Variables Quotes

To be is to be the value of a variable.

Willard Van Orman Quine

Good Life, Values

Journal of Philosophy, 21 Dec. 1939

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Beauty is variable, ugliness is constant.

Douglas Horton

Beauty, Imperfect, Constant

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If there are four equations and only three variables, and no one of the equations is derivable from the others by algebraic manipulation then there is another variable missing.

Talcott Parsons

Missing, Three, Four

TALCOTT PARSONS (1949). “THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIAL ACTION”

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One man's constant is another man's variable.

Alan Perlis

Men, Constant, Programmers

Alan J. Perlis (1975). “Introduction to computer science”

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Time is a series of fluctuating variables.

Terence McKenna

Series

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The variables vary too much and the constants aren't as constant as they seem.

Robert Anton Wilson

Too Much, Constant, Seems

"Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy". Book by Robert Anton Wilson, 1979.

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How are we to adjudicate among rival ontologies? Certainly the answer is not provided by the semantical formula "To be is to be the value of a variable"; this formula serves rather, conversely, in testing the conformity of a given remark or doctrine to a prior ontological standard.

Willard Van Orman Quine

Doctrine, Answers, Rivals

Willard Van Orman Quine, Roger F. Gibson (2004). “Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine”, p.189, Harvard University Press

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That’s the thing about a human life-there’s no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Life Lesson, Groups, Way

Elizabeth Gilbert (2009). “Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything”, p.54, Bloomsbury Publishing

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Control all the variables you can... don't worry about the rest.

Forrest Griffin

Mma, Worry

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Based on my own personal experience – both as an investor in recent years and an expert witness in years past – rarely do more than three or four variables really count. Everything else is noise.

Martin J. Whitman

Past, Years, Experts

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A man of variable mind is not one man, but several men in one; he multiplies himself as often as he changes his taste and manners; he is not this minute what he was the last, and will not be the next what he is now; he is his own successor.

Jean de la Bruyere

Men, Mind, Lasts

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Unlike Hegel's progress model of history, which moves by stages, each containing its own logic of growth and decline, the economic model develops as the simple function of one money-variable over time, with a long-term trend which increases monotonically.

John Carroll

Moving, Simple, Economic Models

John Carroll (2010). “Break-Out from the Crystal Palace: The Anarcho-Psychological Critique: Stirner, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky”, p.135, Taylor & Francis

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As a social and as a personal force, religion has become a dependent variable. It does not originate; it reacts. It does not denounce; it adapts. It does not set forth new models of conduct and sensibility; it imitates. Its rhetoric is without deep appeal; the worship it organizes is without piety. It has become less a revitalization of the spirit in permanent tension with the world than a respectable distraction from the sourness of life.

C. Wright Mills

Atheism, World, Doe

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It simply isn't true, for example, that being big is in general better for fitness than being small except when there are effects of interacting variables; or that flying slow and high is in general better for fitness than flying fast and low except when there are effects of interacting variables; or that being monogamous is in general better for fitness than being polygamous... except when there are effects of interacting variables... It's not that the underlying generalizations are there but imperceptible in the ambient noise.

Jerry Fodor

Flying, Example, Noise

Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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On our planet, all objects are subject to continual and inevitable changes which arise from the essential order of things. These changes take place at a variable rate according to the nature, condition, or situation of the objects involved, but are nevertheless accomplished within a certain period of time. Time is insignificant and never a difficulty for Nature. It is always at her disposal and represents an unlimited power with which she accomplishes her greatest and smallest tasks.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Change, Nature, Science

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The term papers make me more crazy, because they involve more variables I cannot directly control! With acting, I feel more power-like I'm making all the choices.

Fred Savage

Crazy, Term Paper, Choices

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

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We never really see time. We see only clocks. If you say this object moves, what you really mean is that this object is here when the hand of your clock is here, and so on. We say we measure time with clocks, but we see only the hands of the clocks, not time itself. And the hands of a clock are a physical variable like any other. So in a sense we cheat because what we really observe are physical variables as a function of other physical variables, but we represent that as if everything is evolving in time.

Carlo Rovelli

Time, Moving, Mean

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The difference is that we have the hardest and most painful evidence that there was a Holocaust. But, for the global warming scenario that is causing such hysteria, we have only a movie made by a politician and mathematical models whose results change drastically when you change a few of the arbitrarily selected variables.

Thomas Sowell

Hysteria, Differences, Holocaust

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Variable behaviour of the sun is an obvious explanation, and there is increasing evidence that Earth's climate responds to changing patterns of solarmagnetic activity. ... If you look back into the sun's past, you find that we live in a period of abnormally high solar activity. ... It's a boom-bust system, and I would expect a crash soon. ... Having a crash would certainly allow us to pin down the sun's true level of influence on the Earth's climate. Then we will be able to act on fact, rather than from fear.

Nigel Weiss

Past, Sun, Facts

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I always choose an area that is of personal interest, but I don't plan my travels in detail. There are so many variables one cannot predict: the changing light, weather, personal mood, and often just plain luck. Of course, you must have a starting point, so I establish some fixed points then improvise as I go. In many cases the locations seem to choose me.

Josef Hoflehner

Photography, Light, Weather

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In my case, if one out of five opportunities is interesting enough to work on, maybe one in five of those ends up being worth doing. That might be a function of risk. That might be a function of price. There are all the variables. But you have to be constantly sorting and choosing and prioritizing.

Sam Zell

Opportunity, Interesting, Risk

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One constant in a world of variables - a man alone in the evening in his patch of vegetables. and all the things he takes down with him there, where the easement runs along the back fence.

Bruce Dawe

Running, Men, Garden

Bruce Dawe (1971). “Condolences of the season: selected poems”, Addison-Wesley Professional

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In the history of physics, there have been three great revolutions in thought that first seemed absurd yet proved to be true. The first proposed that the earth, instead of being stationary, was moving around at a great and variable speed in a universe that is much bigger than it appears to our immediate perception. That proposal, I believe, was first made by Aristarchos two millenia ago ... Remarkably enough, the name Aristarchos in Greek means best beginning.

Edward Teller

Believe, Moving, Mean

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Measurement has too often been the leitmotif of many investigations rather than the experimental examination of hypotheses. Mounds of data are collected, which are statistically decorous and methodologically unimpeachable, but conclusions are often trivial and rarely useful in decision making. This results from an overly rigorous control of an insignificant variable and a widespread deficiency in the framing of pertinent questions. Investigators seem to have settled for what is measurable instead of measuring what they would really like to know.

Edmund Pellegrino

Knowledge, Science, Data

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Imagine how dull life would be if variables assessed for admission to a graduate program really did predict who would succeed and who would fall. Life would be intolerable - no hope, no challenge

Robyn Dawes

Cute, Fall, Dull Life

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