Ambiguous Quotes - Page 3

• The Russian proposal is ambiguous. If they want to propose enrichment (only) in Russia we have said it is not acceptable. But if it is a complementary or parallel plan, we will study that.

  Hamid-Reza Assefi

  Russia, Want, Study

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• Words are such gross machinery, so primitive and ambiguous.

  Frank Herbert

  Machinery, Gross, Primitive

  Frank Herbert (2008). “Dune Messiah”, p.175, Penguin

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• I think men get nervous when women start counting the number of female senators, and whites become edgy when they hear the next Supreme Court seat will probably go to a Latino. This isn't always because they object to sharing the spoils, by the way; it just reminds us that the melting pot may not be working, and we haven't yet achieved the ambiguous national dream of becoming a nation of indistinguishable beige atheists.

  Dahlia Lithwick

  Dream, Atheist, Men

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• A chess problem is genuine mathematics, but it is in some way "trivial" mathematics. However, ingenious and intricate, however original and surprising the moves, there is something essential lacking. Chess problems are unimportant. The best mathematics is serious as well as beautiful-"important" if you like, but the word is very ambiguous, and "serious" expresses what I mean much better.

  G. H. Hardy

  Beautiful, Moving, Mean

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• A map in the hands of a pilot is a testimony of a man's faith in other men; it is a symbol of confidence and trust. It is not like a printed page that bears mere words, ambiguous and artful, and whose most believing reader - even whose author, perhaps - must allow in his mind a recess for doubt. A map says to you, 'Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not.' It says, 'I am the earth in the palm of your hand. Without me, you are alone and lost.

  Beryl Markham

  Believe, Men, Hands

  Beryl Markham (2012). “West with the Night”, p.272, Open Road Media

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• We live in a world shaped by the ambiguous legacy of the Enlightenment...[it] enlarged the scope of human freedom, prepared our minds for the scientific method, made man the measure of all things, and placed individual consent front and center on the political stage.

  James Q. Wilson

  Men, Political, Mind

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• Death does determine life. Once life is finished it acquires a sense; up to that point it has not got a sense; its sense is suspended and therefore ambiguous. However, to be sincere I must add that for me death is important only if it is not justified and rationalized by reason. For me death is the maximum of epicness and death.

  Pier Paolo Pasolini

  Important, Doe, Add

  Pier Paolo Pasolini (2005). “P.P.P., Pier Paolo Pasolini: Pier Paolo Pasolini and Death”, Hatje Cantz Pub

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• Every human being relies on and is bounded by his knowledge and experience to live. This is what we call “reality”. However, knowledge and experience are ambiguous, thus reality can become illusion. Is it not possible to think that, all human beings are living in their assumptions?

  Masashi Kishimoto

  Reality, Thinking, Assumption

  "Naruto: Shippūden". TV Series, 2007 - 2017.

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• Photography appears to be an easy activity; in fact it is a varied and ambiguous process in which the only common denominator among its practitioners is in the instrument.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Facts, Common

  Henri Cartier-Bresson, Michael L. Sand (1999). “The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers”

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• As a gender variant visual artist I access 'technologies of gender' in order to amplify rather than erase the hermaphroditic traces of my body. I name myself. A gender abolitionist. A part time gender terrorist. An intentional mutation and intersex by design, (as opposed to diagnosis), in order to distinguish my journey from the thousands of intersex individuals who have had their 'ambiguous' bodies mutilated and disfigured in a misguided attempt at 'normalization'. I believe in crossing the line as many times as it takes to build a bridge we can all walk across.

  Del LaGrace Volcano

  Believe, Technology, Journey

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• Bertrand Russell said, 'Electricity is not a thing like St. Paul's Cathedral; it is a way in which things behave.' And it's not 'they' who say, but Walter Benjamin who said, 'Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness, with the base and the banal.' In September, 1940, Benjamin died under ambiguous circumstances in the French-Spanish border town of Portbou, while attempting to flee the Nazis.

  Mary Jo Bang

  Historical, Events, Borders

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• History is the only science enjoying the ambiguous fortune of being required to be at the same time an art.

  Johann Gustav Droysen

  Art, History, Fortune

  Johann Gustav Droysen (1893). “Outline of the Principles of History”

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• Virtually every major technological advance in the history of the human species - back to the invention of stone tools and the domestication of fire - has been ethically ambiguous.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Fire, Religion

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.476, Ballantine Books

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• Alcohol is a pervasive fact of life, but an extraordinary fact-pleasurable and destructive, anathematized and adulated, and deeply ambiguous ... the genie in the bottle.

  Griffith Edwards

  Alcohol, Bottles, Facts

  Griffith Edwards (2013). “Alcohol: The World's Favorite Drug”, p.1, Macmillan

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• I don't think there is such a thing as a precise sexual orientation. I think we're all ambiguous sexually.

  Tennessee Williams

  Gay, Thinking, Lgbt

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• How ever sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, religion or all four.

  Gloria Steinem

  Sex, Race, Liberty

  Gloria Steinem (1986). “Outrageous acts and everyday rebellions”, New Amer Library

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• Late twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert.

  Donna J. Haraway

  Self, Differences, Mind

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• Anime is intended to have ambiguous features. That's part of the art form.

  M. Night Shyamalan

  Art, Anime, Form

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• Documentary photography is becoming more illustrative as people become more familiar with photography’s limitations and vulnerabilities. Reality has always been interpreted through layers of manipulation, abstraction, and intervention. But now, it is very much on the surface. I like this honesty about its dishonesty. Every photograph has many truths and none. Photographs are ambiguous, no matter how seemingly scientific they appear to be. They are always subject to an uncontrollable context. This is a tired statement, but worth repeating.

  Taryn Simon

  Photography, Honesty, Tired

  Interview with Geoffrey Batchen, Nell McClister, www.museomagazine.com.

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• You will not kill my girlfriend today, International Terrorists of Ambiguous Nationality!

  John Green

  Girlfriend, Today, Terrorist

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• It has been my experience that competency in mathematics, both in numerical manipulations and in understanding its conceptual foundations, enhances a person's ability to handle the more ambiguous and qualitative relationships that dominate our day-to-day financial decision-making

  Alan Greenspan

  Success, Business, Decision

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• It's relatively easy to create an ambiguous character. Any conglomeration of likable and unlikeable traits, chosen at random, will result in an ambiguous character. Getting an audience to deeply identify with a character, on the other hand, is one of the hardest things in the world to do.

  Matt Bird

  Character, Hands, World

  "Losing My Religion, Part 2: Misconceptions About Character". www.secretsofstory.com. November 21, 2012.

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• [T]here is a methodological bias in favor of taking natural discourse literally, other things being equal. For example, unless there are clear reasons for construing discourse as ambiguous, elliptical, or involving special idioms, we should not so construe it.

  Tyler Burge

  Philosophical, Special, Favors

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• She used to pride herself on her refusal to see two sides of an argument, but increasingly she accepts that issues are more ambiguous and complicated than she once thought.

  David Nicholls

  Pride, Two Sides, Issues

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• My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.

  Odilon Redon

  Drawing, Inspire, Doe

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