Quotes About System

I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey.

NASA 'working definition' of life, for example: life is 'a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution'.

The simplest and most cost-effective plan was the "single-payer" system used by other leading nations, in which the government collected taxes and paid for the health care of all its citizens.

The beauty of the system, however, is that such dissent and inconvenient information are kept within bounds and at the margins, so that while their presence shows that the system is not monolithic, they are not large enough to interfere unduly with the domination of the official agenda.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of 'brainwashing under freedom' to which we are subjected and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting instruments.

I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors [...] I don't usually admire Sarah Palin, but when she was making fun of this 'hopey changey' stuff, she was right, there was nothing there. And it was understood by the people who run the political system, and so it's no great secret that the US electoral system is mainly a public relations extravaganza...it's sort of a marketing affair.

Small differences in a system of great power can have enormous consequences. [Source: Al Jazeera 'Upfront' interview]

The health care system in the United States, I'm sure you know, is a total international scandal. It's twice the per capita cost of comparable countries and one of the worst outcomes, with a huge number of people uninsured altogether. And it's going to get worse.

Far from creating independent thinkers, schools have always, throughout history, played an institutional role in a system of control and coercion. And once you are well educated you have already been socialized in ways that support the power structure, which, in turn, rewards you immensely.

No doubt a propaganda system is more effective when its doctrines are insinuated rather than asserted, when it sets the bounds for possible thought rather than simply imposing a clear and easily identifiable doctrine that one must parrot—or suffer the consequences.

There is tons of work to be done, and lots of people who would like to do the work. It's just that the economic system is such a grotesque catastrophe that it can't even put together idle hands and needed work, which would be satisfying to the people and which would be beneficial to all of us. That's just the mark of a failed system. The most dramatic mark of it.

Part of the doctrinal system in the United States is the pretense that we're all a happy family, there are no class divisions, and everybody is working together in harmony. But that's radically false.

I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system. State censorship is not necessary, or even very efficient, in comparison to the ideological controls exercised by systems that are more complex and more decentralized.

There's plenty of challenging, gratifying, interesting, productive workaround for people to do, and there are plenty of people who want to do it?they simply aren't being allowed that opportunity under the current economic system.

Hence the elaborate pretense that the press is a critical dissenting force—maybe even too critical for the health of democracy—when in fact it is almost entirely subservient to the basic principles of the ideological system:

Di solito, più si sente la necessità di parlare degli ideali della democrazia, meno democratico è il sistema.

have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system. State censorship is not necessary, or even very efficient, in comparison to the ideological controls exercised by systems that are more complex and more decentralized.

Come negli stati totalitari, anche nelle società aperte esiste la censura, anche se assume forme diverse. Le domande offensive o imbarazzanti per il sistema dottrinale sono bloccate. Le informazioni scomode vengono soppresse. Non serve guardare lontano per giungere a questa conclusione; basta analizzare onestamente che cosa viene riportato dai media e cosa viene tralasciato.

Any thought of soft power has been pretty much abandoned, but US reserves of hard power are enormous. No other country can impose harsh sanctions at will and compel third parties to honor them at cost of expulsion from the international financial system; and, of course, no one else has hundreds of military bases around the world or anything like Washington's advanced military power and ability to resort to force at will and with impunity.

Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they can't afford the time to think.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

Part of the whole capitalist ethic is that the only thing that matters is how much money you make tomorrow: that's the crucial value of the system, profit for tomorrow. Not just profit, but the bottom line has to look good tomorrow. And the result is that planning for the future, and any kind of regulatory apparatus that would sustain the environment for the long-term, become impossible?and that means the planet is going to go down the tubes very fast.

I tried having two purses, one for personal things and one for work things. (Yes, I know: The second purse is usually called a briefcase).) This system works for most people but not for me, and for a fairly obvious reason, which I've already disclosed: I am not an organized human being.