Hierarchy Quotes - Page 8

• Criticism occupies the lowest place in the literary hierarchy: as regards form, almost always; and as regards moral value, incontestably. It comes after rhyming games and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Games, Criticism, Rhyming

  Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmuller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, p.15, Harvard University Press

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• Mediocrity cherishes rules; as for me, I hate them; I feel for them and for every restriction, corporation, caste, hierarchy, level, herd, a loathing which fills my soul, and it is in this respect perhaps that I understand martyrdom.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Respect, Hate, Soul

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• Charity is a cop-out so traditionally female in its apparent self-effacement that there seems resonant comfort in it. We're no longer supposed to serve the imaginations of men who have dominated us. We are to give up ourselves instead to those whose suffering is greater than our own. Looking down is just as distorting as looking up and as dangerous in perpetuating hierarchies.

  Jane Rule

  Giving Up, Men, Self

  Jane Rule (2013). “A Hot-Eyed Moderate: Essays”, p.70, Open Road Media

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• I fancy that the Hell of Too Many People would occupy a respectable place in the hierarchy of infernal regions.

  J. B. Priestley

  People, Fancy, Hell

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• One advantage of exhibiting a hierarchy of systems in this way is that it gives us some idea of the present gaps in both theoretical and empirical knowledge. Adequate theoretical models extend up to about the fourth level, and not much beyond. Empirical knowledge is deficient at practically all levels.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Ideas, Giving, Way

  "General systems theory - the skeleton of science". Kenneth E. Boulding, Management Science, Volume 2, No. 3 (p. 201), April 1956.

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• When the Reformation became established, one of the things that was a question between Catholicism and the Reformation traditions was whether there was a hierarchy of being. If you look at Thomas Aquinas, for example, you have hierarchies of angels and all the rest of it, and hierarchies even of saints and then subsaints - people who aren't quite there, that sort of thing. The Reformation rejected all of that and created a new metaphysics, in effect, that is not hierarchical.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Angel, People, Example

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• But Christ could certainly not have established the Church. That is, the institution we now call by that name, for nothing resembling our present conception of the Church-with its sacraments, its hierarchy, and especially its claim to infallibility-is to be found in Christ's words or in the conception of the men of his time.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Men, Names, Church

  Leo Tolstoy (graf) (1951). “The kingdom of God: and peace essays”

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• A natural hierarchy is simply an order of increasing wholeness, such as: particles to atoms to cells to organisms, or letters to words to sentences to paragraphs. The whole of one level becomes part of the whole of the next. In other words, natural hierarchies are composed of holons.

  Ken Wilber

  Cells, Order, Levels

  Ken Wilber (2007). “A Brief History of Everything”, p.39, Shambhala Publications

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• You can't really divorce women's struggles in the world from women's in the cinema. As long as there's hierarchy it means that women are somehow secondary or second class or less than. That's going to be reflected in movies because films are the most powerful medium to reflect back society's view of itself

  Sally Potter

  Powerful, Struggle, Divorce

  "TIFF: Interview with Sally Potter – Writer and Director of Ginger and Rosa". Interview with Melissa Silverstein, www.indiewire.com. September 13, 2012.

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• Most women prefer circles of sharing to pyramids and hierarchies. They prefer conversation to construction. They will usually choose nurturance and empathy over competition and climbing. They will normally choose connection over simple performance games.

  Richard Rohr

  Simple, Climbing, Games

  "Gender, God and Spirituality" by Richard Rohr, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 28, 2012.

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• It's probable that in the artistic hierarchy birds are the greatest musicians existing on our planet.

  Olivier Messiaen

  Bird, Musician, Artistic

  Claude Samuel, Olivier Messiaen (1976). “Conversations with Olivier Messiaen”, Stainer & Bell, Limited

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• If our leaders are to enjoy the trappings of their position in the hierarchy, then we expect them to offer us protection. The problem is, for many of the overpaid leaders, we know that they took the money and perks and didn’t offer protection to their people. In some cases, they even sacrificed their people to protect or boost their own interests. This is what so viscerally offends us. We only accuse them of greed and excess when we feel they have violated the very definition of what it means to be a leader.

  Simon Sinek

  Mean, People, Greed

  Simon Sinek (2014). “Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't”, p.54, Penguin

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• The military was all about hierarchies, who urinated highest on the hydrant

  Justin Cronin

  Military, Highest

  Justin Cronin (2012). “The Twelve (Book Two of The Passage Trilogy): A Novel (Book Two of The Passage Trilogy)”, p.79, Ballantine Books

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• Most hierarchies are nowadays so cumbered with rules and traditions, and so bound in by public laws, that even high employees do not have to lead anyone anywhere, in the sense of pointing out the direction and setting the pace. They simply follow precedents, obey regulations, and move at the head of the crowd. Such employees lead only in the sense that the curved wooden figurehead leads the ship .

