People From Cincinnati

"The concept of teleological mechanisms, however it be expressed in many terms, may be viewed as an attempt to escape from these older mechanistic formulations that now appear inadequate, and to provide new and more fruitful conceptions and more effective methodologies for studying self-regulating processes, self-orienting systems and organisms, and self-directing personalities. Thus, the terms feedback, servomechanisms, circular systems, and circular processes may be viewed as different but equivalent expressions of much the same basic conception"

"The concepts of purposive behavior and teleology have long been associated with a mysterious, self-perfecting or goal-seeking capacity or final cause, usually of superhuman or super-natural origin. To move forward to the study of events, scientific thinking had to reject these beliefs in purpose and these concepts of teleological operations for a strictly mechanistic and deterministic view of nature. This mechanistic conception became firmly established with the demonstration that the universe was based on the operation of anonymous particles moving at random, in a disorderly fashion, giving rise, by their multiplicity, to order and regularity of a statistical nature, as in classical physics and gas laws. The unchallenged success of these concepts and methods in physics and astronomy, and later in chemistry, gave biology and physiology their major orientation. This approach to problems of organisms was reinforced by the analytical preoccupation of the Western European culture and languages. The basic assumptions of our traditions and the persistent implications of the language we use almost compel us to approach everything we study as composed of separate, discrete parts or factors which we must try to isolate and identify as potential causes. Hence, we derive our preoccupation with the study of the relation of two variables. We are witnessing today a search for new approaches, for new and more comprehensive concepts and for methods capable of dealing with the large wholes of organisms and personalities."

"Past and future are but two aspects of behavior, the past being the persistent modifications in the behaving organism, and the future the controlling direction or pattern imposed upon the unfolding behavior according to those persistent modifications."

"With the death of Lawrence K. Frank on September 23, 1968, one of the founders and major catalysts of the child development movement was lost to the field."

"Nearer my Father's house, Where the many mansions be, Nearer the great white throne, Nearer the crystal sea. Nearer the bound of life, Where we lay our burdens down, Nearer leaving the cross, Nearer gaining the crown."

"Father, perfect my trust; Let my spirit feel in death, That her feet are firmly set On the rock of a living faith!"

"Her washing ended with the day, Yet lived she at its close, And passed the long, long night away In darning ragged hose. But when the sun in all its state Illumed the Eastern skies, She passed about the kitchen grate And went to making pies."

"And though hard be the task, "Keep a stiff upper lip.""

"Her religious sentiments were deep and strong, her faith in the Eternal Goodness unwavering. Educated in the faith of Universalism, she believed to the last in the final salvation of all God's children."

"My soul is full of whispered song,— My blindness is my sight; The shadows that I feared so long Are full of life and light."

"Yea, when mortality dissolves, Shall I not meet thine hour unawed? My house eternal in the heavens Is lighted by the smile of God!"

"We serve Him most who take the most of His exhaustless love."

"Desolate—Life is so dreary and desolate— Women and men in the crowd meet and mingle, Yet with itself every soul standeth single, Deep out of sympathy moaning its moan— Holding and having its brief exultation— Making its lonesome and low lamentation— Fighting its terrible conflicts alone."

"How many lives we live in one, And how much less than one, in all."

"The performance of business leaders during the next decade will play a major role in determining not only business but political and social trends for a long time to come. Here are some of the principal reasons: - Business leaders control the economic well-being of and stockholder. - The course of business shapes public opinion. - Business leaders shape public opinion. So, in addition to his or her prime responsibility of managing his or her enterprise at a profit, the business leader of today is faced with new and larger responsibilities. And, at the same time, the job of managing his or her enterprise at a profit is increasing in complexity. Consequently, the imposition of additional responsibilities makes the nation’s task of developing an adequate number of properly equipped executive leaders a staggering one indeed."

"Marvin Bower was a great leader and a great teacher. He did not believe leadership could be taught, but he did believe it could be learned. I had the opportunity to observe his deep personal influence on legions of business people and colleagues one by one. For that was his way. One by one."

"Marvin Bower, Rhode Island Alpha '25, was honored by Fortune Magazine this year when he was elected to the National Business Hall of Fame. He is considered the "father of modern management consulting."

"... for all the reasons we have discussed in these pages, judgments brought to the board by leaders are likely to be better than those coming to the board in a command company. Moreover, the effective working relationships between leaders and directors in a leadership company further ensures the exercise of sound judgments for such momentous decisions ..."

"I believe that in a leadership company most people will like their work. But the company will be an even more enjoyable place to work if the culture is designed to make it that way. Leading fosters a working atmosphere that stimulates an open exchange of ideas and fosters dissent. People should show a genuine concern for one another and treat one another with fairness, as peers and friends. With such an atmosphere it should be a pleasure to come to work."

"The difference between a leadership and a command company can be very great indeed, because in a hierarchical situation, people who have concerns about reactions against themselves would simply not put forward negative information."

"In large-scale organizations, the factual approach must be constantly nurtured by high-level executives. The more layers of authority through which facts must pass before they reach the decision maker, the greater the danger that they will be suppressed, modified, or softened, so as not to displease the "brass". For this reason, high-level executives must keep reaching for facts or soon they won't know what is going on. Unless they make visible efforts to seek and act on facts, major problems will not be brought to their attention, the quality of their decisions will decline, and the business will gradually get out of touch with its environment."

"The business with high ethical standards has three primary advantages over competitors whose standards are lower:"

"Fourteen basic and well-known managing processes make up the components from which a management system for any business can be fashioned."

