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Economics and politics are so intertwined and interlinked that politics now, mainstream politics, extreme center politics, are little else but a version of concentrated economics. And this means that any alternative - alternative capitalism, left Keynesianism, intervention by the state to help the poor, rolling back the privatizations - becomes a huge issue. The entire weight of the extreme center and its media is turned against it, which in reality now is beginning to harm democracy.
Tariq AliEither it is true that a medicine works or it isn't. It cannot be false in the ordinary sense but true in some alternative sense. If a therapy or treatment is anything more than a placebo, properly conducted double-blind trials, statistically analyzed, will eventually bring it through with flying colours. Many candidates for recognition as orthodox medicines fail the test and are summarily dropped. The alternative label should not (though, alas, it does) provide immunity from the same fate.
Richard DawkinsMaximise the alternative forms in which a user might receive a service, and the alternative sources of supply.
Don ChippGeneralists, people with moderately strong attachments to many ideas, should be hard to interrupt, and once interrupted, should have weaker, shorter negative reactions since they have alternative paths to realize their plans. Specialists, people with stronger attachments to fewer ideas, should be easier to interrupt, and once interrupted, should have stronger, more sustained negative reactions because they have fewer alternative pathways to realize their plans. Generalists should be the upbeat, positive people in the profession while specialists should be their grouchy, negative counterparts.
Karl E. WeickThere is an alternative. It's an old alternative. It's not for everybody. It's only for people who are smart, limited market. It's enlightenment.
Frederick LenzDo not press an enemy at bay. Prince Fu Ch'ai said: "Wild beasts, when at bay, fight desperately. How much more is this true of men! If they know there is no alternative, they will fight to the death.
Sun TzuThe futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that particular stage to remain silent. Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presentersโthere is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void.... Thatโs why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window.
Jean BaudrillardYou just have to stand and grit your teeth and know your poll numbers are going to go down - and mine have - but you gotta grit through it because the alternative is unacceptable.
Chris ChristieHalf the country seceded from the other half when Abraham Lincoln was elected because half the country couldn't abide his position on slavery. You would think 150 years later this had all become pretty historically incontestable. Yet millions continue to contest it in the face of history. Rather the denial of slavery and all its monstrous repercussions defines to one twin America what the country is and means, and therein is the DNA of those "alternative facts" that people believe when they can't stand to believe the truth.
Steve EricksonTo this day, we get letters at Alternative Tentacles from young teenagers who hide their Dead Kennedys albums behind their mirror or in the mattress of their bed. Wouldn't it be better if the parents just discussed this with the kids instead of creating this culture of sneaking and dishonesty within the family? The moral of the story being, you don't hide reality from your kids because then they grow up to be smarter, more aware adults.
Jello BiafraThe social problem is that we haven't come up with any alternative models. Our culture hasn't developed an ars erotica. Think, for example, of conditions in India or in Japanese culture and of how the erotic has been cultivated there. They're not as clinical and rabbit-like as we are.
Volkmar SiguschOur first album was a stupid mistake by the record company. They tried to sell us as an alternative act. A big mistake!
Lauryn HillThere is no alternative. A Democrat is a Republican is a big businessman, and we're all consumers instead of citizens. It just manifests in the culture, in the music, in the art. I feel a little panicky about it.
Ani DiFrancoScience is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don't conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which ones best match the facts. It urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything - new ideas and established wisdom.
Carl SaganWe're living in a different world now in terms of employee needs, and companies have to offer alternative methods for getting the work done. Even under the most difficult circumstances you can have creative flexibility.
Anne M. MulcahyUnlike much of orthodox medicine, alternative approaches to healing typically honor the wisdom and capability of the human body. Their goal is often to support and strengthen the powerful healing forces already at work within us.
John RobbinsI loved the world of Oz. I guess as a young man, I was just drawn to fantasy worlds. I liked being transported to alternative realms where a lot of my early imagination was sparked.
James FrancoMy mother actually left American in 1929 to be part of an alternative community of bohemians around her then father-in-law who was a well-known Greek poet. This group of people were living in this semi-Luddite reality and weaving their own clothes - proto-hippies in a way- -but around an artistic vision.
Anne WaldmanI always say that a poet loves the world, and the prose writer needs to create an alternative world.
Mary KarrMore than a mere alternative strategy, regenerative agriculture represents a fundamental shift in our cultureโs relationship to nature.
Charles EisensteinIt is true that when people are appointed to positions and talk without any appreciation or understanding of scientists, well, that gets scientists worried. And when public officials talk about alternative facts, people who have devoted their careers to trying to uncover facts are dismayed.
Rush D. Holt, Jr.Science fiction invites the writer to grandly explore alternative worlds and pose questions about meaning and destiny.
Lawrence WrightAfter a short period spent in Brussels as a guest of a neurological institute, I returned to Turin on the verge of the invasion of Belgium by the German army, Spring 1940, to join my family. The two alternatives left then to us were either to emigrate to the United States, or to pursue some activity that needed neither support nor connection with the outside Aryan world where we lived. My family chose this second alternative. I then decided to build a small research unit at home and installed it in my bedroom.
Rita Levi-MontalciniI want to say to you who think women cannot succeed, we have brought the government of England to this position, that it has to face this alternative: either women are to be killed or women are to have the vote.
