System Of Life Quotes & Sayings

You have your way of life, we ours. In your system of life we are essentially without 'honor.' In our system of life you are essentially without morality. In your system of life we must forever appear graceless; to us you must forever appear godless. — Maurice Samuel

Should one continue to base one's life on a system of belief that
for all its occasional wisdom and frequent beauty
is demonstrably untrue? — Charles Templeton

It is important to feel the anger without judging it, without attempting to find meaning in it. It may take many forms: anger at the health-care system, at life, at your loved one for leaving. Life is unfair. Death is unfair. Anger is a natural reaction to the unfairness of loss. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

And under all this vast illusion of the cosmopolitan planet, with its empires and its Reuter's agency, the real life of man goes on concerned with this tree or that temple, with this harvest or that drinking-song, totally uncomprehended, totally untouched. And it watches from its splendid parochialism, possibly with a smile of amusement, motor-car civilization going its triumphant way, outstripping time, consuming space, seeing all and seeing nothing, roaring on at last to the capture of the solar system, only to find the sun cockney and the stars suburban. — G.K. Chesterton

The World is currently facing a confluence of mounting shortages in three commodities essential to the continuance of human life on this planet: water, energy, and food. Those three elements combine into something much greater than the sum of its parts, a looming global disaster by 2030. By 2030 the demand for water will increase by 30 percent, while demands for both energy and food will shoot up 50 percent. All this will be driven by a global population increase to about 8 billion people, placing tremendous stress on our highly industrialized global food system. — John L. Casti

I lived a very isolated life. When you start at 20, you have a lot of nonsense to work out of your system. — Edie Sedgwick

If there is no fate and our interactions depend on such a complex system of chance encounters, what potentially important connections do we fail to make? What life changing relationships or passionate and lasting love affairs are lost to chance? — Simon Pegg

Mexico is a country without political freedom, without freedom of speech, without a free press, without a free ballot, without a jury system, without political parties, without any of our cherJ ished guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is a land where there has been no contest for the office of president for more than a generation, where the executive rules all things by means of a standing army, where political offices are sold for a fixed price. I found Mexico to be a land where the people are poor because they have no rights, where peonage is the rule for the great mass, and where actual chattel slavery obtains for hundreds of thousands. — John Kenneth Turner

By comparison, the Integrated Human model of human nature, in addition to the two elements of our previous model, includes: A conscious analytic system, known as the slow brain (where logic resides) A subconscious intuitive system, or fast brain The full range of motivational drives (of which the drive to acquire is only one) Basic ideas of moral behavior, or moral intuitions Distinguishing characteristics, or personality traits Together, these elements of our nature provide all of the fundamental functions necessary for living life as a complete, Integrated Human - and they are the springboard for the development of leadership character. As our research data has shown, the ability to leverage all of these areas influence leadership's ability to achieve positive organizational outcomes. — Fred Kiel

Dustin Wax says it well: No matter how organized you are, how together your system is, how careful you are about processing your inbox, making a task list, and working your calendar, if you don't stop every now and again to look at the "big picture," you're going to get overwhelmed. You end up simply responding to what's thrown at you, instead of proactively creating the conditions of your life.16 Find a time for your weekly review, add it to your calendar, and commit to doing it every week. I really can't over-emphasize the importance of this discipline. — Tim Challies

The gut has not only a remarkable system of nerves to gather all this information, but also a huge surface area. That makes it the body's largest sensory organ. Eyes, ears, nose, or the skin pale by comparison. The information they gather is received by the conscious mind and used to formulate a response to our environment. They can be seen as life's parking sensors. The gut, by contrast, is a huge matrix, sensing our inner life and working on the subconscious mind. — Giulia Enders

Note for Americans and other city-dwelling life-forms: the rural British, having eschewed central heating as being far too complicated and in any case weakening moral fiber, prefer a system of piling small pieces of wood and lumps of coal, topped by large, wet logs, possibly made of asbestos, into small, smoldering heaps, known as "There's nothing like a roaring open fire is there?" Since none of these ingredients are naturally inclined to burn, underneath all this they apply a small, rectangular, waxy white lump, which burns cheerfully until the weight of the fire puts it out. These little white blocks are called firelighters. No one knows why. — Terry Pratchett

