In terms of organisational models and human relationship models, humankind has not evolved much over the last millennia.

By heavens! there is something after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another must not look at a halter. Steal a horse straight out. Very well. He has done...

When it come to creative inspiration, job titles and hierarchy are meaningless.

But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.

There’s a problem with the hierarchical orientation, though. When the numbers get too big, the thing breaks down. A pecking order can hold only so many chickens.

Two ideas are opposed — not concepts or abstractions, but Ideas which were in the blood of men before they were formulated by the minds of men. The Resurgence of Authority stands opposed to the...

Social ascendency, innocently disguised as high fashion, good taste or prestigious expenditure, was the same the world over.

Money, dished out in quantities fitting the context, is a social lubricant here. It eases passage even as it maintains hierarchies. Fifty naira for the man who helps you back out from the parking spot,...

It is a truth widely recognized that tyranny stems from the consent of the governed as much as democracy does.

Those who are at the top would celebrate for their victory that later others would inevitably interpret as boast. Those who are at the middle are very optimistic and open-minded that they would just smile...

When equality is treated not as a medicine or a safety-gadget, but as an ideal, we begin to breed that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority.

Because there is nothing, nothing on Urras that we Anarresti need! We left with empty hands, a hundred and seventy years ago, and we were right. We took nothing. Because there is nothing here but...

A plongeur is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure....

There’s no hierarchy in suffering. I think songs that are transcendent are the ones where everyone can feel something from it, you know?

There is a higher form of hierarchy and that is the hierarchy of the spirit. When I stand in front of a person, I stand in front of a soul and I have met magnificent...

We are the same, you and I. Whether samurai or night-hawk, the Suruga Dainagon or member of the Toudouza, it makes no difference. My sword is the proof….”These words, wrung from the very depths of...

One of the key characteristics of an elite corps is its susceptibility to those more powerful than itself. Elite power is naturally attracted to a power hierarchy and fits itself neatly, obediently into the one...

The lowly have small ambitions, and are satisfied with small indulgences. They need not get fair treatment. They need only think that they do…

One of the great commandments of science is, ‘Mistrust arguments from authority’. (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment.)

Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps

Hierarchies are celestial. In hell all are equal.

All people want to belong to some sort of hierarchy. Allow me to explain. The rich want to be the richest; the poor want to be the smartest; those who are both rich and smart...

Certainly, a clear line must be preserved by strict discipline, and on the other hand the men must know that everything is done for them that hard times permit. On the top of that it...

Unfortunately, in a hierarchical structure, power relationships tend to determine the content; there is always the danger that a “rank-based” logic will prevail. Managers, intent on advancement, tend to supply the information they know their...

What is the bottom line for the animal/human hierarchy? I think it is at the animate/inanimate line, and Carol Adams and others are close to it: we eat them. This is what humans want from...

Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people. Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world...

The violence of hierarchy is the violence that the powerful use against the dispossessed to keep them subordinated. As an example, the violence committed for wealth is socially invisible or committed at enough of a...

One way or another, we spend our whole lives being conditioned into accepting some line or order, some position of domination or subjection. It’s hard to unlearn such hierarchy, to undo such control. It’s implicit.

benefits” of accepting the power of a hierarchy in the human mind?

He was no stranger to compassion: his heart was open to many good impulses, though his rank often prevented their manifestation.

As managers rise up the hierarchy, a host of situational forces come to bear on them which can easily undermine their respect for the people on the front lines, and hence cause them to disregard...

Whatever the religion, we are formatted to accept hierarchy without any questions and while most management studies discuss business models, organisation and power structure, they seldom question the different types of hierarchies. One has to...

Japanese universities have a chair system that is a fixed hierarchy. This has its merits when trying to work as a laboratory on one theme. But if you want to do original work you must...

Without agreement on rank and a certain respect for authority there can be no great sensitivity to social rules, as anyone who has tried to teach simple house rules to a cat will agree.