Emergence Quotes

• Through art alone are we able to emerge from ourselves, to know what another person sees of a universe which is not the same as our own and of which, without art, the landscapes would remain as unknown to us as those that may exist on the moon.

  Marcel Proust

  Art, Persons, Knows

  "In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI: Time Regained".

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• The creativity and adaptability of life expresses itself through the spontaneous emergence of novelty at critical points of instability. Every human organization contains both designed and emergent structures. The challenge is to find the right balance between the creativity of emergence and the stability of design.

  Fritjof Capra

  Creativity, Organization, Design

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• I'm interested in complexity, in the mathematical sense, as well as the idiomatic sense. The idea of emergence - that it's possible for complex patterns to arise out of many simple interactions - is fascinating.

  Hari Kunzru

  Simple, Ideas, Patterns

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• No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.

  Hannah Arendt

  Punishment, Criminals, Firsts

  Hannah Arendt (2006). “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”, p.238, Penguin

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• No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.

  Hannah Arendt

  Punishment, Criminals, Crime

  Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil epilogue (1963)

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• The emergence and blossoming of understanding, love, and intelligence has nothing to do with any tradition, no matter how ancient or impressive-it has nothing to do with time. It happens on its own when a human being questions, wonders, inquires, listens, and looks without getting stuck in fear, pleasure, and pain. When self-concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open.

  Toni Packer

  Love, Pain, Self

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• Our very success, gained you will agree by skill, will draw more people than ever to see it. And that will benefit many more clubs than Rangers. Let the others come after us. We welcome the chase. It is healthy for us. We will never hide from it. Never fear, inevitably we shall have our years of failure, and when they arrive, we must reveal tolerance and sanity. No matter the days of anxiety that come our way, we shall emerge stronger because of the trials to be overcome. That has been the philosophy of the Rangers since the days of the gallant pioneers.

  Bill Struth

  Success, Being Strong, Football

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• Our thoughts about the future go far toward creating it; our minds and hears are like filaments taht connect today to tomorrow, they are conduits for either the status quo or the emergence of different, hopefully more loving, possibilities. How we think and how we behave determine where we are going

  Marianne Williamson

  Thinking, Creating, Mind

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• Failure is merely feedback that there is something blocking the path of the emergence and expansion of the greatest version of yourself.

  Mother Teresa

  Block, Failure, Expansion

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• The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciation of beauty, and of intellectual distinction, and of duty.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Appreciation, Intellectual, Criticism

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• I'm fascinated by the emergence of a global class. They're highly mobile; they reject the idea of place.

  Hari Kunzru

  Class, Ideas, Rejects

  "I'm the bloke who got the big advance" by Rachel Cooke, www.theguardian.com. May 15, 2004.

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• Faith in the creative process, in the dynamics of emergence, in the values and purposes that transcend past achievements and past forms, is the precondition of all further growth.

  Lewis Mumford

  Past, Achievement, Creative

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• The emergence of consciousness, like the unfolding of a leaf, relies upon restraint.

  Peter Atkins

  Rely Upon, Consciousness, Unfolding

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• Hominid and human evolution took place over millions and not billions of years, but with the emergence of language there was a further acceleration of time and the rate of change.

  William Irwin Thompson

  Change, Years, Language

  William Irwin Thompson (2015). “Self and Society: Studies in the Evolution of Cutlture, Second Enlarged Edition”, p.95, Andrews UK Limited

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• Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless. It demonstrates the endless multiplicity of aspects; it takes away our certainty, because it deprives a thing of its meaning and its name. It shows us the thing in all the manifold significance and infinite variety that preclude the emergence of any single meaning and view.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Views, Names

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• People have a hard time accepting free-market economics for the same reason they have a hard time accepting evolution: it is counterintuitive. Life looks intelligently designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that there must be an intelligent designer--a God. Similarly, the economy looks designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that we need a designer--a government. In fact, emergence and complexity theory explains how the principles of self-organization and emergence cause complex systems to arise from simple systems without a top-down designer.

  Michael Shermer

  Intelligent, Simple, Hard Times

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• The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing. We now have a mainstream press whose news agenda is increasingly influenced by this netherworld.

  Carl Bernstein

  News, Agendas, Mainstream

  "The idiot culture". Carl Bernstein, The New Republic, June 8, 1992.

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• The struggle inside the cocoon between the defenders of the worm state and the agents of winged possibility is one that I was still living, one that many of us surely experience in times of spiritual emergence. We may find ourselves pounded into mush, hanging upside down from whatever we can cling to — and yet have the possibility and destiny of becoming much, much more.

  Robert Moss

  Spiritual, Struggle, Destiny

  Robert Moss (2014). “The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse”, p.110, New World Library

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• Extrapolated, technology wants what life wants:
  Increasing efficiency
  Increasing opportunity
  Increasing emergence
  Increasing complexity
  Increasing diversity
  Increasing specialization
  Increasing ubiquity
  Increasing freedom
  Increasing mutualism
  Increasing beauty
  Increasing sentience
  Increasing structure
  Increasing evolvability

  Kevin Kelly

  Technology, Opportunity, Ubiquity

  Kevin Kelly (2010). “What Technology Wants”, p.244, Penguin

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• The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flushes, or short-circuits of reasoning. In fact they may be likened to an immersed chain, of which only the beginning and the end are visible above the surface of consciousness. The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links.

  Arthur Koestler

  Giving, Intuition, Links

  Arthur Koestler (1969). “The Act of Creation”

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• We must see ourselves as co-manifestors -- partners in manifestation -- all engaged in the primal act of unfoldment and emergence. Each act of manifestation may be directed toward a specific outcome, but it also contributes to the greater manifestation of the wholeness, love, compassion, and creativity of the primal source from which we all come.

  David Spangler

  Creativity, Compassion, May

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• Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity...No thing is required for this enlightenment.. .except freedom; and the freedom in question is the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters.

  Immanuel Kant

  Men, Self, Immaturity

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• I am for God, I am the lover of God, I am loved by God, I am the servant of God, I am the servant of the servant of God, and I am the well-wishing instrument of God's love towards every living being, with all humility. The emergence of that realization is the greatest attainment in life.

  Radhanath Swami

  Humility, Servant Of God, Wish

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• Much more frequent in Hollywood than the emergence of Cinderella is her sudden vanishing. At our party, even in those glowing days, the clock was always striking twelve for someone at the height of greatness; and there was never a prince to fetch her back to the happy scene.

  Ben Hecht

  Party, Greatness, Glowing

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