Discrete Quotes

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

  David Mumford

  Mind, World, Statistics

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• 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

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• 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

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

  Salman Rushdie

  Stories, Individual, Our Lives

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• 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

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• 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

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• Although we tend to think of the brain as a discrete organ - a lump of squidgy tissue - it is better to think of it as part of an elaborate network of nervous tissue that reaches out to every single part of the body.

  Tim Birkhead

  Thinking, Brain, Tissues

  Tim Birkhead (2012). “Bird Sense: What It's Like to Be a Bird”, p.13, A&C Black

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• I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint.

  Hesiod

  Wise, Patience, Hope

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• 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. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. The sooner we learn this concerning human sexual behavior, the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex.

  Alfred Kinsey

  Sex, Reality, Two

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

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• The Nazi Party was, in the early 1920s, but one among many nationalist and volkisch radical political groups. It was catapulted to prominence with the onset of economic recession in the late 1920s... The Nazis owed their spectacular to a combination of two discrete sets of factors: first, their distinctive organisation and strategy; and secondly, the wider socio-economic conditions which created climates of opinion and sets of grievances on which the Nazis could prey.

  Mary Fulbrook

  Party, Two, History

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• 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)

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• With ordinary men the moments which are united in a close continuity out of the original discrete multiplicity are very few, and the course of their lives resembles a little brook, whereas with the genius it is more like a mighty river into which all the little rivulets flow from afar; that is to say, the universal comprehension of genius vibrates to no experience in which all the individual moments have not been gathered up and stored.

  Otto Weininger

  Men, Rivers, Ordinary

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.124, Рипол Классик

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• 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

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• 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

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• The mastery of one's phonemes may be compared to the violinist's mastery of fingering. The violin string lends itself to a continuous gradation of tones, but the musician learns the discrete intervals at which to stop the string in order to play the conventional notes. We sound our phonemes like poor violinists, approximating each time to a fancied norm, and we receive our neighbor's renderings indulgently, mentally rectifying the more glaring inaccuracies.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Music, Order, Play

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• I have no faith in our hypocritical, false, hysterical, uneducated and lazy intelligentsia when they suffer and complain: their oppression comes from within. I believe in individual people. I see salvation in discrete individuals, intellectuals and peasants, strewn hither and yon throughout Russia. They have the strength, although there are few of them.

  Anton Chekhov

  Integrity, Believe, Russia

  Letter to I.I. Orlov, February 22, 1899.

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• In live-action, writing, production and editing happen in discrete stages. In animation, they overlap - happening simultaneously. This allows a real dialogue to occur between the writer, the director, the actors and the editor, and it makes the writing process a lot more collaborative and a lot less lonely.

  Michael Arndt

  Lonely, Real, Writing

  "Toy Story 3′ screenwriter talks toys with the Daily". Interview with Lorrayne Shen, tuftsdaily.com. November 4, 2010.

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• The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in.

  William James

  Other Worlds, Two, Filters

  William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.463, Library of America

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• Conventional wisdom, fooled by our misleading "physical intuition", is that the real world is "continuous", and that discrete models are necessary evils for approximating the "real" world, due to the innate discreteness of the digital computer.

  Doron Zeilberger

  Real, Evil, Intuition

  ""Real" Analysis is a Degenerate Case of Discrete Analysis". Ruthgers School of Arts and Sciences Website, sites.math.rutgers.edu. November 26, 2001.

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• Know what makes a sentence more than a random list, practice constructing sentences and explaining what you have done, and you will know how to make sentences forever and you will know too when what you are writing doesn't make the grade because it has degenerated into a mere pile of discrete items.

  Stanley Fish

  Writing, Practice, Forever

  "How To Write A Sentence And How To Read One". Book by Stanley Fish, 2011.

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• We have good reason to believe that memories of early childhood do not persist in consciousness because of the absence or fragmentary character of language covering this period. Words serve as fixatives for mental images. . . . Even at the end of the second year of life when word tags exist for a number of objects in the child's life, these words are discrete and do not yet bind together the parts of an experience or organize them in a way that can produce a coherent memory.

  Selma Fraiberg

  Memories, Children, Believe

  Selma H. Fraiberg (2015). “The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood”, p.120, Simon and Schuster

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• 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

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• At the time, in 1996, an electronic band signing with a major label was something new, at least in France. Daft Punk knew that this meant a marathon of promotion, TV appearances, etc. To protect themselves and to be discrete, they came up with the masks and, three years later, the robot helmets.

  Pedro Winter

  Years, Labels, Band

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• There's a certain power in vague language, but I started to get more into the idea of really trying to have a discrete thought in the lyrics and to have songs that were about stuff - to try to make things more coherent.

  David Longstreth

  Song, Ideas, Trying

  "Dirty Projectors". Interview with Brandon Stosuy, pitchfork.com. July 2, 2012.

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• There is almost no evidence that diagnoses such as 'schizophrenia' and 'bipolar disorder' correspond to discrete entities ('natural kinds' in the language of philosophy).

  Richard Bentall

  Philosophy, Bipolar, Diagnosis

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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