Explaining Quotes - Page 13

• [The Head of Radio Three] had been ensnared by the Music Director of the college and a Professor of Philosophy. These two were busy explaining to the harassed man that the phrase "too much Mozart" was, given any reasonable definition of those three words, an inherently self-contradictory expression, and that any sentence which contained such a phrase would be thereby rendered meaningless and could not, consequently, be advanced as part of an argument in favour of any given programme-scheduling strategy.

  Douglas Adams

  Philosophy, College, Men

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• The only people who can ever put ideas into context are people who don't care; the unbiased and apathetic are usually the wisest dudes in the room. If you want to totally misunderstand why something is supposedly important, find the biggest fan of that particular thing and ask him for an explanation. He will tell you everything that doesn't matter to anyone who isn't him. He will describe paradoxical details and share deeply personal anecdotes, and it will all be autobiography; he will simply be explaining who he is by discussing something completely unrelated to his life.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Ideas, People, Important

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• Mama was always saying I was a brain snob, that I didn't like people who didn't think. I didn't know if that was snobby. Who wanted to walk around explaining everything to people all the time?

  Jacqueline Woodson

  Thinking, People, Brain

  Jacqueline Woodson (2008). “After Tupac and D Foster”, p.21, Penguin

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• There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Spring, Writing, Ideas

  "The Idiot". Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1868 - 1869.

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• With this book in my hands, reading aloud to my friends, questioning them, explaining to them, I was made clearly to understand that I had no friends, that I was alone in the world. Because in not understanding the meaning of the words, neither I nor my friends, one thing became very clear and that was that there were ways of not understanding and that the difference between the non-understanding of one individual and the non-understanding of another created a world of terra firma even more solid than differences of understanding.

  Henry Miller

  Book, Reading, Hands

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• The trouble with us today, there are too many of us who put question marks instead of periods after what the Lord says. I want you to think about that. We shouldn't be concerned about why He said something, or whether or not it can be made so. Just trust the Lord. We don't try to find the answers or explanations. We shouldn't try to spend time explaining what the Lord didn't see fit to explain. We spend useless time.

  Harold B. Lee

  Thinking, Trying, Answers

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• For human words are like shadows, and shadows are incapable of explaining light and between shadow and light there is the opaque body from which words are born.

  Jose Saramago

  Light, Shadow, Body

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• Explaining that I'm faced with a choice between being with the love of my life, or saving four lives that were never meant to end.

  Alyson Noel

  Love Of My Life, Choices, Four

  Alyson Noel (2013). “The Immortals Bundle 1-3: The Immortals: Evermore, The Immortals: Blue Moon and The Immortals: Shadowland”, p.357, Pan Macmillan

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• Many years ago I remember a famous actress explaining to me with perfect seriousness that before making an entrance she always stood aside to allow God to go on first. I can also remember that on that particular occasion He gave a singularly uninspired performance.

  Noel Coward

  Funny, Humorous, Years

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• The brain, which operates on electromagnetic impulses, is as much an activity of the universe as are the electromagnetic storms in the atmosphere or on a distant star. Therefore science is one form of electromagnetism that spends it time studying another formscience is god explaining god through a human nervous systemisn't spirituality the same thing?

  Deepak Chopra

  Spiritual, Stars, Atmosphere

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• Some false representations contravene the law; some do not. ... The sensibilities of no two men are the same. Some would refuse to sell property without carefully explaining all about its merits and defects, and putting themselves in the purchasers' place and inquiring if he himself would buy under the circumstances. But such men never would be prosperous merchants.

  Clarence Darrow

  Men, Law, Two

  Clarence Darrow (2015). “The Story of My Life”, p.84, Lulu.com

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• Economics is a highly sophisticated field of thought that is superb at explaining to policymakers precisely why the choices they made in the past were wrong. About the future, not so much.