Life is a system of relations rather than a positive and independent existence; and he who would be happy himself and make others happy must carefully preserve these relations. He cannot stand apart in surly and haughty egoism; let him learn that he is as much dependent on others as others are on him. — George Augustus Henry Sala

The intoxication of frenzy and, ultimately, some suitable crime reveal
in a moment the whole meaning of a life. Without exactly advocating crime, the romantics insist on
paying homage to a basic system of privileges which they illustrate with the conventional images of the
outlaw, the criminal with the heart of gold, and the kind brigand. Their works are bathed in blood and
shrouded in mystery. The soul is delivered, at a minimum expenditure, of its most hideous desires
desires that a later generation will assuage in extermination camps. Of course these works are also a
challenge to the society of the times. But romanticism, at the source of its inspiration, is chiefly concerned
with defying moral and divine law. That is why its most original creation is not, primarily, the
revolutionary, but, logically enough, the dandy. — Albert Camus

Wrong is wrong. Wrong is out there and lives among us. When do you get tired of voting for the lesser of the two evils? Wrong cannot be fought unless you understand what you are fighting against. Wrong can be fought against by using its own energy against itself. Let the system destroy itself. Accelerate the process by backing your resources out of the system. The system may not collapse in your lifetime, but you have the ability to help set up future generations, your children's children, to have a better life even further away from the system. — Annie Berdel

The details of our struggle to survive and prosper, in what has been a difficult and sometimes bitter relationship with a system of laws and practices that deny us access to the tools necessary for productive and industrious life, are available to any serious student of history or sociology. — August Wilson

How do you get up in the morning? Another wasted life it's so boring The system never failed you You failed yourself and all of your friends Now your heart is failing too A total system failure they pronounce you — Juliana Hatfield

If consciousness is the ground of being rather than an epiphenomenon of physical processes, we may find that a basic question asked by modern astronomy and space science- 'Is there life out there?'- should be rephrased. Organic life, as well as intelligence, may already be a property enmeshed in the fabric of the cosmos, brought to fruition through the spiraling dynamics of the solar system and the galaxy, built into the structure of the universe itself. — Daniel Pinchbeck

A wonderful acting teacher I love, Josh Pais, has a system I love for being in the moment in acting, but also in life. And one of the things he reminds me of is to take a moment and just be here now. — Alysia Reiner

We must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers . — Martin Luther King Jr.

Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirrour of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species. — Samuel Johnson

No civilization would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other. — Hannah Arendt

Here was a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers; under such circumstances immorality was exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery. Things — Upton Sinclair

Think for a moment about an emergency siren. What is its purpose? The siren is an indication and a warning that something harmful is coming. If we hear it, we naturally panic. But what happens when they need to test the siren? What happens when it's just a drill to see how we will react? The test siren sounds exactly the same, but it is "only a test." Although it looks, sounds, and feels real, it is not. It is only a test. And we're reminded of that again and again throughout the test. This is exactly what Allah tells us about this life. It is going to look, sound, and feel very, very real. At times it's going to scare us. At times it's going to make us cry. At times it's going to make us flee, instead of standing firm - even more firm - in our places. But this life and everything in it is only a test. It is not actually real. And like that test of the emergency broadcast system; it is training us for what is real. — Yasmin Mogahed

The idea persists that faith is a remnant of an ancient way of life, a way of knowing that asks for unthinking acceptance of a belief system or adherence to specific dogma. This may be the case for some spiritual traditions, but the Buddha insisted that his disciples investigate his teachings with the powers of reason, test them in the inner laboratory of meditation, and build their faith on a firm foundation of knowledge. As a result, faith in the Dharma implies faith in one's ability to recognize truth when it presents itself and to take responsibility for verifying it through analysis and meditative experience. — Dharma Publishing

