Generalized Quotes
More Generalized Quotes
Money is indispensable to a long-circuit heavy load energy system. It must be used when a sufficient surplus is being produced to allow a margin for exchange, and cost of transport, over a considerable distance. Money represents a storage battery when idle, and a generalized mode of the conversion of energy when it is in motion, with a function of equating time and space.
isabel paterson— The God of the Machine (1943, pg. 32)
What is most unconscionable is that there is not a shred of evidence to justify the certain loss of life. Do the generalized threats and half-truths of this administration give any one of us in Congress the confidence to tell a mother or father or family that the loss of their child or loved one was in the name of a just cause?
pete stark— Statement on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, October 8, 2002, in opposition to the resolution authorizing military force against Iraq
I am surprised to see that today everything that does not amount to surrender pure and simple to generalized capitalism, let us call it thus, is considered to be archaic or old-fashioned, as though in a way there existed no other definition of what it means to be modern than, quite simply, to be at all times caught in the dominant forms of the moment.
alain badiou— From Can Change Be Thought? A Dialogue with Alain Badiou by Bruno Bosteels, in Alain Badiou: Philosophy And Its Conditions, edited by Gabriel Riera. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. ISBN 0791465047.
General Systems Theory is a name which has come into use to describe a level of theoretical model-building which lies somewhere between the highly generalized constructions of pure mathematics and the specific theories of the specialized disciplines. Mathematics attempts to organize highly general relationships into a coherent system, a system however which does not have any necessary connections with the "real" world around us. It studies all thinkable relationships abstracted from any concrete situation or body of empirical knowledge.
kenneth boulding— "General systems theory - the skeleton of science" in: Management Science, Vol. 2, No. 3. (April 1956) p. 197: Opening sentences.
There is something more severe than the problem with Thomas Friedman, which can be generalized to represent someone causing action while being completely unaccountable for his words.
thomas l. friedman— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile - Things That Gain From Disorder, p. 386
It seemed that the time would come evolutionarily when humans might have acquired enough knowledge of generalized principles to permit a graduation from class-two (entropically selfish) evolution into class-one (syntropically cooperative) evolution, thereafter making all the right moves for all the right reasons.
buckminster fuller— Pg. 246 (Afterpiece)
Both religion and science require a belief in God . For believers, God is in the beginning , and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations… To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view.
max planck— Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, trans. F. Gaynor (New York, 1949), pp. 184Variant translations:"Both religion and science need for their activities the belief in God, and moreover God stands for the former in the beginning, and for the latter at the end of the whole thinking. For the former, God represents the basis, for the latter – the crown of any reasoning concerning the world-view." (From Johann Ambrosius Barth Verlag (1958), p. 27; in 50 Nobel Laureates and Other Great Scientists Who Believe in God.)"While both religion and natural science require a belief in God for their activities, to the former He is the starting point, to the latter the goal of every thought process. To the former He is the foundation, to the latter the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view." (from Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers (1968).
The hazards of the generalized prisoner's dilemma are removed by the match between the right and the good.
john rawls— Chapter IX, Section 86, p. 577
Here lies one of the world's rare generalized TINAs. There Is No Alternative to creativity and innovation: these days, obscurantism and conservatism will do for you every time.
— Robert Heller, The Decision Makers (1989)
It's important to abolish the unconscious dogmatism that makes people think their way of looking at reality is the only sane way of viewing the world. My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything. If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind.
— Robert Anton Wilson, in "Robert Anton Wilson : Searching For Cosmic Intelligence" - interview by Jeffrey Elliot (1980)
?Machines which do not receive their motion from heat... can be studied even to their smallest details by the mechanical theory. ...A similar theory is evidently needed for heat-engines. We shall have it only when the laws of Physics shall be extended enough, generalized enough, to make known beforehand all of the effects of heat acting in a determined manner on any body.
— Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat and on Machines Fitted to Develop Power (1824)
Both Religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations... To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view.
— Max Planck Religion and Natural Science (Lecture Given 1937)
The ideas that the colonists put forward, rather than creating a new condition of fact, expressed one that has long existed; they articulated and in so doing generalized, systematized, gave moral sanction to what had emerged haphazardly, incompletely and insensibly, from the chaotic factionalism of colonial politics.
bernard bailyn— Chapter V, TRANSFORMATION, p. 162
Here lies one of the world's rare generalized TINAs. There Is No Alternative to creativity and innovation: these days, obscurantism and conservatism will do for you every time.
— Robert Heller, The Decision Makers (1989)
The prime requisite of a set of postulates is that it be consistent. Since the ordinary notion of consistency involves that of contradiction, which again involves negation , and since this function does not appear in general as a primitive in [the generalized set of postulates] a new definition must be given.
— Jean Van Heijenoort, in From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879-1931, Harvard University Press, 1977, p.276
