balance Quotations

Quotations on Balance

other related subjects: poise, power, symmetry

(a sampling from Kall's quotation database. The complete subject listing also includes quotes form Matisse, Carolyn Mysse, Sallust, Emerson and others)

... the cooperative forces are biologically the more imporatant and vital. The balance between the cooperative and altruistic tendencies and those which are disoperative and egoistic is relatively close. Under many conditions the cooperative forces lose, In the ong run, however, the group centered, more altruistic drives are slightly stronger.
...human altruistic drives are as firmly based on an animal ancestry as is man himself. Our tendencies toward goodness... are as innate as our tendencies toward intelligence; we could do well with more of both.
W.C. Allee, "Where Angels Fear to Tread: A contribution from general sociology to human ethics," Science, vol 97, 1943, p 521

MODERATION, BALANCE
"It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken."
Aristotle

EQUANIMITY, BALANCE, CALM, RELAXATION, PEACE,
"Bear shame and glory with an equal peace and an ever tranquil heart."
Bhagavad Vita

NEED, BALANCE
Happiness consists in a destiny harmonizing with our faculties. Our desires are the offspring of the moment, and often are of fatal consequence to us; but our faculties are permanent, and their necessities are unceasing; hence the conquest of the world may have been as necessary to Alexander, as the possession of a cottage to a shepherd.
Madame De Stael-Holstein Reflections on Suicide

When we are treated as enemies by destiny we have a right to endeavor to escape its malignity: and yet the regulator which determines the result of this balance is entirely within ourselves: the same sort of life, which reduces one to despair, would fill another with joy, who is placed in a sphere of less elevated hopes.
Madame De Stael-Holstein Reflections on Suicide

Happiness depends on how you balance your life's equations between positive and negative experiences and attitudes.
Kall

TOLERATION
...the greatest gift of the mind; it requires that same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.
Helen Keller

"When we put our misfortunes in one scale of the balance, each of us lays, in the other, all that he deems to be happiness. The savage flings feathers and powder, and alcohol into the scale; civilized men some gold, a few days of delirium; but the sage will deposit therein countless things our eyes cannot see-- all his soul, it may be, and even the misfortune that he will have purified."
Maeterlinck, Maurice, WISDOM and DESTINY
THOUGHTS, EPIGRAMS

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
Santayana, Essays

DYSREGULATION, HOMEOSTASIS, IMBALANCE, DRIVE,
"The desire which arises from joy or sorrow, which is related to one or to some, but not to all parts of the body, has no regard to the profit of the whole man."
Spinoza, Prop. LX

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.
--Georges Clemenceau

Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men,--the balance-wheel of the social machinery.
--Horace Mann

The hungry world cannot be fed until and unless the growth of its resources and the growth of its population come into balance. Each man and woman--and each nation--must make decisions of conscience and policy in the face of this great problem.
--Lyndon Baines Johnson

Men like Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson recognized that we are imperfect
beings. Consequently, they invented a government of separate powers and
checks and balances -- to control the imperfections in human nature.
Colin L. Powell

The coordinated physiological processes which maintain most of the steady states in the organism are so complex and so peculiar to living beings --involving, as they may, the brain and nerves, the heart, lungs, kidneys and spleen, all working cooperatively-- that I have suggested a special designation for these states, homeostasis. The word doesnot imply something set and immobile, a stagnation. It means a condition-- a condition which may vary, but which is relatively constant.
IT seems not impossible that the means employed by themore highly evolved animals for preserving uniform and stable their internal economy (i.e., for preserving homeostasis) may present some general principles for the establishment, regulation and control of steady states, that would be suggestive for other kinds of organization even social and industrial-- which suffer from distressing perturbations. Perhaps a comparative study would show that every complex organization must have more or less effective self-righting adjustments in order to prevent a check on its functions or a rapid disintegration of its parts when it is subjected to stress. ANd it may be that an examination of the self-righting methods employed in the more complex living beings may offer hints for improving and perfecting the methods which still operate inefficiently and unsatisfactorily.
Walter B. Cannon, Wisdom of the Body, Intro., 1932

Steady states in society as a whole and steady states in its members are closely linked. Just as social stabilization would foster the stability, both physical and mental, of the members of the social organism, so likewise it would foster their heigher freedom, giving them serenity and leisure, which are the primary conditions for wholesome recreation, for the discovery of a satisfactory and invigorating social milieu, and for the discipline and enjoyment of individual aptitudes.
Walter B. Cannon, Wisdom of the Body, Intro., 1932