Obvious Quotes - Page 8

• It's so obvious The Weather Channel is pro hurricane. Fair and balanced my ass.

  Jim Gaffigan

  Witty, Weather, Hurricanes

  FaceBook post by Jim Gaffigan from Aug 26, 2011

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• It's always wise to raise questions about the most obvious and simple assumptions.

  C. West Churchman

  Wise, Inspiration, Simple

  "The Systems Approach" by C. West Churchman, (p. ix), 1968.

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• About 85 per cent of my "thinking" time was spent getting into a position to think, to make a decision, to learn something I needed to know. Much more time went into finding or obtaining information than into digesting it. Hours went into the plotting of graphs... When the graphs were finished, the relations were obvious at once, but the plotting had to be done in order to make them so.

  J. C. R. Licklider

  Science, Thinking, Order

  J. C. R. Licklider, Robert W. Taylor (1990). “In memoriam, J.C.R. Licklider, 1915-1990”

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• It must be obvious that liberty necessarily means freedom to choose foolishly as well as wisely; freedom to choose evil as well as good; freedom to enjoy the rewards of good judgment, and freedom to suffer the penalties of bad judgment. If this is not true, the word "freedom" has no meaning.

  Ben Moreell

  Mean, Evil, Suffering

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• In my estimation it was obvious that Jansky had made a fundamental and very important discovery. Furthermore, he had exploited it to the limit of his equipment facilities. If greater progress were to be made it would be necessary to construct new and different equipment especially designed to measure the cosmic static.

  Grote Reber

  Discovery, Progress, Important

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• To this day, we see all around us the Promethean drive to omnipotence through technology and to omniscience through science. The effecting of all things possible and the knowledge of all causes are the respective primary imperatives of technology and of science. But the motivating imperative of society continues to be the very different one of its physical and spiritual survival. It is now far less obvious than it was in Francis Bacon's world how to bring the three imperatives into harmony, and how to bring all three together to bear on problems where they superpose.

  Gerald Holton

  Spiritual, Knowledge, Science

  Gerald James Holton (1986). “The Advancement of Science, and Its Burdens: The Jefferson Lecture and Other Essays”, p.183, CUP Archive

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• Why it is that animals, instead of developing in a simple and straightforward way, undergo in the course of their growth a series of complicated changes, during which they often acquire organs which have no function, and which, after remaining visible for a short time, disappear without leaving a trace ... To the Darwinian, the explanation of such facts is obvious. The stage when the tadpole breathes by gills is a repetition of the stage when the ancestors of the frog had not advanced in the scale of development beyond a fish.

  Francis Maitland Balfour

  Science, Animal, Simple

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• Within weeks of our premiere, it became obvious that Leonard [Nimoy] and the character of Spock were becoming something of a national phenomenon. ... And to be unflatteringly frank, it bugged me. ... [Then, Gene Roddenberry] said to me the wisest thing he could possibly have uttered. He said, `Don't ever fear having good and popular people around you, because they can only enhance your own performance. The more you can play to these people, the better the show.'

  William Shatner

  Philosophical, Character, Play

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• So much of what we try to do is get to a point where the solution seems inevitable: you know, you think "of course it's that way, why would it be any other way?" It looks so obvious, but that sense of inevitability in the solution is really hard to achieve.

  Jonathan Ive

  Philosophical, Thinking, Trying

  Icon Magazine Interview, www.iconeye.com. July/August 2003.

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• And indeed nothing but the most determined scepticism, along with a great degree of indolence, can justify this aversion to metaphysics. For if truth be at all within the reach of human capacity, it is certain it must lie very deep and abstruse: and to hope we shall arrive at it without pains, while the greatest geniuses have failed with the utmost pains, must certainly be esteemed sufficiently vain and presumptuous. I pretend to no such advantage in the philosophy I am going to unfold, and would esteem it a strong presumption against it, were it so very easy and obvious.

  David Hume

  Strong, Pain, Philosophy

  David Hume (1874). “A Treatise on Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects; and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”, p.306

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• Today, it is imperative to end this hysteria, to refute the rhetoric of the Cold War and to accept the obvious fact: Russia is an independent, active participant in international affairs. Like other countries, it has its own national interests that need to be taken into account and respected.

