Mechanism Quotes - Page 30

• Story is about pulling the reader in and a plot is a more externalized mechanism of revelation. A plot is more antic, more performative, and less intimate. When you're telling a story you're telling it into someone's ear.

  Anne Enright

  Plot, Stories, Ears

  Interview with Conan Putnam, www.believermag.com. January, 2014.

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• We all deal with a certain amount of stress, on a day-to-day basis. I probably smoke too many cigarettes, which isn't a very good thing. I don't have any extraordinary coping mechanism. I certainly don't talk to a dog.

  Elijah Wood

  Dog, Stress, Coping Mechanisms

  Source: collider.com

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• What will most certainly happen is that there will be very clear and full communication between the government and independents and minor parties. The precise mechanisms will evolve over time, but we certainly intend to keep the minor parties and the independents very much in the loop. We have to if we want our legislative agenda to have a reasonable chance of success and that's what we intend to do.

  Tony Abbott

  Party, Communication, Government

  "Grattan on Friday: In Conversation with Tony Abbott". Interview with Michelle Grattan, theconversation.com. March 27, 2014.

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• I took a great joy with inventing new kinds of mechanisms. I invented new kinds of machines. I've been a student of science fiction for a long, long time, and I'm very well-versed in science fact and science fiction.

  Jack Kirby

  Long, Joy, Fiction

  Interview with Gary Groth, www.tcj.com. February 1990.

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• Is the very mechanism for the universe to come into being meaningless or unworkable or both unless the universe is guaranteed to produce life, consciousness and observership somewhere and for some little time in its history-to-be?

  John P. Wheeler III

  Life, Science, Littles

  "Other Worlds". Book by Paul Davies, 1980.

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• Scaling down individually is very hard. Imagine that if you go to a place where everybody is dressed nicely, and you are the only one who doesn't dress nicely. Everybody goes on vacations to a great place and you go to the Jersey shore. It's very hard to do these things without an organized mechanism, but it looks to me like there might be some organized mechanisms.

  Dan Ariely

  Vacation, Dresses, Looks

  "A conversation with Dan Ariely, Author of Predictably Irrational". Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. November 18, 2009.

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• Money is a wonderful invention. It lets us save, it lets us specialize, right? I couldn't be a professor if there wasn't any money. Every day I would have to raise chicken and bread and broccoli and go ahead and spend all my time trading. So, money is a wonderful mechanism.

  Dan Ariely

  Bread, Wonderful, Invention

  The Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. November 18, 2009.

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• I have a lot of friends who are trying to clean up their act, or that are still making trouble for themselves, so I’m definitely well-versed on what goes on in the mind and the heart of a person who self-destructs as their coping mechanism, and also what they’re like when you take their preferred substance away.

  Natasha Lyonne

  Heart, Coping Mechanisms, Self

  "Natasha Lyonne, Locked Up". Interview with Emma Brown, www.interviewmagazine.com. July 9, 2013.

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• Markets and exchanges are merely mechanisms which reflect the temperament of man

  Luke Johnson

  Men, Temperament

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• The Democratic Party is now a political mechanism having a genuine political principle: national socialism.

  Rose Wilder Lane

  Party, Political, Principles

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• We can think about how we reduce the pain in paying. So, for example, credit cards are wonderful mechanisms to reduce the pain of paying. If you go to a restaurant and you are paying cash, you would feel much worse than if you were paying with credit card. Why? You know the price, there's no surprise, but if you're paying cash, you feel a bit more guilt.

  Dan Ariely

  Pain, Thinking, Guilt

  "A conversation with Dan Ariely, Author of Predictably Irrational". Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. November 18, 2009.

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• It's not the job of government to help the poor. The church is the mechanism that God put on earth to help the poor.

  Rich Mullins

  Jobs, Government, Church

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• The welfare state destroys the market mechanisms - lessens free choice and willing exchange. Simultaneously creating unnatural specializations, it must, granted statism's premise, resort to welfarism; that is, it must assume the responsibility for the people's welfare: their employment, their old age, their income, and the like. As this is done, man loses his wholeness; he is dispossessed of responsibility for self, the very essence of his manhood. The more dependent he becomes, the less dependable!