Faith in life, in oneself, in others must be built on the hard rock of realism; that is to say, on the capacity to see evil where it is, to see swindle, destructiveness, and selfishness not only when they are obvious but in their many disguises and rationalizations. Indeed, faith, love, and hope must go together with such a passion for seeing reality in all its nakedness that the outsider would be prone to call the attitude 'cynicism.' And cynical it is, when we mean by it the refusal to be taken in by the sweet and plausible lies that cover almost everything that is said and believed. But this kind of cynicism is not cynicism; it is uncompromisingly critical, a refusal to play the game in a system of deception. — Erich Fromm

The 'find it, fix it 'model of medicine doesn't work any more. The U.S. healthcare system is bankrupting the country, bankrolling the insurance companies and exhausting healthcare staff. And despite all that, we are ranked 50th in the world for life expectancy. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

For years I supported capital punishment, but I have come to believe that our criminal justice system is incapable of adequately distinguishing between the innocent and guilty. It is reprehensible and immoral to gamble with life and death. — James Frey

There is need for clarity on what your leadership role stands for and the kind of unwavering and unstoppable beliefs required. These beliefs must not be deterred by current circumstances and conditions. They must become your source of internal strength and inspiration, especially during trying times. How strong, positive and empowering is your belief system as a leader? — Archibald Marwizi

We're in our own world, and we're in the world that has been given us outside, and the problem is to achieve3 a harmonious relationship between the two. I come into this society, so I've got to live in terms of this society. It's ridiculous not to live in terms of this society because, unless I do, I'm not living. But I mustn't allow this society to dictate to me how I should live. One has to build up one's own system that may violate the expectations of the society, and sometimes society doesn't accept that. But the task of life is to live within the field provided by the society that is really supporting you. — Joseph Campbell

The decisions of citizens either in matters of private business or political life of the nation, are directly related to the prevailing value system of the nation — Sunday Adelaja

In my Future of an Illusion I was concerned [ ... ] with what the ordinary man understands by his religion, that system of doctrines and pledges that on the one hand explains the riddle of this world to him with an enviable completeness, and on the other assures him that a solicitous Providence is watching over him and will make up to him in a future existence for any shortcomings in this life. The ordinary man cannot imagine this Providence in any other from but that of a greatly exalted father, for only such a one could understand the needs of the sons of men, or be softened by their prayers and placated by the signs of their remorse. The whole thing is so patently infantile, so incongruous with reality, that to one whose attitude to humanity is friendly it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. — Sigmund Freud

Once again, only religion can answer the question of the purpose of life. One can hardly be wrong in concluding that the idea of life having a purpose stands and falls with the religious system. — Sigmund Freud

The man who has successfully solved the problem of his relations with the two worlds of data and symbols is a man who has no beliefs. With regard to the problems of practical life he entertains a series of working hypotheses, which serve his purposes, but are taken no more seriously than any other kind of tool or instrument. In other words, symbols should never be raised to the rank of dogmas, nor should any system be regarded as more than a provisional convenience. — Aldous Huxley

The power of the American system of republicanism lies in its capacity to allow religious belief to be a competing, not a controlling, factor in American life. — Jon Meacham

I was trying to make the web more civil. I was trying to make it more elegant. I got rid of anonymity. I combined a thousand disparate elements into one unified system. But I didn't picture a world where Circle membership was mandatory, where all government and all life was channeled through one network. — Dave Eggers

Social systems are neither a consumer product that we can buy or rent from the market nor a material that we can import from another country. It is not a creation of the almighty gifted from the heavens. A social system is a creation of mankind. That is a reflection of our responsibilities. In other words, the social system is the result of our behavior and the decisions we take in our way of life. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

It is a mistake to talk about the artist looking for his subject. In fact, the subject grows within him like a fruit and begins to demand expression. It is like childbirth. The poet has nothing to be proud of. He is not master of the situation, but a servant. Creative work is his only possible form of existence, and his every work is like a deed he has no power to annul. For him to be aware that the sequence of such deeds is due and ripe, that it lies in the very nature of things, he has to have faith in the idea; for only faith interlocks the system of images for which read system of life. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Usury is the cancer of the world, which only the surgeon's knife of fascism can cut out of the life of the nations. — Ezra Pound

