Dr. Peter van Ham: "NATO should follow the Madonna-curve, and not wait till its controversies escalate into public wrangles. The argument that tinkering on the edges will do since all challenges can be dealt with one at a time simply does not hold. To be successful, NATO needs a package-deal of painful compromises, where each member state has to give and take. This requires a comprehensive reform effort which only a new strategic concept offers. The quality of adapting to new tasks whilst staying true to one’s own principles is something which business analysts qualify as the Madonna-curve. This curve is named after the legendary pop-diva who reinvented herself each time her style and stardom went into inevitable decline, but whose audacity has lifted her up to ever higher levels of relevance and fame."
Madonna Ciccone
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A thrown-stone trajectory is a good metaphor for so many phenomena: the curve of an event, any event; the curve of a life, any life; the curve of a hypothesis; the curve experienced in the manufacture of a work of art; the curve of interest experienced in the manufacture of a catalogue.
Peter Greenaway
"There will always be people who are ahead of the curve," he [James] says, "and people who are behind the curve. But knowledge moves the curve."
Bill James
I never bought into the Laffer curve, a theory, named after an American supply - side economist who had been an adviser to the Reagan administration, that essentially argues that a government will increase its revenue by reducing its taxes. If it were that easy, everybody would do it. What politician doesn't want to reduce taxes in order to win votes? Taken to its logical extreme, the Laffer curve makes no sense because, if you lower your taxes to zero, how are you going to get higher revenues? In practice, every government that toyed with this theory ended up with larger deficits, higher interest rates and greater social inequality.
Jean Chretien
I was attracted by the curve — the liberated, sensual curve suggested by the possibilities of new technology yet so often recalled in venerable old baroque churches.
Oscar Niemeyer
Ciccone, Madonna
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