system

The American system of rugged individualism.

—Hoover, Herbert Clark

The life-efficiency and adaptability of the computer must be questioned. Its judicious use depends upon the availability of its human employers quite literally to keep their own heads, not merely to scrutinize the programming but to reserve for themselves the right of ultimate decision. No automatic system can be intelligently run byautomatonsöor by people who dare not assert human intuition, human autonomy, human purpose.

—Mumford, Lewis

   In my systematic explorations through the realms of microscopic anatomy, there came the turn of the nervous system, that masterpiece of life.

—Ramo¤  n y Cajal, Santiago

We are only beginning to understand on how subtle a communication system the functioning of an advanced industrial society is basedöa communications system which we call the market and which turns out to be a more efficient mechanism for digesting dispersed information than any that man has deliberately designed.

—Hayek, Friedrich August von

It must be possible for an empirical system to be refuted by experience.

—Popper, Sir Karl Raimund

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts† A graphical representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity.Lines of light ranged inthenon- space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.

—Gibson,William Ford

Man is not the enemy of Man, but through the medium of a false system of government.

—Paine,Thomas

   I have got the North Pole out of my system after twenty- three years of effort, hard work, disappointments, hardships, privations, more or less suffering, and some risks† The work is the finish, the cap and climax of nearly four hundred years of effort, loss of life, and expenditure of fortunes by the civilized nations of the world, and it has been accomplished in a way that is thoroughly American. I am content.

—Peary, Robert Edwin

A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. A new era is upon us† We have had our last chance. If we do not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.

—MacArthur, Douglas

Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex.

—Barnes,Julian Patrick

   Observe how system into system runs, What other planets circle other suns.

—Pope, Alexander

The patent system†added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius.

—Lincoln, Abraham

It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only theapplication of themthat is human. Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable asthose by whichthe universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.

—Paine,Thomas

Togrowolder istorealizetheuniverseisCopernican, not Ptolemaic, and that self and the loved one do not form the epicentre of the solar system.

—Phillips, Edward O

In England, the system is benign and the people are hostile. In America, the people are friendlyöand the system is brutal!

—Crisp, Quentin

Scientific discovery consists in the interpretation for our own convenience of a system of existence which has been made with no eye to our convenience at all.

—Wiener, Norbert

We must protect big business from domination by fat- minded men whose principal business policy is to avoid a competitive race for efficiency† They believe in a system of soft enterprise,ösoft in the way that an octopus is soft, with tentacles that stifle and suffocate.

—Arnold,ThurmanWesley

The earth was made for Dombeyand Son to trade in, and thesunandmoonweremadetogivethemlight.Riversand seas were formed to float their ships; rainbowsgave them promise of fair weather; winds blew fororagainst their enterprises; stars and planets circled intheir orbits, to preserve inviolate a system of whichthey were the centre.

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an'death's the other.

—Williams,TennesseeThomas Lanier

The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb.We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forcedöby what? Bya system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.

—Fromm, Erich

Instead of rocking the cradle, they rocked the system.

—Robinson, Mary

The mere animal pleasure of travelling in a wild unexplored country is also great† The effect of travel ona manwhoseheart isintheright place isthatthemind is made more self-reliant: it becomes more confident of its own resourcesöthere isgreater presence of mind† The sweat of one's brow is no longer a curse when one works for God: it proves a tonic to the system, and actually a blessing. No one can trulyappreciate the charm of repose unless he has undergone severe exertion.

—Livingstone, Dr David

Day by day natural science accumulates new riches† The true system of the World has been recognized, developed and perfected† Everything has been discussed and analyzed, or at least mentioned.

—Alembert,Jean le Rond d'

   To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.

—McCarthy,Joseph R(aymond)