I have always disliked the idea of an arts ghetto in which poetry is kept on a life-support system. — Tony Harrison

George ended by looking at the larger picture. He said that computation at present is still parasitic on us, but it probably is in the process of becoming part of life itself
it's just another system of genetics. Evolution, after all, is massively parallel computation, and now the world of code is evolving, perhaps to reshape the tree of life itself. — Stewart Brand

The Cosmos extends, for all practical purposes, forever. After a brief sedentary hiatus, we are resuming our ancient nomadic way of life. Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds throughout the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth. They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way. — Carl Sagan

Never had a cup of coffee in my life. Dr Pepper is my caffeine delivery system of choice. — Steven Soderbergh

Chakras are energy centers where the body's life energy is concentrated. The concept of chakra is found in the Hindu tradition in India & some disciplines of Buddhism. Of the seven major chakras, six are located along the spinal cord & one is located at the crown of the head. The chakras are closely related to the endocrine system,which secretes hormones, and they are known to influence each and every part of the human body through the autonomic nervous system. They are highly attuned sensors that respond to the state of your physical, mental & spiritual health. — Ilchi Lee

Seeing modern health care from the other side, I can say that it is clearly not set up for the patient. It is frequently a poor arrangement for doctors as well, but that does not mitigate how little the system accounts for the patient's best interest. Just when you are at your weakest and least able to make all the phone calls, traverse the maze of insurance, and plead for health-care referrals is that one time when you have to - your life may depend on it. — Ross I. Donaldson

Wars results in immediate deaths and destruction, but the environmental consequences can last hundreds, often thousands of years. And it is not just war itself that undermines our life support system, but also the research and development, military exercises and general preparations for battle that are carried out on a daily basis in most parts of the world. The majority of this pre-war activity takes place without the benefit of civilian scrutiny and therefore we are unaware of some of what is being done to our environment in the name of 'security. — Rosalie Bertell

It's Friday night the city is a heart that beats alone,despite the millions of blood cells that race through its dog-legged arteries, oblivious to each other yet performing a life sustaining dance. [...] You're tired of being part of this blood dance. The immune system has been trying to excise you as diseased for as long you can remember, but you've been tenacious,clinging to the walls and floors as the torrent pushes you around. — A.J. Fitzwater

The ambiance of every environment in a country is the value system of the given nation. It is that culture that influences how citizens of a nation react, respond and behave among themselves in regards to politics, commerce, family and social life. — Sunday Adelaja

The world' is man's experience as it appears to, and is moulded by, his ego. It is that less abundant life, which is lived according to the dictates of the insulated self. It is nature denatured by the distorting spectacles of our appetites and revulsions. It is the finite divorced from the Eternal. It is multiplicity in isolation from its non-dual Ground. It is time apprehended as one damned thing after another. It is a system of verbal categories taking the place of the fathomlessly beautiful and mysterious particulars which constitute reality. It is a notion labelled 'God'. It is the Universe equated with the words of our utilitarian vocabulary. — Aldous Huxley

I try to surround myself with a good support system. Whether that's other creators or my family or my friends, or even my viewers, who encourage me just as much as I might encourage them and they're just as much a part of my life as they let me be a part of theirs. — Tyler Oakley

[N]early every creationist debater will mention the second law of thermodynamics and argue that complex systems like the earth and life cannot evolve, because the second law seems to say that everything in nature is running down and losing energy, not getting more complex. But that's NOT what the second law says; every creationist has heard this but refuses to acknowledge it. The second law only applies to closed systems, like a sealed jar of heated gases that gradually cools down and loses energy. But the earth is not a closed system
it constantly gets new energy from the sun, and this (through photosynthesis) is what powers life and makes it possible for life to become more complex and evolve. It seems odd that the creationists continue to misuse the second law of thermodynamics when they have been corrected over and over again, but the reason is simple: it sounds impressive to their audience with limited science education, and if a snow job works, you stay with it. — Donald R. Prothero