"A business of high principle attracts high-caliber people more easily, thereby gaining a basic competitive and profit edge."

"A business of high principle generates greater drive and effectiveness because people know that they can do the right thing decisively and with confidence."

"Decisions should be based on facts, objectively considered — what I call the fact-founded, thought-through approach to decision making."

"People should be judged on the basis of their performance, not nationality, personality, education, or personal traits and skills."

"I believe that leaders and leadership teams working together in a proper design will run the business more effectively than by hierarchical, command-and-control managing. But I can't prove that. And there are no models."

"I didn't want to be a woman artist, I just wanted to be an artist."

"They would go off to college and when they come home they'd pick up their interest in me, like a parent ... One of my sister had me in Eton collars and tunics; then she went off and another came home and disapproved of those dull clothes and put me in some fancy little things. Everyone was trying to do something to me, except my mother. She was indifferent."

"I hope my work is recognizable as being by a woman, though I certainly would never deliberately make it feminine in any way, in subject or treatment. But if I speak in a voice which is my own, it's bound to be the voice of a woman."

"At Ault, it wasn't just that we weren't supposed to be bad or unethical; we weren't even supposed to be ordinary, and stealing was worse than ordinary. It was unseemly, lacking subtlety, revealing a wish for things you did not already have."

"When I read Curtis Sittenfeld's debut novel Prep, I highlighted passages for the first time since I was a student. So many of the main character's high school observations rang true that I couldn't help myself."

"The newly minted author of the novel Prep talks about high school, gratuitous sex, and why her parents shouldn't be worried"

"I forgot, over and over, that the fact of my wanting something wasn’t enough to make it happen."

"But while I was in their city, it just seemed like such a mistake that I had ever left home, such an error in judgment in all our parts."

"But then she’d know what she’d probably only suspected- how messed up I really was, how much I’d been misleading them for the last four years."

"Hardly ever did it matter if you brushed your hair before driving to the grocery store, rarely did you work in an office where you cared what more than two or three people thought of you. At Ault, caring about everything was draining, but it was also exhilarating."

"How did you even know if you loved another person? Was it a hunch, like a good smell that you couldn’t identify for sure, or did a time come when you had evidence? Was it like walking through a house and once you’d crossed a certain threshold, that was love and you could never turn back? Maybe you’d go into other rooms, you’d fight or even breakup, but you’d always be on the other side of love, after and not before it. My interest in couples felt anthropological - even liking Cross, even wanting to hear from Martha that she could imagine me dating him, I myself could not imagine us together... When I through of Sin - Jun and Clara - and I did so often- what was hardest to wrap my head around was how they’d been a couple while living in the same room. How had they known when to fool around and when to just sit at their desks doing homework? Hadn’t it been either too intense, too tiring to always be around the person you wanted to impress, or else too familiar? Maybe in such close quarters you gave up hope of impressing them and sat there picking your earwax and not caring if you looked cute. But didn’t you lose something there, too? If that was what people meant by intimacy, it didn’t hold much appeal for me- it seemed like you’d be fighting each other for oxygen."

"I believed then that if you had a good encounter with a person, it was best not to see them again for as long as possible."

"As I watched her leave, my mind shot ahead to a time in the future when we would not share a room, when our daily lives would not overlap. The idea made me feel as if I were being held underwater. Then I thought, you’re being so ridiculous; you have almost three more years together, and I could breathe again. But I knew, I always knew- and as unhappy as I often was, the knowledge never made me feel better; instead it seemed the worst part of all- that our lives at Ault were only temporary."

"Flawed as I was, someone recognized me."

"Before or after your stole my best friend? But the real question is if you were using me to get to Martha all along, or if you just took an opportunity when you saw it."

"I have always found those times when another person recognizes you to be strangely sad; I suspect the pathos of these moments is their rareness, the way they contrast with most daily encounters. That reminder that it can be different, that you need not go through your life unknown but that you probably still will - that is the part that's almost unbearable."

"For the whole movie, I had that sense of heightened awareness that is like discomfort but is not discomfort exactly -- a tiring, enjoyable vigilance. I did not get a grasp on the movie's plot, or the names of any of the characters. Then it was over and the lights came on… Maybe this was the place Cross and I would part ways, I thought. And maybe we wouldn't even say good-bye, now that he was with his friends again; maybe I was just supposed to know."

"I did not scream or hug anyone. In fact, as the noise gained momentum, I felt its opposite, a draining of excitement. But not a draining of tension - my body was still stiff and alert, and the impulse I had, strangely, was to weep. Not because I was sad but because I was not happy, and yet, like my classmates, I'd experienced an emotional surge, I too felt the need for expression. This phenomenon -- being gripped by an overwhelming wave of feeling that was clearly not the feeling of the people around me -- had also happened at a pep rally: It made me uncomfortable, because I didn't want anyone to notice that I wasn't jumping up and down or cheering, and it also thrilled me, because it made the world seem full of possibilities that could make my heart pound. I think, looking back, that this was the single best thing about Ault, the sense of possibility… In my whole life, Ault was the place with the greatest density of people to fall in love with."

"I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely."

"As for the politics here, what can you do? There’s a lot of posturing, but it’s all kind of meaningless."

"The reason good women like me and flock to my pictures is that there is a little bit of vampire instinct in every woman."

"After Theda Barra appeared in A Fool There Was, a vampire wave surged over the country. Women appeared in vampire gowns, pendant earrings, and even young girls were attempting to change from frank, open-eyed ingenues to the almond-eyed, carmine-lipped woman of subtlety and mystery."