Explanation Quotes - Page 32

• In private many scientists admit that science has no explanation for the beginning of life... Darwin never imagined the exquisitely profound complexity that exists even at the most basic levels of life.

  Michael Behe

  Profound, Levels, Scientist

  "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution". Book by Michael Behe, 1996.

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• Nature first, then theory. Or, better, Nature and theory closely intertwined while you throw all your intellectual capital at the subject. Love the organisms for themselves first, then strain for general explanations, and, with good fortune, discoveries will follow. If they don't, the love and the pleasure will have been enough.

  E. O. Wilson

  Discovery, Intellectual, Firsts

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• Doing mathematics should always mean finding patterns and crafting beautiful and meaningful explanations.

  Paul Lockhart

  Beautiful, Meaningful, Math

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• Mathematics is the art of explanation. If you deny students the opportunity to engage in this activity-- to pose their own problems, to make their own conjectures and discoveries, to be wrong, to be creatively frustrated, to have an inspiration, and to cobble together their own explanations and proofs-- you deny them mathematics itself.

  Paul Lockhart

  Art, Inspiration, Opportunity

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• God has ordained that His people live by promises and not by explanations.

  Warren W. Wiersbe

  People, Promise, Live By

  Warren W. Wiersbe (2004). “Bible Exposition Commentary: Old Testament Wisdom and Poetry”, p.486, David C Cook

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• When you and I hurt deeply, what we really need is not an explanation from God but a revelation of God. We need to see how great God is; we need to recover our lost perspective on life. Things get out of proportion when we are suffering, and it takes a vision of something bigger than ourselves to get life's dimensions adjusted again

  Warren W. Wiersbe

  Hurt, Perspective, Suffering

  Warren W. Wiersbe (2012). “Looking Up When Life Gets You Down”, p.53, Baker Books

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• I declare and I challenge all mankind to contradict my declaration, that no man can give any account of the order of Freemasonry, of its origin, of its history, of its object, nor any explanation of its mysteries and symbols, which does not leave the mind in total uncertainty on all these points. Every man is entitled therefore, to give any explanation of the symbols and a system of the doctrine that he can render palatable.

  Adam Weishaupt

  Men, Order, Giving

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• Let me end with an explanation of why I believe the move into space to be a human imperative. It seems to me obvious in too many ways to need listing that we cannot much longer depend upon our planet's relatively fragile ecosystem to handle the realities of the human tomorrow. Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving.

  Gene Roddenberry

  Believe, Moving, Reality

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• Cinderella's glass shoe was the perfect size.... so why did it slip off as she ran? It must have been to attract the attention of Prince Charming. I don't see any other explanation.

  Ai Yazawa

  Glasses, Shoes, Perfect

  "Nana". Manga by Ai Yazawa, 2000 - 2009.

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• The traces of our life here will lie cold and still, dreaming, like the brittle eyes of dolls in an abandoned cabin, and the last men will look to them for explanations, or apologies.

  Tim Cahill

  Dream, Lying, Eye

  Tim Cahill (1987). “Jaguars ripped my flesh: adventure is a risky business”, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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• For explanations, they did not look in the pages of the visitor's book to see if others likewise found that ghostly happenings abound.

  Eric Russell

  Mistake, Book, Errors

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• Be careful what you say. It comes true. It comes true. I had to leave home in order to see the world logically, logic the new way of seeing. I learned to think that mysteries are for explanation. I enjoy the simplicity. Concrete pours out of my mouth to cover the forests with freeways and sidewalks. Give me plastics, periodical tables, TV dinners with vegetables no more complex than peas mixed with diced carrots. Shine floodlights into dark corners: no ghosts.

  Maxine Hong Kingston

  Home, Learning, Dark

  FaceBook post by Maxine Hong Kingston from Dec 18, 2011

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• Metaphor for the night sky: a trillion asterisks and no explanations.

  Robert Breault

  Night, Sky, Metaphor

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• It is a sign of maturity... to find explanations in charity.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Maturity, Southern, Charity

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• I'm still the little southern girl from the wrong side of the tracks who really didn't feel like she belonged.

  Faye Dunaway

  Girl, Track, Southern

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• Some scientist needs to explain to spectators Einstein's relativity theory. Before his explanation, he says: 'I have to suffer a lot explaining something I don't understand myself.' This relates to my game: I didn't understand anything!

  Vassily Ivanchuk

  Games, Suffering, Needs

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• Love accepts the trying things of life without asking for explanations. It trusts and is at rest.

  Amy Carmichael

  Love, Trying, Asking

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• What most needs explanation is not why some people are criminals, but why most people are not.

  James Q. Wilson

  People, Criminals, Needs

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• As far as I am concerned, a painting speaks for itself. What is the use of giving explanations, when all is said and done? A painter has only one language.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Giving, Use

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• If the world were to end tomorrow and we could choose to save only one thing as the explanation and memorial to who we were, then we couldn't do better than the Natural History Museum, although it wouldn't contain a single human. The systematic Linnean order, the vast inquisitiveness and range of collated knowledge and beauty would tell all that is the best of us.

  A. A. Gill

  Science, Museums, Order

  A.A. Gill (2008). “Previous Convictions: Assignments from Here and There”, p.80, Simon and Schuster

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• What is the origin of the urge, the fascincation that drives physicists, mathematicians, and presumably other scientists as well? Psychoanalysis suggests that it is sexual curiosity. You start by asking where little babies come from, one thing leads to another, and you find yourself preparing nitroglycerine or solving differential equations. This explanation is somewhat irritating, and therefore probably basically correct.

  David Ruelle

  Baby, Science, Finding Yourself

  David Ruelle (1993). “Chance and Chaos”, p.164, Princeton University Press

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• There's nothing shameful in acknowledging that you don't have the answers to every question about life. Just accept the fact that you know only a fraction of what's going on in the world. You don't have to attach explanations in terms of a special revelation of God's will, a glimpse at the supernatural, evidence of a conspiracy, or anything else.

  Harry Browne

  Wisdom, Special, World

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• If the poem can be improved by the author's explanations, it never should have been published.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Writing, Should Have, Has Beens

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• I see the origin of the irresistible attraction of metaphor and analogy, the explanation of our strange and permanent need to find similarities in things. I can scarcely refrain from suspecting some ancient, diffused magnetism; a call from the center of things; a dim, almost lost memory, or perhaps a presentiment, pointless in so puny a being, of a universal syntax.

  Roger Caillois

  Memories, Needs, Syntax

  Roger Caillois (1985). “The writing of stones”, Univ of Virginia Pr

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• In the chapter on study we considered the importance of observing ourselves to see how often our speech is a frantic attempt to explain and justify our actions. Having seen this in ourselves, let's experiment with doing deeds without any words of explanation whatever. We note our sense of fear that people will misunderstand why we have done what we have done. We seek to allow God to be our justifier.

  Richard J. Foster

  People, Done, Deeds

  Richard J. Foster (1995*). “Richard Foster's treasury of Christian discipline”, Jossey-Bass

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