The current system is organized around financial values over life values. We need to shift that locus of power down to the community level because the financial markets recognize only money and thereby only financial values. — David Korten

Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people. — Andrew Mellon

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex. — Valerie Solanas

Well, if I were you, I'd leave him. I'd find someone with a more normal way of looking at things and live happily ever after. There's no way in hell you can be happy with him. The way he lives, it never crosses his mind to try to make himself happy or to make others happy. Staying with him will only wreck your nervous system. To me, it's already a miracle that you've been with him three years. Of course, I'm very fond of him in my own way. He's fun, and he has lots of great qualities.
He has strengths and abilities that I could never hope to match. But in the end, his ideas about things and the way he lives his life are not normal. Sometimes, when I'm talking to him, I feel as if I'm going
around and around in circles. The same process that takes him higher and higher leaves me going around in circles. It makes me feel so empty! Finally, our very systems are totally different. Do you see what I'm saying? — Haruki Murakami

There can be no peace in the world so long as a large proportion of the population lack the necessities of life and believe that a change of the political and economic system will make them available. World peace must be based on world plenty. — John Boyd Orr

Any man of energy and initiative can get what he wants out of life. But when initiative is crippled by legislation or by a tax system which denies him the right to receive a reasonable share of his earnings, then he will no longer exert himself and the country will be deprived of the energy on which its continued greatness depends. — Andrew Mellon

The main function of System 1 is to maintain and update a model of your personal world, which represents what is normal in it. The model is constructed by associations that link ideas of circumstances, events, actions, and outcomes that co-occur with some regularity, either at the same time or within a relatively short interval. As these links are formed and strengthened, the pattern of associated ideas comes to represent the structure of events in your life, and it determines your interpretation of the present as well as your expectations of the future. — Daniel Kahneman

My expectations from the university were perhaps too idealistic. I had dreams of learning things about innovation and discovery in the field of technology, but all of it hit the ground hard, when I faced with the pathetic reality of the so-called higher education system. To my surprise, I found myself stuck behind the walls of meaningless facts, figures and rankings. It occurred to me that, it was not actually a place for education, rather it was a place where you go to get your head filled with useless undigested information, that you'd probably never use throughout your entire life. It was not education, and moreover, it was definitely not science. — Abhijit Naskar

One of the most effective ways for a system of authority to tout its virtues is not to speak of them directly, but to create a particularly vivid image of their absolute negation - of what it claims life would be like in the total absence of, say, patriarchal authority, or capitalism, or the state. — David Graeber

To become aware of what is constant in the flux of nature and life is the first step in abstract thinking. The recognition of regularity in the courses of the heavenly bodies and in the succession of seasons first provides a basis for a systematic ordering of events, and this knowledge makes possible a calendar ... Simultaneously with this concept, a system of relationships comes into the idea of the world. Change is not something absolute, chaotic, and kaleidoscopic; its manifestation is a relative one, something connected with fixed points and a given order. — Hellmut Wilhelm

However, Galileo got into trouble when he turned his telescope toward a wider horizon. The discovery of the four moons orbiting Jupiter - Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto - suggested that the Earth was not the centre of the universe about which all celestial bodies orbited. By challenging the geocentric model of the Solar System, Galileo found himself accused of heresy and was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. — Andrew Thomas

Dread was always with her, an alarm system in her head, alert
to her next disaster.
Despite being resigned to a life of misfortune, she became
resourceful.
She grudgingly noticed that things always worked out, even
when she claimed defeat.
An inconvenient truth, yet it was right there, in her face,
betraying her self-punishments and assumptions.
She kept overcoming things, dammit, aggravating herself.
She still felt so much joy, despite her efforts to be miserable.
Her life was full of miracles and spectacles that she was afraid
to rely on so she didn't know how to enjoy, how to be thankful,
without guilt.
She didn't want to win and she didn't want to lose.
Ambiguity intrigued her and she found passion in the gaps
between hope and despair. — G.G. Renee Hill

A lot of dudes can't function too long in mainstream life because they've been indoctrinated into that penal system where that shapes their life. — Sadat X

