Explanation Quotes - Page 24

• As a philosopher, I have a right to ask for a rational explanation of religious faith.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Religious, Philosopher, Rational

  4 Copy quote

• There is no explanation you can give that will explain away all the sufferings and evil and torture and destruction and hunger in the world! You'll never explain it. Because life is a mystery, which means your thinking mind cannot make sense of it. For that you've got to wake up and then you'll suddenly realize that reality is not the problem, you are the problem.

  Anthony de Mello

  Mean, Reality, Thinking

  8 Copy quote

• Whereas many philosophers and theologians appear to possess an emotional attachment to their theories and ideas........scientists feel no qualms about suggesting different but mutually exclusive explanations for the same phenomenon.

  Frank J. Tipler

  Emotional, Ideas, Qualms About

  8 Copy quote

• The more I think about our species the more I think we just do stuff and make up explanations later when asked. But it's not true that I would rather write than read. I would rather read than write. To be honest I would rather hang upside down in a bucket than write.

  Douglas Adams

  Writing, Thinking, Buckets

  4 Copy quote

• Perhaps, when a man has special knowledge and special powers like my own, it rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a simpler one is at hand.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Men, Hands, Special

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2013). “The Complete Sherlock Holmes”, p.769, Race Point Pub

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To yearn for a single, and usually simple, explanation of the chaotic materials of the past, to search for a single thread in that most tangled of all skeins, is a sign of immaturity.

  Henry Steele Commager

  Past, Simple, Tangled

  Henry Steele Commager, Raymond Henry Muessig (1980). “The study and teaching of history”, Merrill Publishing Company

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Rationalization is a cover-up, a process of providing one's emotions with a false identity, of giving them spurious explanations and justifications - in order to hide one's motives, not just from others, but primarily from oneself. The price of rationalizing is the hampering, the distortion, and, ultimately, the destruction of one's cognitive faculty. Rationalization is a process not of perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one's emotions.

  Ayn Rand

  Reality, Order, Giving

  Ayn Rand (1984). “Philosophy: Who Needs It”, p.25, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• We accept too damned many things on the explanations of people who could have good reasons for lying.

  Frank Herbert

  Lying, People, Reason

  Frank Herbert (2002). “The Dosadi Experiment”, p.19, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The idea of men's receiving an intimation of their connection with the world around them through an immediate feeling which is from the outset directed to that purpose sounds so strange and fits in so badly with the fabric of our psychology that one is justified in attempting to discover a psycho-analytic - that is, a genetic - explanation of such a feeling.

  Sigmund Freud

  Men, Ideas, Psychology

  Sigmund Freud, James Strachey, Anna Freud, Carrie Lee Rothgeb (1961). “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fact that many things have no explanation ought to prevent them from happening; but it doesn't.

  Ashleigh Brilliant

  Facts, Ought, Happenings

  10 Copy quote

• Nobody knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature does what he does. In fact there is no explanation - or better there is only one explanation: the person in question is stupid.

  Carlo M. Cipolla

  Stupid, Doe, Facts

  6 Copy quote

• There seems to be no mainframe explanation for the PC world in which we're living.

  William J. Clinton

  World, Mainframe, Seems

  Clinton, William J. (1996). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1995”, p.1546, Best Books on

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future; the freedom to get beyond ourselves...in states of mind that allow us to rise above our immediate surroundings and see the beauty and value of the world we live in.

  Oliver Sacks

  Understanding, Mind, Needs

  120 Copy quote

• We don't have an explanation for everything that happens. We don't control almost anything. And if we are not open to that mystery, life becomes so small.

  Isabel Allende

  Mystery, Happens, Ifs

  "Isabel Allende: Despite Terrorism, the World Is a Better Place Now Than Ever Before". Interview with Michael Skafidas, www.huffingtonpost.com.

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.

  Oscar Wilde

  Suffering, World, Kind

  Oscar Wilde (2008). “De Profundis: Easyread Super Large 20pt Edition”, p.33, ReadHowYouWant.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sickness is real. However, I've seen too many people suffering with sicknesses not of their own choosing to say glibly that all sickness is caused by sin. On the other hand, to believe that sin does not exist and that all of our trials and tribulations have naturalistic explanations or are simply random events may cause us to miss the very solution we seek. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland observed that "too many people . . . want to sin and call it psychology."

  Daniel K Judd

  Real, Believe, Hands

  4 Copy quote

• The friends of Job appear on the scene as advisers and "consolers," offering Job the fruits of their moral scientia. But when Job insists that his sufferings have no explanation and that he cannot discover the reason for them through conventional ethical concepts, his friends turn into accusers, and curse Job as a sinner. Thus, instead of consolers, they become torturers by virtue of their very morality, and in so doing, while claiming to be advocates of God, they act as instruments of the devil.

  Thomas Merton

  Jobs, Offering, Suffering

  5 Copy quote

• It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is vitally necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  People, Feelings, Firsts

  26 Copy quote

• The allegory of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of evil, and entailing upon their posterity the wrath of God and the loss of everlasting life, admits of no other explanation than the disease and crime that have flowed from unnatural diet.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Loss, Wrath, Evil

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821). “Queen Mab, a philosophical poem, with notes. [reputed to have been given by the author to W. Francis. Wanting the title-leaf, dedication and part of the last leaf].”, p.158

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Just because science so far has failed to explain something, such as consciousness, to say it follows that the facile, pathetic explanations which religion has produced somehow by default must win the argument is really quite ridiculous.

  Richard Dawkins

  Winning, Ridiculous, Argument

  "The Flying Spaghetti Monster". Interview with Steve Paulson, www.salon.com. October 13, 2006.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The theory that the biosphere was created without evolution, a few thousand years ago, is ruled out by overwhelming scientific evidence. To claim that there are 'alternative (always better) Biblical explanations of the same data', which make creationism a reasonable alternative to our best theories of biology and physics, is appalling intellectual dishonesty.

  David Deutsch

  Biblical, Years, Data

  8 Copy quote

• If complex organisms demand an explanation, so does a complex designer. And it's no solution to raise the theologian's plea that God (or the Intelligent Designer) is simply immune to the normal demands of scientific explanation. To do so would be to shoot yourself in the foot. You cannot have it both ways. Either ID belongs in the science classroom, in which case it must submit to the discipline required of a scientific hypothesis. Or it does not, in which case, get it out of the science classroom and send it back to church, where it belongs.

  Richard Dawkins

  Intelligent, Feet, Discipline

  "One side can be wrong" by Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne, www.theguardian.com. September 01, 2005.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

  Jon Jones

  Theory Of Evolution, Facts, Alternatives

  21 Copy quote

• We cannot imagine events that are connected non-causally and are capable of a non-causal explanation. But that does not mean that such events do not exist.

  Carl Jung

  Mean, Events, Doe

  Carl Gustav Jung, Roderick Main (1997). “Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal”, p.25, Psychology Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Religion began as a natural explanation of the universe. The problem started when people refused to accept new evidence.

  B. B. King

  People, Problem, Natural

  5 Copy quote