#rigid

Disorder is inherent in stability. Civilized man doesn't understand stability. He's confused it with rigidity. Our political and economic and social leaders drool about stability constantly. It's their favorite word, next to 'power.' 'Gotta stabilize the political situation in Southeast Asia, gotta stabilize oil production and consumption, gotta stabilize student opposition to the government' and so forth. Stabilization to them means order, uniformity, control. And that's a half-witted and potentially genocidal misconception. No matter how thoroughly they control a system, disorder invariably leaks into it. Then the managers panic, rush to plug the leak and endeavor to tighten the controls. Therefore, totalitarianism grows in viciousness and scope. And the blind pity is, rigidity isn't the same as stability at all. True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#order #rigidity #stability #totalitarianism #totalitarianism

I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world. ↗

— Malcolm Bradbury

#english #i #immorality #like #most

I think in Vice and American Me I played very silent, rigid characters and people remember them. ↗

— Edward James Olmos

#characters #i #i think #me #people

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal. ↗

— Pope Paul VI

#art #considered #crystal #deepest #devoid

I went with agnosticism for a long, long time because I just hated to say I was an atheist - being an atheist seemed so rigid. But the more I became comfortable with the word, and the more I read, it started to stick. ↗

— Julia Sweeney

#atheist #became #because #being #comfortable

I'm interested in what would normally be considered the worst aspects of commercial art. I think it's the tension between what seems to be so rigid and cliched and the fact that art really can't be this way. ↗

— Roy Lichtenstein

#aspects #between #cliched #commercial #considered

The difference between management and administration (which is what bureaucrats used to do exclusively) is the difference between choice and rigidity. ↗

— Robert Heller

#between #bureaucrats #choice #difference #exclusively

You have to protect it too, you can't let just any stupid person take it and do something demoralizing with it. At the same time, I don't believe in being so rigid about controlling what happens either. ↗

— Paul Auster

#any #being #believe #controlling #demoralizing

Well, you know, after we talked about it, I knew I had to say something to her soon. You… you gave me the courage to do it.” Tanner choked. I was seriously going to spin-kick him in the balls, but Syd smiled— smiled so widely and beautifully that Tanner’s balls might be safe. ↗

— Jennifer L. Armentrout

#j-lynn #jennifer-l-armentrout #beauty

Few things are more absurd than wise saws originally designed to inculcate or maintain the social needs of a society long past - when they are applied to today. ↗

— Idries Shah

#big-picture #lack-of-knowledge #lack-of-perspective #rigidity #design