Top Down Quotes - Page 2

• I think the thing you're seeing now with the music industry is that the people who have tight-knit communities are now able to really hold each other up because of the internet tools. And the really top-down pyramid scheme of major labels and typical superstars isn't sustainable anymore because the system has collapsed.

  Amanda Palmer

  Thinking, Pyramid Schemes, Pyramids

  Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• The traditional view of purpose says it comes from on high, from God, from the Creator. Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition. Whereas people used to think of meaning coming from on high and being ordained from the top down, now we have Darwin saying, "No, all of this design can happen, all of this purpose can emerge from the bottom up without any direction at all."

  Daniel Dennett

  Thinking, Views, Ideas

  "Big Thinkers on Evolution". "NOVA", www.pbs.org. October 6, 2009.

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• Anarchism is grounded in a rather definite social-psychological hypothesis: that forceful, graceful and intelligent behaviour occurs only when there is an uncoerced and direct response to the physical and social environment; that in most human affairs, more harm than good results from compulsion, top-down direction, bureaucratic planning, pre-ordained curricula, jails, conscription, states.

  Paul Goodman

  Intelligent, Jail, Behaviour

  Paul Goodman (1967). “Like a conquered province: the moral ambiguity of America”

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• "Oppression" or "systems of oppression" operate as a shorthand terms in much writing and speaking so that we do not have to list all these systems of meaning and control each time (i.e. racism, ableism, xenophobia, etc.). I needed a term like that, but "oppression" implies a kind of top-down understanding of power that is at odds with the Foucaultian model I rely on in my work.

  Dean Spade

  Xenophobia, Writing, Odds

  "On Normal Life". Interview with Natalie Oswin, societyandspace.org. January 15, 2014.

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• Since we're each unique, if we've shared many experiences, then it probably has something to do with power or politics, and if we unify and act together, then we can make a change. Revolutions that last don't happen from the top down. They happen from the bottom up.

  Gloria Steinem

  Unique, Together, Lasts

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• [Ella Baker]'s second defining characteristic was her dislike of top-down leadership... 'She felt leaders were not appointed but the rose up. Someone will rise. Someone will emerge'. It was an attitude Baker shared with some of the older women in the movement.

  Gail Collins

  Attitude, Rose, Leader

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• Kindliness seems to exist primarily as an animal instinct, so deeply rooted that mental degeneracy, which works from the top down,does not destroy it until the mind sinks to the lower grades of idiocy.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Kindness, Animal, Mind

  Charles Horton Cooley (1992). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.158, Transaction Publishers

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• I've seen, all too often in my career, people coming in to lead agencies and organizations and trying to impose change from the top down. Never works. You never have enough time.

  Robert M. Gates

  Careers, Organization, Agency

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• Enforced by genetics, sexual reproduction, perspective, and experience, the most manifest characteristic of human beings is their diversity. The freer an economy is, the more this human diversity of knowledge will be manifested. By contrast, political power originates in top-down processes-governments, monopolies, regulators, and elite institutions- all attempting to quell human diversity and impose order. Thus power always seeks centralization.

  George Gilder

  Government, Order, Diversity

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• Our top-down pyramid style of management is a very old concept borrowed from centuries of war and monarchies.

  James Hunter

  War, Pyramids, Style

  James C. Hunter (2008). “The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership”, p.56, Crown Business

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• All of us somehow felt that the next battleground was going to be culture. We all felt somehow that our culture had been stolen from us-by commercial forces, by advertising agencies, by TV broadcasters. It felt like we were no longer singing our songs and telling stories, and generating our culture from the bottom up, but now we were somehow being spoon-fed this commercial culture top down.

  Kalle Lasn

  Song, Agency, Singing

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• Nature is pretty good at networks, self-organizing systems. By contrast, social systems are top-down and hierarchical, from which we draw the basic assumption that organization and order can only come from centralism.

  Nicholas Negroponte

  Self, Order, Organization

  "Online Extra: Q&A With MIT's Nicholas Negroponte". Interview with Stephen Baker, www.bloomberg.com. June 21, 2004.

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• I don't expect to get 100 percent of what I want, but what we can't do is go back to the kind of top-down economics that doesn't work.

  Barack Obama

  Want, Kind, Economics

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• [P]rogressivism is a top-down, continent-wide tissue of taxes, mandates, and other coercions.

  George Will

  Tissues, Coercion, Politics

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• Imagine a country where the majority of the population reaps the majority of the benefits for their hard work, creative ingenuity, and collaborative efforts. Imagine a country where corporate losses arent socialized, while gains are captured by an exclusive minority. Imagine a country run as a democracy, from the bottom up, not a plutocracy from the top down. Richard Wolff not only imagines it, but in his compelling, captivating and stunningly reasoned new book, Democracy at Work, he details how we get there from here - and why we absolutely must.

  Nomi Prins

  Running, Country, Book

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• In the Ferrari or Jaguar, switchin' four lanes
  Wit' the top down screaming out money ain't a thang

  Jermaine Dupri

  Hip Hop, Ferrari, Four

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• You cannot teach beginners top-down programming, because they don't know which end is up.

  Tony Hoare

  Trust, Beginners, Ends

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• Most of the approaches to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, have been directed at trying to resolve the most complex problems, like refugees and Jerusalem, which is akin to building the pyramid from the top down.

  Benjamin Netanyahu

  Pyramids, Israel, Trying

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• Common sense tells us that the government's attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy.

  Sarah Palin

  Government, Common Sense, Size

  "Palin gets tough on Democrats' health care proposals" by Alex Mooney, www.cnn.com. September 9, 2009.

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• We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive...." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Las Vegas, Sky, Car

  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas pt. 1 (1971)

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• I know that government doesn't have the all solutions that real solutions do not come from the top down. Instead, the ways to end poverty come from all of us. We are part of the solution.

  Kathleen Blanco

  Real, Government, Way

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• Leadership must be established from the top down.

  Sam Nunn

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• This one is for the boys with the boomin system
  Top down AC with the coolin system

  Nicki Minaj

  Flirty, Boys

  Song: Super Bass

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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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• Democrats believe we must create jobs, not protect the special interests; build the economy from the middle out, not the top down.

  Nancy Pelosi

  Jobs, Believe, Special

  The House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 5, 2012.

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