Approximation Quotes

• A poor relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature.

  Charles Lamb

  Family, Irrelevance, Poor

  'Last Essays of Elia' (1833) 'Poor Relations'

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• Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations.

  John von Neumann

  Religion, Complicated, Truth Is

  John Von Neumann, F. Br¢dy, Tibor V mos (1995). “The Neumann Compendium”, p.626, World Scientific

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• All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.

  Bertrand Russell

  Math, Science, Ideas

  Bertrand Russell (2001). “The Scientific Outlook”, p.45, Psychology Press

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• It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.

  Aristotle

  Nature, Truth, Mind

  "Time to rise to the challenge of social impact measurement" by Jeremy Nicholls, www.theguardian.com. May 10, 2013.

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• Most important part of doing physics is the knowledge of approximation.

  Lev Landau

  Important, Physics

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• Science is about finding ever better approximations rather than pretending you have already found ultimate truth.
  A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Religion, Doe, Lunatic Asylums

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• Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is based on the idea of approximation. If a man tells you he knows a thing exactly, then you can be safe in inferring that you are speaking to an inexact man.

  Bertrand Russell

  Math, Men, Ideas

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• All models are wrong, but some are useful.

  George E. P. Box

  Knowledge, Math, Science

  George E. P. Box, Norman R. Draper (2007). “Response Surfaces, Mixtures, and Ridge Analyses”, p.414, John Wiley & Sons

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• We live in a system of approximations. Every end is prospective of some other end, which is also temporary; a round and final success nowhere. We are encamped in nature, not domesticated.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Success, Knowledge, Finals

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.44, Courier Corporation

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• The nearest approximation to an understanding of life is to feel it--to realize it to the full--to be a profound and inscrutable mystery.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Life, Profound, Understanding

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.11

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• Everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again or, more likely, to be corrected.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Law, Kind, Skepticism

  Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, Matthew Sands (2013). “The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Desktop Edition Volume I”, Basic Books

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• All models are approximations. Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful. However, the approximate nature of the model must always be borne in mind.

  George E. P. Box

  Science, Mind, Statistics

  George E. P. Box, Norman R. Draper (2007). “Response Surfaces, Mixtures, and Ridge Analyses”, p.414, John Wiley & Sons

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• No one knows what the right algorithm is, but it gives us hope that if we can discover some crude approximation of whatever this algorithm is and implement it on a computer, that can help us make a lot of progress.

  Andrew Ng

  Giving, Progress, Algorithms

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• Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man. Every careful measurement in science is always given with the probable error ... every observer admits that he is likely wrong, and knows about how much wrong he is likely to be.

  Bertrand Russell

  Truth, Science, Men

  "The Scientific Outlook".

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• It takes a fearless, unflinching love and deep humility to accept the universe as it is. The most effective way he knew to accomplish that, the most powerful tool at his disposal, was the scientific method, which over time winnows out deception. It can't give you absolute truth because science is a permanent revolution, always subject to revision, but it can give you successive approximations of reality.

  Ann Druyan

  Powerful, Humility, Reality

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• The more perfect the approximation to truth, the more perfect is art.

  Maria Montessori

  Art, Perfect, Perfection

  Maria Montessori, F. Simmonds (trans.) (2008). “Spontaneous Activity in Education”, p.197, Lulu.com

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• Some of the big philosophical problems have been solved by science, at least to a 1st approximation. Examples: the problems of matter, and mind. Only philosophical reactionaries, like Noam Chomsky, claim that they are and will remain mysteries.

  Mario Bunge

  Philosophical, Mind, Example

  Source: deutsche-denker.de

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• Clearly it is not the lovelorn sufferer who seeks solace in chocolate, but rather the chocolate-deprived individual, who, desperate, seeks in mere love a pale approximation of bittersweet euphoria.

  Sandra Boynton

  Food, Cooking, Chocolate

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• Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Writing, Hands

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• Alas! we know that ideals can never be completely embodied in practice. Ideals must ever lie a great way off--and we will thankfully content ourselves with any not intolerable approximation thereto! Let no man, as Schiller says, too querulously "measure by a scale of perfection the meager product of reality" in this poor world of ours.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Lying, Reality, Men

  Thomas Carlyle (1840). “On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History”, p.234, CUP Archive

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• We are looking at a future where to a first approximation everyone is wealthy.

  Ralph Merkle

  Firsts, Wealthy

  "Nanotechnology: Designs for the Future". Interview with John Gehl, ubiquity.acm.org. July 2000.

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• Premie'  re approximation: j'e  cris pour de  truire, en les de  crivant avec pre  cision, des monstres nocturnes qui menacent d'envahir ma vie e  veille  e. First general point: I write to destroy, by describing exactly the nocturnal monsters that threaten to invade my waking life.

  Alain Robbe-Grillet

  Writing, Monsters, Waking Life

  1984 LeMiroir qui revient.

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• Every improvement in our conceptions of justice, as well as in the machinery for the administration of justice, whereby a closer approximation to exact justice may be secured, will make for social peace, though the mere adjudication of conflicting interests will not remove the conflicts themselves nor their cause. That lies deeper than legislatures or courts can probe.

  Thomas Nixon Carver

  Lying, Justice, May

  Thomas Nixon Carver (1915). “Essays in Social Justice”, Harvard university press

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• Change the attitude toward errors. Think of an object's user as attempting to do a task, getting there by imperfect approximations. Don't think of the user as making errors; think of the actions as approximations of what is desired.

  Donald A. Norman

  Attitude, Thinking, Errors

  "The Design of Everyday Things". Book by Don Norman, ch. 5, p. 131, 1988.

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• I don't believe that we are what we do although many thinkers argue otherwise. I believe that what we do is, very often, a poor approximation of what we are -- an imperfect manifestation of a much better totality. Even the best of us sometimes bite off, as it were, less than we can chew.

  Donald Barthelme

  Believe, Arguing, Action

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