Approximation Quotes - Page 3

• Personally, I don't see old economics and behavioural economics as opposed. It is useful to assume people are rational as a good approximation to their long term behaviour, but it would be unwise not to think how in practice their behaviour may deviate from that simplifying assumption.

  Evan Davis

  Thinking, Practice, Long

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• Can quantum mechanics represent the fact that an electron finds itself approximately in a given place and that it moves approximately with a given velocity, and can we make these approximations so close that they do not cause experimental difficulties?

  Werner Heisenberg

  Moving, Velocity, Causes

  Werner Heisenberg (1985). “Gesammelte Werke”, Springer

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• There is a clear acknowledgement all over the world that we should not teach people to read and then to leave them without literature. For they would then relapse into a dreary and ultimately dangerous state of half-education, in which they would be easily satisfied by crude semi-pictorial approximations of the strip cartoon and by the abundant supply of degenerate literature which destroys, rather than promotes, a capacity to face the problems of the world with skill and courage

  A. D. Patel

  Skills, People, Cartoon

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• Between the approximation of the idea and the precision of reality there was a small gap of the unimaginable, and it was this hiatus that gave him no rest.

  Milan Kundera

  Reality, Ideas, Gaps

  "The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive". Book by Brian Christian, March 1, 2011.

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• An artist cannot be partially sincere any more than art can be an approximation of beauty.

  Andrei Tarkovsky

  Art, Artist, Sincere

  "Sculpting in Time" by Andrei Tarkovsky, (p. 47), 1986.

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• Properly understood, style is not a seductive decoration added to a functional structure; it is of the essence of a work of art. The necessary elements of style are lucidity, elegance, and individuality; these three qualities combine to form a preservative which ensures the nearest approximation to permanence in the fugitive art of letters.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Art, Essence, Seductive

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• Each such answer to the great question, invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, or it may be for twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors.

  Thomas Huxley

  Ignorance, Twenties, Finals

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.66, University of Georgia Press

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• Mr. Darwin's hypothesis is not, so far as I am aware, inconsistent with any known biological fact; on the contrary, if admitted, the facts of Development, of Comparative Anatomy, of Geographical Distribution, and of Palaeontology, become connected together, and exhibit a meaning such as they never possessed before; and I, for one, am fully convinced that if not precisely true, that hypothesis is as near an approximation to the truth as, for example, the Copernican hypothesis was to the true theory of the planetary motions.

  Thomas Huxley

  Together, Example, Development

  "Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature". Book by Thomas Henry Huxley. Chapter 2, p. 127, 1863.

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• Macroscopic objects, as we see them all around us, are governed by a variety of forces, derived from a variety of approximations to a variety of physical theories. In contrast, the only elements in the construction of black holes are our basic concepts of space and time. They are, thus, almost by definition, the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the universe.

  Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

  Space, Perfect, Black

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• No matter how consummate a work of art may seem, it is only an approximation of the original conception. It is the artist's consciousness of this discrepancy between his conception and the realization that assures his progress.

  Edgard Varese

  Art, Discrepancies Between, Progress

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• There is no perfect strategic decision. One always has to pay a price. One always has to balance conflicting objectives, conflicting opinions, and conflicting priorities. The best strategic decision is only an approximation - and a risk.

  Peter Drucker

  Perfect, Priorities, Decision

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• The fascinating thing to a dispassionate observer about the structure of life in the Soviet Union is that in their efforts to produce an unknown that we may let its ideologists call Socialism the Communist dictators have produced a brutal approximation of monopoly Capitalism, a system that has all the disadvantages of our own, with none of the palliatives which come to us from surviving competition and from the essential division of economic and political power which has so far made it possible for the humane traditions of the Western world to continue.

  John Dos Passos

  Effort, Political, Competition

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• In its happiest efforts, translation is but approximation, and its efforts are not often happy. A translation may be good as translation, but it cannot be an adequate reproduction of the original.

  George Henry Lewes

  Effort, Adequate, May

  George Henry Lewes (1864). “The Life of Goethe”, p.466

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• It's a pretty widely-accepted notion that the atmosphere is a ridiculously complex system, and the best we can do with our models is a rough approximation.

  Jamais Cascio

  Atmosphere, Accepted, Rough

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• Imitation is for the most part so unconscious that its effects are almost unheeded, but its influence is not the less permanent on that account. It is only when an impressive nature is placed in contact with an impressionable one that the alteration in the character becomes recognizable. Yet even the weakest natures exercise some influence upon those about them. The approximation of feeling, thought, and habit is constant, and the action of example unceasing.

  Samuel Smiles

  Character, Exercise, Feelings

  Samuel Smiles (1884). “Happy Homes and the Hearts that Make Them. Or Thrifty People and why They Thrive”

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• It seems that truth is progressive approximation in which the relative fraction of our spontaneously tolerated residual error constantly diminishes.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Errors, Progressive, Truth Is

  R. Buckminster Fuller (2008). “And It Came to Pass — Not to Stay”, p.30, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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• Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.

  Yann Martel

  Zoos, Civilization, Territory

  Interview, www.bookbrowse.com. October 2, 2002.

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• Books ... were merely nodes in a near-infinite matrix of information that exists in four dimensions, evolving toward the idea of the concept of the approximation of the shadow of Truth vertically through time as well as longitudinally through knowledge.

  Dan Simmons

  Book, Ideas, Shadow

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• Men of science have made abundant mistakes of every kind; their knowledge has improved only because of their gradual abandonment of ancient errors, poor approximations, and premature conclusions.

  George Sarton

  Mistake, Men, Errors

  George Sarton (1959). “A History of Science: Hellenistic science and culture in the last three centuries B.C”

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• As a first-order approximation, I would say that phenomenality is "availability for introspective attention": Consciousness is a property of all those mental contents to which you can in principle direct your attention.

  Thomas Metzinger

  Order, Availability, Attention

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I dream of a collaboration that will become so complete that, often, the poet will think as musician and the musician as poet, so that the work resulting from this union will not be the random conclusion of a series of approximations and concessions, but the harmonious synthesis of two aspects of the same thought.

  Arthur Honegger

  Dream, Thinking, Two

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• There is a noticeable general difference between the sciences and mathematics on the one hand, and the humanities and social sciences on the other. It's a first approximation, but one that is real. In the former, the factors of integrity tend to dominate more over the factors of ideology. It's not that scientists are more honest people. It's just that nature is a harsh taskmaster. You can lie or distort the story of the French Revolution as long as you like, and nothing will happen. Propose a false theory in chemistry, and it'll be refuted tomorrow.

  Noam Chomsky

  Integrity, Real, Lying

  "Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent". Book by Robert F. Barsky, 1997.

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• The first approximation in this future that we're looking at is that everyone will be physically well off. They will have a great abundance in material goods, and as a consequence, I think that will soften some of the conflicts we see now.

  Ralph Merkle

  Thinking, Firsts, Conflict

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

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• I conceive, therefore, that a somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment will prove the means of securing an approximation to full employment.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Mean, Employment, Investing

  John Maynard Keynes (2006). “General Theory Of Employment , Interest And Money”, p.346, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• I think I am most fond of the unseen part. I mean that the various cultural experiences that I go through, and the behavioral aspects of getting the work done, are just as important as the installation and the photograph. So, for me, the relationship between the two is more about hybridism and the search for an ideal form that I'm never going to arrive at. The installation and the photograph are mere approximations of this ideal.

  Sandy Skoglund

  Mean, Thinking, Two

  Sandy Skoglund, Smith College. Museum of Art (1998). “Sandy Skoglund: reality under siege : a retrospective”, Harry N. Abrams

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