Other anatomical changes associated with long-duration space flight are definitely negative: the immune system weakens, the heart shrinks because it doesn't have to strain against gravity, eyesight tends to degrade, sometimes markedly (no one's exactly sure why yet). The spine lengthens as the little sacs of fluid between the vertebrae expand, and bone mass decreases as the body sheds calcium. Without gravity, we don't need muscle and bone mass to support our own weight, which is what makes life in space so much fun but also so inherently bad for the human body, long-term. — Chris Hadfield

And indeed, it cannot be denied that the most successful practitioners of life, often unknown people by the way, somehow contrive to synchronize the sixty or seventy different times which beat simultaneously in every normal human system, so that when eleven strikes, all the rest chime in unison, and the present is neither a violent disruption nor completely forgotten in the past. — Virginia Woolf

Why am I so interested in politics? But if I were to answer you very simply, I would say this: why shouldn't I be interested? That is to say, what blindness, what deafness, what density of ideology would have to weigh me down to prevent me from being interested in what is probably the most crucial subject to our existence, that is to say the society in which we live, the economic relations within which it functions, and the system of power which defines the regular forms and the regular permissions and prohibitions of our conduct. The essence of our life consists, after all, of the political functioning of the society in which we find ourselves.
So I can't answer the question of why I should be interested; I could only answer it by asking why shouldn't I be interested? — Michel Foucault

There is no alternative to action, and that requires faith. The issue is how we are to mold for ourselves a belief system that is worthy of life. — Naguib Mahfouz

If a vast majority of the population identify and embrace the nation's value system, then that nation is automatically great. Because they will live out these values in their daily life. — Sunday Adelaja

In one important sense, Marxism is a religion. To the believer it presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions; and, secondly, a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved. — Joseph Alois Schumpeter

Cookery, or the art of preparing good and wholesome food, and of preserving all sorts of alimentary substances in a state fit for human sustenance, or rendering that agreeable to the taste which is essential to the support of life, and of pleasing the palate without injury to the system, is, strictly speaking, a branch of chemistry; but, important as it is both to our enjoyments and our health, it is also one of the latest cultivated branches of the science. — Friedrich Accum

We were put here as witnesses to the miracle of life. We see the stars, and we want them. We are beholden to give back to the universe ... If we make landfall on another star system, we become immortal. — Ray Bradbury

Our desire to segregate the mind's cogitations from the body's exertions reflects the grip that Cartesian dualism still holds on us. When we think about thinking, we're quick to locate our mind, and hence our self, in the gray matter inside our skull and to see the rest of the body as a mechanical life-support system that keeps the neural circuits charged. More than a fancy of philosophers like Descartes and his predecessor Plato, this dualistic view of mind and body as operating in isolation from each other appears to be a side effect of consciousness itself. Even though the bulk of the mind's work goes on behind the scenes, in the shadows of the unconscious, we're aware only of the small but brightly lit window that the conscious mind opens for us. And our conscious mind tells us, insistently, that it's separate from the body. — Nicholas Carr

It will take faith, to know success can still be attained regardless of unfairness or disadvantages availed by any system you operate within. — Archibald Marwizi

The world of shapes, lines, curves, and solids is as varied as the world of numbers, and it is only our long-satisfied possession of Euclidean geometry that offers us the impression, or the illusion, that it has, that world, already been encompassed in a manageable intellectual structure. The lineaments of that structure are well known: as in the rest of life, something is given and something is gotten; but the logic behind those lineaments is apt to pass unnoticed, and it is the logic that controls the system. — David Berlinski

Jack, who apparently always had to be moving in some way, had made up for the missing knife by grabbing a half loaf of French bread and methodically ripping it into tiny pieces.
"What," I said, narrowing my eyes. "Why don't faeries like bread?"
"Hmm?" Jack looked up, then shrugged. "I dunno."
Lend picked up a piece, crumbling it. "My dad said he thought it was because it was the staff of life for people."
"Nasty stuff tastes like mold," Jack said. "I tried a piece once a while ago when I was still trying to force myself to eat normal food so I could stay here. It was like a shock to my whole system." He shuddered at the memory. — Kiersten White

