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Function Quotes

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Function Quotes

“Since the Greeks the predominant attitude of thinkers towards intellectual activity was to glorify it insofar as (like aesthetic activity) it finds its satisfaction in itself, apart from any attention to the advantages it may procure. Most thinkers would have agreed with Renan's verdict that the man who loves science for its fruits commits the worst of blasphemies against that divinity. The modern clercs have violently torn up this charter. They proclaim the intellectual functions are only respectable to the extent that they are bound up with the pursuit of concrete advantage.”

“It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor. ... Some of the worst tyrannies of our day genuinely are "vowed" to the service of mankind, yet can function only by pitting neighbor against neighbor. The all-seeing eye of a totalitarian regime is usually the watchful eye of the next-door neighbor. In a Communist state love of neighbor may be classed as counter-revolutionary.”

Source: Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer

“Finally one arrives at this: the state of sleep has an ambiguous function; in sleep, the lack of contact with the culture brings out the worst and also the best in us.”

States Culture Sleep Worst Function Contact Ambiguous

Author:Erich Fromm

“[Mikhail Bakunin] expectations were generally confirmed, including his prediction that some would seek to gain state power on the backs of popular revolution, then constructing a "Red bureaucracy" that would be one of the worst tyrannies in history, while others would recognize that power lies elsewhere and would serve as its apologists, becoming mystifies, "disablers," and managers while demanding the right to function in "technocratic isolation," in World Bank lingo.”

World States Would Be Lying Worst Revolution Becoming Expectations Gains Red Function Including Tyranny Managers Isolation Elsewhere Predictions Bureaucracy World Bank

Author:Noam Chomsky

“Human beings either function as individuals or as members of a pack. There's a switch inside us, deep in our spirit, that you can turn one way or the other. It's almost always the case that our worst behaviour comes out when we're switched to the mob setting. The problem with a lot of software designs is that they switch us to that setting.”

Way Humans Problem Spirit Turns Individual Human Beings Cases Worst Design Members Function Setting Settings One Way Software Behaviour Packs Software Design

Author:Jaron Lanier

“Part of the function of memory is to forget; the omni-retentive mind will break down and produce at best an idiot savant who can recite a telephone book, and at worst a person to whom every grudge and slight is as yesterday's.”

Mind Persons Book Memories Forget Break Worst Produce Function Down And Yesterday Idiot Telephones Breaking Down Grudge Savants

Book:Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays

Source: Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays

“There are stories that are true, in which each individual's tale is unique and tragic, and the worst of the tragedy is that we have heard it before, and we cannot allow ourselves to feel it to deeply. We build a shell around it like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function, day in, day out, immune to others' pain and loss. If it were to touch us it would cripple us or make saints of us; but, for the most part, it does not touch us. We cannot allow it to.”

“People get stuck a lot because they're afraid to act; in the worst case,...we get so attached to some end result that we can't function. We need help just to move on, only life doesn't wait.”

People Needs Ends Helping Moving Waiting Results Cases Worst Function Stuck Zen Buddhism Need Help End Results

Author:Bernie Glassman