Explaining Quotes - page 8

Instead of explaining the sober facts of mechanics and electricity, I want to say a few words about the debt which we owe to youth; and with your permission I shall consider you as representing here not only the academic youth of Sweden nor even of Europe but also of America. (Felix Bloch)
Reduced to their most pregnant difference, empiricism means the habit of explaining wholes by parts, and rationalism means the habit of explaining parts by wholes. View quote
William James
The strange and wonderful Book of Job treats of the same subject as we are discussing; its contents are a fiction, conceived for the purpose of explaining the different opinions which people hold on Divine Providence. ...This fiction, however, is in so far different from other fictions that it includes profound ideas and great mysteries, removes great doubts, and reveals the most important truths. View quote
Maimonides
The strange and wonderful Book of Job treats of the same subject as we are discussing; its contents are a fiction, conceived for the purpose of explaining the different opinions which people hold on Divine Providence. ...This fiction, however, is in so far different from other fictions that it includes profound ideas and great mysteries, removes great doubts, and reveals the most important truths. I will discuss it as fully as possible; and I will also tell you the words of our Sages that suggested to me the explanation of this great poem. View quote
Maimonides
If you have a dream, don't waste your energies explaining why. View quote
Paulo Coelho
I think what Kafka does is give a purely mechanical explanation of that complex machine in the story, as sort of a substitute for explaining the situation we're in. What I mean is ... " I have to give it some more thought. "What I mean is, that's his own device for explaining the kind of lives we lead. Not by talking about our situation, but by talking about the details of the machine. View quote
Haruki Murakami
The political Right currently runs the country. That's very annoying, but pretending it isn't true is foolhardy. What is really annoying is that in the late 1970s some of us were giving speeches and writing articles explaining that rightists intended to take over the country. It wasn't hard to figure that out, since at the same time right-wing ideologues and strategists were also giving speeches and writing articles describing in elaborate detail how they planned to do it. Well, they did it. View quote
Chip Berlet
Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome. And human beings evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered. [...] Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, "fact” can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.”. View quote
Stephen Jay Gould
At a minimum, in explaining evolutionary pathways through time, the constraints imposed by history rise to equal prominence with the immediate advantages of adaptation. View quote
Stephen Jay Gould
Decision theory can be pursued not only for the purposes of building foundations for political economy, or of understanding and explaining phenomena that are in themselves intrinsically interesting, but also for the purpose of offering direct advice to business and governmental decision makers. For reasons not clear to me, this territory was very sparsely settled prior to World War II. Such inhabitants as it had were mainly industrial engineers, students of public administration, and specialists in business functions, none of whom especially identified themselves with the economic sciences. Prominent pioneers included the mathematician, Charles Babbage, inventor of the digital computer, the engineer, Frederick Taylor and the administrator, Henri Fayol. During World War II, this territory, almost abandoned, was rediscovered by scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians concerned with military management and logistics, and was renamed "operations research” or "operations analysis.”. View quote
Herbert Simon
In this precise sense, Kant was "the inventor of the philosophical history of philosophy": there are necessary stages in the development of philosophy, that is, one cannot directly get at the truth, one cannot begin wit it, philosophy necessarily began with metaphysical illusions. The path from illusion to its critical denunciation is the very core of philosophy, which means that successful ("true") philosophy is no longer defined by its truthful explanation of the totality of being, but by successfully accounting for the illusions, that is, by explaining not only why illusions are illusions, but also why they are structurally necessary, unavoidable, and not just accidents. (Slavoj Žižek)
There's something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know. View quote
Maya Angelou
I don't feel that I'm explaining the world or teaching people anything. And I'm not trying to be a mirror, showing them what's really going on the world. All I'm trying to do is think of stuff that's funny, just like when I'm kidding around with my friends. View quote
Steven Wright
I have always enjoyed explaining physics. In fact it's more than just enjoyment: I need to explain physics. View quote
Leonard Susskind
I'm a great believer that scientists should spend as much time as possible explaining, and you do explain in the process of teaching. View quote
Leonard Susskind
I have a funny mental framework when I do physics. I create an imaginary audience in my head to explain things to - it is part of the way I think. For me, teaching and explaining, even to my imaginary audience, is part of the process. View quote
Leonard Susskind
If explaining minds seems harder than explaining songs, we should remember that sometimes enlarging problems makes them simpler! View quote
Marvin Minsky
Evolution endowed us with intuition only for those aspects of physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors, such as the parabolic orbits of flying rocks (explaining our penchant for baseball). A cavewoman thinking too hard about what matter is ultimately made of might fail to notice the tiger sneaking up behind and get cleaned right out of the gene pool. Darwin's theory thus makes the testable prediction that whenever we use technology to glimpse reality beyond the human scale, our evolved intuition should break down. View quote
Max Tegmark
In an interview two days ago, Watts said, Here's the problem with Washington: "If you are explaining, you are losing." View quote
Lawrence Lessig
Prediction is certainly a valuable goal in science, but not the only one. Explanation is also important, and there are plenty of sciences that do a lot of explaining and not much predicting. View quote
Eric Maskin
Of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories we make them what we will. It's a way of explaining the universe while leaving the universe unexplained, it's a way of keeping it all alive, not boxing it into time. Everyone who tel. (Jeanette Winterson)
You have everything," she said slowly, as if she were explaining the order of the world to a small child. "A family, a great job, a lot of people who look up to you. You've got a place to go home to." She smiled a little. "So go. View quote
Jodi Picoult
I read once that explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog," Mark said. "You find out how it works, but the frog dies in the process. View quote
Cassandra Clare
Nearly every tale that men tell of magic and witches and such is born out of foolishness and ignorance and sickness of mind-or is a way of explaining things they do not understand. View quote
Susan Cooper
I saw a cockroach playing Pacman. It was on the internet, right, and somebody had linked up a cockroach to err... to some... I can't even be bothered explaining it, but that's what I'm saying - everything is moving on. View quote
Karl Pilkington