael Eric Dyson

Putin needed an enemy, an Other, against which to mobilize. LGBT people are really convenient: we're sort of the ultimate foreign agent. — Masha Gessen

In order to rally people, governments need enemies ... if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us. — Nhat Hanh

Authoritative leaders mobilize people toward a vision. Affiliative leaders create emotional bonds and harmony. Democratic leaders build consensus through participation. Pacesetting leaders expect excellence and self- direction. Coaching leaders develop people for the future. And coercive leaders demand immediate compliance. — Daniel Goleman

Political activists in Hong Kong and Taiwan use Facebook as their primary tool to mobilize support for their causes and activities. — Rebecca MacKinnon

People must know that their ideas will be listened to and, if they have merit, acted upon. If they do, it is possible to mobilize individual creativity on a very broad scale. — James A. Champy

But what is now encompassed by the one word ("school") are two very different kinds of institutions that, in function, finance and intention, serve entirely different roles. Both are needed for our nation's governance. But children in one set of schools are educated to be governors; children in the other set of schools are trained for being governed. The former are given the imaginative range to mobilize ideas for economic growth; the latter are provided with the discipline to do the narrow tasks the first group will prescribe. — Jonathan Kozol

Leadership is accomplishing something through other people that wouldn't have happened if you weren't there ... Leadership is being able to mobilize ideas and values that energize other people ... Leaders develop a story line that engages other people. — Noel Tichy

Creative people have an abiding curiosity and an insatiable desire to learn how and why things work. They take nothing for granted. They are interested in things around them and tend to stow away bits and pieces of information in their minds for the future use. And, they have a great ability to mobilize their thinking and experiences for use in solving a new problem. — William Redington Hewlett

Everything we've done has been designed to make sure that we address that number one priority. That's what the sanctions regime was all about. That's how we were able to mobilize the international community, including some folks that we are not particularly close to, to abide by these sanctions. That's how these crippling sanctions came about, was because we [USA] were able to gain global consensus that Iran having a nuclear weapon would be a problem for everybody. — Barack Obama

I was proud to witness American Jewish organizations found the Save Darfur Coalition in June 2004 to mobilize a coordinated interfaith response to the ongoing humanitarian disaster. — Jan Schakowsky

The mere existence of an additional child or children in the family could signify Less. Less time alone with parents. Less attention for hurts and disappointments. Less approval for accomplishments ... No wonder children struggle so fiercely to be first or best. No wonder they mobilize all their energy to have more or most. Or better still, all. — Adele Faber

I was surprised by how forces in the community could mobilize against a community changing. There were many examples of this. In St. George, members of the Latino community proposed having a "Dixie Fiesta." The resistance to that surprised me. — Richard Benjamin

An emigres artistic problem: the numerically equal blocks of a lifetime are unequal in weight, depending on whether they comprise young or adult years. The adult years may be richer and more important for life and for creative activity both, but the subconscious, memory, language, all the understructure of creativity, are formed very early; for a doctor, that won't make problems, but for a novelist or a composer, leaving the place to which his imagination, his obsessions, and thus his fundamental themes are bound could make for a kind of ripping apart. He must mobilize all his powers, all his artists wiles, to turn the disadvantages of that situation to benefits.
[ ... ] Only returning to the native land after a long absence can reveal the substantial strangeness of the world and of existence. — Milan Kundera

The ability to master certain tasks in a state of distraction proves that their solution has become a matter of habit. Distraction as provided by art presents a covert control of the extent to which new tasks have become soluble by apperception. Since, moreover, individuals are tempted to avoid such tasks, art will tackle the most difficult and most important ones where it is able to mobilize the masses. Today it does so in the film. Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one. — Walter Benjamin

Listen to us rather than to Arkady Mamontov talking about us. Don't twist and distort everything we say. Let us enter into dialogue and contact with the country, which is ours too, not just Putin's and the Patriarch's. Like Solzhenitsyn, I believe that in the end, words will crush concrete. Solzhenitsyn wrote, 'the word is more sincere than concrete, so words are not trifles. Once noble people mobilize, their words will crush concrete.' — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

The bottom line is that we do not accept climate change because we wish to avoid the anxiety it generates and the deep changes it requires. In this regard, it is not unlike any other major threat. However, because it carries none of the clear markers that would normally lead our brains to overrule our short-term interests, we actively conspire with each other, and mobilize our own biases to keep it perpetually in the background. — George Marshall

The National Liberation Front was not ... a viable, autonomous organization with a life of its own; it was a facade, a "front," by means of which the DLD (the North Vietnamese Communist Party) sought to mobilize the people in the South to accomplish its ends, and to garner international sympathy and support. — George Allen

Our people outside of prison used my name to mobilize the community locally and internationally. But for me to be treated separately from my colleagues, who had contributed as much as and even more than I had, would have been a betrayal of them. — Nelson Mandela

Some leaders are not intimidated by opposition; they actually thrive on it. It wakes them up. It energizes them. It calls them to battle. It causes them to mobilize their thoughts and energy. — John Ortberg

A family-friendly "eco-populism" can mobilize and unite millions who, at this point, would be turned off by a more extreme set of demands. The momentum will build, through these early efforts, for more comprehensive solutions. — Van Jones

Progress on problems is the measure of leadership; leaders mobilize people to face problems, and communities make progress on problems because leaders challenge them and help them to do so. — Ronald A. Heifetz

Take the first step, and your mind will mobilize all its forces to your aid. But the first essential is that you begin. Once the battle is startled, all that is within and without you will come to your assistance. — Robert Collier