  Leonard Read

  Responsibility, Men, Essence

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• The moral, then, is that familiar categories of behavior - marriage customs, food taboos, folk superstitions, and so on - certainly do vary across cultures and have to be learned, but the deeper mechanisms of mental computation that generate them may be universal and innate.

  Steven Pinker

  Culture, May, Superstitions

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature”, p.66, Penguin

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• Part of the blame can be put at the artists' door, too - no question. But I see our involvement more as a consequence. When there is too much money at stake, the whole system gets corrupted. Artists can be very vulnerable to these mechanisms.

  Maurizio Cattelan

  Artist, Doors, Too Much

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• If one sentence were to sum up the mechanism driving the Great Stagnation, it is this: Recent and current innovation is more geared to private goods than to public goods. That simple observation ties together the three major macroeconomic events of our time: growing income inequality, stagnant median income, and the financial crisis.

  Tyler Cowen

  Simple, Ties, Innovation

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• It did not seem possible that Wendy Wright had been born out of blood and internal organs like other people. In proximity to her he felt himself to be a squat, oily, sweating, uneducated nurt whose stomach rattled and whose breath wheezed. Near her he became aware of the physical mechanisms which kept him alive; within him machinery, pipes and valves and gas-compressors and fan belts had to chug away at a losing task, a labor ultimately doomed. Seeing her face, he discovered that his own consisted of a garish mask; noticing her body made him feel like a low-class wind-up toy.

  Philip K. Dick

  Blood, Wind, Class

  Philip K. Dick (2012). “Ubik”, p.62, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I hope that George doesn't internalize her scare tactics. I want to argue with her, tell her that "sins of the flesh" is just a control mechanism -- if you demonize a person's pleasure, then you can control his or her life. I can't say how many times this tool has been wielded against me, in a variety of forms. But I see no sin in a kiss. I only see sin in the condemnation.

  David Levithan

  Kissing, Scare Tactics, Flesh

  David Levithan (2012). “Every Day”, p.223, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of 'brainwashing under freedom' to which we are subjected and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting instruments.

  Noam Chomsky

  Freedom, Practice, Tasks

  "The Chomsky Reader". Book by Noam Chomsky, 1987.

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• The nerves of the skin send pain signals to the brain to warn us of the danger from and impending injury. In the case of self-inflicted wounding, this pain acts as the body's own defense mechanism to stop one from proceeding in the effort at physical injury. If a person proceeds despite the pain, that means that he or she is motivated by something stronger than the pain, something that makes him or her capable of ignoring or enduring it.

  Steven Levenkron

  Pain, Mean, Self

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• I have one problem, I don’t hate people. They disgust me and I want to get away from them. I do not have hatred. I have an escape mechanism.

  Charles Bukowski

  Hate, People, Hatred

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• The human mind has a primitive ego defense mechanism that negates all realities that produce too much stress for the brain to handle. It’s called Denial.

  Dan Brown

  Stress, Reality, Ego

  Dan Brown (2014). “Inferno: Special Illustrated Edition (Enhanced): Featuring Robert Langdon”, p.377, Knopf

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• One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference.

  Robert Fulghum

  Differences, Coping Mechanisms, Oatmeal

  "Uh-Oh: Some Observations from Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door". Book by Robert Fulghum, 1991.

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• The Seventeenth Amendment serves not the public's interest but the interests of the governing masterminds and their disciples. Its early proponents advanced it not because they championed 'democracy' or the individual, but because they knew it would be one of several important mechanisms for empowering the federal government and unraveling constitutional republicanism.

  Mark Levin

  Government, Empowering, Important

  Mark R. Levin (2013). “The Liberty Amendments”, p.47, Simon and Schuster

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• The true and lasting genius of humour does not drag you thus to boxes labelled 'pathos,' 'humour,' and show you all the mechanism of the inimitable puppets that are going to perform. How I used to laugh at Simon Tapperwit, and the Wellers, and a host more! But I can't do it now somehow; and time, it seems to me, is the true test of humour. It must be antiseptic.

  Mark Twain

  Humor, Laughing, Doe

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