General System Theory

Famous quotes containing the words general, system and/or theory:

    “They make a great ado nowadays about hard times; but I think that ... this general failure, both private and public, is rather occasion for rejoicing, as reminding us whom we have at the helm,—that justice is always done. If our merchants did not most of them fail, and the banks too, my faith in the old laws of the world would be staggered.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “Psychoanalysis is an attempt to examine a person’s self-justifications. Hence it can be undertaken only with the patient’s cooperation and can succeed only when the patient has something to gain by abandoning or modifying his system of self-justification.”
    —Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)

    “Won’t this whole instinct matter bear revision?
    Won’t almost any theory bear revision?
    To err is human, not to, animal.”
    —Robert Frost (1874–1963)