Alternatives Quotes - Page 19

• From this new point of view, the universe I had inhabited became an object I could perceive in its entirety. It was a hypersphere embedded in a cloud of alternative states - the sum of all possible quantum trajectories from the big bang to the decay of matter. "Reality" - history as we had known or inferred it - was only the most likely of these possible trajectories. There were countless others, real in a different sense: a vast but finite set of paths not taken, a ghostly forest of quantum alternatives, the shores of an unknown sea.

  Robert Charles Wilson

  Real, Taken, Clouds

  "Vortex". Book by Robert Charles Wilson, 2011.

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• While greenies and their media flunkies continue to savage the gasoline-powered internal-combustion engine and rhapsodize about hybrids, hydrogen, electrics, natural gas, propane, nuclear, and God-knows-what-other panaceas, perhaps including bovine urine, there are no realistic, economically viable alternatives. None. Zero. Like it or not, as long as we remain dependent on the private automobile for transportation (roughly 80 percent of all movement in the nation is by car), we are harnessed to the IC gas engine.

  Brock Yates

  Zero, Media, Car

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• Faced with the alternative of saying goodbye to the gold standard, and therefore to his own employment, and goodbye to other people's employment, Mr. Churchill characteristically selected the latter course.

  Oswald Mosley

  Goodbye, People, Gold

  "Oswald Mosley" by Robert Skidelsky, Papermacs, (p. 143), 1981.

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• As parents, we can do a great deal to further this goal by helping our children develop alternative ways of knowing the world verbally/analytically and visually/spatially. During the crucial early years, parents can help to shape a child's life in such a way that words do not completely mask other kinds of reality. My most urgent suggestions to parents are concerned with the use of words, or rather, not using words.

  Betty Edwards

  Children, Reality, Years

  "The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". Book by Betty Edwards, 1979.

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• Until recently baby production was largely dependent on slave labour; as soon as women are allowed to answer the question "Would you like to squeeze as many objects the size of a watermelon out of your body as it takes to kill you?" they generally answer "No, thank you." This leads to falling birthrates everywhere women are not kept enslaved and ignorant of the alternatives.

  James Nicoll

  Baby, Fall, Ignorant

  Usenet article, 2005.

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• Making art is dealing with people on your own terms. The ideal way of using people is using them like clay, but that being out of the question, except for lunatics and leaders, art is a good alternative.

  Lucas Samaras

  Art, Using People, Leader

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• I tend to believe that computers are drawing kids -- and adults -- away from reading purely because they provide an alternative, vast source of spare-time amusement and entertainment. I recently heard a frightening statistic: there are less than one million true readers in this country (those who read every day instead of one book per year on a beach). Terrifying.

  Tim Lebbon

  Country, Beach, Believe

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• It is clear that these are alternative methods of co-ordinating production. Yet, having regard to the fact that, if production is regulated by price movements, production could be carried on without any organization at all might we ask, why is there any organization?

  Ronald Coase

  Organization, Movement, Might

  "The Nature of the Firm". Book by Ronald Coase (p. 388), 1937.

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• We can only escape the bloody and ignorant nightmare of history by exploring alternatives which today look frighteningly weird.

  Peter J. Carroll

  Ignorant, Looks, Today

  "Psybermagick: Advanced Ideas in Chaos Magick". Book by Peter J. Carroll, 1995.

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• To avert the danger [posed by theory] to life, Nietzsche could choose one of two ways: he could insist on the strictly esoteric character of the theoretical analysis of life - that is, restore the Platonic notion of the noble delusion - or else he could deny the possibility of theory proper and so conceive of thought as essentially subservient to, or dependent on, life or fate... If not Nietzsche himself, at any rate his successors [Heidegger] adopted the second alternative.

  Leo Strauss

  Character, Fate, Two

  "Natural Right and History". Book by Leo Strauss, 1953.

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• Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison, the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. They do not know how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Giving Up, War, Men

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• Men become utilitarian out of fear of the alternative the chaos of tangled or tepid desires, of rootlessness and boredom.