He sat in the living room in the dark, an expert at waiting, a nineteen-year veteran of it, waiting for people who failed to appear, missed court dates because they forgot or didn't care, and took off. Nineteen years of losers, repeat offenders in and out of the system. Another one, that's all Louis was, slipping back into the life. — Elmore Leonard

We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life. — Jimmy Carter

The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior - benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as one's own chaos was also brought under control.
'Whenever I am troubled,' said the librarian, 'I think about the Dewey decimal system.'
'Then what happens?' asked the junior, rather overawed.
'Then I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place. That is what Jung was explaining of course - as the chaos of our unconscious contents strive to find their rightful place in the index of consciousness. — Jeanette Winterson

There's no race, no religion, no class system, no color - nothing - no sexual orientation, that makes us better than anyone else. We're all deserving of love. — Sandra Bullock

Men have always been a prey to distractions, which arethe original sins of the mind; but never before today has an attempt been made to organize and exploit distractions, to make of them, because of their economic importance, the core and vital center of human life, to idealize them as the highest manifestations of mental activity. Ours is an age of systematized irrelevances, and the imbecile within us has become one of the Titans, upon whose shoulders rests the weight of the social and economic system — Aldous Huxley

This is a living planet. Look around. Mars, Venus, Jupiter. Look beyond our solar system. Where else is there a place that works, that is just right for the likes of us? It has not happened just instantly. It is vulnerable to our actions. But it's the result of four and a half billion years of evolution, of change over time. And it changes every day, all the time. It would be in our interest to try to maintain a certain level of stability that has enabled us to prosper, to not wreck the very systems that give us life. — Sylvia Earle

Democracy is a continuous, open process of civility.
A democracy can never be "done"; updating democracy can never be over.

Democracy can be nothing else but a continuous process, because we use it to organize our life, and life is nothing but a continuous process.

Democracy can be compared to an operating system or an anti-virus software; if it does not get perpetually updated, it becomes obsolete very fast.

Trusting the updates or the "improvements" of democracy to the elected and the owned mass media is like trusting the updates of an anti-virus program to virus creators; it defeats the purpose of updates or improvements. — Haroutioun Bochnakian

As slaves we were this country's first windfall, the down payment on its freedom. After the ruin and liberation of the Civil War came Redemption for the unrepentant South and Reunion, and our bodies became this country's second mortgage. In the New Deal we were their guestroom, their finished basement. And today, with a sprawling prison system, which has turned the warehousing of black bodies into a jobs program for Dreamers and a lucrative investment for Dreamers; today, when 8 percent of the world's prisoners are black men, our bodies have refinanced the Dream of being white. Black life is cheap, but in America black bodies are a natural resource of incomparable value. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

If humans did not manufacture some of their own to appear like better people, people would not aspire to be someone else. They would stop dreaming. And if people didn't dream, they would be awake to discover the wonderful misery of being. There are no singular great people. There is only a small percentage of people manufactured to look significant, for the purpose of creating the feeling of mass insignificance. — Craig Stone

JESUS'S PATH WAS exactly that, a radically unmanageable simplicity - nothing held back, nothing held onto. It was almost too much for his followers to bear. Even within the gospels themselves, we see a tendency to rope him back in again, to turn his teachings into a manageable complexity. Take his radically simple saying: "Those who would lose their life will find it; and those who would keep it will lose it." Very quickly the gospels add a caveat: "Those who would lose their life for my sake and the sake of the gospel will find it." That may be the way you've always heard this teaching, even though most biblical scholars agree that the italicized words are a later addition. But you can see what this little addition has done: it has shifted the ballpark away from the transformation of consciousness (Jesus's original intention) and into martyrdom, a set of sacrificial actions you can perform with your egoic operating system still intact. Right from — Cynthia Bourgeault

