Vague Quotes - Page 23

• Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than the exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.

  John Tukey

  Answers, Statistics, Made

  Annals of Mathematical Statistics, Mar. 1962

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• Though my plans at the moment are vague, I can assure you that I'll never run for the Senate in New York.

  Laura Bush

  Running, New York, Moments

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• No problem can be solved until it is reduced to some simple form. The changing of a vague difficulty into a specific, concrete form is a very essential element in thinking.

  J. P. Morgan

  Mistake, Science, Simple

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.

  John Updike

  Easter, New York, Writing

  John Updike (2013). “Picked-Up Pieces: Essays”, p.472, Random House

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• She envied Ralph his dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything more — this idea was as sweet as the vision of a cool bath in a marble tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land.

  Henry James

  Sweet, Eye, Thinking

  "Portrait of a Lady".

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• One is happy as a result of one's own efforts, once one knows of the necessary ingredients of happiness-simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self-denial to a point, love of work, and, above all, a clear conscience. Happiness is no vague dream, of that I now feel certain.

  George Sand

  Happiness, Dream, Simple

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• It would indeed be a great delusion, if we stated that those sports of Nature [we find] enclosed in rocks are there by chance or by some vague creative power. Ah, that would be superficial indeed! In reality, those shells, which once were alive in water and are now dead and decomposed, were made thus by time not Nature; and what we now find as very hard, figured stone, was once soft mud and which received the impression of the shape of a shell, as I have frequently demonstrated.

  Agostino Scilla

  Life, Sports, Nature

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• All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Evolution, Definite, Knows

  Charles Sanders Peirce, Kenneth Laine Ketner (1992). “Reasoning and the logic of things: the Cambridge conferences lectures of 1898”, Harvard Univ Pr

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• In Latin America the border between soccer and politics is vague. There is a long list of governments that have fallen or been overthrown after the defeat of the national team.

  Luis Suarez

  Soccer, Latin, Team

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• We tried war, we tried aggression, we tried intervention. None of it works. Why don't we try peace, as a science of human relations, not as some vague notion - as everyday work.

  Dennis Kucinich

  War, Everyday, Trying

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• Sir Hiram Maxim is a genuine and typical example of the man of science, romantic, excitable, full of real but somewhat obvious poetry, a little hazy in logic and philosophy, but full of hearty enthusiasm and an honorable simplicity. He is, as he expresses it, "an old and trained engineer," and is like all of the old and trained engineers I have happened to come across, a man who indemnifies himself for the superhuman or inhuman concentration required for physical science by a vague and dangerous romanticism about everything else.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Philosophy, Real, Science

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• We are ... led to a somewhat vague distinction between what we may call "hard" data and "soft" data. This distinction is a matter of degree, and must not be pressed; but if not taken too seriously it may help to make the situation clear. I mean by "hard" data those which resist the solvent influence of critical reflection, and by "soft" data those which, under the operation of this process, become to our minds more or less doubtful.

  Bertrand Russell

  Taken, Mean, Science

  Bertrand Russell (1914). “Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy”

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• That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.

  Oscar Wilde

  Philosophy, Real, Soul

  Oscar Wilde (1969). “The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.365, University of Chicago Press

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• It is... easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Easy, Uncertain, Certain

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1931). “Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce”

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• What do we mean by "knowledge" or "understanding"? And how do billions of neurons achieve them? These are complete mysteries. Admittedly, cognitive neuroscientists are still very vague about the exact meaning of words like "understand," "think," and indeed the word "meaning" itself.

  Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

  Mean, Thinking, Understanding

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• But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult! The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.

  Kate Chopin

  Sea, Voice, Seductive

  1899 The Awakening, ch.6.

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• Immersed in solitude, he would dream or read far into the night. By protracted contemplation of the same thoughts, his mind grew sharp, his vague, undeveloped ideas took on form.

  Joris-Karl Huysmans

  Dream, Night, Ideas

  Joris-Karl Huysmans (2015). “Against the Grain”, p.4, Booklassic

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• The idea occurred to him when he was twenty. At first it was only a vague idea, a question looming — what should I do? — with an answer taking shape: nothing.

  Georges Perec

  Ideas, Twenties, Answers

  Georges Perec (1987). “Life, a user's manual: fictions”, Collins Harvill Press

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• Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.

  Frank Herbert

  Suffering, Purpose, Empires

  Frank Herbert (2008). “Dune Messiah”, p.49, Penguin

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• Many have a vague idea that they must make some wonderful effort in order to gain the favor of God. But all self-dependence is vain. It is only by connecting with Jesus through faith that the sinner becomes a hopeful, believing child of God.

  Ellen G. White

  Jesus, Children, Believe

  Ellen G. White (2014). “Signs of the Times Articles - Book I of III”, p.55, Lulu Press, Inc

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• As I got farther and farther along in the series I did less and less preparation. I didn't use outlines or sketches. I just had a vague idea of what I wanted to tell and then the dialogue just came to me as I was inking the page.

  Jhonen Vasquez

  Ideas, Preparation, Use

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• What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright...Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, Wind, Ideas

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• . . . Moon-Watcher felt the first faint twinges of a new and potent emotion. It was a vague and diffuse sense of envy--of dissatisfaction with his life. He had no idea of its cause, still less of its cure; but discontent had come into his soul, and he had taken one small step toward humanity.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Taken, Moon, Ideas

  Arthur C. Clarke (2012). “2001: A Space Odyssey”, p.34, RosettaBooks

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• My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up.

  Frank O'Hara

  Eye, Blue, Sky

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.197, Univ of California Press

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• Even people who are aware that the traditional family farm has been taken over by big business interests, and that some questionable experiments go on in laboratories, cling to a vague belief that conditions cannot be too bad, or else the government or the animal welfare societies would have done something about it.

  Peter Singer

  Taken, Animal, Government

  Peter Singer (1975). “Animal liberation: a new ethics for our treatment of animals”

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