"An organization which depends solely upon its blueprints of prescribed behavior is a very fragile social system." (Daniel Katz, "The motivational basis of organizational behavior", Behavioral science, 1964)
"Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited." (Margaret Mead, "Male and female: a study of the sexes in a changing world", 1975)
"As control engineers and scientists, we have greatly altered the way people and nations live and interact with one another. We have helped to create a world in which people live longer, enjoy better health, are better educated, and can travel and communicate over greater distances. But the systems that provide these better lives are fragile systems subject to unpredictable failures and possible destruction. We have also helped to create a world in which international relations are such that the very civilizations we have helped to build over centuries can be destroyed in a matter of hours. (Harold Chestnut, "Applications of Control Principles to International Relations", IEEE Control Systems Magazine Vol.6 (6), 1986)
"Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better." (Nassim N Taleb, "Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder", 2012)
"[...] True and False (hence what we call "belief") play a poor, secondary role in human decisions; it is the payoff from the True and the False that dominates-and it is almost always asymmetric, with one consequence much bigger than the other, i.e., harboring positive and negative asymmetries (fragile or antifragile)." (Nassim N Taleb, "Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder", 2012)
"In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule." (Pope Francis, "The Joy of the Gospel", 2013)
"Democracy is a highly robust, but at the same time very fragile, complex system, which requires constant change to maintain its self-organized state. Democracy is by definition not in equilibrium. The random graph pattern may pose a system of boring and very low-complexity equilibrium. If all of us ever find ourselves with plenty of resources, that will be THE END of our history." (Péter Csermely, "Weak Links: The Universal Key to the Stabilityof Networks and Complex Systems", 2009)
"The scale-free system is a ‘borderline’ case between the random graph and the star phase. It is very fragile and transient, but in spite of this, it is very robust. We call it democracy. This democracy net always keeps a delicate balance betweenanarchy (random net) and dictatorship (star net). Fortunately, in democratic systems, the society is not segmented and weak links flourish. Consequently, the fragile system becomes robust. Democratic systems show the greatest complexity of all. However, weak links and their buffering may grow too great. A democratic society remains flexible for smaller challenges, but occasionally may become overcomplicated and unable to make a fast response to a life-threatening danger." (Péter Csermely, "Weak Links: The Universal Key to the Stabilityof Networks and Complex Systems", 2009)
