Shifting Quotes - page 2
Even the widespread resort to shifting cultivation with burning and light hoeing was not as childish as the first European colonialists supposed. That simple form of agriculture was based on a correct evaluation of the soil potential, which was not as great as initially appears from the heavy vegetation; and when the colonialists started upsetting the thin topsoil the result was disastrous. The above remarks show that when an outsider comes into a new ecological system, even if he is more skilled he does not necessarily function as effectively as those who have familiarized themselves with the environment over centuries; and the newcomer is likely to look more ridiculous if he is too arrogant to realize that he has something to learn from the "natives.”.
Walter Rodney
For me the intentions of background music are openly political, and an example of how political power is constantly shifting from the ballot box into areas where the voter has nowhere to mark his ballot paper. The most important political choices in the future will probably never be consciously exercised. I'm intrigued by the way some background music is surprisingly aggressive, especially that played on consumer complaint phone lines and banks, airplanes and phone companies themselves, with strident non-rhythmic and arms-length sequences that are definitely not user-friendly.
J. G. Ballard
He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate.
Simone Weil
Some of the great results of the war, if they are adequately realized, are in complete harmony with what for ages past have been Liberal aims and ideals. I mean, for instance, the abolition of militarism; I mean the progressive disarmament of the civilized peoples of the world; I mean the recognition for small states as well as for great States of the principle of self-determination. ... And it means, above all, or ought to mean...a conversion of the old State system with its precarious equipoise of power, with its shifting alliances and combinations, with its infinite opportunities for the achievements of selfish ambition and territorial aggrandizement, it means the conversion of that into a true international democratic polity, a system of Government under which there will be equal rights and equal power to all States whatever their size.
H. H. Asquith
You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief?... We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone.
Antonin Artaud
If Germany is going again to be a great armed camp, filled with a population about twice as great as that of any State in Europe; and if she is going again to pursue a policy of world domination, it will no doubt tax all the statesmanship of the rest of the world to prevent a repetition of the calamities from which we have been suffering. But the only radical cure for this is a change in the international system of the world-a change which French statesmen are doing nothing to promote, and the very possibility of which many of them regard with ill-concealed derision. They may be right; but if they are, it is quite certain that no manipulation of the Rhine frontier is going to make France anything more than a second-rate Power, trembling at the nod of its great neighbours in the East, and depending from day to day on the changes and chances of a shifting diplomacy and uncertain alliances.
Arthur Balfour
Multitasking is a myth. ...What's actually happening in the brain is sequential tasking. ...the brain is rapidly shifting ...so quickly and seamlessly that you don't really notice... What you end up with is attention that's been fractionated into little... bits and you're not able to actually sustain attention on any one thing. ...You're not saving time. You're wasting time.
Daniel Levitin
Sit like a fool then, crassly emptying
Glass after wineglass in some foul tavern,
Watching the night and its candles gutter,
Snoring at sunrise.
In England now the wind blows high
And clouds brush rudely at the sky;
The blood runs thinly through my frame,
I half-caress the hearthstone's flame,
Oppressed by autumn's desolate cry.
Then homesick for the south am I,
For where the lucky swallows fly,
But each warm land is just a name
In England now.
The luckless workers I espy
With chins dipped low and collars high,
Walk into winter, do not blame
The shifting globe. A gust of shame
Represses my unmanly sigh
In England now.
Anthony Burgess
If the doctrine of free-will has raised up fanatics and persecutors, who, assuming that men may be good under all conditions if they merely wish to be so, have sought to persuade other men's wills with threats, fines, imprisonments, torture, the spike, the wheel, the axe, the fagot, in order to make them good and save them against their obdurate wills; if the doctrine of Spiritualism, the soul supreme, has done this, the doctrine of Materialistic Determinism has produced shifting, self-excusing, worthless, parasitical characters, who are this now and that at some other time, and anything and nothing upon principle. "My conditions have made me so," they cry, and there is no more to be said; poor mirror-ghosts! how could they help it!
Voltairine de Cleyre