The physical heart, which houses the spiritual heart, beats about 100,000 times a day, pumping two gallons of blood per minute and over 100 gallons per hour. If one were to attempt to carry 100 gallons of water (whose density is lighter than blood) from one place to another, it would be an exhausting task. Yet the human heart does this every hour of every day for an entire lifetime without respite. The vascular system transporting life-giving blood is over 60,000 miles long - more than two times the circumference of the earth. So when we conceive of our blood being pumped throughout our bodies, know that this means that it travels through 60,000 miles of a closed vascular system that connects all the parts of the body - all the vital organs and living tissues - to this incredible heart. — Hamza Yusuf

A strengthened national spirit can provide the motive power to rise our people from the depths and ... pour new life and vigor in the national system.
The reinvigoration of the national spirit must take place in the grass roots, in every city, town and barrio in the Philippines, and it must start among our own people ... To be a worthy citizen of the world one must first prove himself to be a good Filipino. — Carlos P. Romulo

The soil is not a mass of dead debris, merely resulting from the physical and chemical weathering of rocks; it is a more or less homogeneous system which has resulted from the decomposition of plant and animal remains. It is teeming with life. — Selman Waksman

Excluding the God of providence in your life's configuration and design is like removing the thermostat from a thermodynamic system. — Ikechukwu Joseph

It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, and sub-atomic, and galactic
structure of things today. And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature! And you will atone! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? — Paddy Chayefsky

Ahead of me lies the familiar litany: weakening of the heart, hardening of the arteries, increasing brittleness of bones, decreases in kidney filtration rates, lower resistance of the immune system, and loss of memory. The list could be extended almost indefinitely. Evolution seems indeed to have arranged things so that all our systems deteriorate, and that we invest in repair only as much as we are worth. — Jared Diamond

Since oceans are the life support system of our planet, regulating the climate, providing most of our oxygen and feeding over a billion people, what's bad for oceans is bad for us - very bad. — Philippe Cousteau Jr.

What is a god? A god is a personification of a motivating power of a value system that functions in human life and in the universe. — Joseph Campbell

I was raised in the Marine Corps and I was taught as a boy that you feed your own men before you feed yourself. It was my belief then, and it remains so today, that my platoon who loves and respect me will slaughter your platoon that hates you. But here is the great lesson I took from the plebe system - it let me know exactly the kind of man I wanted to become. It made me ache to be a contributing citizen in whatever society I found myself in, to live out a life I could be proud of, and always to measure up to what I took to be the highest ideal of a Citadel man - or, now, a Citadel woman. The standards were clear to me and they were high, and I took my marching orders from my college to take my hard-won education and go out to try to make the whole world a better place. — Pat Conroy

For all its complexity, however, astrology remains fundamentally simple. It offers a time-honored system of symbols that sum up key aspects of human life while providing profound insights and practical guidance. — Anne M. Nordhaus-Bike

You could remove the powerful preaching from our church and it would still continue. You could remove the administration of pastoral care through the cell group system and the church would still continue. But if you remove the prayer life of our church it would collapse. — David Yonggi Cho

Really, how much of one's life is made up of these private incidents; how submerged one is. You know, for example, that you will recover from a broken heart, but somehow that piece of information, that factoid, never arrives at the soul or the brain or the nervous system, yes, the nervous system, where it might do some good. But if you know you're going to be all right, why then do you suffer so? To get there. To get where you know you are going to get to anyway. How pathetic, then, to feel about having arrived. I survived, you say. Yes, but what else would you do? No one dies from love. Come, come. — David Gilmour

Human activity is destroying the natural systems that we depend upon for our survival. Our most basic instinct as humans is to survive; yet we continue to destroy our life-support machine. Connected humans understand this terrible contradiction; disconnected humans are not able to.

Not all humans are responsible: just those who are part of Industrial Civilization. Industrial Civilization depends on economic growth and the unsustainable use of natural resources, so it has developed a complex set of tools for keeping people disconnected from the real world and living a life that keeps civilization running. Humans have been manipulated in order to be part of a destructive system.

The only way to prevent global ecological collapse and thus ensure the survival of humanity is to rid the world of Industrial Civilization. — Keith Farnish

Take Christ out of the gospel, and you take its very heart out. He has not only originated a system, but He has put Himself into it, as its very life and soul and power. — Herrick Johnson