Speculation Quotes - Page 5

• I did ... learn an important distinction in graduate school: a speculation about who had syphilis when is gossip if it's about your friends, a plot element if it's about a character in a novel, and scholarship if it's about John Keats.

  Margaret Atwood

  School, Character, Gossip

  Margaret Atwood (1984). “Second words: selected critical prose”, Beacon Press, 1984

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• I'm a novelist, and idle speculation is what novelists do. How odd to spend one's life trying to pretend that non-existent people are real: though no odder, I suppose, than what government bureaucrats do, which is trying to pretend that real people are non-existent.

  Margaret Atwood

  Real, Government, People

  Margaret Atwood (1984). “Second words: selected critical prose”, Beacon Press, 1984

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• But, as potentially the first African American first lady, I was also the focus of another set of questions and speculations; conversations sometimes rooted in the fears and misperceptions of others. Was I too loud, or too angry, or too emasculating? Or was I too soft, too much of a mom, not enough of a career woman?

  Michelle Obama

  Mom, Careers, Focus

  Tuskegee University Commencement Address, delivered 09 May 2015, Tuskegee, Alabama

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• The rare earth elements perplex us in our researches, baffle us in our speculations, and haunt us in our very dreams. They stretch like an unknown sea before us mocking, mystifying and murmuring strange revelations and possibilities.

  William Crookes

  Dream, Sea, Elements

  "Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements (New Edition)" by John Emsley, (p. 266), October 1, 2011.

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• Speculation in land may be necessary to capitalism, but speculative orgies periodically become a quagmire of destruction for capital itself.

  David Harvey

  Land, Quagmire, May

  "The Limits to Capital". Book by David Harvey, 2006 VERSO Edition,

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• We don't talk about sources and methods. Don't talk about ongoing intelligence operations. I know there's speculation. But it's important for the American people to understand that I will use my powers to protect us, and I will do so under the law, and that's important for our citizens to understand.

  George W. Bush

  Law, People, Important

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• Once upon a time, a historian told me that the most important choice a new historian could make was of his or her specialist subject. Most of the good stuff was far too overcrowded, so you had to pick about in the exotic and extinct. His recommendations were the Picts or the Minoans, because hardly anything was known about them and you could spend a happy lifetime of speculation.

  A. A. Gill

  Happy Life, Important Choices, History

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• There were moments when I wondered at the gossamer veil that stops licence from being libel. I suspect that taking on the job of England manager puts you outside the protection of the courts. It must be part of the job description that you will be held hostage by media speculation and can have your character tortured, molested and finally executed at the public whim, in exchange for a lifetime's supply of money.

  A. A. Gill

  Soccer, Football, Jobs

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• So long as men die, life will reassert its tragic interest from time to time with fresh energy, and to this interest Christianity alone can respond. If the scientific people could rid us of death, they might indeed hope to win over the heart and conscience of the world, permanently, to some form of non-theistic speculation. As it is, the tide ebbs, as I believe, only that it may flow again.

  Henry Parry Liddon

  Believe, Heart, Winning

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• The Master was exceedingly gracious to university dons who visited him, but he would never reply to their questions or be drawn into their theological speculations. To his disciples, who marveled at this, he said, "Can one talk about the ocean to a frog in a well or about the divine to people who are restricted by their concepts?

  Anthony de Mello

  Ocean, People, Frogs

  Anthony De Mello (2012). “One Minute Wisdom”, p.105, Image

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• We believe this approach (progress sharing) is a rational approach because you cooperate in creating the abundance that makes the progress possible, and then you share that progress after the fact, and not before the fact. Profit sharing would resolve the conflict between management apprehensions and worker expectations on the basis of solid economic facts as they materialize rather than on the basis of speculation as to what the future might hold.

  Walter Reuther

  Believe, Creating, Expectations

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• Let us descend now therefore from this top Of speculation.

  John Milton

  1665 Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.12, l.588-9.

