Explanation Quotes - Page 14

• I’m not interested in the words or the meaning of the words. I’m interested in disappearing in it completely, to not be aware of yourself at all. That’s the way music works for me. It’s purely emotional. It goes straight to the heart. There are no explanations. That’s just it.

  Karl Ove Knausgard

  Heart, Emotional, Way

  "In Search of Karl Ove Knausgard". Interview with Jared Levy, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 29, 2015.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do loathe explanations.

  James M. Barrie

  Loathe

  "My Lady Nicotine". Book by James Matthew Barrie. Chapter 16, 1890.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• When an artist explains what he is doing, he usually has to do one of two things: either scrap what he has explained, or make his work fit in with the explanation.

  Alexander Calder

  Artist, Two, Fit

  Alexander Calder, A. S. C. Rower, Ugo Mulas, Pier Giovanni Castagnoli, Palazzo delle esposizioni (Rome, Italy) (2009). “Calder: Sculptor of Air”, 24 Ore Cultura

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• If one should criticize one should always have a meaningful explanation to accompany.

  Criss Jami

  Meaningful, Should, Criticize

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.44, Criss Jami

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Existence is a mystery , and one should accept it as a mystery and not pretend to have any explanation .

  Rajneesh

  Mystery, Accepting, Should

  "Never Born, Never Died". Book by Osho, 2002.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• The nature of Christ is, I grant it, from one end to another, a web of mysteries; but this mysteriousness does not correspond to the difficulties which all existence contains. Let it be rejected, and the whole world is an enigma; let it be accepted, and we possess a wonderful explanation of the history of man.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Men, Doe, World

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 423, 1895.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• We injure mysteries, which are matters of faith by any attempt at explanation in order to make them matters of reason.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Order, Matter, Mystery

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I should say that, in addition to my tree-love (it was originally called The Tree), it arose from my own pre-occupation with the Lord of the Rings, the knowledge that it would be finished in great detail or not at all, and the fear (near certainty) that it would be 'not at all'. The war had arisen to darken all horizons. But no such analyses are a complete explanation even of a short story.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  War, Tree, Details

  Letter to Caroline Everett, June 24, 1957.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplification of our culture.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Looks, Needs, Culture

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1968). “The New Industrial State”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Jesus doesn't give an explanation for the pain and sorrow of the world. He comes where the pain is most acute and takes it upon himself. Jesus doesn't explain why there is suffering, illness, and death in the world. He brings healing and hope. He doesn't allow the problem of evil to be the subject of a seminar. He allows evil to do its worst to him. He exhausts it, drains its power, and emerges with new life.

  N. T. Wright

  Death, Christian, Hope

  179 Copy quote

• It would take too long to explain the intimate alliance of contradictions in human nature which makes love itself wear at times the desperate shape of betrayal. And perhaps there is no possible explanation.

  Joseph Conrad

  Betrayal, Long, Making Love

  Joseph Conrad (2015). “Under Western Eyes (Unabridged Deluxe Edition): An Intriguing Tale of Espionage and Betrayal in Czarist Russia From the Renowned Author of Heart of Darkness, Nostromo & The Secret Agent (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)”, p.307, e-artnow

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The future, and the future alone, is the home of explanation.

  Henry Dwight Sedgwick

  Home

  4 Copy quote

• It is better to adopt the simplest explanation, even if it is not simple, even if it does not explain very much. A bright light is not necessary, a taper is all one needs to live in strangeness, if it faithfully burns.

  Samuel Beckett

  Simple, Light, Doe

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable”, p.176, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• God means movement, and not explanation.

  Elie Wiesel

  Mean, Movement

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “Legends of Our Time”, p.93, Schocken

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Historical science is not worse, more restricted, or less capable of achieving firm conclusions because experiment, prediction, and subsumption under invariant laws of nature do not represent its usual working methods. The sciences of history use a different mode of explanation, rooted in the comparative and observational richness in our data. We cannot see a past event directly, but science is usually based on inference, not unvarnished observation (you don't see electrons, gravity, or black holes either).

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Past, Law, Data

  "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, p. 279, 1989.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we look to presumed sources of origin for competing evolutionary explanations of the giraffe's long neck, we find either nothing at all, or only the shortest of speculative conjectures. Length, of course, need not correspond with importance. Garrulous old Polonius , in a rare moment of clarity, reminded us that "brevity is the soul of wit" (and then immediately vitiated his wise observation with a flood of woolly words about Hamlet 's Madness.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Wise, Long, Soul

  10 Copy quote

• Bacon not only despised the syllogism, but undervalued mathematics, presumably as insufficiently experimental. He was virulently hostile to Aristotle , but he thought very highly of Democritus , Although he did not deny that the course of nature exemplifies a Divine purpose, he objected to any admixture of teleological explanation in the actual investigation of phenomena; everything, he held, should be explained as following necessarily from efficient causes .

  Bertrand Russell

  Purpose, Causes, Mathematics

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.499, Routledge

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Any philosophic explanation of Quality is going to be both false and true precisely because it is a philosophic explanation. The process of philosophic explanation is an analytic process, a process of breaking something down into subjects and predicates. What I mean (and everybody else means) by the word 'quality' cannot be broken down into subjects and predicates. This is not because Quality is so mysterious but because Quality is so simple, immediate and direct.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Mean, Simple, Broken

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, "If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation." That is why 90% of academic film theory is bullshit. Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

  Roger Ebert

  Wise, Long Ago, Editors

  Roger Ebert (2009). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2010”, p.583, Andrews McMeel Publishing

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Novelists are people who have discovered that they can dampen their neuroses by writing make-believe. We will keep on doing that no matter what, while offering loftier explanations.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Believe, Writing, Offering

  4 Copy quote

• Man is even as steel, the essence of which is hidden: through admonition and explanation, good counsel and education, that essence will be brought to light. If, however, he be allowed to remain in his original condition, the corrosion of lusts and appetites will effectively destroy him.

  Bahá'u'lláh

  Men, Light, Essence

  26 Copy quote

• Even if surrounded with explanations, Auschwitz can never be grasped.

  Gunter Grass

  Auschwitz, Ifs

  "The Boys' Crusade". Book by Paul Fussell (p. 15), September 9, 2003.

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• At a certain stage of misery, you'll try anything to explain what's going on with you, even if you know it doesn't explain a thing and it's one failed explanation after another.

  Philip Roth

  Trying, Misery, Stage

  Philip Roth (2010). “The Humbling”, p.12, Random House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science as we now understand the word is of later birth. If its germinal origin may be traced to the early period when Observation, Induction, and Deduction were first employed, its birth must be referred to that comparatively recent period when the mind, rejecting the primitive tendency to seek in supernatural agencies for an explanation of all external phenomena, endeavoured, by a systematic investigation of the phenomena themselves to discover their invariable order and connection.

  George Henry Lewes

  Agency, Order, Mind

  George Henry Lewes (1864). “Aristotle: a chapter from the history of science including analyses of Aristotle's scientific writings”, p.26, London : Smith, Elder and Company

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The spontaneous tendency to invoke a Final Cause in explanation of every difficulty is characteristic of metaphysical philosophy. It arises from a general tendency towards the impersonation of abstractions which is visible throughout History.

  George Henry Lewes

  Philosophy, Finals, Causes

  George Henry Lewes (1864). “Aristotle: a chapter from the history of science including analyses of Aristotle's scientific writings”, p.86, London : Smith, Elder and Company

  4 Copy quote

  Show source