Predictable Quotes
More Predictable Quotes
The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowlyand deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius.Theresulting performance, though lessinspiring, is far more predictable.
john kenneth galbraith— 1967 The New Industrial State.
Organisms are not billiard balls, propelled by simple and measurable external forces to predictable new positions on life's pool table. Sufficiently complex systems have greater richness. Organisms have a history that constrains their future in myriad, subtle ways.
stephen jay gould— Prologue, p. 16
I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which, if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again, or perhaps any twig with any property that we would care to call consciousness.
stephen jay gould— "Can We Complete Darwin's Revolution?", p. 327
I rent everything, other than the gift of life itself, which wasgiven to me without any predictable lease, a gift that can be withdrawn at any time.
— 1991 Interview given three days before his suicide, in the Weekend Guardian, 25-6 May.
Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance — these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.
isaiah berlin— Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century (1950)
The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.
john kenneth galbraith— Chapter VI, Section 2, p. 62
There never has been security. No man has ever known what he would meet around the next corner; if life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.
eleanor roosevelt— p. 80 (Tomorrow Is Now (1963))
Cassidy had been drawn to the crime beat because of its guaranteed drama. It offered murders, kidnappings, armed robbery, and the occasional hostage situation. But predictable it wasn’t.
lis wiehl— p. 193 (Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson))
A somewhat casual observer from outer space might well deduce that the course of evolution in this planet had produced a species of large four-wheeled bugs with detachable brains; peculiar animals which rested when they sent their brains away from them but performed in rather predictable manner when their brains were recalled.
kenneth boulding— Boulding (1966) Economics and Ecology. p.225
Science is the only news. When you scan through a newspaper or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same sorry cyclic dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness, and even the technology is predictable if you know the science. Human nature doesn’t change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly.
stewart brand— Whole Earth Discipline (2009), page 216.
So many people seem to spend their lives trying to appear normal, predictable and consistent to themselves and those that surround them. They just end up bored with themselves, bereft of any depth of inner resources, suffocated by the inhibitions that defend their own monolithic identities.
peter j. carroll— p. 13 (PsyberMagick (1995))
The irony of the post-Cold War period is that the fall of communism was followed by the rise of another utopian ideology. In American and Britain, and to a lesser extent other Western countries, a type of market fundamentalism became the guiding philosophy. The collapse of American power that is underway is the predictable upshot.
john n. gray— "A shattering moment in America's fall from power," The Observer (2008-09-28)
The atrocity in New York was predictable and inevitable. It was an act of retaliation against constant and systematic manifestations of state terrorism on the part of the United States over many years, in all parts of the world. I believe that it will do this not only to take control of Iraqi oil, but also because the American administration is now a blood-thirsty wild animal.
Harold Pinter— Referring to the 9/11 attacks, in "The American administration is a bloodthirsty wild animal", The Telegraph (12 November 2002), published version of speech made upon accepting an honorary doctorate from University of Turin in 2002.
The abuse of the veto power has become so predictable that frequently resolutions are not even tabled because of the certainty of a veto against their adoption. Necessary discussion is thereby suppressed. Concerted action by the Security Council, the General Assembly and other United Nations agencies is necessary to prevent major human rights violations, stop ongoing breaches and provide remedies to victims.
alfred de zayas— United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order [18]
The abuse of the veto power has become so predictable that frequently resolutions are not even tabled because of the certainty of a veto against their adoption. Necessary discussion is thereby suppressed. Concerted action by the Security Council, the General Assembly and other United Nations agencies is necessary to prevent major human rights violations, stop ongoing breaches and provide remedies to victims.
— United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order [18]
World view, a concept borrowed from cultural anthropology, refers to the culturally dependent, generally subconscious, fundamental organization of the mind. This conceptual organization manifests itself as a set of presuppositions that predispose one to feel, think, and act in predictable patterns.
— Kenneth G. Tobin (1993) The practice of constructivism in science educaction. p. 58: Talking about world view theory.
Social science and humanities … have a mutual contempt for one another, the former looking down on the latter as unscientific, the latter regarding the former as philistine. … The difference comes down to the fact that social science really wants to be predictive, meaning that man is predictable, while the humanities say that he is not.
Allan Bloom— Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: 1988), p. 357
They are men and women who tend to believe that the human being is perfectible and social progress predictable, and that the instrument for effecting the two is reason; that truths are transitory and empirically determined; that equality is desirable and attainable through the action of state power; that social and individual differences, if they are not rational, are objectionable, and should be scientifically eliminated; that all people and societies strive to organize themselves upon a rationalist and scientific paradigm.
buckley, william f., jr.— A definition of what he meant when referring to "liberals"in Up from Liberalism (1959); as quoted in "An American original: appreciating Bill Buckley" by George Shadroui (2003)
You can hit a nail on the head, or cause a machine to do so, and get a fairly predictable result. Hit a dog on the head, and it will either dodge, bite back, or die, but it will never again react in the same way. We can predict only those things we set up to be predictable, not what we encounter in the real world of living and reactive processes.
bill mollison— chapter 2.2 (Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988))
