Discrete Quotes

• The world is continuous, but the mind is discrete.

  David Mumford

  Mind, World, Statistics

  17 Copy quote

• Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another's, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.

  Salman Rushdie

  Stories, Individual, Our Lives

  23 Copy quote

• The full beauty of the subject of generating functions emerges only from tuning in on both channels: the discrete and the continuous.

  Herbert Wilf

  Math, Tuning, Function

  7 Copy quote

• The basic structure of proteins is quite simple: they are formed by hooking together in a chain discrete subunits called amino acids.

  Michael Behe

  Simple, Ties, Together

  8 Copy quote

• Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation. Pay attention to everything in the world as if it's alive. Realize everything has its own discrete existence outside your story. By doing this, you open to gifts and lessons that the world has to give you.

  David Whyte

  Giving, Attention, Stories

  93 Copy quote

• Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheeps and goats. Not all things are black nor all things white.

  Alfred Kinsey

  Two, White, Black

  Sexual Behavior in the Human Male ch. 21 (1948)

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• Holocaust is very much a part of present discussion all over the place. There are little plaques everywhere you go around in different neighborhoods. "This person here was prosecuted." "This person was sent to this concentration camp." "A family of Jews lived here. They took over his business." Little, very discrete, very dignified plaques are everywhere.

  Bob Balaban

  Holocaust, Different, Littles

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• No trauma has discrete edges. Trauma bleeds. Out of wounds and across boundaries.

  Leslie Jamison

  Life, Boundaries, Trauma

  Leslie Jamison (2014). “The Empathy Exams: Essays”, p.9, Granta Books

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• You're not a historian, but most historians will tell you that they make very discrete judgment as to what facts to omit in order to make their book into some shape, some length that can be managed.

  Oliver Stone

  Book, Order, Shapes

  4 Copy quote

• We needed to take a discrete population to give people the confidence that if we can end veterans' homelessness , we can attack chronic homelessness, families and other populations like foster youth, who each have distinct needs.

  John Carlos Frey

  People, Giving, Population

  Source: www.pbs.org

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• In my view, a political vision is not a grab-bag of discrete problems and solutions. It is the visionary anticipation of a direction.

  Roberto Unger

  Views, Political, Vision

  "The ideas interview: Roberto Unger". Interview with John Sutherland, www.theguardian.com. February 28, 2006.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Chi-Os were ideal partners for all occasions. They were discrete, desirable, tactful, polite, and fun... Every mom dreamed of her son coming home with a Chi Omega, a woman's woman.

  David Letterman

  Mom, Fun, Home

  10 Copy quote

• At the head of these new discoveries and insights comes the establishment of the facts that electricity is composed of discrete particles of equal size, or quanta, and that light is an electromagnetic wave motion.

  Johannes Stark

  Light, Discovery, Facts

  72 Copy quote

• Looking out over the port of Dover, with the endless steam of boats coming in and out, every British citizen is reminded that belonging here has never been about blood or genes. It's simply about being at home on this discrete island and being aware of the privileges and responsibilities that brings.

  Julian Baggini

  Home, Responsibility, Islands

  "Why the white cliffs of Dover are so special" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. August 19, 2012.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do you think it's possible that things that seem to be discrete in three dimensions might all be part of the same bigger object in four dimensions? ...What if humanity- that collective noun we so often employ- really is, at a higher level, a singular noun? What it what we perceive in three dimensions as seven billion individual human beings are really all just aspects of one giant being?

  Robert J. Sawyer

  Thinking, Humanity, What If

  4 Copy quote

• In large organizations there are discrete functions. I do this; you do that. I swim in my lane; you swim in your lane. That can be very effective for certain processes and in certain stable conditions. But it doesn't work in unstable conditions.

  Daniel H. Pink

  Leadership, Organization, Swim

  7 Copy quote

• The same tantalizing guile and sublime skill....[The series is] reinforced in its claim to be one of the major literary works of this century....Only two other writers that this reviewer can think of have each created an entire, discrete and compelling world, a totally believable entity which one might wish to inhabit, and they are Joyce and Proust. It is not pretentious to place Patrick O'Brian in the first canon of literature.

  Kevin Myers

  Thinking, Skills, Two

  4 Copy quote

• Innocence could be considered a discrete state of mind.

  John Shirley

  Mind, Innocence, States

  7 Copy quote

• Life is a constant creation. It is a moment by moment, instant by instant creation. I don’t mean by this that it is a set of discrete creations, it is not like that. But nevertheless, this spontaneity is constantly arising. And it is within this that is our freedom.

  Albert Low

  Mean, Life Is, Spontaneity

  11 Copy quote

• Digital time does not flow; it flicks. Like any binary, discrete decision, it is either here or there. In contrast to our experience of the passing of time, digital time is always in the now, or in no time. It is still. Poised.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Decision, Doe, Flow

  Douglas Rushkoff (2013). “Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now”, p.55, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Winning has a joy and discrete purity to it that cannot be replaced by anything else. Winning is important to any man's or woman's sense of satisfaction and well-being. Winning is not everything; but it is something powerful, indeed beautiful, in itself, something as necessary to the strong spirit as striving is necessary to the healthy character.

  A. Bartlett Giamatti

  Success, Beautiful, Sports

  A. Bartlett Giamatti (1981). “The University and the Public Interest”, Atheneum Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you must be indiscrete, be discrete in your indiscretion.

  Mark Twain

  Moderation, Ifs

  7 Copy quote

• If you think about even very common examples like, say, something that you would build, like a clock or a car or a group of people trying to accomplish something, it fails when its unity breaks down. So when it stops having a single form, which is functioning all together, then it sort of falls apart into discrete elements.

  Peter Adamson

  Fall, Thinking, People

  Source: www.abc.net.au

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those revolutions are not strictly incessant; they occur in discrete rushes which are separated from each other by spans of comparative quiet. The process as a whole works incessantly however, in the sense that there always is either revolution or absorption of the results of revolution, both together forming what are known as business cycles.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Business, Together, Revolution

  Joseph A. Schumpeter (2013). “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”, p.83, Routledge

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Maybe it's wrong when we remember breakthroughs to our own being as something that occurs in discrete, extraordinary moments. Maybe falling in love, the piercing knowledge that we ourselves will someday die, and the love of snow are in reality not some sudden events; maybe they were always present. Maybe they never completely vanish, either.

  Peter Høeg

  Falling In Love, Reality, Break Through

  Peter Høeg (2010). “Smilla's Sense of Snow: A Novel”, p.49, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  6 Copy quote

  Show source