A Quote by Gregory Bateson
It is of first-class importance that our answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx should be in step with how we conduct our civilisation, and this should in turn be in step with the actual workings of living systems.
Related Quotes
First, we should not be opening our coasts, all of our coasts, to oil drilling when we have not taken the first step, not the first step, to conserve oil.
[We should] set our eyes on the future. The political differences between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan should eventually be solved step by step, and [we] can not let these problems hand on from generation to generation.
If Americans are working harder than ever earning less than they once did, our government and our leaders should step up, offer a plan, fix what's wrong -- or they should step aside, the recovery has been everywhere but in the family paychecks. The American Dream has become a mirage for far too many.
A major difficulty is that the answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx is partly a product of the answers that we already have given to the riddle in its various forms.
No civilisation can grow unless fanatics, bloodshed, and brutality stop. No civilisation can begin to lift up its head until we look charitably upon one another; and the first step towards that much-needed charity is to look charitably and kindly upon the religious convictions of others. Nay more, to understand that not only should we be charitable, but positively helpful to each other, however different our religious ideas and convictions may be.
Defense leaders should be searching for ways to reform out-of-date procurement processes, to collapse layers of Pentagon bureaucracy, and to restrain the growth in personnel and benefits costs. A critical first step in that process should be to conduct a full Pentagon audit to determine how DOD spends taxpayer dollars.
The European Union should not be prescribing an identity. We know what that's like, when a government tells its people how it should look; what it should be doing. That's the first step towards totalitarianism.
The population question is the real riddle of the sphinx, to which no political Oedipus has as yet found the answer. In view of the ravages of the terrible monster over-multiplication, all other riddle sink into insignificance.
The government shouldn't step in at the first stage and create land banks. Industry should buy the land as much as they can, and if they get stuck, then the government should step in.
There should be a class on drugs. There should be a class on sex education-a real sex education class-not just pictures and diaphragms and 'un-logical' terms and things like that.....there should be a class on scams, there should be a class on religious cults, there should be a class on police brutality, there should be a class on apartheid, there should be a class on racism in America, there should be a class on why people are hungry, but there are not, there are classes on gym, physical education, let's learn volleyball.
In our manner of speech, our plans of living, our dealings with others, our conduct and walk in the church and out of it-all should be done as becomes the gospel (Phil. 1:27).
If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by our friends the murderers.
Of course the sands of Present Time are running out from under our feet. And why not? The Great Conundrum: 'What are we here for?' is all that ever held us here in the first place. Fear. The answer to the Riddle of the Ages has actually been out in the street since the First Step in Space. Who runs may read but few people run fast enough. What are we here for? Does the great metaphysical nut revolve around that? Well, I'll crack it for you, right now. What are we here for? We are here to go!
The first step to this end is to develop peace and goodwill within our borders, by training our youth of both sexes to its practice as their habit of life, so that the jealousies of town against town, class against class and sect against sect no longer exist; and then to extend this good feeling beyond our frontiers towards our neighbours.
I think it's a different kind of activism. Like, women shouldn't have to step into men's roles to be empowered. They should be able to step into themselves. So that's what I try to bring, that we shouldn't be thinking of it as menswear or womenswear; it should be clothing for people.
But the solution to the riddle of life and space and time lies outside space and time. For, as it should be abundantly clear by now, nothing inside a frame can state, or even ask, anything about that frame. The solution, then, is not the finding of an answer to the riddle of existence, but the realization that there is no riddle. This is the essence of the beautiful, almost Zen Buddhist closing sentences of the Tracticus: "For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist."
Related Authors
Austin O'Malley Quotes
American
Scientist
Carl Sagan Quotes
American
Scientist
Charles Darwin Quotes
English
Scientist
E. O. Wilson Quotes
American
Scientist
Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes
German
Scientist
Isaac Asimov Quotes
American
Scientist
Jane Goodall Quotes
English
Scientist
Margaret Mead Quotes
American
Scientist
Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes
Lebanese
Scientist
Neil deGrasse Tyson Quotes
American
Scientist
Richard Dawkins Quotes
English
Scientist
Stephen Jay Gould Quotes
American
Scientist
Steven Pinker Quotes
Canadian
Scientist
Sylvia Earle Quotes
American
Scientist
Thomas Huxley Quotes
English
Scientist
W. Edwards Deming Quotes
American
Scientist