Equilibrium Quotes

• If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.

  E. O. Wilson

  Science, Years, Environmental

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• Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fully respond to its consolations because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.

  Helen Keller

  Light, Darkness, Trouble

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• In silence, we are better able to listen to and understand ourselves; ideas come to birth and acquire depth... Deeper reflection helps us to discover the links between events that at first sight seem unconnected... For this to happen, it is necessary to develop an appropriate environment, a kind of 'eco-system' that maintains a just equilibrium between silence, words, images and sounds.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Faith, Inspiration, Reflection

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• Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight.

  Tom Stoppard

  Happiness, Weight

  Tom Stoppard (2014). “The Real Thing”, p.65, Faber & Faber

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• Let the states of equilibrium and harmony exist in perfection, and a happy order will prevail throughout heaven and earth, and all things will be nourished and flourish.

  Confucius

  Order, Perfection, Heaven

  Confucius (2016). “Delphi Collected Works of Confucius - Four Books and Five Classics of Confucianism (Illustrated)”, p.137, Delphi Classics

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• Peace is not in itself a dream, but we know it only as the result of a momentary equilibrium--an accident.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Dream, Peace, Results

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• To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.

  Eric Hoffer

  Justice, Diversity, Soul

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Everything lives by movement, everything is maintained by equilibrium, and harmony results from the analogy of contraries; this law is the form of forms.

  Eliphas Levi

  Law, Analogies, Movement

  Eliphas Levi (1968). “Transcendental Magic”, p.425, Weiser Books

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• Equilibrium is the profoundest tendency of all human activity.

  Jean Piaget

  Art, Philosophy, History

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• There exists everywhere a medium in things, determined by equilibrium.

  Dmitri Mendeleev

  Determined, Mediums

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• Democracy is the only system capable of reflecting the humanist premise of equilibrium or balance. The key to its secret is the involvement of the citizen.

  John Ralston Saul

  Keys, House, Secret

  John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.94, Simon and Schuster

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• Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Earth Day, Survival

  Ayn Rand (1999). “The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution”, p.226, Penguin

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• A well ordered society would be one where the State only had a negative action, comparable to that of a rudder: a light pressure at the right moment to counteract the first suggestion of any loss of equilibrium.

  Simone Weil

  Loss, Light, Suggestions

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.172, Psychology Press

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• For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Law, Trying

  Albert Camus (2012). “Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays”, p.190, Vintage

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• For this equilibrium now in sight, let us trust that mankind, as it has occurred in the greatest periods of its past, will find for itself a new code of ethics, common to all, made of tolerance, of courage, and of faith in the Spirit of men.

  Albert Claude

  Men, Past, Sight

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• It is clear to all that the animal organism is a highly complex system consisting of an almost infinite series of parts connected both with one another and, as a total complex, with the surrounding world, with which it is in a state of equilibrium.

  Ivan Pavlov

  Animal, World, Infinite

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• And so The Snow Queen also became a story about the need to seek equilibrium, in our own lives, with the natural world, even within the universe at large.

  Joan D. Vinge

  Queens, Snow, World

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• All biologic phenomena act to adjust: there are no biologic actions other than adjustments. Adjustment is another name for Equilibrium. Equilibrium is the Universal, or that which has nothing external to derange it.

  Charles Fort

  Names, Action, Adjustment

  Charles Fort (2016). “The Book of the Damned: The Original Classic of Paranormal Exploration”, p.12, Penguin

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• We know, in other words, the general conditions in which what we call, somewhat misleadingly, an equilibrium will establish itself: but we never know what the particular prices or wages are which would exist if the market were to bring about such an equilibrium.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Wages, Economy, Particular

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• Is it a surprise that into the vessel, in which the mercury has no inclination and no repugnance, not even the slightest, to being there, it should enter and should rise in a column high enough to make equilibrium with the weight of the external air which forces it up?

  Evangelista Torricelli

  Air, Weight, Mercury

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• The first and most optimistic response was complete rational expectations econometrics. A rational expectations equilibrium is a likelihood function. Maximize it.

  Thomas J. Sargent

  Optimistic, Expectations, Firsts

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• Journey with me to a true commitment to our environment. Journey with me to the serenity of leaving to our children a planet in equilibrium.

  Paul Tsongas

  Children, Commitment, Journey

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• Establishing an equilibrium between the Islam of truth and Islam as an identity is one of the most difficult tasks of religious intellectuals.

  Abdolkarim Soroush

  Religious, Identity, Islam

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• The proposition of an established classification of states as slave states and free states, as insisted on by some, and into northern and southern, as maintained by others, seems to me purely imaginary, and of course the supposed equilibrium of those classes a mere conceit.

  William H. Seward

  Class, Southern, Slave

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• The hierarchy of relations, from the molecular structure of carbon to the equilibrium of the species and ecological whole, will perhaps be the leading idea of the future.

  Joseph Needham

  Ideas, Hierarchy, Carbon

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