Emmeline PankhurstThere are clearly people for whom Stoicism immediately "clicks," it comes natural, and others for whom it doesn't. Then again, Stoicism isn't the only positive philosophy of life. Buddhism is an excellent alternative, if it speaks more clearly to one's personality or cultural background.
Massimo PigliucciI think the other side of this is that while the contradictions matter, one of the things that you cannot lose sight of is that even with a guy like [George] Soros the thing that he doesn't question, which does unify that class, is that they don't want to get rid of the capitalist system, they don't see an alternative.
Henry GirouxI would only read the novels that people classify as 'beach books' if I were being held prisoner and the only alternative was the 'Book of Mormon.'
Tom RobbinsWe desire peace. However, if imperialism insists on fighting a war, we will have no alternative but to take the firm resolution to fight to the finish before going ahead with our construction. If you are afraid of war day in day out, what will you do if war eventually comes? First, I said that the East Wind is prevailing over the West Wind and war will not break out, and now I have added these explanations about the situation in case war should break out. Both possibilities have thus been taken into account.
Mao ZedongI don't want to pooh-pooh modern pop. I appreciate that as well, but my personal favorite kind of music is guitar-based rock. I like grunge and garage bands and alternative music, but that's more my personal taste.
Al YankovicThe idea that somehow we're better off today than the day that Barack Obama was inaugurated president of the United States is totally an alternative universe. The simple fact is that the world has been torn asunder.
Jeb BushWell, if you can't then write in the press or put on television the importance of parents changing what they're doing, then the safe way out is to say, "Look, learning disabilities is probably genes. ADHD, probably genes." And that is the political alternative to not blaming the victim.
Jerome KaganI've always thought that one of the things that the Internet and the gaming world permits as a narrative technique is to not tell the story from beginning to end - to tell stories sideways, to give alternative possibilities that the reader can, in a way, choose between.
Salman RushdieI have been only the humblest jugglers-with-facts; and that, in a country where the truth is what it is instructed to be, reality quite literally ceases to exist, so that everything becomes possible except what we are told is the case; and maybe this was the difference between my Indian childhood and Pakistani adolescence--that in the first I was beset by an infinity of alternative realities, while in the second I was adrift, disoriented, amid an equally infinite number of falsenesses, unrealities and lies.
Salman RushdieOften, we try to repair broken things in such a way as to conceal the repair and make it โgood as new.โ But the tea masters understood that by repairing the broken bowl with the distinct beauty of radiant gold, they could create an alternative to โgood as newโ and instead employ a โbetter than newโ aesthetic. They understood that a conspicuous, artful repair actually adds value. Because after mending, the bowl's unique fault lines were transformed into little rivers of gold that post repair were even more special because the bowl could then resemble nothing but itself.
Teresita FernandezAround the mid-'90s every hair guy who would have been in a hair-metal band got his tattoos and suddenly decided he was alternative. It just became like a thing.
Billy CorganHugh Everett's work has been described by many people in terms of many worlds, the idea being that every one of the various alternative histories, branching histories, is assigned some sort of reality.
Murray Gell-MannTHE REAL PURPOSE OF HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM IS TO MAKE NATIONAL SOCIALISM AN ACCEPTABLE POLITICAL ALTERNATIVE AGAIN.
Harold CovingtonI'm sure there are a few things in my CD collection that might surprise people. I like classical music, the blues, and I'm a big fan of alternative rock.
Brad PaisleyIf Christians could be trained to provide solid evidence for what they believe and good answers to unbelieversโ questions and objections, then the perception of Christians would slowly change. Christians would be seen as thoughtful people to be taken seriously rather than as emotional fanatics or buffoons. The gospel would be a real alternative for people to embrace.
William Lane CraigThe fatalism of the limits-to-growth alternative is reasonable only if one ignores all the resources beyond our atmosphere, resources thousands of times greater than we could ever obtain from our beleaguered Earth. As expressed very beautifully in the language of House Concurrent Resolution 451, 'This tiny Earth is not humanity's prison, is not a closed and dwindling resource, but is in fact only part of a vast system rich in opportunities...'
Gerard K. O'NeillThe elegance of staying with a moment, without needing to stop and change all the lighting, made [the alternative] seem lazy and indulgent.
Edward Norton[Alternative energy] will make us less dependent on foreign oil. It would make us more secure in our future. It would mean that our foreign policy could be a reflection of our values and our other interests, and not just that.
William J. ClintonI don't get inoculations or take anti-malaria tablets when I go abroad, I take the homeopathic alternative, called 'nosodes', and I'm the only one who never goes down with anything.
Julia SawalhaEven though Google may do very well, there will always be an alternative to what Google is doing, and people will always have the free choice... because there's no way for us to prevent them from exercising that choice. That is one of the key aspects of why the Internet has been so successful. No technologies can dominate.
Eric SchmidtTo overcome negative emotions, consulting intuition is always useful. How can it guide you. During nervous periods, it offers a more centered alternative to agitation. Intuition is a neutral from of information that allows you to soberly gauge the validity of your worries. If you tune in and find out they're unfounded, you'll be relieved. If they are founded, you can develop a strategy to deal with them.
Judith OrloffEconomics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. It's purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature.
Thomas Sowell