  Vladimir Putin

  Country, Powerful, War

  Vladimir Putin “VLADIMIR PUTIN: Munich”, ITBM

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• Perhaps the best argument...that the Big Bang supports theism is the obvious unease with which it is greeted by some atheist physicists. At times this has led to scientific ideas...being advanced with a tenacity which so exceeds their intrinsic worth that one can only suspect the operation of psychological forces lying very much deeper than the usual academic desire of a theorist to support his or her theory.

  Christopher Isham

  Atheist, Lying, Ideas

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• There is no doubt that man is a competitive animal and there is no place where this fact is more obvious than in the ring. There is no second place. Either you win or you lose. When they call you a champion, it's because you don't lose. To win takes a complete commitment of mind and body.

  Rocky Marciano

  Commitment, Wrestling, Animal

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• I hope you have lost your good looks, for while they last any fool can adore you, and the adoration of fools is bad for the soul. No, give me a ruined complexion and a lost figure and sixteen chins on a farmyard of Crow's feet and an obvious wig. Then you shall see me coming out strong.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Beauty, Strong, Feet

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• The purpose of our creation is obvious: to reach our utmost goals of belief, knowledge, and spirituality; to reflect on the universe, humanity, and God, and thus prove our value as human beings.

  Fethullah Gulen

  Wisdom, Islamic, Goal

  M. Fethullah Gülen (2010). “Toward Global Civilization Love Tolerance”, p.168, Tughra Books

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• We must endure our thoughts all night, until the bright obvious stands motionless in the cold.

  Wallace Stevens

  Death, Night, Dying

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.351, Vintage

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• In sum, the truth is that we luxuriate in the comfortable assertion that women enjoy equality. We have salved our consciences by eliminating the more obvious discriminations like unequal rates of pay for work of equal value. But, in fact, we have not eliminated the inheritance of the millennia that women are lesser beings, an inheritance which still manifests itself in a whole range of prejudice and other forms of discrimination.

  Bob Hawke

  Leadership, Facts, Prejudice

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• There is enough oil in the ground to deep-fry the lot of us, and no obvious means to prevail upon governments and industry to leave it in the ground.

  George Monbiot

  Mean, Government, Oil

  "We were wrong on peak oil. There's enough to fry us all" by George Monbiot, www.theguardian.com. July 2, 2012.

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• ...it is quite obvious that the temperature change during the last 100 years or so includes significant natural changes, both the linear change and fluctuations. It is very puzzling that the IPCC reports state that it is mostly due to the greenhouse effect.

  Syun-Ichi Akasofu

  Years, Energy, Lasts

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• No society ever seems to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Men, Boredom, Capacity

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1998). “The Affluent Society”, p.16, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichés that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well worn nor commonplace to him. ... The conclusion is obvious: you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced. The best seller sells because he writes with his heart's blood.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing, Heart, Character

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• My notion of a failed writing workshop is when everybody comes out replicating the teacher and imitating as closely as possible the great original at the head of the table. I think that's a mistake, in obvious opposition to the ideal of teaching which permits a student to be someone other than the teacher. ... The successful teacher has to make each of the students a different product rather than the same.

  Nicholas Delbanco

  Teacher, Mistake, Teaching

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• Judging from the way they sat and goggled at the drag on the stage it was obvious that they were indulging in delightful fantasies that brought to them substantial memories of the girls they had left behind in London or Manchester. As the Quartermaster Captain lisped after performing before a particularly rapt audience: 'I bet there were more standing pricks than snotty noses tonight'. Astonishingly, I suspect he was right. We probably helped to keep the home fires of passion burning.

  Eric Hiscock

  Girl, Memories, War

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• We have an opportunity to focus global attention on what should be obvious: every mother, and every child, counts. They count because we value every human life. The evidence is clear that healthy mothers and children are the bedrock of healthy and prosperous communities and nations.

  Lee Jong-wook

  Mother, Children, Opportunity

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• If creative work protects a man against mental illness, it is small wonder that he pursues it with avidity; and even if the state of mind he is seeking to avoid is no more than a mild state of depression or apathy, this still constitutes a cogent reason for engaging in creative work even when it brings no obvious external benefit in its train.

  Anthony Storr

  Writing, Men, Creative

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