Hierarchy Quotes

“A steep hierarchy level can even lead to miscommunication or loss of information.”
― Pooja Agnihotri, 17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure

“There is a will that exists, a desperate, continual, constantly renewed effort to place some people on a level below you, not to be on the lowest rung of the social ladder.”
― Édouard Louis, The End of Eddy

“Authority systems must be based on people arranged in a hierarchy. Thus the critical question in determining control is, Who is over whom? How much over is far less important than the visible presence of a ranked ordering.”
― Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority

“Maybe what she meant was that obviously she wasn't a lady because there was no way she could be. To be ordinary, as if pride were not the first manifestations of shame.”
― Édouard Louis, The End of Eddy

“They are also difficult to reconcile with archaeological evidence of how cities actually began in many parts of the world: as civic experiments on a grand scale, which frequently lacked the expected features of administrative hierarchy and authoritarian rule. We do not possess an adequate terminology for these early cities. To call them ‘egalitarian’, as we’ve seen, could mean quite a number of different things. It might imply an urban parliament and co-ordinated projects of social housing, as with some pre-Columbian centres in the Americas; or the self-organizing of autonomous households into neighbourhoods and citizens’ assemblies, as with prehistoric mega-sites north of the Black Sea; or, perhaps, the introduction of some explicit notion of equality based on principles of uniformity and sameness, as in Uruk-period Mesopotamia.

None of this variability is surprising once we recall what preceded cities in each region. That was not, in fact, rudimentary or isolated groups, but far-flung networks of societies, spanning diverse ecologies, with people, plants, animals, drugs, objects of value, songs and ideas moving between them in endlessly intricate ways. While the individual units were demographically small, especially at certain times of year, they were typically organized into loose coalitions or confederacies. At the very least, these were simply the logical outcome of our first freedom: to move away from one’s home, knowing one will be received and cared for, even valued, in some distant place. At most they were examples of ‘amphictyony’, in which some kind of formal organization was put in charge of the care and maintenance of sacred places. It seems that Marcel Mauss had a point when he argued that we should reserve the term ‘civilization’ for great hospitality zones such as these. Of course, we are used to thinking of ‘civilization’ as something that originates in cities – but, armed with new knowledge, it seems more realistic to put things the other way round and to imagine the first cities as one of those great regional confederacies, compressed into a small space.”
― David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

“The Human Contradiction held them. Intelligence at the service of hierarchical behavior. They were not free.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Adulthood Rites

“Each time a new flower blooms, you are that flower. You are living in an infinite quantum field, so it does not matter in which direction you can choose to view reality - as a hierarchical chain from lowest to highest or a hierarchy from highest to lowest - it does not matter. Because there is an endless blossoming of this flower in all directions. You cannot simply say that you are 'ascending upwards' for example, because there is no up or down, right, or left, or diagonal, in the infinite quantum field. Just as you cannot order soup in a restaurant and ask the waiter to please serve each ingredient separately, so too, humanity also lives in a quantum vibratory soup. That is why there is no dogma in Gnosticism. You just need to intensify your consciousness.”
― Laurence Galian, Alien Parasites: 40 Gnostic Truths to Defeat the Archon Invasion!

“The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim – for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives – is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“A society punishing a boy for stealing because he is otherwise unable to feed himself, would be hypocritical if not also blaming the instrument for not being tuned.”
― Monaristw

“Having been brought up in a serf-owner’s family, I entered active life, like all young men of my time, with a great deal of confidence in the necessity of commanding, ordering, scolding, punishing, and the like. But when, at an early stage, I had to manage serious enterprises and to deal with men, and when each mistake would lead at once to heavy consequences, I began to appreciate the difference between acting on the principle of command and discipline, and acting on the principle of common understanding. The former works admirably in a military parade, but it is worth nothing where real life is concerned and the aim can be achieved only through the severe effort of many converging wills.”
― Pyotr Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist

“Few people mind a dumb person who is humble and follows orders well, but dumb people who agitate for change that benefits dumb people quickly destroy any civilization.”
― Brett Stevens, Nihilism: A Philosophy Based In Nothingness And Eternity

“Fish?

The little fish eats the tiny fish,
The big fish eats the little fish--
So only the biggest fish get fat.
Do you know any folks like that?”
― Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends

“... why have we all decided that the most important and to-be-respected quality is the one possessed by the worst people?”
― K.J. Charles, The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting

“Humans who are in positions of power make the rules, and therefore their interests almost always come first—no matter what the cost to anymals and less powerful human beings.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Animals and World Religions

“She didn't realise that her family, her parents, her brothers and sisters, even her children, pretty much everyone in the village, had had the same problems, and what she called mistakes were, in fact, no more and no less than the perfect realisation of the normal course of things.”
― Édouard Louis, The End of Eddy

“The first thing that happens in a disaster is the breakdown of endogroups and hierarchy and the establishment of altruistic exosocial aid.”
― Heather Marsh, The Creation of Me, Them and Us

“The notion that egalitarian purposes could be served by the "restoration" of upward mobility betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding. High rates of mobility are by no means inconsistent with a system of stratification that concentrates power and privilege in a ruling elite. Indeed, the circulation of elites strengthens the principle of hierarchy, furnishing elites with fresh talent and legitimating their ascendancy as
a function of merit rather than birth.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy

“LCB instructors have warned us about the hierarchy of sight, a system where society privileges those who have more sight. Blind people sometimes internalize the hierarchy of sight, with those who are totally blind deferring to the partially sighted, and the partially sighted deferring to the fully sighted. Such classifications divide the blind community and contribute to our oppression. The training program has been teaching us to recognize and resist the oppressive system.