  Ben Bernanke

  Past, Choices, Fields

  "Wonkbook: Ben Bernanke’s surprisingly excellent, radical speech" by Ezra Klein, Evan Soltas, www.washingtonpost.com. June 3, 2013.

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• I thought that by saying no and explaining my reasons my employer would abandon his social suggestions. However, to my regret, in the following few weeks, he continued to ask me out on several occasions

  Anita Hill

  Regret, Saying No, Suggestions

  Opening Statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, delivered 11 October 1991, Washington, D.C.

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• The closer and more completely you can come to explaining what a work of art means, the less like art it seems.

  Laura Miller

  Art, Mean, Seems

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• It saves trouble to be conventional, for you're not always explaining things.

  Myrtle Reed

  Trouble, Explaining Things, Conventional

  Myrtle Reed (1916). “Old Rose and Silver”, p.19, Library of Alexandria

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• It is often stated that when an Angel descends to the earth, it brings with it a part of the light of the heavens, thus perhaps explaining the strong association of white to represent that light.

  James R. Lewis

  Strong, Angel, Light

  James R. Lewis, Evelyn Dorothy Oliver (2008). “Angels A to Z”, p.92, Visible Ink Press

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• The best way to solve a problem? Try explaining it to somebody outside your field.

  Jonah Lehrer

  Leadership, Trying, Way

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• The Japanese are great at inventing complex systems of rules, and not so great at explaining those rules to foreign visitors.

  Charles C. Mann

  Visitors, Complex Systems, Complexes

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• The books the Holy Spirit is writing are living, and every soul a volume in which the divine author makes a true revelation of his word, explaining it to every heart, unfolding it in every moment.

  Jean-Pierre de Caussade

  Book, Writing, Heart

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• I have prayed for new men, fiery, reckless men, possessed of uncontrollably youthful passion-these lit by the Spirit of God. I have prayed for new words, explosive, direct, simple words. I have prayed for new miracles. Explaining old miracles will not do. If God is to be known as the God who does wonders in heaven and earth, then God must produce for this generation. Lord, fill preachers and preaching with Thy power. How long dare we go on without tears, without moral passions, hatred and love? Not long, I pray, Lord Jesus, not long.

  Jim Elliot

  Jesus, Passion, Men

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• It still may take some explaining, but many more women are keeping their birth names (and not calling them maiden names, with all the sexual double standards that implies).

  Gloria Steinem

  Names, Justice, Calling

  Gloria Steinem (2017). “Passion, Politics, and Everyday Activism: Collected Essays: Moving Beyond Words; Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions; and Revolution from Within”, p.798, Open Road Media

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• In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Giving, Stupidity, Credit

  "Pelosi's Armenian gambit". jewishworldreview.com. October 19, 2007.

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• Looking at the line-up of speakers at the (Democratic National) Convention, I have developed the 7-11 challenge: I will quit making fun of, for example, Dennis Kucinich, if he can prove he can run a 7-11 properly for 8 hours. We'll even let him have an hour or so of preparation before we open up. Within 8 hours, the money will be gone, the store will be empty, and he'll be explaining how three 11-year olds came in and asked for the money and he gave it to them.

  Ann Coulter

  Running, Fun, Years

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• If a theory purports to explain everything, then it is likely not explaining much at all.

  Massimo Pigliucci

  Theory, Ifs

  Massimo Pigliucci (2010). “Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk”, p.2, University of Chicago Press

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• I’ve spent too many years explaining who and what I am repeatedly, so as of this moment I officially secede from both races. I plan to start my own separate nation. Because I am half Ojibway and half Caucasian, we will be called the Occasions. And of course, since I’m founding the new nation, I will be a Special Occasion.

  Drew Hayden Taylor

  Funny, Race, Years

  Drew Hayden Taylor (1998). “Funny, You Don't Look Like One: Observations of a Blue-eyed Ojibway”, Penticton, B.C. : Theytus Books, l998.

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