Elusive Quotes - Page 10

• Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon: it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it.

  Stuart Sutherland

  Reading, Doe, Impossible

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• The 'data' (given) of research are not so much given as taken out of a constantly elusive matrix of happenings. We should speak of capta rather than data.

  R. D. Laing

  Taken, Data, Research

  R.D Laing (1967). “The Politics of Experience”

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• The act of focusing our mightiest intellectual resources on the elusive goal of goto-less programs has helped us get our minds off all those really tough and possibly unresolvable problems and issues with which today's professional programmer would otherwise have to grapple.

  Unknown

  Issues, Goal, Intellectual

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• The Canadian Identity, it seems, is truly elusive only at home. Beyond the borders Canadians know exactly who they are, within they see themselves as part of a family, a street, a neighbourhood, a community, a province , a region, and on special occasions like Canada Day and Grey Cup weekend and, of course, during the Winter Olympics, a country called Canada. Beyond the borders, they pine; within the borders, they more often whine

  Roy MacGregor

  Country, Home, Winter

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• Fiction is too complicated and too elusive to break down into a set of tricks.

  Ben Marcus

  Fiction, Complicated, Breaking Down

  "'A reading list is not my trophy case.' An Interview with Ben Marcus About His Syllabus". Interview with Stephanie Palumbo, logger.believermag.com. June 24, 2014.

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• Worldwide, the twentieth century has seen the rise of extraordinary concentrations of economic and political power - evoking the people as the source of power while simultaneously privatizing its most meaningful exercise. Democracy always seems to be at least slightly elusive under such conditions.

  Thomas L. Dumm

  Meaningful, Exercise, People

  Interview with Jill Stauffer, staging.believermag.com. January 2009.

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• Every business has two financial objectives: One is to make money; the other, more elusive, is to make money consistently.

  Dave Liniger

  Two, Financial, Making Money

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• What is intelligence, anyway It is only a word that people use to name those unknown processes with which our brains solve problems we call hard. But whenever you learn a skill yourself, you're less impressed or mystified when other people do the same. This is why the meaning of 'intelligence' seems so elusive: It describes not some definite thing but only the momentary horizon of our ignorance about how minds might work.

  Marvin Minsky

  Ignorance, Skills, Names

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• Freedom is like holding a small bird. If you squeeze it too hard, you will kill it. But if you don't hold it firmly enough, it will fly away. Indeed, freedom can be both fragile and elusive, and so-as the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum so powerfully reminds us-it requires our eternal vigilance, our willingness, our ability, our conviction to stand up for that which we think is right.

  Alex Kotlowitz

  Thinking, Museums, Bird

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• I wrote much more quickly when I was younger. Over the years I've required more time in order for the pieces to arrive in a place I am happy with. The process cannot be rushed. I have to live with a piece for quite a while to feel it ultimately is where it needs to be - though anything resembling complete satisfaction remains elusive.

  Michael Hersch

  Years, Order, Satisfaction

  Interview with Elijah Ho, www.thecounterpoints.com. April 14, 2014.

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• Time's passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystalize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days. It is silent and elusive, refusing to be damned and dripped out day by day; it swirls through the mind while an entire lifetime can ride like foam on the deceptive, transparent waves and get sprayed onto the conciousness at ragged, unexpected intervals.

  Gloria Naylor

  Hurt, Memories, Glasses

  Gloria Naylor (2005). “The Women of Brewster Place”, p.35, Penguin

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• On these matters of specific fact, like is the mushroom an extraterrestrial and that sort of thing, I haven't the faintest idea. The mushroom itself is such a mercurial, elusive, Zen sort of personality that I never believe a word it says. I simply entertain its notions and try and sort through them, and I found that to be the most enriching approach to it.

  Terence McKenna

  Believe, Ideas, Mushrooms

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• As Bartok put it so succinctly: "Competitions are for horses." Nothing could be more barbaric that the practice or ranking artists as though they were divers or figure skaters....What one suspects is that the appetite for dividing the world into winners and losers, anointed and anonymous, is so compulsive that it feeds with special, vindictive hunger on the most elusive and ephemeral of subjects. For if music can be reduced to games of power and success, then innocence-love without profit-can be dealt a crushing blow.

  Russell Sherman

  Crush, Horse, Artist

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• The violence of language consists in its effort to capture the ineffable and, hence, to destroy it, to seize hold of that which must remain elusive for language to operate as a living thing.

  Judith Butler

  Effort, Violence, Language

  Judith Butler (2013). “Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative”, p.19, Routledge

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• Science is like a love affair with nature; an elusive, tantalising mistress. It has all the turbulence, twists and turns of romantic love, but thats part of the game.

  Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

  Happiness, Romantic Love, Games

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• Memories are made of peculiar stuff, elusive and yet compelling, powerful and fleet. You cannot trust your reminiscences, and yet there is no reality except the one we remember.

  Klaus Mann

  Memories, Powerful, Reality

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• Good architecture is still the difficult, conscientious, creative, expressive planning for that elusive synthesis that is a near-contradiction in terms: efficiency and beauty.

  Ada Louise Huxtable

  Creative, Synthesis, Planning

  Ada Louise Huxtable (2010). “On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change”, p.43, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• The good writer and the good actor are always searching for what is essential. It is a never-ending task because what is essential is always elusive and, therefore, fascinating.

  Glenda Jackson

  Essentials, Tasks, Actors

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• There is a world of difference between facts and the truth. You can have so many facts that you don't deal with the truth. You never get to the truth. You have the places where, the people who, the times when, the reasons why, the methods how - blah blah. And never get to the human truth. The human truth is as elusive as the air. And as important as the air.

  Maya Angelou

  Air, Differences, People

  Source: www.npr.org

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• I think love is one of the most elusive things in the world. I don't know that there's a perfect formula for it and that's what makes the stories interesting.

  Ashton Kutcher

  Love Is, Thinking, Perfect

  "Valentine's Day - Ashton Kutcher and Topher Grace interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• One's favorite book is as elusive as one's favorite pudding.

  E. M. Forster

  Book, Taste, Pudding

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• Nonviolence being the mightiest force in the world and also the most elusive in its working, demands the greatest exercise of faith.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Exercise, World, Demand

  Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, Ronald Duncan (2005). “Gandhi: Selected Writings”, p.95, Courier Corporation

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• There is something else I am after, out here in the wild. I am searching for an even more elusive prey . . . something that can only be found through the help of wilderness. I am looking for my heart.

  John Eldredge

  Heart, Helping, Wilderness

  John Eldredge (2011). “Wild at Heart Revised and Updated: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul”, p.3, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• The scientist does not defy the universe. He accepts it. It is his dish to savor, his realm to explore; it is his adventure and never-ending delight. It is complaisant and elusive but never dull. It is wonderful both in the small and in the large. In short, its exploration is the highest occupation for a gentleman.

  Isidor Isaac Rabi

  Adventure, Gentleman, Dull

  Isidor Isaac Rabi (1970). “Science: the center of culture”

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• Acting is somewhat mysteriously taught. There are so many different methods and systems and processes for teaching acting because it will always be an elusive art-form.

  Deborah Ann Woll

  Art, Teaching, Acting

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

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