Determining Quotes
More Determining Quotes
With each generation the entire race passes through the body of its womanhood as through a mould, reappearing withtheindeliblemarks ofthat mould upon it, that as the os cervix of woman, through which the head of the human infant passes at birth, forms a ring, determining for ever the size at birth of the human head?so exactly the intellectual capacity, the physical vigour, the emotional depth of woman, forms also an untranscendable circle, circumscribing with each successive generation the limits of expansion of the human race. 720
Iron— 1911Women and Labour, ch.3.
Men do not sufficiently realise that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on their refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods (la fonction essentielle de l'universe, qui est une machine à faire des dieux).
henri-louis bergson— The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932), concluding sentences. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002, p. 317.
— Often just the last part of the last sentence is quoted, in the form: "The universe is a machine for making gods."
We are perhaps too near the age of transition to see clearly the interplay of all that made for progress. Each of us has had his own peculiar training, his own personal contact with the mighty ones of the immediate past; and this forms as it were a telescopic tube determining limits to our field of vision. No doubt we may range the whole horizon; but after all we look from our own point of vantage.
cargill gilston knott— On the scientific revolution of the second half of the 19th century, in Life and Scientific Work of Peter Guthrie Tait: supplementing the two volumes of Scientific papers published in 1898 and 1900. Cambridge University Press. 1911. p. 1.
In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.
george r. r. martin— Interview with Infinity Plus (February 2001)
When we program a computer to make choices intelligently after determining its options, examining their consequences, and deciding which is most favorable or most moral or whatever, we must program it to take an attitude towards its freedom of choice essentially isomorphic to that which a human must take to his own.
john mccarthy— "Ascribing Mental Qualities to Machines" (1979) Sect. 5.5: Free Will. Reprinted in Formalizing Common Sense: Papers By John McCarthy, 1990, ISBN 0893915351
The institution of the family is decisive in determining not only if a person has the capacity to love another individual but in the larger social sense whether he is capable of loving his fellow men collectively. The whole of society rests on this foundation for stability, understanding and social peace.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan— Family and Nation, ch. 1 (1986)
If a model itself is “a poor representation of reality,” they write, “determining the sensitivity of an individual parameter in the model is a meaningless pursuit.”
orrin h. pilkey— [1]
The will to power which always emanates from individuals or from small minorities in society is in fact a most important driving force in history. The extent of its influence has up to now been regarded far too little, although it has frequently been the determining factor in the shaping of the whole of economic and social life.
rudolf rocker— Ch. 1 "The Insufficiency of Economic Materialism"
The government has, in all countries, a vast influence, in determining the character of the national consumption; not only because it absolutely directs the consumption of the state itself, but because a great proportion of the consumption of individuals is gained by its will and example.
jean-baptiste say— Book III, On Consumption, Chapter IV, p. 400
Intellectual capital is the main determining factor and the base for economic and social development to any country.
talal abu-ghazaleh— Meeting the Challenges of Electronic Business” in Muscat, Oman, October 9, 2000.
It is absurd to suppose we can think of nature as a system apart from knowledge, for it is knowledge that is increasingly determining the course of nature
kenneth boulding— p.141 as cited in John Laurent (2003) Evolutionary Economics and Human Nature. p.175
...the perception of potential threats to survival may be much more important in determining behavior than the perceptions of potential profits, so that profit maximization is not really the driving force. It is fear of loss rather than hope of gain that limits our behavior
kenneth boulding— p.104 (Evolutionary Economics, 1981)
A life given to determining the best form for the letters of the alphabet does it seem extraordinary to you? But no day passes that our eyes do not fall upon something that was influenced, and made better, by this extraordinary, eccentric Scot, and if that is not a life well spent, I should be interested in a better definition.
Robertson Davies— Edward Johnston (1960)
Suppose that the organism is given the problem of determining the analysis of a stimulus at a certain level of representation- e.g., the problem of determining which sequence of words a given utterance encodes. Since, in the general case, transducer outputs underdetermine perceptual analyses, we can think of the solution of such problems as involving processes of nondemonstrative inference. In particular, we can think of each input system as a computational mechanism which projects and confirms a certain class of hyputheses on the basis of a certain body of data.
jerry fodor— p. 126, partly cited in: Meredith Williams (2002) Wittgenstein, Mind, and Meaning: Toward a Social Conception of Mind. p. 104. Quote about the direction of information flow in perceptual and observer analysis.
