Pyramid Quotes - page 3
Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom. To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.
Tracy Kidder
[Mim, to Nelson, after discussing Annabelle's stepfather being dead] "More and more is dead, are you old enough to notice? Vegas is dead, the way it was. [...] Now it's herds. Herds and herds of Joe Nobodies. Bozos. The hoi pollio, running up credit-card debt. Gambling is legal in half the states so they've built these huge moron-catchers along the Strip, all the way to the airport. A Pyramid, the Eiffel Tower, Venice – it's all here, Nelson, all for the morons. It's depressing as hell."
John Updike
From the outside, the favela and everyone in it look the same, but there are various strata, and my family was one of those at the top of the pyramid...Below us were the garbage collectors, delivery boys and street vendors who made even less money than we did, and then those who were so poor that they never even left the favela and lived from odd jobs here and there.
Paulo Lins
Whether we consider Nazi Germany or Abu Ghraib prison, there were many people who observed what was happening and said nothing. At Abu Ghraib, one photo shows two soldiers smiling before a pyramid of naked prisoners while a dozen other soldiers stand around watching passively. If you observe such abuses and don't say, "This is wrong! Stop it!” you give tacit approval to continue. You are part of the silent majority that makes evil deeds more acceptable.
Philip Zimbardo
Twenty years ago, the business world was taken by surprise when the work pyramid was up-ended. Suddenly customers were on top and a flattened corporate hierarchy made front-line workers responsible for understanding and satisfying the customer's every whim. Today, we're poised for the natural sequel to that revolution. It's time to focus on keeping workers satisfied - or at least engaged in their work.
Adrian Slywotzky
What does it matter whether millions of semi-brainless beings curse or bless my memory? It is equally one to me whether they hang my bones in chains like they did the bones of Cromwell, or build a pyramid of stone over my mouldering coffin. Today only do I regard. Today I know. Today is mine. Today I wish to be something.
Arthur Desmond
Like it or not, giant, vertically integrated corporate enterprises were the most efficient means of organizing the production and distribution of mass produced goods and services. Bringing together supply chains, production processes, and distribution channels in vertically integrated companies under centralized management dramatically reduced transaction costs, increased efficiencies and productivity, lowered the marginal cost of production and distribution, and, for the most part, lowered the price of goods and services to consumers, allowing the economy to flourish. While those at the top of the corporate pyramid disproportionately benefited from the increasing returns on investment, it's only fair to acknowledge that the lives of millions of consumers also improved appreciably in industrialized nations.
Jeremy Rifkin
Like gladiator games and pyramid building, opera has always been a gloriously money-losing proposition. It is the most extravagant of arts, requiring the constant support of kings, dictators, plutocrats, and town councils. Box-office success is no solution. San Francisco Opera loses money at every sold-out performance. Sane business practices simply don't suffice. Composer Richard Wagner's patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, was the ideal operatic angel - very rich and certifiably insane. Mel Brooks' shyster producer Max Bialystock need not have mounted Springtime for Hitler to score a surefire loss. Aida would have done just fine.
Dana Gioia
THE TERM (Sustainability) HAS BECOME so widely used that it is in danger of meaning nothing. It has been applied to all manner of activities in an effort to give those activities the gloss of moral imperative, the cachet of environmental enlightenment. "Sustainable” has been used variously to mean "politically feasible,” "economically feasible,” "not part of a pyramid or bubble,” "socially enlightened,” "consistent with neoconservative small-government dogma,” "consistent with liberal principles of justice and fairness,” "morally desirable,” and, at its most diffuse, "sensibly far-sighted.”.
Eric Zencey
What Bacon was telling us is that the bible has nothing to do with what is perceived as "Christianity." As I have been telling you for years, the real message for those of intellect and understanding is hidden in the secret coding system. The secret teachings, persecuted by tyrants of church and state, were hidden under their noses as the Hermetic Philosophers have done for all the thousands of years since they supervised the building of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh.
David Lane (white nationalist)
The fact is that building a pyramid is fairly easy, aside from the lifting. You just pile up stones in receding layers, placing one layer carefully upon another, and pretty soon you have a pyramid. You can't help it. In other words, it is not in the nature of a pyramid to fall down. [Footnote: It probably could not fall down if it tried.].
Will Cuppy