... I believe I have come to adopt a cybernetic way of thinking... I became aware of this in the many conversations with students who were worrying about their future and asked for advice. I heard myself telling them that it was far more important to know what one did not want to do, than to have detailed plans of what one did want to do. One day it dawned on me that this was plain cybernetic advice; It is more useful to specify constraints rather than goals. - And then I explained it by adding that in one's teens or twenties one usually has already discovered a number of things that one cannot stand, whereas it is quite impossible to foresee what, ten or twenty years later, will provide the satisfactions needed to maintain one's equilibrium.
Ernst von GlasersfeldRelated topics
advice believe day equilibrium far future impossible later number plain quite stand teens telling ten thinking twenty way years thingsRelated quotes
Traditionally, economic analysis treats the economic system as one of the givens. The term "design" in the title is meant to stress that the structure of the economic system is to be regarded as an unknown. An unknown in what problem? Typically that of finding a system that would be, in a sense to be specified, superior to the existing one. The idea of searching for a better system is at least as ancient as Plato's Republic, but it is only recently that tools have become available for a systematic, analytical approach to such search procedures. This new approach refuses to accept the institutional status quo of a particular time and place as the only legitimate object of interest and yet recognizes constraints that disqualify naive Utopias.
Leonid Hurwicz
Don't forget that God sees you and watches you when you are in pain; He perceives even the beating of your heart. Consequently, He will not leave you without consolation and His fatherly protection. Naturally, the saints rejoiced in their afflictions; as for us, let us at least manage to accept affliction or pain patiently.
My child, pray within your heart, and the name of Jesus will become for you a comforting balm so that you can bear this trial of yours in a way which benefits you. You will greatly benefit from this trial if you submit yourself to it patiently. So again I say to you, with the almighty armor of prayer continually approach the omnipotent Lord more often, and you will come to know how He wondrously lifts the burden of pain and marvellously gives rest to sufferers.
Ephraim of Arizona
In this administration also it has been necessary at times to issue specific warnings - warnings that we could not stand by and watch the Communists conquer Laos by force, or intervene in the Congo, or swallow West Berlin, or maintain offensive missiles on Cuba. But while our goals were at least temporarily obtained in these and other instances, our successful defense of freedom was due not to the words we used, but to the strength we stood ready to use on behalf of the principles we stand ready to defend. This strength is composed of many different elements, ranging from the most massive deterrents to the most subtle influences. And all types of strength are needed - no one kind could do the job alone.
John F. Kennedy
A later generation could have explained the miracle to Sir Frank - though explaining in terms he would not have understood. Though he knew well enough the theory of family traits and likenesses, it would have been impossible then to make him comprehend the intricacy of a chromosome which carries inside it - not merely the stereotypes of parental hair or temperament - but the secret knowledge of how to breathe, how to work the muscles to move the bones, how to grow, how to remember, how to commence the processes of thought ... all the infinite number of secret "how to's" that have to be passed on for life to stay above jelly level.
A freak chromosome in Sir Frank ensured he passed on, together with these usual secrets, the secret of his individual consciousness.
Brian Aldiss
Experience is valuable only when it has brought suffering and when the suffering has left its mark upon both body and mind. Sleepless nights and conflicts with reality make statesmen realists; how could these experiences be usefully handed on to young idealists who expect to transform the universe without effort? The counsels of Polonius are platitudes, but the moment we start giving advice we are all like Polonius. For us those platitudes are packed with meaning, memories, and visions. For our children, they are abstract and boring. We should like to make a wise woman of a girl of twenty; it is physiologically impossible. "The counsels of old age," said Vauvenargues, "are like a winter's sun which gives light but no warmth."
André Maurois