Vague Quotes

• It is better to be wrong than to be vague.

  Freeman Dyson

  Mindset

  Freeman Dyson (2014). “The Scientist as Rebel”, p.214, New York Review of Books

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• I refuse to be burdened by vague worries. If something wants to worry me, it will have to make itself clear.

  Robert Breault

  Worry, Want, Clear

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• The knowledge that mankind needs is not the way or principle which has an absolute existence, but the particular truths for here and now and for particular individuals. Absolute truth is imaginary, abstract, vague, without evidence, and cannot be demonstrated.

  Hu Shih

  Truth, Principles, Needs

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• The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Inspirational, Life, Death

  Edgar Allan Poe (2006). “The Best of Poe”, p.134, Prestwick House Inc

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• We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

  George F. Kennan

  Rights, Should, Standards

  "PPS No. 23". Memo by George Kennan, en.wikisource.org. February 28, 1948.

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• Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.' That's a rather broad idea,' I remarked. One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,' he answered.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Memories, Ideas, Race

  1887 A Study in Scarlet, ch.7.

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• The memories which peaceful country scenes call up, are not of this world, nor of its thoughts and hopes. Their gentle influence may teach us how to weave fresh garlands for the graves of those we loved: may purify our thoughts, and bear down before it old enmity and hatred; but beneath all this, there lingers, in the least reflective mind, a vague and half-formed consciousness of having held such feelings long before, in some remote and distant time, which calls up solemn thoughts of distant times to come, and bends down pride and worldliness beneath it.

  Charles Dickens

  Country, Nature, Memories

  Charles Dickens (2016). “Oliver Twist”, p.199, Pan Macmillan

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• It was a perfect spring afternoon, and the air was filled with vague, roving scents, as if the earth exhaled the sweetness of hidden flowers.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Spring, Flower, Air

  Ellen Glasgow (2016). “The Miller of Old Church”, p.224, The Floating Press

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• Set reasonable goals; not something vague and unrealistic like "I want to be super-model skinny." I always had visions of very thin actresses in my mind when I was at the gym and it seemed so unattainable that I would quit any health regimen before it even got off the ground. But when I changed my mindset to focusing on making the healthiest choices possible for myself, it was a lot more realistic, more attainable, and then the results were visible.

  Alison Sweeney

  Goal, Choices, Mind

  Source: www.goodhousekeeping.com

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• If you can't be kind, at least be vague.

  Judith Martin

  Inspirational, Kindness, Advice

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• But during all these years I had a vague but persistent desire to return to New Orleans. I never forgot New Orleans. And when we were in tropical places and places of those flowers and trees that grow in Louisiana, I would think of it acutely and I would feel for my home the only glimmer of desire I felt for anything outside my endless pursuit of art.

  Anne Rice

  Art, Flower, Home

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• Vague expression permits the hearer to imagine whatever suits him and what he already thinks in any case.

  Theodor Adorno

  Thinking, Expression, Suits

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.101, Verso

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• You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.

  Pablo Picasso

  Inspirational, Artist, Ideas

  Pablo Picasso (1972). “Picasso on art: a selection of views”, Viking Adult

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• Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Past, Degrees

  Bertrand Russell, Robert Charles Marsh (1988). “Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901-1950”, p.180, Psychology Press

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• As long as you are not aware of the continual law of Die and Be Again, you are merely a vague guest on a dark Earth.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Death, Dark, Law

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• What one reads, or rather all that comes to us, is surely only of interest and value in proportion as we find ourselves therein, -- form given to what was vague, what slumbered stirred to life.

  Alice James

  Form, Proportion, Given

  Alice James (1934). “Her Brothers Her Journal”

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• Now I know what loneliness is, I think. Momentary loneliness, anyway. It comes from a vague core of the self - - like a disease of the blood, dispersed throughout the body so that one cannot locate the matrix, the spot of contagion.

  Sylvia Plath

  Fear, Loneliness, Thinking

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.29, Anchor

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• Sleep seems to hammer out for me the logical conclusions of my vague days, and offer them to me as dreams.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Dream, Sleep, Reflection

  D. H. Lawrence, James T. Boulton (2002). “The Letters of D. H. Lawrence”, p.359, Cambridge University Press

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• May we not suspect that the vague but very real fears of children, which are quite independent of experience, are the inherited effects of real dangers and abject superstitions during ancient savage times?

  Charles Darwin

  Children, Real, Independent

  Charles Darwin “Charles Darwin: An Anthology”, Transaction Publishers

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• Problems are often stated in vague terms... because it is quite uncertain what the problems really are.

  John von Neumann

  Problem, Uncertain, Term

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• Under chattel slavery and feudalism, exploitation was concrete and personalized in the producer's relationship with his master. The slave and peasant knew exactly who was screwing them. The modern worker, on the other hand, feels a pounding sensation, but has only a vague idea where it is coming from.

  Kevin Carson

  Hands, Ideas, Slavery

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• But, the true reason for the success of such new expositions [translated Eastern religious texts] is to be found where they are the most accommodating, least rigid, least severe, most vague, and ready to come to easy terms with the prejudices and weaknesses of the modern world. Let everyone have the courage to look deeply into himself and to see what it is that he really wants.

  Julius Evola

  Religious, Weakness, Prejudice

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• I never said a word against eminent men of science. What I complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposes itself to be scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of new religion and an uncommonly nasty one. When people talked about the fall of man, they knew they were talking about a mystery, a thing they didn't understand. Now they talk about the survival of the fittest: they think they do understand it, whereas they have not merely no notion, they have an elaborately false notion of what the words mean.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Philosophy, Fall, Mean

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• The human language, as precise as it is with its thousands of words, can still be so wonderfully vague.

  Garth Stein

  Language, Humans, Stills

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• O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Thanksgiving, Running, Thinking

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.228, Jazzybee Verlag

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