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• Scientists do what writers do. They also live with an active interiority, only the ongoing speculation in their heads is about relations in the physical world rather than the psychological one.

  Vivian Gornick

  Ongoing, World, Psychological

  Vivian Gornick (2013). “Women in Science: Then and Now”, p.28, The Feminist Press at CUNY

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• There is scarcely an instance of a man who has made a fortune by speculation and kept it

  Andrew Carnegie

  Men, Investing, Made

  Andrew Carnegie (1992). “The Andrew Carnegie reader”, Univ of Pittsburgh Pr

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• Part of my attraction to ancient art is that there is an element of risk, of speculation.

  Michael Steinhardt

  Art, Risk, Elements

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• Mathematics is ordinarily considered as producing precise and dependable results; but in the stock market the more elaborate and abstruse the mathematics the more uncertain and speculative are the conclusions we draw there from. Whenever calculus is brought in, or higher algebra, you could take it as a warning that the operator was trying to substitute theory for experience, and usually also to give to speculation the deceptive guise of investment.

  Benjamin Graham

  Giving, Trying, Investing

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• Many able Gardeners and Husbandmen are yet Ignorant of the Reason of their Calling; as most Artificers are of the Reason of their own Rules that govern their excellent Workmanship. But a Naturalist and Mechanick of this sort is Master of the Reason of both, and might be of the Practice too, if his Industry kept pace with his Speculation; which were every commendable; and without which he cannot be said to be a complete Naturalist or Mechanick.

  William Penn

  Practice, Ignorant, Pace

  Benjamin Franklin, William Penn (2012). “Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims”, p.21, Courier Corporation

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• My speculation is that the U.S. does not want to establish the principle that it has to defer to some higher authority before carrying out the use of violence.

  Noam Chomsky

  Use, Want, Violence

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• I don't expect that the scientific community now embraces and kisses me 'Oh wonderful, great you did!' we have to live with critics, this is normal. Chariots of the Gods was full of speculation, I had 238 question marks. Nobody read the question mark. They always said: Mr. Von Daniken is saying... I did not say, I asked the questions, would that be a posibility? In Chariots of the Gods, I made clear difference between a speculations and facts.

  Erich von Däniken

  Kissing, Differences, Community

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• There is no more disastrous mania, no more dangerous whim, than the speculation over roads not taken.

  Juan Gabriel

  Taken, Whim, Dangerous

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• Philosophy is based on speculation, on logic, on thought, on the synthesis of what we know and on the analysis of what we do not know. Philosophy must include within its confines the whole content of science, religion and art.

  P.D. Ouspensky

  Art, Philosophy, Analysis

  "A New Model of the Universe: Principles of the Psychological Method in Its Application to Problems of Science, Religion and Art". Book by P.D. Ouspensky, 1931.

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• I need scarcely say that the beginning and maintenance of life on earth is absolutely and infinitely beyond the range of all sound speculation in dynamical science. The only contribution of dynamics to theoretical biology is absolute negation of automatic commencement or automatic maintenance of life.

  Lord Kelvin

  Sound, Needs, Maintenance

  "The Life of Lord Kelvin" by Silvanus Phillips, Volume 2, (p. 866), 2005.

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• The imbalance results from ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to States, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good.

  Pope Francis

  Imbalance, Common, Financial

  Pope Francis (2016). “Care for Creation: A Call for Ecological Conversion”, p.36, Orbis Books

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• Stock
  speculation is largely a matter of A trying to decide what B, C and D
  are likely to think-with B, C and D trying to do the same.

  Benjamin Graham

  Thinking, Trying, Matter

  Benjamin Graham, David Le Fevre Dodd (1940). “Security Analysis: Principles and Techniques”

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• His subject is the "Origin of Species," & not the origin of Organization; & it seems a needless mischief to have opened the latter speculation at all.

  Harriet Martineau

  Organization, Latter, Origin Of Species

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