Clarifying Quotes

• All decision-making is a values-clarifying exercise.

  Tony Robbins

  Exercise, Decision, Values

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• Logic issues in tautologies, mathematics in identities, philosophy in definitions; all trivial, but all part of the vital work of clarifying and organising our thought.

  Frank P. Ramsey

  Philosophy, Hard Work, Science

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• Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He copies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He’s convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.

  Pablo Picasso

  Drawing, Lasts, Firsts

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• A scientist's aim in a discussion with his colleagues is not to persuade, but to clarify.

  Leo Szilard

  Scientist, Aim, Colleagues

  Leo Szilard (1961). “The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories”, p.54, Stanford University Press

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• When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, and needed rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion.

  Marshall B. Rosenberg

  Compassion, Judging, Focus

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• Like other revolutionaries I can thank God for the reactionaries. They clarify the issue.

  Robin G. Collingwood

  Issues, Thank You God, Thank God

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• Words are powerful. When I make mistakes I just try to come back and clarify what I meant.

  Soulja Boy

  Powerful, Mistake, Trying

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• I use my hands like a sculptor, to mold and shape the sound I want, to clarify.

  Leonard Slatkin

  Hands, Mold, Sound

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• I tried to fit it in with some previous broad conceptual understanding of some part of mathematics that would clarify the particular problem I was thinking about.

  Andrew Wiles

  Thinking, Understanding, Problem

  "Andrew Wiles on Solving Fermat". NOVA Interview, www.pbs.org. November 1, 2000.

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• It's better for me to go up against someone's passion with my passion and then clarifying something that he wrote. Then I know how to work around certain things.

  Penny Marshall

  Passion, Certain, Know How

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

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• During periods of relaxation after concentrated intellectual activity, the intuitive mind seems to take over and can produce the sudden clarifying insights which give so much joy and delight.

  Fritjof Capra

  Truth, Knowledge, Giving

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• Trials and tribulations tend to squeeze the artificiality out of us, leaving the essence of what we really are and clarifying what we really yearn for.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Essence, Leaving, Trials

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• So if we look at progress, or evolution, or we look at accomplishment in our life, the key is to be continually moving on, expanding and growing, clarifying, developing and maturing. The opposite would be getting stuck, staying stuck, so there's no maturing, no developing, no accomplishing, no movement.

  Dennis Merzel

  Moving, Keys, Opposites

  Dennis Genpo Merzel (2007). “Big Mind, Big Heart: Finding Your Way”, Big Mind Pub

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• Reducing every issue to an argument can become stale but it's often a very good way of clarifying issues.

  Evan Davis

  Issues, Way, Argument

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• Not the least of the problems in clarifying one's consciousness is developing the stoic determination to criticize one's own softness or sentimentality toward oneself. Ego, self-solicitous about its own tenderness, is the ultimate policeman over its own false consciousness, dementedly uprooting every healthy seedling of insight into the truth. As Kierkegaard remarked, most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, but the real trick and task of life is to learn to be just the very opposite.

  Kenny Smith

  Life, Determination, Truth

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• Not all negativity is bad. In politics, it's a necessary clarifying tool.

  Jacob Weisberg

  Negativity, Tools

  "Learning How To Make Pork-Infused Veggies". Chat with readers, www.slate.com. May 23, 2012.

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• The ideological are individuals ultimately swamped by the complexities of modern life and political and economic relations; they have deliberately attached themselves to some caricatural maven like Falwell or Limbaugh who speaks to their manipulable pathos. The gulf between such individuals' education or intellectual competence or information and the actual issues of our times is simply too great. They were bred to be culture-media for false consciousness, junkies who crawl on their bellies across broken glass for another hit of "clarifying wisdom" from some ideological Pope.

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Media, Issues

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• Fresh and clarifying, cool and refreshing, Lucite Green has a minty glow. Light in weight and also in tone, Lucite Green seems almost transparent.

  Leatrice Eiseman

  Light, Weight, Green

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• Clarifying your identity helps you just talk to ladies.

  Jack Black

  Identity, Helping

  "Gulliver's Travels - Jack Black interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• In a museum in El Paso, Texas, there's a map that shows all the places the border between the U.S. and Mexico has been (because it shifted) - I find it very clarifying (not confusing) to be reminded that everything we feel like we've really pinned down is transient, arbitrary, and marks the site of a painful if not violent negotiation, one that may not have ended.

  Laura Mullen

  Museums, Texas, Confusing

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Rather than managing by clarifying events, the creative process may require raising the level of uncertainty. Sometimes this can be done by issuing a creative challenge that has resonance in that it inspires the team to activity.

  John Kao

  Team, Creative, Challenges

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

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• There is something eminently Chilean about avoiding confrontation, or about not clarifying the way you feel sometimes. It's a particular culture, where emotions are not discussed as profusely with your family or friends, nor shown in an explicit manner.

  Omar Zuniga

  Culture, Way, Emotion

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• I encourage all you superior seekers in the secret depths to devote yourselves to penetrating and clarifying the self, as earnestly as you would put out a fire on the top of your head.

  Hakuin Ekaku

  Fire, Self, Secret

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• I have always been spurred on by my not finding expressed anywhere the kinds of perspectives that I thought these issues most perspicuously needed and deserved; but that is just another way of saying that Americans have overwhelmingly expunged from their public understanding the strongest and most clarifying resources out of ancient and traditional European cultures. By far we prefer our familiar and user-friendly parochialisms, and there is no percentage in trying to pry these pachydermal plates apart.

  Kenny Smith

  Issues, Perspective, Understanding

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• When humor works, it works because it's clarifying what people already feel. It has to come from someplace real.

  Tina Fey

  Real, People, Working It

  "Oprah Talks to Tina Fey". Interview with Oprah Winfrey, www.oprah.com. February 2009.

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