Details Quotes - Page 24

• Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Government, Liberty, Inquiry

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1863). “Democracy in America”, p.363

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• With respect to the words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.

  James Madison

  Character, Government, Liberty

  James Madison's letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831.

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• It is now widely realized that nearly all the 'classical' problems of molecular biology have either been solved or will be solved in the next decade. The entry of large numbers of American and other biochemists into the field will ensure that all the chemical details of replication and transcription will be elucidated. Because of this, I have long felt that the future of molecular biology lies in the extension of research to other fields of biology, notably development and the nervous system.

  Sydney Brenner

  Lying, Numbers, Long

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• Molecular genetics, our latest wonder, has taught us to spell out the connectivity of the tree of life in such palpable detail that we may say in plain words, "This riddle of life has been solved."

  Max Delbruck

  Taught Us, Tree, May

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• Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are ... rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Knowledge, Science, Light

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.419, Simon and Schuster

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• It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some detail the reality of ignorance.

  Lewis Thomas

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• Any chemist reading this book can see, in some detail, how I have spent most of my mature life. They can become familiar with the quality of my mind and imagination. They can make judgements about my research abilities. They can tell how well I have documented my claims of experimental results. Any scientist can redo my experiments to see if they still work-and this has happened! I know of no other field in which contributions to world culture are so clearly on exhibit, so cumulative, and so subject to verification.

  Donald Cram

  Reading, Book, Science

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• Making people believe the unbelievable is no trick; it's work... Belief and reader absorption come in the details: An overturned tricycle in the gutter of an abandoned neighborhood can stand for everything.

  Stephen King

  Believe, Writing, People

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

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• The focus and the concentration and the attention to detail that flying takes is a kind of meditation. I find it restful and engaging, and other things slip away.

  Harrison Ford

  Focus And Concentration, Meditation, Flying

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• Keep things informal. Talking is the natural way to do business. Writing is great for keeping records and putting down details, but talk generates ideas. Great things come from out luncheon meetings which consist of a sandwich, a cup of soup, and a good idea or two. No martinis.

  T. Boone Pickens

  Communication, Writing, Talking

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• It is difficult to imagine anyone having any real hopes for the human race in the face of the fact that the great majority of men still believe that the universe is run by a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft and girth, who is nevertheless interested in the minutest details of the private conduct of even the meanest man.

  H. L. Mencken

  Running, Fear, Real

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• Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information. And so the point is to find design strategies that reveal detail and complexity - rather than to fault the data for an excess of complication. Or, worse, to fault viewers for a lack of understanding.

  Edward Tufte

  Data, Confusion, Design

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• Know the philosophy, know the details, and ignore everything in the middle.

  Gary Vaynerchuk

  Inspirational, Philosophy, Middle

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• Don't get bogged down with all the details of how it's going to come together. Just do the dishes. And watch the momentum build.

  Brian J. White

  Inspirational, Happiness, Inspiring

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• We are like the explorers of a great continent, who have penetrated its margins in most points of the compass and have mapped the major mountain chains and rivers. There are still innumerable details to fill in, but the endless horizons no longer exist.

  H. Bentley Glass

  Science, Rivers, Mountain

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• His [Henry Cavendish's] Theory of the Universe seems to have been, that it consisted solely of a multitude of objects which could be weighed, numbered, and measured; and the vocation to which he considered himself called was, to weigh, number and measure as many of those objects as his allotted three-score years and ten would permit. This conviction biased all his doings, alike his great scientific enterprises, and the petty details of his daily life.

  George Wilson

  Science, Years, Numbers

  George Wilson (1851). “The life of the Hon. Henry Cavendish: including abstracts of his more important scientific papers, and a critical inquiry into the claims of all the alleged discoverers of the composition of water”, p.186

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• Beneath all the wealth of detail in a geological map lies an elegant, orderly simplicity.

  John Tuzo Wilson

  Lying, Science, Order

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• Traditional dinosaur theory is full of short circuits. Like the antiquated wiring in an old house, the details sputter and burn out when specific parts are tested.

  Robert T. Bakker

  Science, House, Dinosaurs

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• It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual.

  Alexander Fleming

  Team, Science, Discovery

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• Nevertheless, just as I believe that the Book of Scripture illumines the pathway to God, so I believe that the Book of Nature, with its astonishing details-the blade of grass, the Conus cedonulli, or the resonance levels of the carbon atom-also suggest a God of purpose and a God of design. And I think my belief makes me no less a scientist.

  Owen Gingerich

  Believe, Book, Thinking

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• Every writer must reconcile, as best he may, the conflicting claims of consistency and variety, of rigour in detail and elegance in the whole. The present author humbly confesses that, to him, geometry is nothing at all, if not a branch of art.

  Julian Coolidge

  Art, Science, Consistency

  Julian Lowell Coolidge (2004). “A Treatise on Algebraic Plane Curves”, p.10, Courier Corporation

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• At last there dawned the most beautiful day of all the days of my life. How perfectly I remember even the smallest details of those sacred hours! The joyful awakening, the reverent and tender embraces of my mistresses and older companions, the room filled with white frocks, like so many snowflakes, where each child was dressed in turn.

  Therese of Lisieux

  Beautiful, Children, White

  Saint Therese of Lisieux (2007). “The Story of the Soul”, p.59, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The field is a halfway house, halfway between the detail of those intimately known places and the ignorance of a landscape view ... The essence of a field is that the cultural accommodates the natural there. The human being makes room for and makes use of those organisms that are not him. In that way the field is a poem to symbiosis, and a human contract with the natural.

  Adam Nicolson

  Ignorance, Views, Essence

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• Every climate scientist has his or her own views on some issues that differ from the mainstream in detail. But the broad findings of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have general support amongst scientists with relevant specialist expertise. The broad wisdom of the IPCC is strongly contested by a small number, and a small minority, of reputed climate scientists. It is not contested by the large majority of specialists, and by the leaders of the relevant learned academies in the countries of great scientific accomplishment.

  Ross Garnaut

  Country, Ignorance, Knowledge

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• Whatever the ups and downs of detail within our limited experience, the larger whole is primarily beautiful.

  Gregory Bateson

  Beautiful, Attitude, Ups & Downs

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