Explanation Quotes - Page 33

• Optimists, by contrast, look for specific, limited, short-term explanations for bad events, and as a result, in the face of a setback, they’re more likely to pick themselves up and try again.

  Paul Tough

  Trying, Events, Looks

  Paul Tough (2012). “How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character”, p.54, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The goal of faithfulness is not that we will do work for God, but that He will be free to do His work through us. God calls us to His service and places tremendous responsibilitie s on us. He expects no complaining on our part and offers no explanation on His part. God wants to use us as He used His own Son.

  Oswald Chambers

  Son, Goal, Complaining

  Oswald Chambers (2010). “My Utmost for His Highest”, p.725, Discovery House

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• President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner have agreed to play a round of golf together. Imagine the two of them at the end of that golf game? Boehner will be crying over his score and Obama will be giving three explanations as to why his score is actually better than it appears.

  Jay Leno

  Golf, Games, Play

  "Economy Panel". "This Week", abcnews.go.com. June 12, 2011.

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• We are so impressed by scientific clank that we feel we ought not to say that the sunflower turns because it knows where the sun is. It is almost second nature to us to prefer explanations . . . with a large vocabulary. We are much more comfortable when we are assured that the sunflower turns because it is heliotropic. The trouble with that kind of talk is that it tempts us to think that we know what the sunflower is up to. But we don't. The sunflower is a mystery, just as every single thing in the universe is.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Thinking, Vocabulary, Sunflower

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• There is a logical explanation for everything, often mistaken for the reason it happened.

  Robert Breault

  Reason, Logical, Mistaken

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• Stay close to those who sing, tell stories, and enjoy life, and whose eyes sparkle with happiness. Because happiness is contagious and will always manage to find a solution, whereas logic can find only an explanation for the mistake made.

  Paulo Coelho

  Mistake, Eye, Enjoy Life

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• We crave explanations for most everything, but innovation and progress happen when we allow ourselves to embrace uncertainty.

  Simon Sinek

  Innovation, Progress, Embrace

  Twitter post from Aug 17, 2011

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• In the moment of hardship, we ask why some things happen. In those moments of suffering, questioning prayers that do not ask for explanations but beg the Lord to accompany us are the most useful

  Pope Francis

  Prayer, Accompany Us, Suffering

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• I do not share the pessimism of the age about the novel. They are one of our greatest spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual inventions. As a species it is story that distinguishes us, and one of the supreme expressions of story is the novel. Novels are not content. Nor are they are a mirror to life or an explanation of life or a guide to life. Novels are life, or they are nothing.

  Richard Flanagan

  Spiritual, Mirrors, Expression

  "Man Booker prize-winner Richard Flanagan's acceptance speech in full" by Richard Flanagan, www.theguardian.com. October 14, 2014.

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• You can't always explain everything you do to everybody, you know.

  Robert Fulghum

  Knows

  "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten". Book by Robert Fulghum, 1986.

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• Explanation changes whatever is explained into something explainable.

  Wendell Berry

  Wendell Berry (2001). “Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition”, Counterpoint Press

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• It meant that Diana had not waited for any explanation, however halting and imperfect, but had condemned him unheard; and this showed a much harder, far less affectionate woman than the Diana he had known or had thought he knew - a mythical person, no doubt created by himself. It had of course been evident from her letter, which made no reference to his; but he had not chosen to see the evidence and now it was absolutely forced upon his sight it made his eyes sting and tingle again. And deprived of his myth he felt extraordinarily lonely.

  Patrick O'Brian

  Lonely, Eye, Sight

  Patrick O'Brian (2011). “The Reverse of the Medal (Vol. Book 11) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)”, p.168, W. W. Norton & Company

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• If you reject the infinite, you are stuck with the finite, and the finite is parochial... the best explanation of anything eventually involves universality, and therefore infinity. The reach of explanations cannot be limited by fiat.

  David Deutsch

  Infinity, Infinite, Stuck

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• It is a matter of record that in the German Election of 1933, the Communist Party was ordered by its leaders to vote for the Nazis - with the explanation that they could later fight the Nazis for power, but first they had to help destroy their common enemy : capitalism and its parliamentary form of government.

  Ayn Rand

  Party, Fighting, Government

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.171, Penguin

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• Poetry is a series of explanations of life, fading off into horizons too swift for explanations.

  Carl Sandburg

  Horizon, Fading, Poetry Is

  Carl Sandburg (2015). “Harvest Poems: 1910-1960”, p.77, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I was born with music inside me. That's the only explanation I know of

  Ray Charles

  Born, Knows

  Ray Charles, David Ritz (2004). “Brother Ray: Ray Charles' Own Story”, p.11, Da Capo Press

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• I love karate, it's like a bible to me. But deep inside I'm so I mean, I'm so sensitive.

  Jean-Claude Van Damme

  Mean, Karate, Sensitive

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• I don't read books, I write them.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Book, Writing

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• Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, But love unexplained is clearer.

  Rumi

  Tongue, Clear, Unexplained

  Rumi “Masnavi”, Lulu.com

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• Regarding this Dhamma, it is not something that we can simply talk about or take another's word for it. We need to develop meditation so that the understanding arises clearly within oneself. It is not the case that merely by listening to another's explanation our defilements will disappear. When we gain some understanding we need to chew on it again so that we see it for ourselves with certainty: paccattam.

  Ajahn Chah

  Meditation, Understanding, Listening

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• If other people do not understand our behavior-so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being 'asocial' or 'irrational' in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them.

  Erich Fromm

  Hurt, Eye, Long

  Erich Fromm (1992). “The art of being”, Continuum Intl Pub Group

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• No Scripture is exhausted by a single explanation.
  The flowers of God's garden bloom not only double,
  but sevenfold;
  they are continually pouring forth fresh fragrance.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Christian, Flower, Garden

  Charles Spurgeon (2014). “Commentary on the New Testament”, p.1483, Titus Books

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• On a morning from a Bogart movie, in a country where they turn back time. You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre, contemplating a crime. She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain. Don't bother asking for explanations, she'll just tell you that she came in the year of the cat.

  Al Stewart

  Running, Country, Travel

  Song: The Year Of The Cat

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• Let us remember that every worldview-not just Christianity's-must give an explanation or an answer for evil and suffering...this is not just a problem distinctive to Christianity. It will not do for the challenger just to raise the question. This problem of evil is one to which we all must offer an answer, regardless of the belief system to which we subscribe.

  Ravi Zacharias

  Evil, Giving, Suffering

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• I think the more rational explanation is that the excision of a five-to-six-foot leech from the surface of a human body means that that body is going to have more of its own blood in its own veins. Unless the leech finds another body, it is going to go hungry.

  Dave Sim

  Mean, Thinking, Feet

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