Coherence Quotes

• Today we all speak, if not the same tongue, the same universal language. There is no one center, and time has lost its former coherence: East and West, yesterday and tomorrow exist as a confused jumble in each one of us. Different times and different spaces are combined in a here and now that is everywhere at once.

  Octavio Paz

  Confused, Yesterday, Space

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.21, Arcade Publishing

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• Small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos can shift the whole system to a higher order.

  Barbara Marx Hubbard

  Islands, Order, Sea

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• The genuine coherence of our ideas does not come from the reasoning that ties them together, but from the spiritual impulse that gives rise to them.

  Nicolas Gomez Davila

  Spiritual, Ideas, Ties

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• The goal is nothing other than the coherence and completeness of the system not only in respect of all details, but also in respect of all physicists of all places, all times, all peoples, and all cultures.

  Max Planck

  Science, People, Goal

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• If you don’t know your purpose, discover it, now. The core of your life is your purpose. Everything in your life, from your diet to your career, must be aligned with your purpose if you are to act with coherence and integrity in the world. If you know your purpose, your deepest desire, then the secret of success is to discipline your life so that you support your deepest purpose and minimize distractions and detours.

  David Deida

  Integrity, Careers, Discipline

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• The confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence but of the coherence of the story the mind has managed to construct.

  Daniel Kahneman

  People, Mind, Quality

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• The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.

  Adam Smith

  Ideas, Imagination, Evidence

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• The proverbial German phenomenon of the verb-at-the-end about which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a sentence, ramble on for an entire lecture, and then finish up by rattling off a string of verbs by which their audience, for whom the stack had long since lost its coherence, would be totally nonplussed, are told, is an excellent example of linguistic recursion.

  Douglas Hofstadter

  Communication, Long, Example

  "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid". Book by Douglas Hofstadter, 1979.

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• Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.

  Al Alvarez

  Art, May, Belief

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• Every human being is a raindrop. And when enough of the raindrops become clear and coherent they then become the power of the storm.

  John Trudell

  Power, People, Storm

  "What it Means to be a Human Being". John Trudell's speech in San Francisco, California, www.radio4all.net. March 2001.

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• We are coming to understand health not as the absence of disease, but rather as the process by which individuals maintain their sense of coherence (i.e. sense that life is comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful) and ability to function in the face of changes in themselves and their relationships with their environment.

  Aaron Antonovsky

  Life, Change, Meaningful

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• Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.

  Luis Bunuel

  Memories, Feelings, Our Actions

  Luis Bunuel (2011). “My Last Breath”, p.9, Random House

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• Overconfidence is a powerful source of illusions, primarily determined by the quality and coherence of the story that you can construct, not by its validity.

  Daniel Kahneman

  Powerful, Quality, Stories

  "Kahneman and Klein on strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut?". Interview with Gary Klein, bobmorris.biz. September 25, 2016.

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• Overall, because branding is about creating and sustaining trust it means delivering on promises. The best and most successful brands are completely coherent. Every aspect of what they do and what they are reinforces everything else.

  Wally Olins

  Success, Trust, Mean

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• You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all... Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it we are nothing.

  Luis Bunuel

  Life, Memories, Remembrance

  Luis Bunuel (2011). “My Last Breath”, p.9, Random House

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• This splendid book discusses how, in the last two hundred fifty years, large numbers of people have achieved levels of well-being that were previously available only to a few individuals, and how this achievement has given rise to equally unprecedented inequalities. Unique in its focus and scope, exceptional knowledge and coherence, and careful argumentation, The Great Escape is highly illuminating and a delight to read.

  Thomas Pogge

  Book, Unique, Years

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• As a reporter you tend to seek coherence from your subject or your source - it all needs to add up and make sense. In truth, in reality, there's often a great deal of murkiness and muddiness, confusion and contradiction.

  Amy Waldman

  Reality, Confusion, Add

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• Amid chaos of images, we value coherence. We believe in the printed word. And we believe in clarity. And we believe in immaculate syntax. And in the beauty of the English language.

  William Shawn

  Believe, Printed Word, Syntax

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• In the evolution of mankind there has always been a certain degree of social coherence.

  Herbert Read

  Degrees, Evolution, Social

  Herbert Read (1963). “Selected Writings: Poetry and Criticism”

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• Meditation makes the entire nervous system go into a field of coherence.

  Deepak Chopra

  Meditation, Fields, Nervous

  "Deepak Chopra on Your "Super Brain," Work Stress and Creativity". Interview with Judy Martin, www.forbes.com. December 20, 2012.

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• Without exception, the dominance and coherence of culture proved to be an essential quality of the excellent companies.

  Tom Peters

  Quality, Essentials, Culture

  "In Search of Excellence". Book by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr., 1982.

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• Dramatic experience is not logical; it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism, of form.

  Allen Tate

  Criticism, Experience, May

  Allen Tate (1999). “Essays of Four Decades”, Isi Books

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• With acknowledgement of residues, we can be more easily prepared to grant the unit of science, the overlapping of disciplines, and the total coherence of all facts.

  Kenneth Lee Pike

  Discipline, Facts, Acknowledgement

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• The idea of eternity lives in all of us. We thirst to live in a belief which raises our small personality to a higher coherence - a coherence which is human and yet superhuman, absolute and yet steadily growing and developing, ideal and yet real.

  Christian Lous Lange

  Real, Ideas, Personality

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• When I was a child in the 1940s and early 1950s, my parents and grandparents spoke of Britain as home, and New Zealand had this strong sense of identity and coherence as being part of the commonwealth and a the identity of its people as being British.

  Michael King

  Strong, Children, Home

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