A Quote by Mary Barnett Gilson

One of the baffling things about life is that the purposes of institutions may be ideal, while their administration, dependent upon the faults and weaknesses of human beings, may be bad.

Mary Barnett Gilson

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About Administration Bad Baffling Beings Dependent Faults Human Human Being Human Beings Ideal Institutions Life Life Is May Purposes Things Weaknesses While

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Mary Barnett Gilson
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September 10, 1877 - 1959

While we may continue to use the words smart and stupid, and while IQ tests may persist for certain purposes, the monopoly of those who believe in a single general intelligence has come to an end. Brain scientists and geneticists are documenting the incredible differentiation of human capacities, computer programmers are creating systems that are intelligent in different ways, and educators are freshly acknowledging that their students have distinctive strengths and weaknesses.

Howard Gardner

Poetry, at all times, exercises two distinct functions: it may reveal, it may unveil to every eye, the ideal aspects of common thingsor it may actually add to the number of motives poetic and uncommon in themselves, by the imaginative creation of things that are ideal from their very birth.

Walter Pater

I do not believe God is responsible for my sins, some people may. But I believe that my own weaknesses are father-filtered and just as much as God touched Jacob's hip and he walked with a limb the rest of his life, that I have certain emotional weaknesses that are there to keep me dependent on God.

Rick Warren

In a properly automated and educated world, then, machines may prove to be the true humanizing influence. It may be that machines will do the work that makes life possible and that human beings will do all the other things that make life pleasant and worthwhile

Isaac Asimov

I may not be funny. I may not be a singer. I may not be a damn seamstress. I may have diabetes. I may have really bad vision. I may have one leg. I may not know how to read. I may not know who the vice president is. I may technically be an alien of the state. I may have a Zune. I may not know Excel. I may be two 9-year-olds in a trench coat. I may not have full control of my bowels. I may drive a '94 Honda Civic. I may not “get” cameras. I may dye my hair with Hydrogen Peroxide. I may be afraid of trees. I may be on fire right now. But I'm a fierce queen.

Justin Johnson

Spirit itself is not human; it may spring up in any life... it may exist in all animals, and who know in how many undreamt-of beings, or in the midst of what worlds?

George Santayana

Institutions do all the things that are supposed to be bad. They impede personal exploration. They enforce conformity. But they often save us from our weaknesses and give meaning to life.

David Brooks

Art arises in those strange complexities of action that are called human beings. It is a kind of human behavior. As such it is not magic, except as human beings are magical. Nor is it concerned in absolutes, eternities, "forms," beyond those that may reside in the context of the human being and be subject to his vicissitudes. Art is not an inner state of consciousness, whatever that may mean. Neither is it essentially a supreme form of communication. Art is human behavior, and its values are contained in human behavior.

Baker Brownell

It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad; his life may be true, or it may be false; it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up; the bad man destroys himself.

Henry David Thoreau

War to me is very much like sex. You can develop a theory that says sex is primarily for the exchange of genetic material, or that it's a celebration of life, or you can make up 50,000 theories about why human beings have sex, all of which are in some sense true, all of which by themselves miss the point. Because the answer is extraordinarily complex. It may be for fun, it may be for reproduction, for financial reasons, any number of things.

George Friedman

So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to the master - so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil - so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best-regulated administration of slavery.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

The human mind may know God, and learn of God, though it has no terms by which to explain Him; it may think of Him as Absolute, as Infinite, as Personal, while it may never in this life be able to fathom the full meaning of these sublime ideas.

George C. Lorimer

Identity means "how do I get known? How do I expressmyself?" and that's generally what I'm helping somebody do. It may be three dimensional, it may be a public space, it may involve government,it may involve cultural institutions, it may involve corporations, it may involve editorial publications - it can be anything, really.

Paula Scher

In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments-which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves.

Atul Gawande

Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies the highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic.

Samuel Smiles

My fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe; who presides in the councils of nations; and whose providential aid can supply every human defect; that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the People of the United States, a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good.

George Washington

A Quote by Mary Barnett Gilson

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