Design Quotes - page 14
Every technology goes through three stages: first a crudely simple and quite unsatisfactory gadget; second, an enormously complicated group of gadgets designed to overcome the shortcomings of the original and achieving thereby somewhat satisfactory performance through extremely complex compromise; third, a final stage of smooth simplicity and efficient performance based on correct understanding of natural laws and proper design therefrom.
Robert A. Heinlein
As much in vain, perhaps, will they search ancient history for examples of the modern Slave-Trade. Too many nations enslaved the prisoners they took in war. But to go to nations with whom there is no war, who have no way provoked, without farther design of conquest, purely to catch inoffensive people, like wild beasts, for slaves, is an hight of outrage against Humanity and Justice, that seems left by Heathen nations to be practised by pretended Christians. How shameful are all attempts to colour and excuse it!
Thomas Paine
What is happening to Assange should terrify the press...The silence about the treatment of Assange is not only a betrayal of him but a betrayal of the freedom of the press itself. We will pay dearly for this complicity.... Assange is on his own. Each day is more difficult for him. This is by design. It is up to us to protest. We are his last hope, and the last hope, I fear, for a free press.
Chris Hedges
We learn with concern, that not only a spirit of tumult and disorder has shown itself in acts of insurrection, which required the interposition of a military force in support of the civil magistrate, but that the industry employed to excite discontent has appeared to proceed from a design to attempt, in concert with persons in foreign countries, the destruction of our happy constitution, and the subversion of all order of government.
William Pitt the Younger
I suggested before that the whole of economic history could be rewritten in terms of this gradual suppression of the primitive instincts by what we very mistakenly call "artificial” rules. Of course, they are not in the strict sense artificial. Nobody ever invented them. They were not the result of design. The new manners of conduct were not adopted because anybody thought they were better. They were adopted because somebody who acted on them profited from it and his group gained from it, and so these rules, without anybody under standing them-that is very important for the later part of my argument-without anybody understanding in what way they benefited their community, gradually came to be generally accepted.
Friedrich Hayek
The design of the following treatise is to investigate the fundamental laws of those operations of the mind by which reasoning is performed; to give expression to them in the symbolical language of a Calculus, and upon this foundation to establish the science of Logic and construct its method; to make that method itself the basis of a general method for the application of the mathematical doctrine of Probabilities; and, finally, to collect from the various elements of truth brought to view in the course of these inquiries some probable intimations concerning the nature and constitution of the human mind.
George Boole
I saw Guillaumin. We went to look at my two latest paintings which were bought by Durand. All he said was 'there's no firmness in the foreground'. It was evening, we were seeing the paintings by gas-light, which neutralized the orange tones. As Seurat says, what they [the Impressionists]] look for is thick impasto; but at Clauzet's I saw a Guillaumin, also in the evening, and it looked made of tar, so much shellac was used at the base of this painting, which in my view is really old stuff; it must be admitted that he made an effort to tighten the design but then the harmonies are insignificant and lack logic - there is no drawing, there is a flurry of colors, but no modeling; it is one step from [w: Jules Dupré|Jules Dupreé]] - modernized.
Camille Pissarro
The present mode of life on earth is madness, which is nontheless lethal for being legal. Rational existence is possible, but it calls for a world consciousness and a world design. People who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world citizens are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time.
Norman Cousins
There are two ways to look at this earth. Some people look at this world and say, ‘You know it's amazing! A ‘Big Bang' made this from nothing!' That's the Humanist worldview which says, ‘Man is god.' Other people look at the world and say, ‘You know its incredible design! There must be a smart designer.' That's the Creationist worldview which says, ‘God is God.
Kent Hovind
In the year 1783 I finished a very good twenty-foot reflector with a large aperture, and mounted it upon the plan of my present telescope. After two years' observation with it, the great advantage of such apertures appeared so clearly to me that I recurred to my former intention of increasing them still further; and being now sufficiently provided with experience in the work which I wished to undertake, the President of the Royal Society, who is always ready to promote useful undertakings, had the goodness to lay my design before the king. His Majesty was graciously pleased to approve of it, and with his usual liberality to support it with his royal bounty.
William Herschel
Planning is the design of a desired future and of effective ways of bringing it about. It is an instrument that is used by the wise, but not by the wise alone. When conducted by lesser men it often becomes an irrelevant ritual that produces short-run peace of mind, but not the future that is longed for.
Russell L. Ackoff
