Constructs Quotes - Page 16

• Darwinism has failed in practice. The whole aim and purpose of Darwinism is to show how modern forms descended from ancient forms, that is, to construct reliable phylogenies [evolutionary family trees]. In this it has utterly failed.

  Norman Macbeth

  Practice, Tree, Purpose

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• Fractals, the theory of relativity, the genome: these are magnificently beautiful constructs.

  Adam Savage

  Beautiful, Fractals, Theory

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• Flowers construct the most charming geometries: circles like the sun, ovals, cones, curlicues and a variety of triangular eccentricities, which when viewed with the eye of a magnifying glass seem a Lilliputian frieze of psychedelic silhouettes.

  Duane Michals

  Flower, Eye, Circles

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• I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. That would be claiming too much. But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming . . . and a little mad.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Success, Cutting, Math

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

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• Dreaming is a form of action. Idleness is a form of action. The idle man stares at the sky and sees what constitutes our eternal ceiling. The sky is one of the things that constructs us, one of our constants. But it is not what people believe. I should like to close this circle by turning over in my bed and scrutinizing the stars.

  Philippe Starck

  Dream, Stars, Believe

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• . . . it is worth discussing radical changes, not in the expectation that they will be adopted promptly but for two other reasons. One is to construct an ideal goal, so that incremental changes can be judged by whether they move the institutional structure toward or away from that ideal. The other reason is very different. It is so that if a crisis requiring or facilitating radical change does arise, alternatives will be available that have been carefully developed and fully explored.

  Milton Friedman

  Change, Moving, Two

  Milton Friedman, Kurt R. Leube (1987). “The essence of Friedman”, Hoover Inst Pr

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• Architecture is my first love, if you want to talk about what moves me... the ordering of space, the visual pleasure, architecture's power to construct our days and nights.

  Barbara Kruger

  Moving, First Love, Night

  Art in America, Volume 85, Nr. 10-12, 1997.

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• The beauty of doing film is that you construct whatever you do block by block and you can build something that will stay.

  Michel Gondry

  Block, Film

  Interview with Sandra Hebron, www.theguardian.com. February 7, 2007.

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• The process of reading is not a half sleep, but in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle: that the reader is to do something for him or herself, must be on the alert, just construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay--the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start, the framework.

  Walt Whitman

  Struggle, Reading, Sleep

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• My wish is to construct a system of sociology on the model of celestial mechanics, physics, and chemistry.

  Vilfredo Pareto

  Wish, Chemistry, Physics

  Vilfredo Pareto (1963). “The Mind and Society: A Treatise on General Sociology”

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• Eiffel borrows quite openly from several earlier programming languages and I am sure that if we had found a good language construct in C we would have used it as well.

  Bertrand Meyer

  Language, Used, Found

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• I would construct and work along various lines until I found them untenable. When one theory was discarded, I developed another at once. I realized very early that this was the only possible way for me to work out all the problems.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Adventure, Work Out, Lines

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• I am deeply concerned that Sri Lanka, despite the opportunity provided by the end of the war to construct a new vibrant, all-embracing state, is showing signs of heading in an increasingly authoritarian direction.

  Navi Pillay

  War, Opportunity, Sri Lanka

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• In White Summer, Joelle Biele exhibits a Roethke-like affinity with nature and natures creatures. At times a miniaturist, Biele constructs exquisite addresses to a heron, cicada, spider, catalpa tree, mockingbird, snail, cormorant, and others. These pitch-perfect poems are written with a delicate, meticulous attention to craft and music. Like the joy she takes in her subjects, this collection is a joy to read.

  Elizabeth Spires

  Summer, White, Perfect

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• A story is how we construct our experiences.

  Doris Lessing

  Stories

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• When I'm writing a book, generally I start with the mood and setting, along with a couple of specific images—things that have come into my head, totally abstracted from any narrative, that I've fixated on. After that, I construct a world, or an area, into which that general setting, that atmosphere, and the specific images I've focused on can fit.

  China Mieville

  Couple, Book, Writing

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• As we educate a child -- removing out of its path those obstacles over which we ourselves, in early days, have stumbled, and strengthening its mind with the aid of our own matured experience -- we, as it were, construct a new and better replica of ourselves, and thus enable the race to move slowly, but surely, forward towards the ultimate goal of existence -- towards perfection.

  Leonid Andreyev

  Children, Moving, Race

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• Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act... a "doing" rather than a "being". There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results. If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.

  Judith Butler

  Sex, Character, Expression

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• We construct our lives for one person, and when at length it is ready to receive her that person does not come; presently she is dead to us, and we live on, prisoners within the walls which were intended only for her.

  Marcel Proust

  Wall, Doe, Length

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.253, Modern Library

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• The essence of a software entity is a construct of interlocking concepts. I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor of representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation.

  Fred Brooks

  Believe, Essence, Design

  "No Silver Bullet – Essence and Accident in Software Engineering". Paper by Fred Brooks, 1986.

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• Science offers the boldest metaphysics of the age. It is a thoroughly human construct, driven by the faith that if we dream, press to discover, explain, and dream again, thereby plunging repeatedly into new terrain, the world will somehow come clearer and we will grasp the true strangeness of the universe. And the strangeness will all prove to be connected, and make sense.

  E. O. Wilson

  Faith, Dream, Age

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• The religions are delusional constructs formed around an infallible core.

  Frederick Franck

  Delusional, Infallible, Core

  "Echoes from the Bottomless Well". Book by Frederick Franck, p. 74, 1985.

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• Having gathered all power to itself, [the State] has become the sole focus of all conflict, and it must construct totalitarian defences to match its total exposure.

  Anthony de Jasay

  Focus, Democracy, Conflict

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• It is remarkable how fast and how effectively you can construct a nationality with a flag , a few speeches, and a national anthem; to this day I avoid the label "Lebanese," preferring the less restrictive "Levantine" designation.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Labels, Flags, Speech

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Fragility"”, p.5, Random House

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• That's all very well as an abstract moral principle, Avril, a coffee-table theoretical construct, but there's no denying the sheer gratuitous pleasure to be derived from seeing members of the ruling class in pain and torment.

  Irvine Welsh

  Pain, Coffee, Class

  Irvine Welsh (1995). “The Acid House”, p.269, W. W. Norton & Company

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