Michael J. Saylor Quotes

Information from destructive activities going back a hundred years right up until today is being incorporated into the system. And as that happens the underlying framework of industrialism is collapsing and causing disintegration.

Many people believe that the current system must inevitably end in total annihilation. They reject, sometimes very emotionally, any attempts to analyze this notion.

In a previous life I wrote the software that controlled my physics experiments. That software had to deal with all kinds of possible failures in equipment. That is probably where I learned to rely on multiple safety nets inside and around my systems.

We are putting more and more power into a system which is less and less able to carry it reliably.

Everything is being run by computers. Everything is reliant on these computers working. We have become very reliant on Internet, on basic things like electricity, obviously, on computers working. And this really is something which creates completely new problems for us. We must have some way of continuing to work even if computers fail.

For something to collapse, not all systems have to shut down. In most cases, just one system is enough. For example, the human body is a system of systems. If just one system, such as the cardiovascular system, shuts down, death follows.

The tragic thing is that we're letting our transportation system crumble at the exact moment we need to build it up.

As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.

So all the system was running down and collapsing. Mrs. Thatcher became the leader of the Conservative Party in February 1975, and she clearly wanted to strike out and do something different.

I think anytime that you go to the extreme of any mode of economics, be it capitalism or communism, you have these feedback mechanisms that make the system turn in on itself.

One thing about these storms, we know how disruptive things can be when we depend on the system to keep working. What would happen if the terrorists do it? Knock down the power, destroy bridges, cut the water supply?

Since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents, they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities.

Several highly improbable and therefore unforeseen failures.

Complex systems work until the day that they don’t work.

If the current international order proves too brittle to change, it will simply crumble.

There will always be some who, for whatever reason, find themselves dependent on the charity of others. But when half the population is along for the ride, the system becomes dangerously out of balance. Things fall apart.

Communism can't survive the captivating allure of capitalism.

I'm the cog in the middle that makes it all turn together. And if you pull me out, a lot of other cogs start to fall.

If we don't get a hold of what we owe Americans who are providing services to our veterans, then the entire system collapses.

Economic systems come, and economic systems go. No economic system lasts forever. Capitalism is not likely to last forever, either.

The most rigid structures, the most impervious to change, will collapse first.

Ironically, the universities have trained hundreds of thousands of graduates for jobs that soon will not exist. They have trained people to maintain a structure that cannot be maintained. The elite...know only how to feed the beast until it dies. Once it is dead, they will be helpless. Don't expect them to save us. They don't know how....and when it all collapses, when our rotten financial system with its trillions in worthless assets implodes and our imperial wars end in humiliation and defeat, the power elite will be exposed as being as helpless, and as self-deluded as the rest of us

If all individuals were conditioned to machine efficiency in the performance of their duties there would have to be at least one person outside the machine to give the necessary orders; if the machine absorbed or eliminated all those outside the machine, the machine will slow down and stop forever.

If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.

The opposite of ‘open’ isn’t closed. The opposite of open is broken.