  Laurence J. Peter

  Leadership, Moving, Law

  Dr. Laurence J. Peter, Raymond Hull (1969). “THE PETER PRINCIPLE WHY THINGS ALWAYS GO WRONG”

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• The most striking feature of the perennial philosophy/psychology is that it presents being and consciousness as a hierarchy of dimensional levels, moving from the lowest, densest, and most fragmentary realms to the highest, subtlest, and most unitary ones.

  Ken Wilber

  Philosophy, Moving, Psychology

  Ken Wilber (2001). “Eye to Eye: The Quest for the New Paradigm”, p.113, Shambhala Publications

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• Now the dressing-room full of RSC hierarchy. Suddenly Trevor Nunn pushes his way through and 'Trevs' me. I've heard a lot about this 'Trevving', but never had it done to me. From what I'd heard, a 'Trev' is an arm round your shoulder and a sideways squeeze. But this 'Trev' is a full frontal hug, so complete and so intimate that the dressing-room instantly clears, as if by suction. I'm left alone in the arms of this famous man wondering whether it's polite to let go.

  Antony Sher

  Letting Go, Men, Hug

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• The power of theocrasy or exercise of government rule over the masses by a hierarchy of priests or adepts rested on its dual system of teaching, namely : Exoterism and Esoterism, the former a code of discipline of the thought and mode of life of the masses; the latter the hierarchic school wherein were trained the chosen adepts destined to safeguard the rules imposed upon the people by the high priests.

  Edith Starr Miller

  Teaching, School, Exercise

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• There are no secrets on an successful software project. Both good and bad news must be able to move up and down the ptoject hierarchy without restriction.

  Steve McConnell

  Moving, Successful, Secret

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• The idea that the universe itself is physically structured around hierarchy was sort of an integration of earlier science and theology that was made by people like Thomas Aquinas, that was assumed doctrinally in that tradition. The Reformation rejected that model of reality and created a highly individualistic metaphysics in the sense that it located everything normative that can be said about reality in human perception, there being, of course, no other avenue of knowing. There is Scripture, there is conscience, there is perception itself.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Reality, Knowing, Ideas

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• At a young age, boys learn that to express compassion or empathy is to show weakness. They hear confusing messages that force them to repress their emotions, establish hierarchies, and constantly prove their masculinity ... whether boys and later men have chosen to resist or conform to this masculine norm, there is loneliness, anxiety, and pain.

  Jennifer Siebel Newsom

  Pain, Loneliness, Compassion

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• We've tended in our cosmologies to make things familiar. Despite all our best efforts, we've not been very inventive. In the West, Heaven is placid and fluffy, and Hell is like the inside of a volcano. In many stories, both realms are governed by dominance hierarchies headed by gods or devils. Monotheists talked about the king of kings. In every culture we imagined something like our own political system running the Universe. Few found the similarity suspicious.

  Carl Sagan

  Running, Kings, Volcanoes

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.65, Ballantine Books

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• Ireland is such a young society. The British were the ruling class up until they left about a hundred years ago, and we've been trying to work out what our class hierarchy is ever since.

  Tana French

  Years, Class, Work Out

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• Archbishop Romero of El Salvador was a member of the Salvadoran aristocracy. He could not have risen to the top of the church hierarchy otherwise. But after he began voicing critical remarks about the war and concerned comments about the poor, he was assassinated.

  Michael Parenti

  War, Political, Church

  Michael Parenti (1996). “Dirty Truths”, p.189, City Lights Books

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• In the agreement to rescue Rome [i.e., the Roman Catholic Church's hierarchy] from the predicament of losing its world control to Protestantism, and to preserve the spiritual and temporal supremacy which the popes [had] 'usurped' during the Middle Ages, Rome now 'sold' the [Roman Catholic] Church to the Society of Jesus [i.e., the Jesuits]; in essence the popes surrendered themselves into their hands.

  John Daniel

  Spiritual, Jesus, Agreement

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• All that passes for knowledge can be arranged in a hierarchy of degrees of certainty, with arithmetic and the facts of perception at the top.

  Bertrand Russell

  Knowledge, Science, Perception

  Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.380, Psychology Press

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