We do not wish to “judge” or assess out surrounding merely as a kind of expressive activity carelessly projected onto the world, but we wish to evaluate the world “correctly,” i.e., in according with that it truly is, and the desire to know is directed at determining what the world truly is.
raymond geuss— p. 40 (Philosophy and Real Politics (2008))
If the subjectivist view hold true, thinking cannot be of any help in determining the desirability of any goal in itself. The acceptability of ideals, the criteria for our actions and beliefs, the leading principles of ethics and politics, all our ultimate decisions are made to depend upon factors other than reason. They are supposed to be matters of choice and predilection, and it has become meaningless to speak of truth in making practical, moral or esthetic decisions.
max horkheimer— pp. 7-8 (Eclipse of Reason (1947))
In most cases, to be reasonable means not to be obstinate, which in turn points to conformity with reality as it is. The principle of adjustment is taken for granted. When the idea of reason was conceived, it was intended to achieve more than the mere regulation of the relation between means and ends: it was regarded as the instrument for understanding the ends, for determining them.
max horkheimer— p. 10 (Eclipse of Reason (1947))
Reason as an organ for perceiving the true nature of reality and determining the guiding principles of our lives has come to be regarded as obsolete.
max horkheimer— p. 18 (Eclipse of Reason (1947))
There are many degrees of Probable, some nearer Truth than others, in the determining of which lies the chief exercise of our Judgment.
christiaan huygens— Book.1, p.10
Many, and I think the determining, constitutive facts remain outside the reach of the operational concept. And by virtue of this limitation this methodological injunction against transitive concepts which might show the facts in their true light and call them by their true name the descriptive analysis of the facts blocks the apprehension of facts and becomes an element of the ideology that sustains the facts. Proclaiming the existing social reality as its own norm, this sociology fortifies in the individuals the “faithless faith” in the reality whose victims they are.
herbert marcuse— p. 119 (One-Dimensional Man (1964))
All the sophisticated syllogisms of the ponderous volumes published by Marx, Engels, and hundreds of Marxian authors cannot conceal the fact that the only and ultimate source of Marx's prophecy is an alleged inspiration by virtue of which Marx claims to have guessed the plans of the mysterious powers determining the course of history. Like Hegel , Marx was a prophet communicating to the people the revelation that an inner voice had imparted to him.
karl marx— Ludwig von Mises (1949), Human Action
The Greek words daimon and daimonion express a determining power which comes upon man from outside, like providence or fate, though the ethical decision is left to man.
— Carl Gustav Jung in Aion (1968), p. 27
The Greek words daimon and daimonion express a determining power which comes upon man from outside, like providence or fate, though the ethical decision is left to man.
— Carl Gustav Jung in Aion (1968), p. 27
Software Engineering Economics is an invaluable guide to determining software costs, applying the fundamental concepts of microeconomics to software engineering, and utilizing economic analysis in software engineering decision making.
— Barry W. Boehm (1981) Software engineering economics. Abstract.
One of the best maxims in determining our course in life is, to select, at the outset, that in which virtue and principle will be least likely to be put to a test, and in which, from the nature of the calling, a man may bring around him such associations and influences as will be an auxiliary in keeping him in the path of virtue.
— Albert Barnes, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 437.
I hate and detest all frivolous pleas; but I never will make too much haste, in determining matters which may be of consequence to the subject.
— Lee, C.J., The King v. Mayor of Heydon and others (1748), 1 Black. 35.
Islam is the first school of social thought that recognizes the masses as the basis, the fundamental and conscious factor in determining history and society not the elect as Nietzsche thought, not the aristocracy and nobility as Plato claimed, nor great personalities as Carlyle and Emerson believed, not those of pure blood as Alexis Carrel imagined, not the priests or the intellectuals, but the masses."
— Ali Shariati (1979), On the sociology of Islam: lectures. p. 49
Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history
karl marx— Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto (M)
One might compare the relation of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse . The horse provides the locomotor energy, and the rider has the prerogative of determining the goal and of guiding the movements of his powerful mount towards it. But all too often in the relations between the ego and the id we find a picture of the less ideal situation in which the rider is obliged to guide his horse in the direction in which it itself wants to go.
— Sigmund Freud, in New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1932), Lecture 31 : The Anatomy of the Mental Personality
