Explanation Quotes - Page 34

• Photography is a craft. Anyone can learn a craft with normal intelligence and application. To take it beyond the craft is something else. That's when magic comes in. And I don't know that there's any explanation for that.

  Elliott Erwitt

  Photography, Magic, Crafts

  4 Copy quote

• It's this expandable capacity to represent reasons that we have that gives us a soul. But what's it made of? It's made of neurons. It's made of lots of tiny robots. And we can actually explain the structure and operation of that kind of soul, whereas an eternal, immortal, immaterial soul is just a metaphysical rug under which you sweep your embarrassment for not having any explanation.

  Daniel Dennett

  Giving, Soul, Robots

  14 Copy quote

• People need a consistent explanation of the cross of Christ and what it accomplished. Christ's atoning work is the centerpiece of the gospel and the only solution for humanity's estrangement from our Creator.

  R. C. Sproul

  People, Humanity, Needs

  10 Copy quote

• Art, if it is successful, needs no explanation. Star Trek and Spock, if they are works of art, can be discussed. But finally the response comes in individual terms. Each viewer sees what is there for him, depending on his frame of reference.

  Leonard Nimoy

  Art, Stars, Inspiration

  7 Copy quote

• In Hollywood, imitation is the most profitable form of flattery. That is the only plausible explanation.

  Desson Thomson

  Hollywood, Flattery, Imitation

  "'101 Dalmatians': A Little Spotty" by Desson Howe, www.washingtonpost.com. November 27, 1996.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Why do any of us act the way we do? Is it our beliefs or our biology that shapes us? Lauren Grodstein considers this eternal question through the story of Andrew Waite, scientist, father, widower, struggling to raise two daughters, living with the ghost of his wife, facing a test of his faith in science. There are no easy answers here, just the honest complexity of human beings trying their best to be good people. The Explanation for Everything is moving, beautiful, and wonderfully funny.

  Victor LaValle

  Beautiful, Daughter, Father

  6 Copy quote

• Everyone isn’t logical. Everything doesn’t make sense in the end. Sometimes you have to forget about explanations or excuses and leave people and places behind, because otherwise they will drag you straight down.

  Tammara Webber

  People, Sometimes, Forget

  9 Copy quote

• Due to personal issues, I have been let go from the cast of Glee. Explanations will come shortly.

  Chris Colfer

  Letting Go, Issues, Glee

  "Chris Colfer Not Leaving ‘Glee,’ Manager Says Twitter Account Was Hacked" By Stephanie Marcus, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 3, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation.

  Stephen Hawking

  Believe, Natural, Convincing

  "Stephen Hawking to Be Buried at Westminster Abbey, Dean of Church Hails Unity of Science, Religion" by Stoyan Zaimov, www.christianpost.com. March 21, 2018.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science is prediction, not explanation.

  Fred Hoyle

  Science, Predictions

  4 Copy quote

• Alternative explanations are always welcome in science, if they are better and explain more. Alternative explanations that explain nothing are not welcome... Note how science changed those beliefs when new data became available. Religions stick to the same ancient beliefs regardless of the data.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Data, Religion, Alternatives

  6 Copy quote

• The reality that is present to us and in us: call it being...Silence. And the simple fact that by being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering the natural capacity to listen) we can find ourself engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained: the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of Love for which there can be no explanations.... May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us.

  Thomas Merton

  Simple, Reality, Silence

  5 Copy quote

• What is the explanation for the blind eye that has been turned on the flood of medical reports on the causative role of carbohydrates in overweight, ever since the publication in 1864 of William Banting's famous "Letter on Corpulence"? Could it be related, in part, to the vast financial endowments poured into the various departments of nutritional education by the manufacturers of our refined carbohydrate foodstuff?

  Robert Atkins

  Eye, Dark, Age

  Robert C. Atkins (1972). “Dr. Atkins' diet revolution; the high calorie way to stay thin forever”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is absurd to say in respect of any intelligence that it is infallible, but if you ask me what I believe, I believe the intelligence was correct, and I think in the end we will have an explanation.

  Tony Blair

  Believe, Thinking, Iraq

  "Powell admits weapons may not be found" by Duncan Campbell, Richard Norton-Taylor, www.theguardian.com. January 25, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be.

  Norman Mailer

  Funny, Sex, Humor

  The International Herald Tribune, January 24, 1992.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• We desire peace. However, if imperialism insists on fighting a war, we will have no alternative but to take the firm resolution to fight to the finish before going ahead with our construction. If you are afraid of war day in day out, what will you do if war eventually comes? First, I said that the East Wind is prevailing over the West Wind and war will not break out, and now I have added these explanations about the situation in case war should break out. Both possibilities have thus been taken into account.

  Mao Zedong

  Peace, War, Taken

  Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.40, Lulu.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• And what of my extended family-birds, beasts, and reptiles? They too have drowned. Every single thing I value in life has been destroyed. And I am allowed no explanation? I am to suffer hell without any account from heaven? In that case, what is the purpose of reason, Richard Parker? Is it no more than to shine at practicalities-the getting of food, clothing and shelter? Why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch? (pg. 98)

  Yann Martel

  Giving, Shining, Bird

  Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.108, Vintage Canada

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• A study of interactions between women and obstetricians offers an explanation. It described three levels of increasing power imbalance: In the first, you fight and lose; in the second you don't fight because you know you can't win. However, in the highest level of power differential, your preferences are so manipulated that you act against your own interests, but you are content. Elective [meaning requested for no medical reason, not to be confused with needed surgery planned in advance] repeat cesarean exemplifies that highest level.

  Henci Goer

  Confused, Fighting, Winning

  Henci Goer (1999). “The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth”, p.163, Penguin

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship, upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help them make more sense. Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Arrows, Understanding, Together

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2016). “Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile”, p.860, Random House

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Description

  Garth Hallett, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1977). “A companion to Wittgenstein's "Philosophical investigations"”, Cornell Univ Pr

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Here I beg you to observe in passing that the scruples that prevented ancient writers from using arithmetical terms in geometry, and which can only be a consequence of their inability to perceive clearly the relation between these two subjects, introduced much obscurity and confusion into their explanations.

  Rene Descartes

  Two, Confusion, Experience

  10 Copy quote

• Underlying all your choices, particularly subject matter and the way you represent it, should be your own personal scruples, the standards and rules that you voluntarily set for yourself, and which you may change or abandon whenever you choose - without explanation to anyone.

  Richard Schmid

  Choices, May, Matter

  7 Copy quote

• The patient needs an experience, not an explanation.

  Frieda Fromm-Reichmann

  Needs, Patient

  11 Copy quote

• The sole argument generally given to justify this picture of the world is that perturbative string theories have a massless spin two mode and thus could provide an explanation of gravity, if one ever managed to find an underlying theory for which perturbative string theory is the perturbative expansion.

  Peter Woit

  World, Argument, String Theory

  4 Copy quote

• They want explanation, not faith; God gives them faith as the explanation.

  Geoffrey Wood

  Giving, Want

  4 Copy quote