  John Carroll

  Men, Boredom, Tangled

  John Carroll (2010). “Break-Out from the Crystal Palace: The Anarcho-Psychological Critique: Stirner, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky”, p.119, Taylor & Francis

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• Stirner and Nietzsche [adopt] a mode of thinking which is personal, introspective, and which while often operating on alternative systems of belief and action does so only as a means of better grasping one dominant goal the patterns of individual redemption. Stirner and Nietzsche are not primarily interested in critique as such. ... Their work is too egoistically compelled for them ever to employ the external world as more than the repository for a series of projections of their own.

  John Carroll

  Mean, Thinking, Goal

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• If the system exhibits a structure which can be represented by a mathematical equivalent, called a mathematical model, and if the objective can be also so quantified, then some computational method may be evolved for choosing the best schedule of actions among alternatives. Such use of mathematical models is termed mathematical programming.

  George Dantzig

  Use, Schedules, May

  George Dantzig (2016). “Linear Programming and Extensions”, p.2, Princeton University Press

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• I think the Mussolinean institution of a third way alternative to comunism is currently still very relevant.

  Gianfranco Fini

  Thinking, Way, Institutions

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• Sometimes we face resistance in Alberta and Canada because we already have other power sources, but this is a competitive alternative.

  Alison Thompson

  Canada, Resistance, Faces

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• [Alternative medicine is defined as] that set of practices that cannot be tested, refuse to be tested or consistently fail tests.

  Richard Dawkins

  Medicine, Practice, Tests

  Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love”, p.180, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Margaret Miles offers a stunning treatment of human experience, coaxing humans to leave dualisms behind and embrace our intelligent bodies. In a foundational text, she draws on the arts, philosophy and theology, and her experience as a hospice volunteer to explore concrete alternatives to privileging the rational mind. Her erudition, wisdom, and graceful writing are compelling proof of the intelligent body.

  Mary E. Hunt

  Art, Philosophy, Writing

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• Men since the beginning of time have sought peace...military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn have failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. The utter destructiveness of war not blots out this alternative.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Military, War, Men

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• I don't get inoculations or take anti-malaria tablets when I go abroad, I take the homeopathic alternative, called 'nosodes', and I'm the only one who never goes down with anything.

  Julia Sawalha

  Malaria, Tablets

  "Celebrity endorsements that are science fiction trashed in annual list" by Alok Jha, www.theguardian.com. December 28, 2010.

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• To be ignorant or unconvinced of one's own needs has become the unforgivable anti-social act. The good citizen is one who imputes standardized needs to himself with such conviction that he drowns out any desire for alternatives, much less the renunciation of need.

  Ivan Illich

  Ignorant, Desire, Needs

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• We should listen less to the opinions of those who either overtly promote or stubbornly reject complementary and alternative medicine without acceptable evidence. The many patients who use complementary and alternative medicine deserve better. Patients and healthcare providers need to know which forms are safe and effective. Its future should (and hopefully will) be determined by unbiased scientific evaluation.

  Edzard Ernst

  Pain, Medicine, Deserve Better

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• Thomas Gordon, founder of P.E.T. (Parent Effectiveness Training), observed that when children are behaving in a way that interferes with your ability to meet your needs, shouting direct orders to them doesn't work very well. So, he advised sending I messages. That is, a better alternative to, Your room is a disaster area-clean it up this minute, would be something like, I get embarrassed when Mrs. Johnson is visiting and sees your room looking this messy, so I need you to clean it up.

  Ben Yagoda

  Children, Effectiveness, Order

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• Not every child learns for the same purpose, not every child thrives in the same settings and schools. Limiting a child to just one opportunity does nothing more than limit that child's future. The way forward must involve more public charter schools, which offer parents a tuition-free alternative to their neighborhood school.

  Rick Perry

  Education, Children, School

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• Our problem today is not how to expropriate the expropriators but, rather, how to arrange matters so that the masses, dispossessed by industrial society in capitalist and socialist systems, can regain property. For this reason alone, the alternative between capitalism and socialism is false-not only because neither exists anywhere in its pure state anyhow, but because we have here twins, each wearing different hats.

  Hannah Arendt

  Wisdom, Different, Politics

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