Ambiguity Quotes - Page 3

• In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.

  Bertrand Russell

  Realist, Results, Idealism

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “Theory of Knowledge: The 1913 Manuscript”, p.6, Routledge

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• Despite elections and the experience of post-Soviet personal freedoms by the Russian people, the fate of democracy in Russia is perhaps more ambiguous now than at any time since the collapse of the Communist system.

  Richard Lugar

  Fate, Russia, People

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• People ask me if I left the lyrics open to ambiguity. Of course I did. I wanted to make a whole series of complex statements. The lyrics had to do with the state of society at the time.

  Don McLean

  Music, People, American Pie

  "Going for a song: American Pie manuscript to be auctioned" by Hannah Ellis-Petersen, www.theguardian.com. February 13, 2015.

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• The earnings have been pretty good so far, but there's an ambiguity in the market about them, because you'll see Amazon or Microsoft disappointing and then others beating.

  Hugh S. Johnson

  Amazon, Microsoft, Earning

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• The great thing about 'Allen Gregory' is that we try to make it really questionable that the things he says have happened, have really happened. We like that ambiguity.

  Jonah Hill

  Trying, Questionable, Great Things

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• I think there is a commitment on the part of the White House to racial justice in this country, and no ambiguity.

  Richard Lugar

  Country, Commitment, Thinking

  "GOP looks to Frist to repair Lott damage". www.cnn.com. December 22, 2002.

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• Let there be no ambiguity about the American view that Syria's lack of cooperation .. is not acceptable.

  John Bolton

  Views, Cooperation, Syria

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• One of the things Wall Street does not like is ambiguity. Now that the agreement is there, it begins to make the future look a little less cloudy, and that's positively received by Wall Street.

  Philip M. Condit

  Wall, Agreement, Doe

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• But there are a couple of places where it is clear to me that there should be no ambiguity of corporate responsibility - the environment and civil rights, .. As a corporation, you cannot let the desire for unanimity override your obligation for fairness.

  Leo Hindery

  Couple, Responsibility, Rights

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• The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood.

  Alexander Haig

  Military, Eyebrows, Political

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• As a novelist, your impulse is toward multiplicity: multiple voices, multiple perceptions, multiple nuances, the ambiguity in human communication. Fiction really is the ultimate home for that sense of ambiguity.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Communication, Home, Voice

  Interview with Sarah Fay, staging.believermag.com. March 2007.

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• My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity.

  Kenzaburo Oe

  Country, Japan, Years

  "Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature: Lagerkvist-Pontoppidan". Book by Thomson Gale, 2007.

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• I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world.

  Carl Sandburg

  Age, World, Aging

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• When it appears as though the governors of the Federal Reserve believe that the end of the rate increases is near, that's very good news for investors. A lack of ambiguity from the Federal Reserve is always a little bit of a shocker.

  Hugh S. Johnson

  Believe, News, Littles

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• The election is another element of ambiguity, .. and oil remains the crucial variable.

  Hugh S. Johnson

  Oil, Elements, Variables

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• During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.

  John le Carre

  War, Literature, Shade

  "John le Carré at the NFT". Interview with Adrian Wootton, www.theguardian.com. October 5, 2002.

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• The film is ambiguous, an ambiguity that reflects on Japan today, and a world in which nothing is clear. Once I made the film [Takeshis'], I realized it was about this feeling of vague disquiet in Japan and in the rest of the world, a feeling that is gaining on us, getting less vague.

  Takeshi Kitano

  Japan, Feelings, World

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Understand the causes of terror? Yes, we should try, but let there be no moral ambiguity about this: nothing could ever justify the events of September 11 and it is to turn justice on its head to pretend it could

  Tony Blair

  Justice, September 11, Trying

  Address at the Labour Party Conference, delivered 2 October 2001

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• If physics is too difficult for the physicists, the nonphysicist may wonder whether he should try at all to grasp its complexities and ambiguities. It is undeniably an effort, but probably one worth making, for the basic questions are important and the new experimental results are often fascinating. And if the layman runs into serious perplexities, he can be consoled with the thought that the points which baffle him are more than likely the ones for which the professionals have not found satisfactory answers.

  Edward Condon

  Running, Effort, Important

  "Physics, in What is Science?: Twelve Eminent Scientists and Philosophers Explain Their Various Fields to the Layman". Book by James Roy Newman, published by Simon and Schuster, p. 102, 1955.

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• Bad faith makes the most of every ambiguity.

  Mason Cooley

  Faith, Betrayal

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• Standing outside the cultural hysteria the trend is fairly clear. It is a trend toward temporal compression and the emergence of ambiguity.

  Terence McKenna

  Hysteria, Trends, Standing Out

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• The Japanese, if I understand them, are masters of the unsaid and the unstated, of subtlety and ambiguity, all of which constitute powerful stimulants to the imagination.

  Semir Zeki

  Powerful, Imagination, Masters

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• Some wits, too, like oracles, deal in ambiguities, but not with equal success; for though ambiguities are the first excellence of an imposter, they are the last of a wit.

  Edward Young

  Excellence, Lasts, Firsts

  Edward Young (1866). “The complete poetical works of Edward Young. With life”, p.267

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• We have a language that is full of ambiguities; we have a way of expressing ourselves that is often complex and elusive, poetic and modulated; all our thoughts can be rendered with absolute clarity if we bother to put the right dots and squiggles between the words in the right places. Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking. If it goes, the degree of intellectual impoverishment we face is unimaginable.

  Lynne Truss

  Thinking, Intellectual, Degrees

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• Just as God's love entered the world, thereby submitting to the misunderstanding and ambiguity that characterize everything worldly, so also Christian love does not exist anywhere but in the worldly, in an infinite variety of concrete worldly action, and subject to misunderstanding and condemnation. Every attempt to portray a Christianity of 'pure' love purged of worldly 'impurities' is a false purism and perfectionism that scorns God's becoming human and falls prey to the fate of all ideologies. God was not too pure to enter the world.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Christian, Fall, Fate

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