Explanation Quotes - Page 11

• What could me more plausible than a line of reasoning which argues that the explanation of the origin of a system was to achieve an end that has in fact been achieved?

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Lines, Facts, Arguing

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.41, Verso

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• It just takes the faith of a little seed to make a way through what might to be impossibility, and the ability will match the occasion. The outcome will defy explanation. The liberation will not be televised when it arrives like lightning in the skies.

  Josh Garrels

  Faith, Inspiration, Sky

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• I do not want to presuppose anything as known. I see in my explanation in section 1 the definition of the concepts point, straight line and plane, if one adds to these all the axioms of groups i-v as characteristics. If one is looking for other definitions of point, perhaps by means of paraphrase in terms of extensionless, etc., then, of course, I would most decidedly have to oppose such an enterprise. One is then looking for something that can never be found, for there is nothing there, and everything gets lost, becomes confused and vague, and degenerates into a game of hide and seek.

  David Hilbert

  Confused, Mean, Games

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• I believe that there is an explanation for everything, so, yes, I believe in miracles.

  Robert Breault

  Inspirational, Life, Positive

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• Too late for changes, too late perhaps for explanations and ideological webs, but the love goes on, the love goes on, blind to laws and warnings and even to wisdom and to fears. And whatever that love is, perhaps an illusion of a new love, I want it, I cant resist it, my whole being melts in one kiss, my knowledge melts, my fears melt, my blood dances, my legs open.

  Anais Nin

  Love, Kissing, Blood

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• The Constitution on which our Union rests, shall be administered by me [as President] according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people of the United States at the time of its adoption - a meaning to be found in the explanations of those who advocated, not those who opposed it, and who opposed it merely lest the construction should be applied which they denounced as possible.

  Thomas Jefferson

  People, Adoption, Understanding

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• In modern times the belief that the ultimate explanation of all things was to be found in Newtonian mechanics was an adumbration of the truth that all science, as it grows towards perfection, becomes mathematical in its ideas.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Math, Ideas, Perfection

  Alfred North Whitehead (1958). “An Introduction to Mathematics”, p.6, New York : Oxford University Press, 1958 [c1948]

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• A purely psychological explanation is ruled out... the discs show signs of intelligent guidance, by quasi-human pilots.

  Carl Jung

  Intelligent, Pilots, Guidance

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• I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are obviously wrong.

  Salman Rushdie

  Simple, Thinking, People

  "Talking with David Frost (Salman Rushdie)". TV Series, November 26, 1993.

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• Quantum mechanics provides us with an approximate, plausible, conjectural explanation of what actually is, or was, or may be taking place inside a cyclotron during a dark night in February.

  Edward Abbey

  Dark, Night, May

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.49, RosettaBooks

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• A teacher's hardest lesson is to limit his explanation to the minimum.

  Ernst Bacon

  Teacher, Lessons, Limits

  Ernst Bacon, Sara Davis Buechner (2011). “Notes on the Piano”, p.76, Courier Corporation

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• There is nothing more difficult to outgrow than anxieties that have become useful to us, whether as explanations for a life that never quite finds its true force or direction, or as fuel for ambition, or as a kind of reflexive secular religion that, paradoxically, unites us with others in a shared sense of complete isolation: you feel at home in the world only by never feeling at home in the world.

  Christian Wiman

  Home, Ambition, Anxiety

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• How are you, G.I. Joe? It seems to me that most of you are poorly informed about the going of the war, to say nothing about a correct explanation of your presence over here. Nothing is more confused than to be ordered into a war to die.

  Hanoi Hannah

  Confused, War, Your Presence

  "The Life and Death of Hanoi Hannah" by Don North, donnorth.com. October 17, 2016.

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• There is no explanation in the Big Bang theory for the seemingly fortuitous fact that the density of matter has just the right value for the evolution of a benign, life supporting universe.

  Robert Jastrow

  Bangs, Density, Matter

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• Only professional mathematicians learn anything from proofs. Other people learn from explanations.

  Ralph P. Boas, Jr.

  Knowledge, Math, People

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• Among all of the mathematical disciplines the theory of differential equations is the most important... It furnishes the explanation of all those elementary manifestations of nature which involve time.

  Sophus Lie

  Education, Discipline, Important

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• A single kind of red cell is supposed to have an enormous number of different substances on it, and in the same way there are substances in the serum to react with many different animal cells. In addition, the substances which match each kind of cell are different in each kind of serum. The number of hypothetical different substances postulated makes this conception so uneconomical that the question must be asked whether it is the only one possible. ... We ourselves hold that another, simpler, explanation is possible.

  Karl Landsteiner

  Animal, Numbers, Cells

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• Mathematics, however, is, as it were, its own explanation; this, although it may seem hard to accept, is nevertheless true, for the recognition that a fact is so is the cause upon which we base the proof.

  Gerolamo Cardano

  Causes, Facts, May

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• It should be obvious that this pattern of systematic holes and gaps in Iraq's declaration is not the result of accidents, editing oversights or technical mistakes. These are material omissions that - in our view - constitute another material breach. It is up to Iraq to prove that there is some other explanation besides the obvious one, that this declaration is just one more act of deception in a history of lies from a defiant dictator.

  John Negroponte

  Mistake, Lying, Editing

  "U.N. officials react to Blix briefing". www.cnn.com. December 19, 2002.

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• The great proliferation of museums in the nineteenth century was a product of the marriage of the exhibition as a way of awakening intelligent interest in the visitor with the growth of collections that was associated with empire and middle-class affluence. Attendance at museums was as much associated with moral improvement as with explanation of the human or natural world.

  Richard Fortey

  Intelligent, Class, Museums

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• The more the years go by, the less I know. But if you give explanations and understand everything, then nothing can happen. What helps me go forward is that I stay receptive, I feel that anything can happen.

  Anouk Aimee

  Learning, Years, Giving

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• I am a great mayor; I am an upstanding Christian man; I am an intelligent man; I am a deeply educated man; I am a humble man.

  Marion Barry

  Christian, Education, Humble

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• Science attempts to figure out laws and then uses it later. While the work of art reflects the cosmic order without asking for an explanation

  Alija Izetbegovic

  Art, Order, Law

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• I have no decision-making role at all in my job description. I would have liked an explanation as to why I was moved from first base coach to the ambassadorship, but none was ever given.

  Mookie Wilson

  Jobs, Decision, Roles

  Mookie Wilson, Erik Sherman (2014). “Mookie: Life, Baseball, and the '86 Mets”, p.134, Penguin

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• The publisher, Jeff Johnson, who has offered not a word of explanation to me, has privately told people that he hated every word that I wrote. I assume that mostly refers to my exposing the lies used by President Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq. Fortunately sixty percent of Americans now get the point, but only after tens of thousand of Americans and Iraqis have been killed and maimed as the carnage spirals out of control. My only regret is that my pen was not sharper and my words tougher.

  Robert Scheer

  Regret, Lying, Iraq

  "On Leaving the LA Times". www.huffingtonpost.com. May 25, 2011.

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