Denominator Quotes - page 3
The Imperial Palace of Japan is like a breathtaking oasis snoozing in the midst of a concrete panorama. That the Tokyo Metropolitan Government painstakingly built their Capital City around the Imperial Palace is clearly reflective of the centrality of the monarchy's unifying role in the life of Japanese society. It is a heart-warming thought and a valuable lesson to glean, in terms of its overall resilience to the challenges of modernization. As I see it, this feature of indigenous heritage is itself the most obvious common denominator between the Japanese and the Fijian peoples. The Japanese are being able to safeguard against an erosion of their respect, passion and regard for the Imperial Family in the face of external pressures. In the long run, this will, as a uniting stand, ensure their survival as a community of people. Now, that should certainly be a lesson for Fiji to learn from.
Tevita Momoedonu
It is one of the anomalies of the human story that these peoples, who could not be assimilated and unified under the skies of Europe, should on coming to America discover an amazing genius for cooperation, for fusion, and for harmonious effort. Yet they were the same people when they came here that they had been on the other side of the Atlantic. Quite apparently, they found something in our institutions, something in the American system of Government and society which they themselves helped to construct, that furnished to all of them a political and cultural common denominator.
Calvin Coolidge
I'm not trying to win a popularity contest. If you're in a public media setting and you're not expressing something of yourself, turn it over to someone who will. Just get out. Just go away and put somebody on who has a point of view, because the most dangerous thing about TV is its equalizing factor, its lowest common denominator factor. And that's what I fight against all the time.
Keith Olbermann
If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator -- the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value, counts.
Herbert Marcuse
I'm acquainted with a, uh, gentleman who claims that the extent to which a society focuses on the needs of its lowest common denominator is the extent to which that society'll be mired in mediocrity. Whereas, if we would aim the bulk of our support at the brightest, most talented, most virtuous instead, then they would have the wherewithal to solve a lot of our problems, to uplift the whole culture, enlighten it or something, so that eventually there wouldn't be so many losers and weaklings impeding evolution and dragging the whole species down. He claims that martyrs like you just perpetuate human misery by catering to it. He believes individuals have to take responsibility for their own lives and accept the consequences of their choices.
Tom Robbins
In Nuoro Province of Sardinia Italy and Okinawa Japan there are zones called "blue zones” that are known for having the highest number of centenarians - which are people over age 100. When scientists researched these zones to find out how these people were living so long, they found the least common denominator: These people all had emphasized Ikigai in their cultures. They knew what their reason for being alive was. I have never believed that one man should remain a lifelong politician, therefore, I am imposing my own term limit on this office. Ideas get used up and then the man who had them needs to step aside to make way for the new ones. And so, I strive to become like he whom Plato once apotheosized - the statesman. This means that I know my place, and that is why as a builder and starter, it is now my time to pass the torch of good government on to whomever the public's wisdom declares a new leader in the upcoming November election.
Robert Agresta
Think of it: the lowest common denominator in being digital is not your operating system, modem, or model of computer. It's a tiny piece of plastic, designed decades ago by Bell Labs' Charles Krumreich, Edwin Hardesty, and company, who thought they were making an inconspicuous plug for a few telephone handsets. Not in their wildest dreams was Registered Jack 11 - a modular connector more commonly known as the RJ-11 - meant to be plugged and unplugged so many times, by so many people, for so many reasons, all over the world.
Nicholas Negroponte
I think the characters I play go through tunnels, like in Three Colours : Blue, for example, where she's lost everything ... In The English Patient, she loses her best friend; this patient is dying in front of her – there's no hope, so she's going to start from the bottom. In films we see extremes, because it's where you have turning points. Before I thought there was a common denominator between my films - as if all my characters were sisters – but I'm not so sure now.
Juliette Binoche
People are the common denominator of progress. So, paucis verbis, no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills, and the other familiar furniture of economic development. At some stages of development - the stage that India and Pakistan have reached, for example - they are central to the strategy of development. But we are coming to realize, I think, that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first.
John Kenneth Galbraith
It was the fate of Europe to be always a battleground. Differences in race, in religion, in political genius and social ideals, seemed always, in the atmosphere of our mother continent, to be invitations to contest by battle. From the dawn of history, and we can only conjecture how much longer, the conflicts of races and civilizations, of traditions and usages, have gone on. It is one of the anomalies of the human story that these peoples, who could not be assimilated and unified under the skies of Europe, should on coming to America discover an amazing genius for cooperation, for fusion, and for harmonious effort. Yet they were the same people when they came here that they had been on the other side of the Atlantic. Quite apparently, they found something in our institutions, something in the American system of Government and society which they themselves helped to construct, that furnished to all of them a political and cultural common denominator.
Calvin Coolidge
Contact is possible throughout cosmos through the common denominator of mind, if the consciousness is high enough. But of course, it is only the very highest Beings Who have this cosmic consciousness (Telepathy is a fact, an inborn fact in nature, a natural part of man's being.) Evil on other planets exists, but it is contained in a way that evil on this planet is not so easily contained... we are protected; it is all under law.
Benjamin Creme