Social Systems Quotes - Page 3

• The market economy-capitalism-is a social system of consumers' supremacy.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Economy, Social, Supremacy

  Ludwig Von Mises (1990). “Money, method, and the market process: essays”, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• A pacifism which can see the cruelties only of occasional military warfare and is blind to the continuous cruelties of our social system is worthless.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Military, Warfare, Poverty

  Mahatma Gandhi (2012). “The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas”, p.285, Vintage

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• In my work, I am not attempting to predict the future.  I am only pointing out what is possible with the intelligent application and humane use of science and technology.  This does not call for scientists to manage society.  What I suggest is applying the methods of science to the social system for the benefit of human kind and the environment.

  Jacque Fresco

  Intelligent, Technology, Doe

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• The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system - and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.

  Ayn Rand

  Majority Rule, Liberty, Principles

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.522, Penguin

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• We are, first of all, not solitary creatures and second of all, we are deeply embedded in the lives of others. It's very easy to forget that and to engage in an atomistic fallacy - where we think that all we have to do is study the individual components of a system in order to understand the system. That's clearly not the case when it comes to social systems.

  Nicholas A. Christakis

  Thinking, Order, Humanity

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• Charity is an ugly trick. It is a virtue grown by the rich on the graves of the poor. Unless it is accompanied by sincere revolt against the present social system, it is a cheap moral swagger. In former times it was used as fire insurance by the rich, but now that the fear of Hell has gone along with the rest of revealed religion, it is used either to gild mean lives with nobility or as a political instrument.

  Rebecca West

  Mean, Fire, Justice

  Rebecca West, Jane Marcus (1982). “The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17”, New York : Viking Press

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• The long history of mankind is studded with convergences, perhaps most notably in social systems and the use of artefacts and technology. But for human history, set in the arrow of time, there appears to be one intolerable stumbling-block. This is the catastrophic failure in human values and decency.

  Simon Conway Morris

  Block, Technology, Arrows

  "The Crucible of Creation". Book by Simon Conway Morris, 1998.

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• Modern schools and universities push students into habits of depersonalized learning, alienation from nature and sexuality, obedience to hierarchy, fear of authority, self-objectification, and chilling competitiveness. These character traits are the essence of the twisted personality-type of modern industrialism. They are precisely the character traits needed to maintain a social system that is utterly out of touch with nature, sexuality and real human needs.

  Arthur Evans

  Real, School, Character

  Arthur Evans (1978). “Witchcraft and the Gay counterculture: a radical view of Western civilization and some of the people it has tried to destroy”, Bookpeople

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• The alarm must be sounded because it is the economic and social system of capitalism and imperialism that prevents the urgently needed full mobilization of the potential economic surplus and the attainment of rates of economic advancement that can be secured with its help.

  Paul A. Baran

  Alarms, Advancement, Helping

  Paul A. Baran (1968). “Political Econ of Growth”, p.244, NYU Press

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• Contrary to widespread faith in "communication" and "knowledge transfer," information has a social life, and unless new insights are embedded in the social system they evaporate.

  Richard Pascale

  Communication, Learning, Knowledge

  Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin, Monique Sternin (2013). “The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World's Toughest Problems”, p.120, Harvard Business Press

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• The American system demands success, and in order to succeed we must first believe that we can. Yet our society, with its intolerance of failure and poverty, traps millions of people in positions where any kind of success seems impossible to contemplate, and in which failure itself is a kind of passive rebellion against their own misery and the social system which created it in the first place. To succeed it is necessary to accept the world as it is and rise above it.

  Michael Korda

  Believe, Order, People

  "Success!". Book by Michael Korda, 1977.

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• What distinguishes the historical social system we are calling historical capitalism is that in this historical system capital came to be used (invested) in a very special way. It came to be used with the primary objective or intent of self-expansion. In this system, past accumulations were 'capital' only to the extend they were used to accumulate more of the same.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Past, Self, Historical

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• But even in the absence of direct interference by those who had the power to interfere, the process was usually aborted by the non-availability of one of more elements of the process - the accumulated stock in a money form, the labor-power to be utilized by the producer, the network of distributors, the consumers who were purchasers. One or more elements were missing because, in previous historical social systems, one or more of these elements was not commodified or was insufficiently commodified.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Availability, Missing, Historical

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• Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships.

  Ayn Rand

  Rights, Laissez Faire Capitalism, Recognition

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.35, Penguin

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• Social systems proceed by (usually) covering up the brutalities upon which they are based. The doctor doesn't let you get to his door and then turn you away, rather his home address is hard to find. The government handcuffs you so they don't have to shoot you trying to escape. And so on.

  Tyler Cowen

  Home, Doctors, Government

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• What distinguishes exemplary boards is that they are robust, effective social systems . . .The highest performing companies have extremely contentious boards that regard dissent as an obligation and that treat no subject as undiscussable.

  Jeffrey Sonnenfeld

  Boards, Social, Robust

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• We are losing our living systems, social systems, cultural systems, governing systems, stability, and our constitutional health, and we're surrendering it all at the same time.

  Paul Hawken

  Losing, Social, Stability

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• The military system of a nation is not an independent section of the social system but an aspect of its totality.

  Tony Judt

  Military, Independent, Social

  Tony Judt (2008). “Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century”, p.176, Penguin

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• Individual talent is too sporadic and unpredictable to be allowed any important part in the organization society. Social systems which endure are built on the average person who can be trained to occupy any position adequately if not brilliantly.

  Stuart Chase

  Average, Organization, Important

  Stuart Chase (1948). “The Proper Study of Mankind ...: An Inquiry Into the Science of Human Relations”, New York : Harper

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• Constructing a social system that tends to those who agree with it is a piece of cake compared to constructing one that makes those who disagree with it want to obey its principles.

  Erik Naggum

  Cake, Principles, Pieces

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• Communists have always viewed the national question through the prism of the class struggle, believing that its solution has to be subordinated to the interests of the Revolution, to the interests of socialism. That is why Communists and all fighters for socialism believe that the main aspect of the national question is unification of the working people, regardless of their national origin, in the common struggle against every type of oppression, and for a new social system which rules out exploitation of the working people.

  Leonid Brezhnev

  Believe, Struggle, Class

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• Mythology is the study of whatever religious or heroic legends are so foreign to a student's experience that he cannot believe them to be true. . . . Myth has two main functions. The first is to answer the sort of awkward questions that children ask, such as: 'Who made the world? How will it end? Who was the first man? Where do souls go after death?'. . . . The second function of myth is to justify an existing social system and account for traditional rites and customs.

  Robert Graves

  Religious, Children, Believe

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• The redeeming feature of war is that it puts a nation to the test. As exposure to the atmosphere reduces all mummies to instant dissolution, so war passes supreme judgment upon social systems that have outlived their vitality.

  Karl Marx

  War, Atmosphere, Tests

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• Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART.

  Joseph Beuys

  Art, Order, Social

  Caroline Tisdall, Joseph Beuys (1979). “Joseph Beuys”

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• The determination of the average man is not merely a matter of speculative curiosity; it may be of the most important service to the science of man and the social system. It ought necessarily to precede every other inquiry into social physics, since it is, as it were, the basis. The average man, indeed, is in a nation what the centre of gravity is in a body; it is by having that central point in view that we arrive at the apprehension of all the phenomena of equilibrium and motion.

  Adolphe Quetelet

  Determination, Men, Views

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