Formal Quotes - Page 6

• I arrived from Harvard, where I had studied philosophy and the history of ideas, with a bias toward literature and formal thought.

  Robert Darnton

  Philosophy, Ideas, Literature

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• Mathematics, in its widest significance, is the development of all types of formal, necessary, deductive reasoning.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Development, Mathematics, Type

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• Correctitude implies nowadays a formal or fastidious use of words; and what is wanted is not so much the correct as the living use of words. It is the memory of the meaning of a word which is the life of the word.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Truth, Memories, Use

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• Bowing, ceremonious, formal compliments, stiff civilities, will never be politeness; that must be easy, natural, unstudied; and what will give this but a mind benevolent and attentive to exert that amiable disposition in trifles to all you converse and live with?

  William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham

  Giving, Mind, Compliment

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• The twentieth century had dispensed with the formal declaration of war and introduced the fifth column, sabotage, cold war, and war by proxy, but that was only the begining. Summit meetings for disarmament pursued mutual understanding and a balance of power but were also held to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy. The world of the war-or-peace alternative became a world in which war was peace and peace war.

  Stanislaw Lem

  War, Understanding, Enemy

  Stanislaw Lem (2002). “Peace on Earth”, p.59, HMH

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• Logic is something the mind has created to conceal its timidity, a hocus-pocus designed to give formal validity to conclusions we are willing to accept if everybody else in our set will too.

  Carl L. Becker

  Giving, Mind, Hocus Pocus

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• Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies. When they fail to come off its clergy simply say that they will be realized later on. Thus, if we have another boom, they will argue that the collapse of capitalism is only postponed. The fact that the greatest booms ever heard of followed Marx's formal prophecy of the downfall of capitalism is already forgotten, just as millions have long since forgotten the early Christian prophecy that the end of the world was at hand. The first Christians accepted postponements as docilely as the Communists of today.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, Hands, Long

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.277, Knopf

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• It is almost as hard to define mathematics as it is to define economics, and one is tempted to fall back on the famous old definition attributed to Jacob Viner, "Economics is what economists do," and say that mathematics is what mathematicians do. A large part of mathematics deals with the formal relations of quantities or numbers.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Fall, Numbers, Definitions

  "Economics As a Science" by Kenneth E. Boulding, McGraw-Hill, (p. 97), 1988.

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• The American formal position has been that we oppose violence by governments against their people. That principle should not be abandoned.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Government, People, Violence

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• A titled leader relies heavily on positional power to get things done; a natural leader is able to mobilize others without the whip of formal authority.

  Gary Hamel

  Leader, Done, Able

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• To me, the work I do is a means of interpreting unsettling truths, of bearing witness, and of sounding an alarm. The beauty of formal representation both carries an affirmation of life and subversively brings us face to face with news from our besieged world.

  Richard Misrach

  Photography, Mean, Alarms

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• Man is a thinking being. The way he thinks is related to society, politics, economics, and history and is also related to very general and universal categories and formal structures. But thought is something other than societal relations.

  Michel Foucault

  Men, Thinking, Way

  Source: www.nicklewis.org

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• There is a formal poetry perfect only in form?the number of syllables, the designated and required stresses of accent, the rhymes if wantedthey come off with the skill of a solved crossword puzzle.

  Carl Sandburg

  Stress, Skills, Numbers

  Quoted inTheComplete Poems of Carl Sandburg (1986),'Notes for a Preface'.

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• Congress, after years of stalling, finally got around to clearing the way for informal discussions that might lead to possible formal talks that could potentially produce some kind of tenative agreements.

  Dave Barry

  Agreement, Years, Might

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• There is certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be found upon the summits of formal and laborious science; but it is all round about you, and for the trouble of looking, that you will acquire the warm and palpitating facts of life.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Facts, Chill, Trouble

  Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays (Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, containing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona and A Child's Garden of Verses”, p.4580, e-artnow

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• Logos is the formal cause of the kosmos and all things, responsible for their nature and configuration.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Logos, Causes, Responsible

  "Laws of Media: The New Science". Book by Marshall McLuhan, co-written with Eric McLuhan, p. 37, 1988.

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• The laws of the media, in tetrad form, bring logos and formal cause up to date to reveal analytically the structure of all human artefacts.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Media, Law, Logos

  "Laws of Media: The New Science". Book by Marshall McLuhan, co-written with Eric McLuhan, p. 127, 1988.

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• The study of law is valuable as a mental discipline, but the practice of pleading tends to make one petty, formal, and insincere. To be driven to look to legality rather than to equity blurs the view of truth and justice.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Law, Practice, Views

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Power, Men

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• The strength of the claims of formal justice, of obedience to system, clearly depend upon the substantive justice of institutions and the possibilities of their reform.

  John Rawls

  Justice, Reform, Obedience

  John RAWLS (2009). “A Theory of Justice”, p.59, Harvard University Press

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• In all the talk in the Principles (as opposed to the formal analysis) it is not the saving of rentiers but the energy of entrepreneurs which governs accumulation.

  Joan Robinson

  Entrepreneur, Energy, Principles

  Joan Robinson (1973). “Economic heresies: some old-fashioned questions in economic theory”

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• Human memory, they say, is like a coat closet: The most enduring outcome of a formal education is that it creates rows of coat hooks so that later on, when you come upon a new piece of information, you have a hook to hang it on. Without a hook, the new information falls on the floor.

  Ursula Goodenough

  Memories, Fall, Coats

  Ursula Goodenough (2000). “The Sacred Depths of Nature”, p.21, Oxford University Press, USA

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• To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great or rational whether in life or in science. Great achievement is assured, however, of subsequent recognition and grateful acceptance by public opinion, which in due course will make it one of its own prejudices

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Grateful, Independent, Acceptance

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1945). “Hegel's Philosophy of right”

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• Self-taught are those without formal education. Most self-taught artists have missing ingredients to their work.

  Billy Cannon

  Teaching, Artist, Self

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• Each poem seems to demand its own formal approach. In both drafting and revision, I'll play around with line lengths and stanza formations, eventually letting the poem settle into what I think is its own best form.

  Allison Joseph

  Thinking, Play, Lines

  Source: atticusreview.org

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