Structural Theory Quotes & Sayings

Do you think it is only a little thing to possess a house from which lovely things can be seen? — Saint Teresa Of Avila

It is the question that is also asked by modern political theory: Can politics accept truth as a structural category? Or must truth, as something unattainable, be relegated to the subjective sphere, its place taken by an attempt to build peace and justice using whatever instruments are available to power? By relying on truth, does not politics, in view of the impossibility of attaining consensus on truth, make itself a tool of particular traditions that in reality are merely forms of holding on to power?
And yet, on the other hand, what happens when truth counts for nothing? What kind of justice is then possible? Must there not be common criteria that guarantee real justice for all - criteria that are independent of the arbitrariness of changing opinions and powerful lobbies? Is it not true that the great dictatorships were fed by the power of the ideological lie and that only truth was capable of bringing freedom? — Pope Benedict XVI

I went on to say that no lies, after all, were as strong as the lies we tell ourselves and then unfortunately have to keep telling to make the whole puke stay down in our stomachs, eating us alive, as he would find out soon enough. — Alice Munro

I love the three-act theory. It works and works beautifully. But you don't necessarily have to structure a story that way: Cortazar and Borges wrote in different structural styles. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

You're going to have 100s of millions of users on Chrome, spanning mobile, tablets, and desktops. That is one unfragmented base. That uniformity is probably better than most of the issues across browsers. — Sundar Pichai

Pythagoras (550 BCE), with his theory of numbers, had been a source of inspiration for those who sought harmony in the Universe. His aim was to show in his philosophy that there was a high, structural, divine order to the Universe. This was a natural habitat for the souls. Mathematics was the tool to investigate this order. — Altay Birand

The fundamental biological variant is DNA. That is why Mendel's definition of the gene as the unvarying bearer of hereditary traits, its chemical identification by Avery (confirmed by Hershey), and the elucidation by Watson and Crick of the structural basis of its replicative invariance, are without any doubt the most important discoveries ever made in biology. To this must be added the theory of natural selection, whose certainty and full significance were established only by those later theories. — Jacques Monod

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power. — Judith Butler

If theory is the role of the architect, then such beautiful proofs are the role of the craftsman. Of course, as with the great renaissance artists, such roles are not mutually exclusive. A great cathedral has both structural impressiveness and delicate detail. A great mathematical theory should similarly be beautiful on both large and small scales. — Michael Atiyah

There is no self-knowledge but an historical one. No one knows what he himself is who does not know his fellow men, especially the most prominent one of the community, the master's master, the genius of the age. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

[The] structural theory is of extreme simplicity. It assumes that the molecule is held together by links between one atom and the next: that every kind of atom can form a definite small number of such links: that these can be single, double or triple: that the groups may take up any position possible by rotation round the line of a single but not round that of a double link: finally that with all the elements of the first short period [of the periodic table], and with many others as well, the angles between the valencies are approximately those formed by joining the centre of a regular tetrahedron to its angular points. No assumption whatever is made as to the mechanism of the linkage. Through the whole development of organic chemistry this theory has always proved capable of providing a different structure for every different compound that can be isolated. Among the hundreds of thousands of known substances, there are never more isomeric forms than the theory permits. — Nevil Vincent Sidgwick

As the crow flies. That's how she liked to walk. So what if she had nowhere to go? So what if no one on earth knew or probably cared where she was or when she'd get home? That wasn't the point. It didn't mean she had to take the long way. She was starting a new school in the morning, and she meant to put as much distance between herself and tomorrow as she could. Walking fast didn't stop the earth's slow roll, but sometimes it felt like it could. — Francine Pascal

I think there are still unanswered questions about Benghazi. I think there are unanswered questions, and they could be easily answered. But I think they need to be answered. — Condoleezza Rice

Each being is sacred
meaning that each has inherent value that cannot be ranked in a hierarchy or compared to the value of another being. — Starhawk

(Game theory is) essentially a structural theory. It uncovers the logical structure of a great variety of conflict situations and describes this structure in mathematical terms. Sometimes the logical structure of a conflict situation admits rational decisions; sometimes it does not. — Anatol Rapoport

I wonder if to stare into the face of God will drive me crazy. (I wonder who would blink first.) — Tim Allen

Abstract ideas are connected in a systematic way to more concrete experiences. — Steven Pinker

Open text is one of a pair of terms popularized by Eco to refer to kinds of interpretative interactions between text and reader. An open text, unlike a closed one such as a work of popular fiction, is not aimed at a specific reader in a specific social context. It is also open in that its theme, structure and language are more complex, less explicit, more "open-ended": what other critics as Barthes in reception theory would call "Indeterminate". The open text constructs the model of its own reader as part of its structural strategy. — Katie Wales

It would probably be wiser to nail up over the door of the new quantum theory a notice, 'Structural alterations in progress - No admittance except on business', and particularly to warn the doorkeeper to keep out prying philosophers. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

Sexual objectification doesn't get oppressive until it is done consistently, and to a specific group of people, and with no regard whatsoever paid to their humanity. Then it ceases to become about desire and starts to be about control. Seeing another person as meat and fat and bone and nothing else gives you power over them, if only for an instant. Structural sexual objection of women draws that instant out into an entire matrix of hurt. It tells us that women are bodies first, idealised, subservient bodies, and men are not. — Laurie Penny

I had a great first year and Mr. MacDonald was my biggest supporter. He gave me the encouragement I needed that first year to get my career started on a positive note. — Jim Evans

If ardent passions push not men on to lofty enterprise, calm wisdom never will accomplish it. — Vittorio Alfieri

I call this theory mystical pluralism because of its similarity to John Hick's pluralist interpretation of religion. The theory is essentialist in both the therapeutic and epistemological senses described above. Its thesis is that mystical traditions initiate common transformative processes in the consciousness of mystics. Though mystical doctrines and practices may be quite different across traditions, they nevertheless function in parallel ways - they disrupt the processes of mind that maintain ordinary, egocentric experience and induce a structural transformation of consciousness. The essential characteristic of this transformation is an increasingly sensitized awareness/knowledge of Reality that manifests as (among other things) an enhanced sense of emotional well-being, an expanded locus of concern engendering greater compassion for others, an enhanced capacity to creatively negotiate one's environment, and a greater capacity for aesthetic appreciation. — Randall Studstill

I'm up there trying to do my Chore. I've got the men's bathroom. There's something ... Pat there's something in the toilet up there. That won't flush. The thing. It won't go away. It keeps reappearing. Flush after flush. I'm only here for instructions. Possibly also protective equipment. I couldn't even describe the thing in the toilet. All I can say is if it was produced by anything human then I have to say I'm worried. Don't even ask me to describe it. If you want to go up and have a look, I'm 100% confident it's still there. It's made it real clear it's not going anywhere. — David Foster Wallace

No, something far more mysterious has taken Felix. He has heard the unicorn." Like a performer, the cat gave a dramatic pause.
"Um," said Lionheart.
"You have no idea what I'm talking about, have you?"
"No, sorry."
"Mortals," growled the cat. — Anne Elisabeth Stengl