Modern Arrangements Quotes & Sayings

Thus, it is a political axiom that power follows property. But it is now a historical fact that the means of production are fast becoming the monopolistic property of Big Business and Big Government. Therefore, if you believe in democracy, make arrangements to distribute property as widely as possible. Or take the right to vote. In principle, it is a great privilege. In practice, as recent history has repeatedly shown, the right to vote, by itself, is no guarantee of liberty. Therefore, if you want to avoid dictatorship by referendum, break up modern society's merely functional collectives into self-governing, voluntarily co-operating groups, capable of functioning outside the bureaucratic systems of Big Business and Big Government. — Aldous Huxley

In view of the frequent occurrence of modern domestic groups that do not consist of, or contain, an exclusive pair-bonded father and mother, I cannot see why anyone should insist that our ancestors were reared in monogamous nuclear families and that pair-bonding is more natural than other arrangements. — Marvin Harris

Fine taste is an aspect of genius itself, and is the faculty of delicate appreciation, which makes the best effects of art our own. — Nathaniel Parker Willis

It was not until the Industrial Age, that a new demand began growing: the demand for employees. In response, the government took over the task of mass education, adopting the Prussian system, which is what most Western school systems in the world are still modeled after today. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

A modern economy is marked by the feasibility of endogenous change: Modernization brings myriad arrangements from expanded property rights to company law and financial institutions. — Edmund Phelps

The benefits of a philosophy of neo-religious pessimism are nowhere more apparent than in relation to marriage, one of modern society's most grief-stricken arrangements, which has been rendered unnecessarily hellish by the astonishing secular supposition that it should be entered into principally for the sake of happiness. Christianity and Judaism present marriage not as a union inspired and governed by subjective enthusiasm but rather, and more modestly, as a mechanism by which individuals can assume an adult position in society and thence, with the help of a close friend, undertake to nurture and educate the next generation under divine guidance. These limited expectations tend to forestall the suspicion, so familiar to secular partners, that there might have been more intense, angelic or less fraught alternatives available elsewhere. Within the religious ideal, friction, disputes and boredom are signs not of error, but of life proceeding according to plan. — Alain De Botton

One stood behind me and ran her hands down my chest, her breasts rubbing against my back. The next stood in front of me holding onto my shirt and pulling me close to her as she ground into me seductively. The third danced slowly and seductively with the second girl, giving the girl-on-girl effect. I knew I was going to burst at any moment, so I had to close my eyes and take repeated deep breaths to calm down.
"What's the matter Aid-man, you feeling a little frustrated?" Dixon boasted from under his lap dancer.
"Shut up Dixon." Though I didn't really want him to shut up, his teasing was distracting me pretty well. "I'm going to kill you for this."
"Oh no little man!" He laughed loudly. "Thank your future wife! That one is on her!" he howled. — Sadie Grubor

Too much counterpoint; what is worse, Protestant counterpoint. — Thomas Beecham

She made him want to lose control, something he never did. She also made him want things he'd never imagined for his own life, like a family and someone to come home to every night. — Katie Reus

Happiness is not being afraid. — Roy Keane

Of all modern notions, the worst is this: that domesticity is dull. Inside the home, they say, is dead decorum and routine; outside is adventure and variety. But the truth is that the home is the only place of liberty, the only spot on earth where a man can alter arrangements suddenly, make an experiment or indulge in a whim. The home is not the one tame place in a world of adventure; it is the one wild place in a world of rules and set tasks. — G.K. Chesterton

Ian took a good look in my eyes and sighed in resignation. "Dammit, the boss didn't tell me you were part elf."
"I'm not."
"Are you feeling good?"
"Quite."
"Confident?"
"You know it."
"Absurdly relaxed to the point of doing something stupid?"
I scooted my tuffet toward my delectable partner. If Ian wanted to ensure every man here knew I was taken, I was more than willing to help spread the word. "Why don't you come over here and try me. — Lisa Shearin

A = A is a simplification, one so radical that it sometimes utterly distorts reality. It skins reality alive. Is A = A useful? Does logic come in handy? Is math a magnificent symbolic system with which to comprehend what's around us? And is math based on A = A? Yes. Absolutely. But math and logic are just that - very, very simplified representations. Symbolic systems with massive powers. But symbolic systems that sometimes do enormous injustice to the richness of that which they attempt to represent. Symbol systems that sometimes do enormous injustice to science's greatest mystery, cosmic creativity. — Howard Bloom

I wish I did believe in God. It would be a great relief to think, 'God'll take care of it. God'll put gas in the car tomorrow' — Wayne Coyne

How do you change the world? One room at a time. Which room? The one you're in. — Peter Block

We also have to bear in mind that our own sense of what is plausible and implausible is severely limited by the fact that the modern world is dominated by an extremely narrow range of family arrangements. Looking in anthropology books on kinship and marriage is like opening a book on a huge variety of dead and dying languages, all victims of the inexorable homogenisation of the world that has been in progress since the dawn of civilisation. — Patricia Crone

The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds. — William James