Explanation Quotes - Page 20

• For the educated, the authority of science rested on the strictness of its methods; for the mass, it rested on the powers of explanation.

  Jacques Barzun

  Authority, Mass, Method

  Jacques Barzun (1964). “Science: the glorious entertainment”

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• The one man who should never attempt an explanation of a poem is its author. If the poem can be improved by it's author's explanations it never should have been published, and if the poem cannot be improved by its author's explanations the explanations are scarcely worth reading.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Reading, Men, Should Have

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• A Mr. (save, perhaps, some half dozen in the nation,) always needs a note of explanation.

  Jane Austen

  Needs, Half, Dozen

  Jane Austen (2013). “Persuasion In Modern English”, p.155, BookCaps Study Guides

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• The explanation is quite simple. I wished to be near my mother.

  James Whistler

  Mother, Simple, Birth

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• Directors like Satyajit Ray, Rossellini, Bresson, Buñuel, Forman, Scorsese, and Spike Lee have used non-professional actors precisely in order that the people we see on the screen may be scarcely more explained than reality itself. Professionals, except fo the greatest, usually play not just the necessary role, but an explanation of the role.

  John Berger

  Reality, Order, Play

  John Berger (2014). “Selected Essays of John Berger”, p.480, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• [L]et my reader who is puzzled by my awkward explanations close his eyes for no more than two minutes, and see if he does not find himself suddenly not a compact human being at all, but only a consciousness on a sea of sound and touch . . .

  Shirley Jackson

  Eye, Sea, Two

  Shirley Jackson (1966). “The Magic of Shirley Jackson”, p.361, Macmillan

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• Sometimes
  a word is found so right it trembles
  at the slightest explanation.

  Rita Dove

  Sometimes, Found

  Rita Dove (1989). “The Yellow House on the Corner: Poems”, Carnegie-Mellon University Press

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• The description and explanation is the best part of music reviewing. There is such a thing, and you know it too, as a gift for judgment. If you have it, you can say anything you like. If you haven't got it, you don't know you haven't got it.

  Virgil Thomson

  Say Anything, Judgment, Description

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• Wittgenstein imagined that the philosopher was like a therapist whose task was to put problems finally to rest, and to cure us ofbeing bewitched by them. So we are told to stop, to shut off lines of inquiry, not to find things puzzling nor to seek explanations. This is intellectual suicide.

  Simon Blackburn

  Suicide, Philosophical, Intellectual

  Simon Blackburn (1993). “Essays in Quasi-Realism”, p.51, Oxford University Press

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• Financiers are great mythomaniacs, their explanations and superstitions are those of primitive men; the world is a jungle to them.They perceive acutely that they are at the dawn of economic history.

  Christina Stead

  Men, Primitive Man, Dawn

  Christina Stead (2012). “House of All Nations”, p.122, Open Road Media

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• In such systems, there is unquestioning respect for authority. Faith trumps evidence. But if indeed this is broadly the explanation for how co-operative behaviour has evolved and been maintained in human societies, it could be very bad news. Because although such authoritarian systems seem to be good at preserving social coherence and an orderly society, they are, by the same token, not good at adapting to change.

  Robert May, Baron May of Oxford

  Behaviour, News, Coherence

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• Because the region of the Celestial World is of so great and such incredible magnitude as aforesaid, and since in what has gone before it was at least generally demonstrated that this comet continued within the limits of the space of the Aether, it seems that the complete explanation of the whole matter is not given unless we are also informed within narrower limits in what part of the widest Aether, and next to which orbs of the Planets [the comet] traces its path, and by what course it accomplishes this.

  Tycho Brahe

  Space, World, Matter

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• Science, for me, gives a partial explanation for life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment.

  Rosalind Franklin

  Giving, Facts, Experiments

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• What causes adolescents to rebel is not the assertion of authority but the arbitrary use of power, with little explanation of therules and no involvement in decision-making. . . . Involving the adolescent in decisions doesn't mean that you are giving up your authority. It means acknowledging that the teenager is growing up and has the right to participate in decisions that affect his or her life.

  Laurence Steinberg

  Giving Up, Growing Up, Teenager

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• A young professor I watched in action at one of our large eastern colleges used to stand with his back to the class and mumble explanations of blackboard problems. He was "let out" at the end of two years because students refused to attend his classes. He was given an evasive reason for his dismissal and he left with justifiable bitterness toward the administration. If someone had told him the truth he could have avoided this denouement. Sometimes professors go on for years without any conception of remediable faults which irritate their listeners.

  Mary Barnett Gilson

  College, Class, Two

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• We prefer to find an explanation for why things are not perfect, and these rarely stand up to close scrutiny.

  Charlie Campbell

  Perfect, Complaining, Scrutiny

  Charlie Campbell (2012). “Scapegoat: A History of Blaming Other People”, p.8, The Overlook Press

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• To develop an empiricist account of science is to depict it as involving a search for truth only about the empirical world, aboutwhat is actual and observable.... It must involve throughout a resolute rejection of the demand for an explanation of the regularities in the observable course of nature, by means of truths concerning a reality beyond what is actual and observable, as a demand which plays no role in the scientific enterprise.

  Bas van Fraassen

  Mean, Science, Reality

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• Many people have trouble sticking to their resolutions, and there is a simple scientific explanation for this. In 1987, a team of psychologists conducted a study in which they monitored the New Year's resolutions of 275 people. After one week the psychologists found that 92 percent of the people were keeping their resolutions; after two weeks we have no idea what happened because the psychologists had quit monitoring.

  Dave Barry

  New Year, Team, Simple

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• However much I might try to expound or explain Love, when I come to Love itself, I am ashamed of my explanations... Love alone can explain the mysteries of love and lovers.

  Rumi

  Trying, Might, Lovers

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• My companion assumes to know my mood and habit of thought, and we go on from explanation to explanation, until all is said that words can, and we leave matters just as they were at first, because of that vicious assumption.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Understanding, Goes On, Matter

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays: First and Second Series”, p.399, Library of America

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• I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope that it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mother, Brother, Father

  "Self-Reliance". Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, en.wikisource.org. 1847.

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• Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called "silent poetry," and poetry "speaking painting." The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Writing, Law

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters”, p.48, London S. Low, Son & Marston 1870.

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• The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use for the interpretation of the experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Philosophy, Plain Language, Understanding

  "Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science". Book by Werner Heisenberg, 1958.

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• Every one who understands the subject will agree that even the basis on which the scientific explanation of nature rests is intelligible only to those who have learned at least the elements of the differential and integral calculus, as well as analytical geometry.

  Felix Klein

  Elements, Calculus, Geometry

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• One should not wrongly reify 'cause' and 'effect,' as the natural scientists do (and whoever, like them, now 'naturalizes' in his thinking), according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press and push until it 'effects' its end; one should use 'cause' and 'effect' only as pure concepts, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and communication-not for explanation.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Communication, Thinking, Purpose

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.219, Modern Library

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