It is not true that the perfection of police power is the result of the state's Machiavellianism or of some transitory influence. The whole structure of society of society implies it, of necessity. The more we mobilize the forces of nature, the more must we mobilize men and the more do we require order. — Jacques Ellul

The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision. — Ken Blanchard

Negative identity is a phenomenon whereby you define yourself by what you are not. This has enormous advantages, especially in terms of the hardening of psychological boundaries and the fortification of the ego: one can mobilize a great deal of energy on this basis and the new nation [the US] certainly did ... The downside ... is that this way of generating an identity for yourself can never tell you who you actually are, in the affirmative sense. It leaves, in short, an emptiness at the center, such that you always have to be in opposition to something, or even at war with someone or something, in order to feel real. — Morris Berman

Terrorists regard themselves as a vanguard. They're trying to mobilize others to their cause. I mean, every specialist on terrorism knows that. — Noam Chomsky

Someone will always want to mobilize Death on a massive scale for economic Domination or revenge. And the task, taken As a task, appeals to the imagination. The military is an engineering profession. — Robert Hass

Conflict manipulation is the favored strategy of people who incessantly worry about failure, of managers who excel at motivational chats that point out the highly unpleasant consequences if the company's goals are not achieved, and of social movements that attempt to mobilize people through fear. — Peter M. Senge

I had furthermore spoken on the assumption that Russia would mobilize, whereas the assumption of the German Government had hitherto been, officially, that Serbia would receive no support; and what I had said must influence the German Government to take the matter seriously. — Edward Grey

We're learning as we go. We're a lot smarter this time. We understand what it takes to mobilize away from the threat of a hurricane. — Ray Nagin

The Trans Pacific Partnership (and fast-track authority to whisk it through Congress without debate) is fast approaching. If you haven't seen our video about it, please watch. If you have, please share. And mobilize and organize friends and colleagues to call their senators and representatives to tell them to vote against this reprehensible deal. — Robert Reich

The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Brazil has rediscovered itself, and this rediscovery is being expressed in its people's enthusiasm and their desire to mobilize to face the huge problems that lie ahead of us. — Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva

Today even the dimmest of capitalist can see that the centralized nation-state, so promising an idea a generation ago, has lost all credibility with the population. Anarchism now is the idea that has seized hearts everywhere, some form of it will come to envelop every centrally governed society ... If a nation wants to preserve itself, what other steps can it take, but mobilize and go to war? Central governments were never designed for peace. Their structure is line and staff, the same as an army. The national idea depends on war. A general European war, with ever striking worker a traitor, flags threatened, the sacred soils of homelands defiled, would be just the ticket to wipe Anarchism off the political map. The national idea would be reborn. One trembles at the pestilent forms that would rise up afterward, from the swamp of the ruined Europe. — Thomas Pynchon

One lesson is that to understand what is happening we should attend not only to critical events of the real world, often dismissed from history, but also to what leaders and elite opinion believe, however tinged with fantasy. Another lesson is that alongside the flights of fancy concocted to terrify and mobilize the public (and perhaps believed by some who are trapped in their own rhetoric), there — Noam Chomsky

The power of podcasting is pretty remarkable. It is such an amazing way to mobilize fans. It's almost like they're part of your family. They probably listen to you more than they listen to their own families. I know that's true for me. So there is a real bond there. — Scott Aukerman

If we are to curb emissions in the next decade, we need a massive mobilization larger than any in history. We need a Marshall Plan for the Earth. This plan must mobilize financing and technology transfer on scales never seen before. It must get technology onto the ground in every country to ensure we reduce — Naomi Klein

The possibility to mobilize the international community to act on human suffering is what drives me every day as a photojournalist. — Lynsey Addario

You can't mobilize people and connect with them authentically when they can't see the true you. — Kevin Allen

Hearing this announcement, your soul will mobilize accordingly. It will mobilize ecstatically, in fact, because this is what your soul was born for. (Trust me, your soul has been waiting for you to wake up to your own existence for years.) But — Elizabeth Gilbert

Actually, they (extremists) wanted to take this opportunity to mobilize the people for the religious unification and to divert the government's attention from other issues in the war against terrorism. So they are using this issue as a matter of unity. — Shahbaz Bhatti

To make your spiritual yearning public, I thought, was to announce that you were wounded. To turn deeply into religion was to admit that your own resources were so weak you had to resort to magic and miracle cures for healing. To acquire faith was to mobilize the powers of an overly active imagination. — Vanessa L Ochs

It is of course no secret to contemporary philosophers and psychologists that man himself is changing in our violent century, under the influence, of course, not only of war and revolution, but also of practically everything else that lays claim to being "modern" and "progressive." We have already cited the most striking forms of Nihilist Vitalism, whose cumulative effect has been to uproot, disintegrate, and "mobilize" the individual, to substitute for his normal stability and rootedness a senseless quest for power and movement, and to replace normal human feeling by a nervous excitability. The work of Nihilist Realism, in practice as in theory, has been parallel and complementary to that of Vitalism: a work of standardization, specialization, simplification, mechanization, dehumanization; its effect has been to "reduce" the individual to the most "Primitive" and basic level, to make him in fact the slave of his environment, the perfect workman in Lenin's worldwide "factory. — Seraphim Rose

One of the sure signs that we have been co-opted by our culture is that, like frogs in the proverbial kettle, we have grown comfortable with things that should shock us and mobilize us to action. We no longer feel the heat of outrage against things that anger God. We have so embraced the American dream that we can no longer see or feel the world's nightmare of poverty, suffering, and hopelessness. — Richard Stearns

Objectives are not fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are a means to mobilize resources and energies of the business for the making of the future. — Peter Drucker