Vague Quotes - Page 15

I am far from any intention to limit curiosity, or confine the labours of learning to arts of immediate and necessary use. It is only from the various essays of experimental industry, and the vague excursions of mind set upon discovery, that any advancement of knowledge can be expected; and though many must be disappointed in their labours, yet they are not to be charged with having spent their time in vain; their example contributed to inspire emulation, and their miscarriage taught others the way to success.

Samuel Johnson

Art, Miscarriage, Necessary Use

Samuel Johnson (1889). “Select Essays”

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A man of clear ideas errs grievously if he imagines that whatever is seen confusedly does not exist; it belongs to him, when he meets with such a thing, to dispel the midst, and fix the outlines of the vague form which is looming through it.

John Stuart Mill

Persistence, Men, Ideas

John Stuart Mill (2008). “Utilitarianism and On Liberty: Including 'Essay on Bentham' and Selections from the Writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin”, p.65, John Wiley & Sons

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The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.

Edsger Dijkstra

Simplicity, Design, Purpose

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People watch movies - and it's vague ideas, it's vague notions, but people pick up on these things, that they are supposed to think certain ways or that they're not supposed to think, basically, and they don't.

Crispin Glover

Thinking, Ideas, People

Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com. 2003.

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On vague wording of drone strike criteria: “Are you going to just drop a hellfire missile on Jane Fonda? Are you going to drop a missile on Kent State? That’s gobbledygook.

Rand Paul

Drones, Criteria, States

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Vague a l'ame - melancholy yearning for the end of the world.

Emile M. Cioran

World, Melancholy, Ends

"A Short History of Decay". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1949.

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My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often - in fact, mostly - at the expense of everything else in my life.

Stan Getz

Music, Spring, Perfection

Stan Getz (2017). “Stan Getz - Omnibook: For B-flat Instruments”, p.2, Hal Leonard Corporation

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People frequently comment on the emptiness in one night stands, but emptiness here has always been just another word for darkness. Blind encounters writing sonnets no one can ever read. Desire and pain communicated in the vague language of sex.
None of which made sense to me until much later when I realized everything I thought I'd retained of my encounters added up to so very little, hardly enduring, just shadows of love outlining nothing at all.

Mark Z. Danielewski

Sex, Pain, Writing

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After all we speak of people 'taking refuge' in vagueness -the more precise you are, in general the more likely you are to be wrong, whereas you stand a good chance of not being wrong if you make it vague enough.

J. L. Austin

People, Vagueness, Chance

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Many of the younger generation know my name in a vague way and connect it with grotesque inventions, but don't believe that I ever existed as a person. They think I'm a nonperson, just a name that signifies a tangled web of pipes or wires or strings that suggest machinery. My name to them is like a spiral staircase, veal cutlets, barber's itch — terms that give you an immediate picture of what they mean.

Rube Goldberg

Believe, Mean, Thinking

"Rube Goldberg: Inventions!".

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From time to time, from the endless flow of our mental imagery, there emerges unexpectedly something that, vague though it may be, seems to carry the promise of a form, a meaning, and, more important, an irresistible poetic charge.

Leo Lionni

Promise, Important, Flow

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The principle that the end justifies the means is and remains the only rule of political ethics; anything else is just a vague chatter and melts away between one’s fingers.

Arthur Koestler

Mean, Political, Principles

ARTHUR KOESTLER (1941). “DARKNESS AT NOON”

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Now 'pay equity' has everything to do with pay and nothing to do with equity. It’s based on the vague notion of 'equal pay for work of equal value,' which is not the same as equal pay for the same job.

Stephen Harper

Jobs, Equal Pay, Equity

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The fictive is an emormous territory it turns out, its boundaries vague, and there is little certainty about where it begins and ends.

Siri Hustvedt

Littles, Territory, Boundaries

Siri Hustvedt (2011). “The Summer Without Men: A Novel”, p.87, Macmillan

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For though we often need to be restored to the small, concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to be reminded of the large, vague, unlimited, unknown

A. R. Ammons

Needs, Unlimited, Certain

A. R. Ammons (1996). “Set in motion: essays, interviews, and dialogues”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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Of course the word chaos is used in rather a vague sense by a lot of writers, but in physics it means a particular phenomenon, namely that in a nonlinear system the outcome is often indefinitely, arbitrarily sensitive to tiny changes in the initial condition

Murray Gell-Mann

Mean, Outcomes, Tiny

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I think that the fact that a theory so vague, so insufficiently verifiable, and so far from the criteria otherwise applied in "hard" science, could become a dogma, can be explained only on sociological grounds.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy

Facts, Dogma, Criteria

"Perspectives on general system theory: scientific-philosophical studies".

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It’s time to stop being vague. If you wish to be an extraordinary person, if you wish to be wise, then you should explicitly identify the kind of person you aspire to become.

Epictetus

Motivational, Wise, Extraordinary Person

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There are the two main reasons we don't get our needs met. First, we don't know how to express our needs to begin with and second if we do, we forget to put a clear request after it, or we use vague words like appreciate, listen, recognize, know, be real, and stuff like that.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

Real, Communication, Two

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Vague memories hang about the mind like cobwebs.

George Eliot

Memories, Mind, Cobwebs

George Eliot (1863). “Romola: In Two Volumes”, p.105

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I don't see how it's doing society any good to have so many members walking around with vague memories of algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams and clear memories of hating them.

Paul Lockhart

Memories, Hate, Diagrams

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You can never get rich, or start the creative power into action, by sending out unformed longings and vague desires.

Wallace D. Wattles

Creative, Desire, Action

Wallace D. Wattles, General Press (2016). “The Science of Getting Rich”, p.26, GENERAL PRESS

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Moving to the country is a very bold thing to do. You can have vague romantic notions about doing that, but in actuality, it can be a terrifying thing.

Nick Cave

Country, Moving, Notion

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I think the real reason so many youngsters are clamoring for freedom of some vague sort, is because of unrest and dissatisfaction with present conditions; I don't believe this machine age gives full satisfaction in a spiritual way, if the term may be allowed.

Robert E. Howard

Spiritual, Real, Believe

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[Harry] had always suffered from a vague restlessness, a longing for adventure that she told herself severely was the result of reading too many novels when she was a small child.

Robin McKinley

Children, Reading, Adventure

Robin McKinley (2016). “The Blue Sword”, p.8, HarperCollins

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