I don't want a blind world where the one-eyed man is automatically king.”
― Haben Girma, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law

“Talent today is more aware, assertive and empowered than ever before, which makes it respond better to coaching and facilitation as opposed to direction and control. And organization cultures are changing to reflect this need by dialing down entitlements, privileges and distinctions associated with rank. This is an age which puts a premium on democracy and respect over authority and seniority”
― Gyan Nagpal, The Future Ready Organization: How Dynamic Capability Management Is Reshaping the Modern Workplace

“But that was one of the perks of being higher-ranking; you could tell your juniors to cut back on the courtesy, while simultaneously being offended if you felt they were being too rude. A win-win situation, for the people on top.”
― Genevieve Cogman, The Lost Plot

“Society is a hierarchy of rights and duties. Law exists to enforce the second, as much as to protect the first. Property is not a mere aggregate of economic privileges, but a responsible office. Its raison d’etre is not only income, but service. It is to secure its owner such means, and no more than such means, as may enable him to perform those duties, whether labour on the land, or labour in government, which are involved in the particular status which he holds in the system. He who seeks more robs his superiors, or his dependants, or both. He who exploits his property with a single eye to its economic possibilities at once perverts its very essence and destroys his own moral title, for he has ‘every man’s living and does no man’s duty.”
― RH Tawney

“There is an ugly, unmentioned truth behind a feminist’s tendency to associate women with men, rather than with similarly exploited pigs or cattle:
Those who purposefully distance women from other female animals hope to liberate female humans while leaving nonhuman animals in the category of exploitable “other." But it is
reprehensible for individuals who are seeking release from oppression to purposefully leave others in the dungeons of exploitation—even to condemn others to such exploitation—in the process of working to extricate themselves.

In any event, this selfish approach has not worked, and the reason for this seems somewhat obvious: As long as we foster power-over—whether over pigs or turkeys or women—most human females will remain under the control of men, along with pigs and cows and chickens (who will generally remain yet lower on the rungs of power). In seeking to stand above
nonhuman females, women help to maintain a hierarchy through which they are held below men. As long as we support a hierarchy, as long as we support a system which grants some individuals power over other individuals, men will dominate over women. Hierarchies entail power-over, and the power of one individual over another inevitably supports oppression.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices

“As long as we foster power-over—whether over pigs or turkeys or women—most human females will remain under the control of men, along with pigs and cows and chickens (who will generally remain yet lower on the rungs of power). In seeking to stand above nonhuman females, women help to maintain a hierarchy through which they are held below men. As long as we support a hierarchy, as long as we support a system which grants some individuals power over other individuals, men will dominate over women.”
― Lisa Kemmerer, Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices

“The distribution of tasks amongst the various employees follows a simple rule, which is that the duty of the members of each category is to do as much work as they possibly can, so that only a small part of that work need be passed to the category above. This means the clerks are obliged to work without cease from morning to night, whereas senior clerks do so only now and then, the deputies very rarely, and the Registrar almost never.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“Authority was a little plastic ball that Graff carried.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“Human Capital > Money
Emotional-Intelligence > Economic Intelligence
Collaboration > Hierarchy
Meaning and Purpose > Material Rewards”
― Richie Norton

“We have never been respectable yet; don't let's begin now.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

“In the name of rejecting ecclesiastical authority as "hierarchy" or "tradition" as theological manipulation and bondage, we have instead created a hermeneutic of suspicion and have invested every biblically informed conscience (instead of a pope) to speak ex cathedra. It is a Pyrrhic victory for Free church Protestantism when the net effect of its teaching results in the replacing of the tyranny of the magisterium with the tyranny of individualism.”
― Daniel H. Williams, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants

“Most people are robots-executors, not very much unlike animals. They are not even aware of the true motives of their behavior. They make the majority among simples, and among vors, and among outs. On the other hand, there is a minority, robots-rulers, who are aware of themselves, of the motives of their actions, and are able to control them to a certain extent. This is the only real freedom available to people.”
― Andrew Orange, The Outside Intervention

“Language created our chimeric personality in which high killing power lies alongside reduced emotional reactivity. A unique communicative ability gave us a uniquely contradictory psychology of aggression.”
― Romain Gagnon, SO MAN CREATED GOD IN HIS OWN IMAGE: The Science of Happiness