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S Quotes

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All S Quotes

“Some people as a result of adversity are sadder, wiser, kinder, more human. Most of us are better, though, when things go better. Knowing when to keep your mouth shut is invariably more important than opening it at the right time. Always listen to a man when he describes the faults of others. Often times, most times, he's describing his own, revealing himself.”

“Some people ask who they are and expect their feelings to tell them. But feelings are flickering flames that fade after every fitful stimulus. Some people ask who they are and expect their achievements to tell them. But the things we accomplish always leave a core of character unrevealed. Some people ask who they are and expect visions of their ideal self to tell them. But our visions can only tell us what we want to be, not what we are”

“Some people ask: "Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?" Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general-but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.”

“Some people ate less food less often when they each had a home than they now do as hobos.”

“Some people automatically associate morality and altruism with a religious vision of the world. But I believe it is a mistake to think that morality is an attribute only of religion. We can imagine two types of spirituality: one tied to religion, while the other arises spontaneously in the human heart as an expression of love for our neighbors and a desire to do them good.”

“Some people avoid thinking deeply in public, only because they are afraid of coming across as suicidal.”

“Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.”

“Some people believe labor-saving technological change is bad for the workers because it throws them out of work. This is the Luddite fallacy, one of the silliest ideas to ever come along in the long tradition of silly ideas in economics. Seeing why it's silly is a good way to illustrate further Solow's logic. The original Luddites were hosiery and lace workers in Nottingham, England, in 1811. They smashed knitting machines that embodied new labor-saving technology as a protest against unemployment (theirs), publicizing their actions in circulars mysteriously signed "King Ludd." Smashing machines was understandable protection of self-interest for the hosiery workers. They had skills specific to the old technology and knew their skills would not be worth much with the new technology. English government officials, after careful study, addressed the Luddites' concern by hanging fourteen of them in January 1813. The intellectual silliness came later, when some thinkers generalized the Luddites' plight into the Luddite fallacy: that an economy-wide technical breakthrough enabling production of the same amount of goods with fewer workers will result in an economy with - fewer workers. Somehow it never occurs to believers in Luddism that there's another alternative: produce more goods with the same number of workers. Labor-saving technology is another term for output-per-worker-increasing technology. All of the incentives of a market economy point toward increasing investment and output rather than decreasing employment; otherwise some extremely dumb factory owners are foregoing profit opportunities. With more output for the same number of workers, there is more income for each worker. Of course, there could very well be some unemployment of workers who know only the old technology - like the original Luddites - and this unemployment will be excruciating to its victims. But workers as a whole are better off with more powerful output-producing technology available to them. Luddites confuse the shift of employment from old to new technologies with an overall decline in employment. The former happens; the latter doesn't. Economies experiencing technical progress, like Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, do not show any long-run trend toward increasing unemployment; they do show a long-run trend toward increasing income per worker. Solow's logic had made clear that labor-saving technical advance was the only way that output per worker could keep increasing in the long run. The neo-Luddites, with unintentional irony, denigrate the only way that workers' incomes can keep increasing in the long-run: labor-saving technological progress. The Luddite fallacy is very much alive today. Just check out such a respectable document as the annual Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Program. The 1996 Human Development Report frets about "jobless growth" in many countries. The authors say "jobless growth" happens whenever the rate of employment growth is not as high as the rate of output growth, which leads to "very low incomes" for millions of workers. The 1993 Human Development Report expressed the same concern about this "problem" of jobless growth, which was especially severe in developing countries between 1960 and 1973: "GDP growth rates were fairly high, but employment growth rates were less than half this." Similarly, a study of Vietnam in 2000 lamented the slow growth of manufacturing employment relative to manufacturing output. The authors of all these reports forget that having GDP rise faster than employment is called growth of income per worker, which happens to be the only way that workers "very low incomes" can increase.”

“Some people believe that explanations which do not involve matter are supernatural. In fact, material explanations are themselves supernatural. How can lifeless matter produce life? There’s nothing natural about that. How can mindless matter produce mind? What’s natural about that? How can temporal and contingent matter come into existence in the first place? You can’t get existence from non-existence. That’s logic 101.”

“Some people believe that it isn’t so much power that is exchanged in TPE, as it is authority. The intrinsic difference between power and authority can best be explained thusly: If we were talking about a car, then power would be what was under the hood. Exercising that power would mean taking the car out for a spin. Having the authority to do so might involve a driver’s license, possessing the keys, or having the title and registration.”

“Some people believe that to find happiness, you should live each day of your life as if it's your last because that way you will appreciate every single moment you have. Other people believe that you should live each day as if it's your first because then every day can be the beginning of a new journey.”