Provisional Quotes - page 2

Late in my senior year, I went through a crisis of doubt when my provisional girlfriend, a willowy physics major named Morgan Piziks, informed me at the end of our fourth date that anybody seriously in the question "Why?” should look not to philosophy but to the physical sciences-to cosmology, quantum mechanics, molecular biology, and the periodic table of the elements. My mind went blank. Try as I might, I could contrive no riposte. I felt instinctively that Morgan's claim enjoyed the nontrivial virtue of being true. (James K. Morrow)
I want you to shake the hands of every Minister in the Provisional Government ( Irish Free State )who's responsible for my death. I forgive them and so must you, Erskine. The second will apply if ever you go into Irish politics. You must not speak of my execution in public.
Robert Erskine Childers
I grew up in the theater. I began my career at 3. That was the first time I stepped onto a provisional stage.
Demian Bichir
We wait here to meet the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam to discuss together a ceremony of orderly transfer of power so as to avoid any unnecessary bloodshed in the population.
Duong Van Minh
In the Steven F. Austin Colony, which was the first colony, Texans first established a provisional government in 1835 with the intention of writing a declaration of independence soon after.
Michael McCaul
It's extremely difficult to say what one actually means by 'sculpture' other than, in a provisional sense, it's something that goes on the floor or a pedestal, and loosely applies to a certain history of the use of that term.
Walead Beshty
In science, all conclusions are provisional, subject to new evidence and better arguments, the very antithesis of religious faith.
Michael Shermer
Life today is the fruit of an interregnum, of an empty space between two organizations of historical rule - that which was, that which is to be. For this reason it is essentially provisional.
José Ortega y Gasset
No one knows toward what center human things are going to gravitate in the near future, and hence the life of the world has become scandalously provisional.
José Ortega y Gasset
Conceptual expressions are tentative and provisional... [because] the intellectual account... are constructed theories of experience.
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
As far as he could see, the world was moving, in an orderly capitalist fashion, toward a logical, perhaps provisional, perhaps permanent, end. (Cees Nooteboom)
Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it.
Stephen Hawking
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.”.
Stephen Jay Gould
[T]he new line that the Taehan minguk was not founded in August 1948, but instead came into existence when a provisional government was formed in Shanghai in 1919. I don't need to remind anyone of the internationally accepted criteria for statehood. The Blue House seems more interested in downgrading the republic that fought the North than in making a serious case for the statehood of something else. The original modest budget for the 70th anniversary of the ROK's founding has already been cut. The joint North-South commemoration of the March 1st uprising's 100th anniversary next year is likely to make the festivities this August 15 look subdued in comparison.
Brian Reynolds Myers
Christian hope asks us to regard every stage in the growth of a person and every phase in the development of the Church as merely provisional. It has to be transcended. We are still on our way to the final Kingdom.
Kurien Kunnumpuram
The complex notion of the ‘provisional' character of the State is the reason why the attitude of the first Christians toward the State is not unitary, but rather appears to be contradictory. I emphasize, that it appears to be so. We need only mention Romans 13:1, ‘Let every man be subject to the powers that be . . .,' alongside Revelation 13: the State as the beast from the abyss. In both instances, the same Roman state is spoken of.
Oscar Cullmann
Nowadays, however, we are much more aware of the fact that the best proof in the world is worth no more than its premises: every scientific theory is transitory and provisional, in wait for a better one, and accepted only as long as the experimental results conform to its predictions.
Ivar Ekeland
Only cultureless societies can exist without presiding presences. No presence can preside when all are subject to abandonments quick as their adoptions. Our passionate truths are so provisional, they move so quickly with the electrified times, that none can prepare us to receive them deeply into ourselves, as character.
Philip Rieff
Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.
Stephen Hawking
I think anyone who is creative or self-aware in any way, there's like a humility to it, or I should say a humiliation to it. But there's also a self-delusion - the provisional ego, as my uncle would call it. The self-delusion is the thing that makes you go, oh you know what, all the music that I've ever loved in the world, I want to be a part of that - hey, listen to what I have to say, it's really important, it's going to matter.” You can't apologize your way into people's hearts ... You have to go full force.
St. Vincent (musician)
The result of the rebuilding was a maze of crooked stairways, claustrophobic passages, abrupt dangerous ramps and Alice in Wonderland doors. Most of the smaller rooms were overcrowded, under-ventilated, separated only by plywood partitions and lit by naked bulbs hanging from wires. Everything was provisional, and liable to electrocute you, fall on your head, or come apart in your hand. (Christopher Isherwood)
Never again, by the necessity of an axiom, will an Englishman live for his country or die for his country: the country for which people live and die was obsolete and we have abolished it. Or not quite yet. No, not yet. The Referendum is not a ‘verdict' after which the prisoner is hanged forthwith. It is no more than provisional... This will be so as long as one Parliament can alter or undo whatever that or any other Parliament has done. Hence those golden words in the Government's Referendum pamphlet: ‘Our continued membership will depend on the continuing assent of Parliament.'
Enoch Powell
If all that divides Marx from the Classical Economists amounts to the historical character of economic categories, Marx need only historicize these categories, refusing to take them as fixed, absolute or eternal, but, on the contrary, regarding them as relative, provisional and transitory, i.e., as categories subject in the last instance to the moment of their historical existence. In this case, Marx's relation to Smith and Ricardo can be represented as identical with Hegel's relation to classical philosophy. Marx would then be Ricardo set in motion, just as it is possible to describe Hegel as Spinoza set in motion; set in motion, i.e., historicized.
Baruch Spinoza
But these were mere passing irritants. Deeper were the systemic troubles. She stressed the many unknowns; the media wanted sharp answers to huge questions, preferably in a compact one-liner. She tried to emphasize the progressive questioning of her method and how all answers were provisional, awaiting confirmation; reporters liked zippy adventure and exciting guesses with, of course, striking visuals in primary colors.
Gregory Benford
A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the Fascists during these last years, such a people must be free and independent. For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, solemnly declare to the world that Vietnam has the right to be a free and independent country and in fact it already has been so. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty.
Ho Chí Minh