Mechanism Quotes - Page 8

• A little more grace, a motive made pure, a few truths tenderly told, a heart softened, a character subdued, a life consecrated, would restore the right action of the mental mechanism, and make manifest the movement of body and soul in accord with God.

  Mary Baker Eddy

  Character, Heart, Soul

  Mary Baker Eddy (1967). “The Christian Science Journal”

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• Using SROI to explore the value of our online question and answer service, askTheSite, helped us develop new mechanisms for speaking to young people and gain a real insight into the impact of our work. The project enabled us to demonstrate YouthNets commitment to robust impact measurement as well as our commercial approach to project evaluation. Perhaps most importantly, being able to assign a monetary value to askTheSite has enabled YouthNet to convey to current and potential funders how valuable the service is for both young people and the wider society in a language that they understand

  Sarah McCoy

  Real, Commitment, Impact

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• A lot of the turning points happen in high school and in college, and it defines a lot of how you see the world and how you decide to defend yourself from the world. Some people - their defense mechanism is, I'm really smart or I'm sexy or I'm the leader. And other people - they hide or they make jokes.

  Judd Apatow

  Sexy, Smart, School

  "A Conversation with Director Judd Apatow". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. October 25, 2010.

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• We had an electronic head and arm for Threepio, and I manipulated the mechanism with a joystick. But it wasn't working. The propman said, 'Give me fifteen minutes.' We all went to get coffee, and when we came back, Threepio's head turned perfectly and his arm moved naturally. I looked up and realized that the prop man had a fishing pole with a fine nylon string attached to Threepio's arm. He had rigged another string around the head, which Chewbacca was holding. As Chewie moved his hands, Threepio's head turned!

  Irvin Kershner

  Coffee, Men, Hands

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• What mechanism can it be that results in the production of homologous organs, the same 'patterns', in spite of their not being controlled by the same genes? I asked this question in 1938, and it has not been answered

  Gavin de Beer

  Patterns, Genes, Results

  Sir Gavin De Beer (1971). “Homology: An Unsolved Problem”

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• It is one of the dangerous self-deceptions of our society to pretend that mechanisms of control do not really exist, and to maintain, without qualification, that we are an economically "free" people.

  Robert Heilbroner

  Self, People, Deception

  "The Future As History". Book by Robert Heilbroner, Chapter III, Part 9, The Embrarras De Richesses, p. 150, 1960.

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• When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense - as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms - but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Philosophy, Silly, Law

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.310, Harvard University Press

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• A convincing demonstration of correctness being impossible as long as the mechanism is regarded as a black box, our only hope lies in not regarding the mechanism as a black box.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Lying, Long, Black

  "Notes On Structured Programming" by Edsger Dijkstra, April 1970.

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• Neither camera, nor lens, nor film determine the quality of pictures; it is the visual perception of the man behind the mechanism which brings them to life. Art contains the allied ideas of making and begetting, of being master of one's craft and able to create. Without these properties no art exists and no photographic art can come into being

  Helmut Gernsheim

  Art, Men, Ideas

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• Nullification is not a 'defense' recognized by law, but rather a mechanism that permits a jury, as community conscience, to disregard the strict requirements of law where it finds that those requirements cannot justly be applied in a particular case.

  David L. Bazelon

  Law, Community, Defense

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• It appeared to me that the dignity of which human existence is capable is not attainable by devotion to the mechanism of life , and that unless contemplation of eternal things is preserved, mankind will become no better than well-fed pigs.

  Bertrand Russell

  Pigs, Dignity, Devotion

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Autobiography”, p.149, Routledge

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• What conservation education must build is an ethical underpinning for land economics and a universal curiosity to understand the land mechanism. Conservation may then follow.

  Aldo Leopold

  Land, Curiosity, May

  Aldo Leopold (1972). “Round River”, p.114, Oxford University Press

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• If I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child's natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn't possibly do as good a job as is currently being done-I simply wouldn't have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.

  Paul Lockhart

  Crush, Jobs, Children

  "A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form". Book by Paul Lockhart, 2009.

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• A cold heart is my protection mechanism. I don't really feel anything for anyone.

  Emmanuel Jal

  Heart, Cold, Protection

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• Only lifeless mechanisms move along faultlessly straight lines and compass circles. In art the surest way to destroy is to canonize one given form and one philosophy: that which is canonized quickly dies of obesity, of entropy.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Philosophy

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• It is when physicians are bogged down by their incomplete technologies, by the innumerable things they are obliged to do in medicine when they lack a clear understanding of disease mechanisms, that the deficiencies of the health-care system are most conspicuous. If I were a policy-maker, interested in saving money for health care over the long haul, I would regard it as an act of high prudence to give high priority to a lot more basic research in biologic science.

  Lewis Thomas

  Technology, Medicine, Long

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• In the United States, there is a broadly shared view that the U.N. is one of many potential instruments to advance U.S. issues, and we have to decide whether a particular issue is best done through the U.N. or best done through some other mechanism.

  John Bolton

  Views, Issues, United States

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• Worry was my mother's mechanic, her mechanism for engaging with the machinery of living. Worry was an anchor for her, a hook, something to clutch on to in the world. Worry was a box to live inside of, worry a mechanism for evading the present, for re-creating the past, for dealing with the future.

  Charles Yu

  Mother, Past, Anchors

  FaceBook post by Charles Yu from May 11, 2014

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• That's what Buddhism has been trying to unravel - the mechanism of happiness and suffering. It is a science of the mind.

  Matthieu Ricard

  Buddhism, Mind, Suffering

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• Acting is a reflex, a mechanism for development and survival. . . . It isn't 'second nature,' it is 'first nature.'

  Declan Donnellan

  Survival, Acting, Development

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• The Europeans governments have massively changed the landscape in Europe. There is no doubt about it. They have put together the European Financial Stability Fund. They have discussed and approved the European Stability Mechanism.

  Christine Lagarde

  Government, Europe, Doubt

  "Christine Lagarde interview on second day in IMF job". Interview with Stephanie Flanders, www.bbc.com. July 6, 2011.

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• Tools and techniques ought to be an extension of consciousness, but they can just as easily be a protection from consciousness. Then the tools become defence mechanisms... against the unconscious.

  Rollo May

  Technique, Tools, Consciousness

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• anyone who writes about "Darwin's theory of evolutionin the singular, without segregating the theories of gradual evolution, common descent, speciation, and the mechanism of natural selection, will be quite unable to discuss the subject competently.

  Ernst Mayr

  Writing, Society, Common

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• Christianity has a built-in defense system: anything that questions a belief, no matter how logical the argument is, is the work of Satan by the very fact that it makes you question a belief. It's a very interesting defense mechanism and the only way to get by it -- and believe me, I was raised Southern Baptist -- is to take massive amounts of mushrooms, sit in a field, and just go, "Show me.".

  Bill Hicks

  Believe, Mushrooms, Interesting

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• A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights. Men are moved by only two mechanisms: fear and self-interest. Victory belongs to the most persevering.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Fighting, Men, Rights

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