Stimulus Quotes
More Stimulus Quotes
Women watched for the spectacular performances of the men , and there can be no reasonable doubt that the presence of an audience is a very important factor in shaping the men's behavior. In fact, it is probable that the men are more exhibitionistic because the women admire their performances. Conversely, there can be no doubt that the spectacular behavior is a stimulus which summons the audience together, promoting in the women the appropriate behavior.
Gregory Bateson— Bateson as cited in: David Lipset (1982) Gregory Bateson: the legacy of a scientist. p.143
Wahrscheinlich sindsie der interessantesteReiz und Stoff unseres Nachdenkens und unsererT a« tigkeit. Probably theyare the most interesting stimulus and object of our meditation and our activity.
thomas mann— 1924 Of illnesses. Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), vol.1.
The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important, than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus — the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir and keeps us in the intellectual company of man.
helen keller— Letter to Dr. James Kerr Love (1910), published in Helen Keller in Scotland: a personal record written by herself (1933), edited by James Kerr Love. Paraphrasing of this statement may have been the origin of a similar one which has become attributed to her:
It is only comparatively primitive machinery that affords a stimulus, and there is already a faint period touch about Pacific 231 and Le Pas d'Acier. One feels…that Prokofieff should have written ballets about the spinning jenny and the Luddite riots; that Honegger should have been there to celebrate the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway and the death of Huskisson with a "Symphonie Triomphale et Funèbre".
Constant Lambert— "Mechanical Romanticism", pp. 209-10.
We need some imaginative stimulus, some not impossible ideal such as may shape vague hope, and transform it into effective desire, to carry us year after year, without disgust, through the routine-work which is so large a part of life.
walter pater— Ch. 25 (Marius the Epicurean (1885))
The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.
wystan hugh auden— "The Protestant Mystics", p. 51
Integrity in the Moment of Choice Quality of life depends on what happens in the space between stimulus and response.
stephen covey— p. 167 (First Things First (1994))
We are product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. As we wisely exercise our power to choose based on principles, the space will become larger.
stephen covey— ? p. 62 (Disputed)
Through systematic terror, through indoctrination, through systematic manipulation of stimulus, reward, and punishment, we can today break man and convert him into brute animal ... The first step toward survival is therefore to make government legitimate again by attempting to deprive it of these powers... by international action to ban such powers.
Peter Drucker— p. 258 (Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959))
A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection not an invitation for hypnosis.
Umberto Eco— "Can Television Teach?" in Screen Education 31 (1979), p. 12
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.
Modern European composers…have very largely received their stimulus, their rhythms and impulses from Machine Age America. They have a much older tradition of musical technique which has helped them put into musical terms a little more clearly the thoughts that originated here. They can express themselves more glibly.
George Gershwin— Page 386 (The Composer in the Machine Age (1933))
Being inexhaustible, life and nature are a constant stimulus for a creative mind.
hans hofmann— As quoted in Hans Hofmann (1986) by Cynthia Goodman, p. 103
Nature's purpose in relation to the visual arts is to provide stimulus not imitation. ... From its ceaseless urge to create springs all Life all movement and rhythm time and light, color and mood in short, all reality in Form and Thought.
hans hofmann— As quoted in Hans Hofmann (2000) by James Yohe
faith and reason “mutually support each other”; each influences the other, as they offer to each other a purifying critique and a stimulus to pursue the search for deeper understanding
— Encyclical Fides et Ratio, 14 September 1998Source:
What saved the economy, and the New Deal was the enormous public-works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy's needs.
paul krugman— Op-ed, "Franklin Delano Obama," New York Times, November 10, 2008 [1]
If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months. … There was a Twilight Zone episode like this in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace. Well, this time, we don't need it, we need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus.
paul krugman— on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS", August 21, 2011. [3]
The physical lot of surviving workers had notably improved, with unemployment insurance, social security, and the new health services, while their children's school education was assured by the government-operated schools: in addition, they had, for intellectual or emotional stimulus and diversion, the radio and the television. But the work itself was no longer as various, as interesting, or as sustaining to the personality...
Lewis Mumford— Technical Liberation
The premonition of death may for many be a stimulus to novelty of experience: the imminence of death serves to sweep away the inessential preoccupations for those who do not flee from the thought of death into triviality.
david riesman— “Clinical and Cultural Aspects of the Aging Process,” p. 485
Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing.
Samuel Smiles— 19th C Scottish author and reformer. 'Money: Its Use and Abuse', Self-Help (1856), Chapter 10.
Social protest and even civil disobedience serve the law 's need for growth . Ideally, reform would come according to reason and justice without self-help and disturbing, almost violent, forms of protest. … Still, candor compels one here again to acknowledge the gap between the ideal and the reality . Short of the millennium, sharp changes in the law depend partly upon the stimulus of protest.
— Archibald Cox, Civil Rights, the Constitution, and the Courts (1967: Harvard University Press), pp. 22–23 (40 N.Y. State B.J. 161, 169 (1968)).
faith and reason “mutually support each other”; each influences the other, as they offer to each other a purifying critique and a stimulus to pursue the search for deeper understanding
— Encyclical Fides et Ratio, 14 September 1998
— Source:
A blind neuroscientist could give precise quantitative details regarding electrical discharges in the eye produced by the stimulus of light, and a blind craftsman could with instruction fashion a good material model of the eye; but sight and seeing can be known only by one who sees.
— Leon Kass (2009) Looking for an Honest Man
*The very general occurrence of the homosexual in ancient Greece, and its wide occurrence today in some cultures in which such activity is not taboo suggests that the capacity of an individual to respond erotically to any sort of stimulus, whether it is provided by another person of the same or opposite sex, is basic in the species."
alfred kinsey— Alfred Kinsey, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948)
The very general occurrence of the homosexual in ancient Greece, and its wide occurrence today in some cultures in which such activity is not taboo suggests that the capacity of an individual to respond erotically to any sort of stimulus, whether it is provided by another person of the same or opposite sex, is basic in the species.
alfred kinsey— Alfred Kinsey, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948)
The very general occurrence of the homosexual in ancient Greece, and its wide occurrence today in some cultures in which such activity is not taboo suggests that the capacity of an individual to respond erotically to any sort of stimulus, whether it is provided by another person of the same or opposite sex, is basic in the species.
alfred kinsey— Alfred Kinsey, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948)
A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection not an invitation for hypnosis.
— U.Eco, in The Public Voice in a Democracy at Risk, (1 January 1998), p.75
A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection, not an invitation for hypnosis.
— Umberto Uno, in ,,The Public Voice in a Democracy at Risk, (1 January 1998), p.75
Then you get the argument, "Well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill." What do you think a stimulus is? That's the whole point! No, seriously, that's the point!
Barack Obama— Speech to Democrats in Virginia about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (5 February 2009) - YouTube video
