Tacit Quotes

• We know more than we can tell.

  Michael Polanyi

  Knows

  Michael Polanyi, Amartya Sen (2009). “The Tacit Dimension”, p.4, University of Chicago Press

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• Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence.

  Karl Kraus

  Mean, Agreement, Civilization

  "In these great times" by Karl Kraus, translated by Harry Zohn, Montreal, pp. 73-74, ("In these great times"), 1976.

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• True values are not taught and declared, they evolve through the acts and interaction of the living, they are understood at a near tacit level by those who live them.

  Dave Snowden

  Learning, Knowledge, Levels

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• The silence of a friend commonly amounts to treachery. His not daring to say anything in our behalf implies a tacit censure.

  William Hazlitt

  Silence, Say Anything, Daring

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1465, Delphi Classics

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• Usually a person relates to another under the tacit assumption thatthe other shares his view of reality, that indeed there is only onereality.

  Paul Watzlawick

  Reality, Views, Assumption

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• Money doesn't mind if we say it's evil, it goes from strength to strength. It's a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy.

  Martin Amis

  Evil, Addiction, Mind

  FaceBook post by Martin Amis from Aug 02, 2011

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• Some theists in evolutionary science acquiesce to these tacit rules and retain a personal faith while accepting a thoroughly naturalistic picture of physical reality.

  Phillip E. Johnson

  Reality, Accepting, Theist

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• While tacit knowledge can be possessed by itself, explicit knowledge must rely on being tacitly understood and applied. Hence all knowledge is either tacit or rooted in tacit knowledge. A wholly explicit knowledge is unthinkable.

  Michael Polanyi

  Learning, Knowledge, Management

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• There was a tacit understanding between them that 'liquor helped'; growing more miserable with every glass one hoped for the moment of relief.

  Graham Greene

  Glasses, Alcohol, Understanding

  Graham Greene (1973). “The Portable Graham Greene”

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• Any warning normally implies, even if it is tacit, that there should be changes

  Steven Biko

  Warning, Should, Ifs

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• In the end, many of his more militant colleagues began to feel that [Ho Chi Minh's] tendency to compromise, and his reluctance to confront the enemy directly, was a sign of weakness. The decision to confront the United States in 1963-1965 was a tacit recognition that Ho's approach had failed.

  William J. Duiker

  Decision, Enemy, Weakness

  Source: www.sonshi.com

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• The rules of friendship are tacit, unconscious; they are not rational. In business, though, you have to think rationally.

  Steven Pinker

  Thinking, Rational, Unconscious

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• The second noble truth states that we must discover why we are suffering. We must cultivate the courage to look deeply, with clarity and courage, into our own suffering. We often hold the tacit assumption that all of our suffering stems from events in the past. But, whatever the initial seed of trauma, the deeper truth is that our suffering is more closely a result of how we deal with the effect these past events have on us in the present.

  Peter A. Levine

  Past, Suffering, Looks

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• Symbolic violence is violence wielded with tacit complicity between its victims and its agents, insofar as both remain unconscious of submitting to or wielding it.

  Pierre Bourdieu

  Agents, Violence, Victim

  Pierre Bourdieu, Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson (1999). “On Television”, p.17, The New Press

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• Conventionality is the tacit agreement to set appearances before reality, form before content.

  Ellen Key

  Reality, Agreement, Appearance

  Ellen Key (1911). “The Morality of Woman: And Other Essays”

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• Tacit knowledge is one of the most important concepts of current scholarship in the humanities. Ambitious and important, Tacit and Explicit Knowledge is a well-written and original book.

  Robert P. Crease

  Book, Humanity, Important

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• At any given moment, there is a sort of all pervading orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss large and uncomfortable facts.

  George Orwell

  Agreement, Orthodoxy, Facts

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• There's a tacit agreement between myself and the audience that I will entertain them when they buy their ticket, and I've been the one that has screwed that up. Once in while I indulge myself and try something else, and I keep my fingers crossed that it will come out good and there'll be enough people who will enjoy it, but that doesn't often happen.

  Woody Allen

  Agreement, People, Trying

  Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. September 27, 2001.

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• Agile methods derive much of their agility by relying on the tacit knowledge embodied in the team, rather than writing the knowleadge down in plans.

  Barry Boehm

  Team, Writing, Agility

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• Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Family, Being Thankful, Understanding

  "The Complete Neurotic's Notebook". Book by Mignon McLaughlin, 1981.

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• Beware of "the real world". A speaker's apeal to it is always an invitation not to challenge his tacit assumptions.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Real, Challenges, World

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• All the analysis of infinite reality which the finite human mind can conduct rests on the tacit assumption that only a finite portion of this reality constitutes the object of scientific investigation, and that only it is 'important' in the sense of being 'worthy of being known.

  Max Weber

  Reality, Mind, Important

  Max Weber (2015). “On the Methodology of the Social Sciences”, p.104, Lulu Press, Inc

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• War is the admission of defeat in the face of conflicting interests: by war the issue is left to chance, and the tacit assumption that the best man will win is not at all justified. It might equally be argued that the worst, the most unscrupulous man will win, although history will continue the absurd game by finding him after all the best man.

  Germaine Greer

  War, Winning, Men

  Germaine Greer (1972). “The female eunuch”

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• One of the most powerful shocks of the Middle Passage is the collapse of our tacit contract with the universe-the assumption that if we act correctly, if we are of good heart and good intentions, things will work out. We assume a reciprocity with the universe. If we do our part, the universe will comply. Many ancient stories, including the Book of Job, painfully reveal the fact that there is no such contract, and everyone who goes through the Middle Passage is made aware of it.

  James Hollis

  Jobs, Powerful, Book

  James Hollis (1993). “The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife”, p.41, Inner City Books

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• People who spend their working hours in a lab or research library or a classroom might be intent primarily on keeping or advancing their elite positions, thereby lending tacit support to power structures. Or they might not be.

  Noam Chomsky

  People, Support, Library

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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