Clarifying Quotes

• All decision-making is a values-clarifying exercise.

  Tony Robbins

  Exercise, Decision, Values

  9 Copy quote

• Logic issues in tautologies, mathematics in identities, philosophy in definitions; all trivial, but all part of the vital work of clarifying and organising our thought.

  Frank P. Ramsey

  Philosophy, Hard Work, Science

  20 Copy quote

• Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He copies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He’s convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.

  Pablo Picasso

  Drawing, Lasts, Firsts

  8 Copy quote

• A scientist's aim in a discussion with his colleagues is not to persuade, but to clarify.

  Leo Szilard

  Scientist, Aim, Colleagues

  Leo Szilard (1961). “The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories”, p.54, Stanford University Press

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, and needed rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion.

  Marshall B. Rosenberg

  Compassion, Judging, Focus

  11 Copy quote

• Like other revolutionaries I can thank God for the reactionaries. They clarify the issue.

  Robin G. Collingwood

  Issues, Thank You God, Thank God

  49 Copy quote

• I use my hands like a sculptor, to mold and shape the sound I want, to clarify.

  Leonard Slatkin

  Hands, Mold, Sound

  7 Copy quote

• Words are powerful. When I make mistakes I just try to come back and clarify what I meant.

  Soulja Boy

  Powerful, Mistake, Trying

  9 Copy quote

• I tried to fit it in with some previous broad conceptual understanding of some part of mathematics that would clarify the particular problem I was thinking about.

  Andrew Wiles

  Thinking, Understanding, Problem

  "Andrew Wiles on Solving Fermat". NOVA Interview, www.pbs.org. November 1, 2000.

  64 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's better for me to go up against someone's passion with my passion and then clarifying something that he wrote. Then I know how to work around certain things.

  Penny Marshall

  Passion, Certain, Know How

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• During periods of relaxation after concentrated intellectual activity, the intuitive mind seems to take over and can produce the sudden clarifying insights which give so much joy and delight.

  Fritjof Capra

  Truth, Knowledge, Giving

  8 Copy quote

• Trials and tribulations tend to squeeze the artificiality out of us, leaving the essence of what we really are and clarifying what we really yearn for.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Essence, Leaving, Trials

  77 Copy quote

• So if we look at progress, or evolution, or we look at accomplishment in our life, the key is to be continually moving on, expanding and growing, clarifying, developing and maturing. The opposite would be getting stuck, staying stuck, so there's no maturing, no developing, no accomplishing, no movement.

  Dennis Merzel

  Moving, Keys, Opposites

  Dennis Genpo Merzel (2007). “Big Mind, Big Heart: Finding Your Way”, Big Mind Pub

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Reducing every issue to an argument can become stale but it's often a very good way of clarifying issues.

  Evan Davis

  Issues, Way, Argument

  5 Copy quote

• Not the least of the problems in clarifying one's consciousness is developing the stoic determination to criticize one's own softness or sentimentality toward oneself. Ego, self-solicitous about its own tenderness, is the ultimate policeman over its own false consciousness, dementedly uprooting every healthy seedling of insight into the truth. As Kierkegaard remarked, most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, but the real trick and task of life is to learn to be just the very opposite.

  Kenny Smith

  Life, Determination, Truth

  4 Copy quote

• Not all negativity is bad. In politics, it's a necessary clarifying tool.

  Jacob Weisberg

  Negativity, Tools

  "Learning How To Make Pork-Infused Veggies". Chat with readers, www.slate.com. May 23, 2012.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have always been spurred on by my not finding expressed anywhere the kinds of perspectives that I thought these issues most perspicuously needed and deserved; but that is just another way of saying that Americans have overwhelmingly expunged from their public understanding the strongest and most clarifying resources out of ancient and traditional European cultures. By far we prefer our familiar and user-friendly parochialisms, and there is no percentage in trying to pry these pachydermal plates apart.

  Kenny Smith

  Issues, Perspective, Understanding

  4 Copy quote

• Guarding your heart and protecting your dignity are a little bit more important than clarifying the emotions of someone who's only texting you back three words. I've learned that from trying to figure out people who don't deserve to be figured out. When someone seems mysterious, we like to romanticize that he's "deep" or "complicated." But a lot of the time, things are exactly as they seem....

  Taylor Swift

  Relationship, Heart, People

  "Taylor Swift's Dating Tips: Glamour's March Cover Star on the One Thing She Won't Do in Relationships". Interview with Cindi Leive, www.glamour.com. February 4, 2014.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The ideological are individuals ultimately swamped by the complexities of modern life and political and economic relations; they have deliberately attached themselves to some caricatural maven like Falwell or Limbaugh who speaks to their manipulable pathos. The gulf between such individuals' education or intellectual competence or information and the actual issues of our times is simply too great. They were bred to be culture-media for false consciousness, junkies who crawl on their bellies across broken glass for another hit of "clarifying wisdom" from some ideological Pope.

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Media, Issues

  4 Copy quote

• What Joe Hamilton lacked more than anything else in the world was some one to kick him. Many a man who might have lived decently and become a fairly respectable citizen has gone to the dogs for the want of some one to administer a good resounding kick at the right time. It is corrective and clarifying.

  Paul Laurence Dunbar

  Dog, Men, Citizens

  Paul Laurence Dunbar (2017). “Delphi Complete Works of Paul Laurence Dunbar (Illustrated)”, p.992, Delphi Classics

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• And with each step my heart broke for the person I would never find, the person who'd love me. And then I would remember I had a wife at home who loved me, or later that my wife had left me and I was terrirfied, or again later that I had a beautiful alcoholic girlfriend who would make me happy forever. But every time I entered the place there were veiled faces promising everything and then clarifying quickly into the dull, the usual, looking up at me and making the same mistake.

  Denis Johnson

  Beautiful, Girlfriend, Mistake

  19 Copy quote

• We embark unhesitatingly on the path, in a direction that is absolutely right and urgent, supported by everyone, in the knowledge that this path is but a learning process... We have to keep on learning, creating, applying, by-passing, touching upon, refining and clarifying a number of notions and details that need to be improvised and applied and which, thank God, we cannot foresee. The only rigidity lies in our will, our conviction that we are on the right road and that our initiatives are most pressing.

  Yehudi Menuhin

  Life, Lying, Creating

  "The Mandate". Book by Jacob Bergen, p. 33, 2006.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus.

  Michael Haneke

  Distance, Empowerment, Cinema

  6 Copy quote

• Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively.

  Peter Senge

  Reality, Personal Mastery, Discipline

  Peter M Senge (2010). “The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization: First edition”, p.14, Random House

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Rather than managing by clarifying events, the creative process may require raising the level of uncertainty. Sometimes this can be done by issuing a creative challenge that has resonance in that it inspires the team to activity.

  John Kao

  Team, Creative, Challenges

  Interview with Joel Kurtzman, www.strategy-business.com. October 1, 1996.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source