Quotes About Stability

As Minsky argued, stability destabilizes. This is an aspect of what George Soros, the successful speculator and innovative economic thinker, calls 'reflexivity': the way human beings think determines the reality in which they live.

Good old Watson!You are the one fixed point in a changing age.

My existence was as unstable as a stream, changing in every way; but the moth was like a piece of stone, changing not at all.

Wherever we find orderly, stable systems in Nature, we find that they are hierarchically structured, for the simple reason that without such structuring of complex systems into sub-assemblies, there could be no order and stability-except the order of a dead universr filled with a uniformly distributed gas.

Willy Loman: I don't want change, I want Swiss cheese!

PARRIS: I want a mark of confidence, is all! I am your third preacher in seven years. I do not wish to be put out like the cat whenever some majority feels the whim.

But the big hills up at the lake helped to make him feel that the houseboat man did not matter. The hills had been there before Captain Flint. They would be there for ever. That, somehow was comforting.

One can even say that we require at all times a certain quantity of care or sorrow or want, as a ship requires ballast, in order to keep on a straight course.

And I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. A ship without ballast is unstable and will not go straight.

They experienced trials, to be sure, and more moments of poignancy--that is, of positive and negative emotion mixed together. But overall, they found living to be a more emotionally satisfying and stable experience as time passed, even as old age narrowed the lives they led...The common view was that these lessons are hard to learn. Living is a kind of skill. The calm and wisdom of old age are achieved over time.

I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place.

The motto over Chaumont's door read, "Se sta bene non se muove," which a later American tenant translated, overly literally, as "If you stand well, stand still.

When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.

Times may change; Cynsters never do

and it was there. It will always be there for you now.

Even though we are the most privileged and richest human beings there have been so far, in terms of the stability and length of our lives and the cultural resources available to us, we're not as happy as we should be. I'd like to see politics more oriented toward the question of happiness; certainly I'd like to see religion more concerned with making integral, happy people and raising the quality of personal life in our culture.

It's an insane world but in it there is one sanity, the loyalty of old friends

The experiences of men in combat produces emotions stronger than civilians can know, emotions of terror, panic, anger, sorrow, bewilderment, helplessness, uselessness, and each of these feelings drained energy and mental stability.

As a result, in more than three dimensions the sun would not be able to exist in a stable state with its internal pressure balancing the pull of gravity. It would either fall apart or collapse to form a black hole, either of which could ruin your day.

Because gravity shapes space and time, it allows space time to be locally stable but globally unstable. On the scale of the entire universe, the positive energy of the matter can be balanced by the negative gravitational energy, and so there is no restriction on the creation of whole universes. Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing in the manner described in Chapter 6.

Hairstyles change, and skirt lengths, and slang, but high school administrations? Never.

When all the normal patterns and routines of a person's life fell apart—and with such shocking suddenness—you had to find something you could hold onto, something that was both sane and predictable.

The world has a way of keeping things in balance.

got to be regular if you want to be happy