Exactness Quotes - Page 2

• Departure from the literal aspect, rather than mechanical exactness, is the code of the true artist. However, departures are the result of studied intent rather than inability.

  Edgar Alwin Payne

  Artist, Inability, Departure

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• One thing I learned from meteorology is that being an actual science was no guarantee of exactness.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Meteorology, Guarantees, One Thing

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

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• Whatever does not spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but still remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Spring, Men, Choices

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• This is a diseased century. We diagnosed the disease and its causes with microscopic exactness, but whenever we applied the healing knife a new sore appeared. Our will was hard and pure, we should have been loved by the people, but they hate us. Why are we so odious and detested? We brought you truth and in our mouth it sounded like a lie. We brought you freedom, and it looks in our hands like a whip. We brought you the living life, and where our voice is heard the trees wither and there is a rustling of dry leaves. We brought you the promise of the future, but our tongue stammered and barked.

  Arundhati Roy

  Lying, Hate, Live Life

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Many leave the labours of half their life to their executors and to chance, because they will not send them abroad unfinished, and are unable to finish them, having prescribed to themselves such a degree of exactness as human diligence can scarcely ontain.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Degrees, Half

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An essay on his life and genius”, p.262

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• The lives of great men cannot be writ with any tolerable degree of elegance or exactness within a short time after their decease.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Degrees, Elegance

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• In 1815, M. Charles Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D-----. He was a man of seventy-five, and had occupied the bishopric of D----- since 1806. Although it in no manner concerns, even in the remotest degree, what we have to relate, it may not be useless, were it only for the sake of exactness in all things, to notice here the reports and gossip which had arisen on his account from the time of his arrival in the diocese.

  Victor Hugo

  Book, Men, Gossip

  Victor Hugo (1994). “Les Miserables Volume One”, p.3, Wordsworth Editions

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• The space you occupy and the authority you exercise may be measured with mathematical exactness by the service you render.

  Napoleon Hill

  Exercise, Space, May

  Napoleon Hill (2008). “The Law of Success: The Master Wealth-Builder's Complete and Original Lesson Plan forAchieving Your Dreams”, p.195, Penguin

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• Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Book, Would Be, Speech

  "The Philosophy of Paine" by Thomas A. Edison, June 7, 1925.

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• I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.

  Adam Smith

  Mean, Political, Arithmetic

  Adam Smith (2007). “The Wealth of Nations: An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: With an introduction by Jonathan B. Wight, University of Richmond”, p.474, Harriman House Limited

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• In proportion as the machine is improved and performs man's work with an ever increasing rapidity and exactness, the labourer, instead of prolonging his former rest times, redoubles his ardour, as if he wished to rival the machine. O, absurd and murderous competition!

  Paul Lafargue

  Men, Competition, Machines

  Paul Lafargue (1984). “Selected Marxist Writings of Paul Lafargue”

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• No technique is possible when men are free. Technique requires predictability and, no less, exactness of prediction. It is necessary, then, that technique prevail over the human being.

  Jacques Ellul

  Men, Technique, Predictions

  "The Technological Society". Book by Jacques Ellul, translated by John Wilkinson, p. 138, 1964.

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• I've never found anything to be lacking in a blurry canvas. Quite the contrary: you can see many more things in it than in a sharply focused image. A landscape painted with exactness forces you to see a determined number of clearly differentiated trees, while in a blurry canvas you can perceive as many trees as you want. The painting is more open.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Numbers, Tree

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

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• Your service will be arduous, it will be painful and rigorous, and the slightest delinquencies will be requited immediately with corporal and afflicting punishments; hence, I must recommend to you prompt exactness, submissiveness, and total self-abnegation that you be enabled to heed naught but our desires; let them be your laws, fly to do their bidding, anticipate them, cause them to be born.

  Marquis de Sade

  Self, Law, Punishment

  MARQUIS DE SADE (2017). “120 days of sodom”, p.59, Youcanprint

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• I believe that ideas such as absolute certitude, absolute exactness, final truth, etc. are figments of the imagination which should not be admissible in any field of science... This loosening of thinking seems to me to be the greatest blessing which modern science has given to us. For the belief in a single truth and in being the possessor thereof is the root cause of all evil in the world.

  Max Born

  Believe, Thinking, Blessing

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• Many writers profess great exactness in punctuation who never yet made a point.

  George D. Prentice

  Writing, Editing, Punctuation

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• It will be contributing to bring forward the moment in which, seeing clearer into the nature of things, and having learnt to distinguish real knowledge from what has only the appearance of it, we shall be led to seek for exactness in every thing.

  Jean-Andre Deluc

  Real, Knowledge, Science

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• He would be guilty of mortal sin, because he exposes himself to the danger of grievously offending God. Hence, before he acts he must lay aside the doubt; and if he has not hitherto done so, he must confess it, at least, as it is before God. But the scrupulous, who have doubts about everything, must follow another rule: they must obey their confessor. When he tells them to conquer their doubts, and to act against scruples, they should obey with exactness; otherwise they will render themselves unable and unfit to perform any spiritual exercise.

  Alphonsus Liguori

  Spiritual, Exercise, Offending

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• Granted the endless variations of moral customs, still the essential standards persist. As in a scientific laboratory, all else may change but the standards are unalterable- disinterested love of truth, fidelity to facts, accuracy in measurement, exactness of verification-so, in life as a whole, the towering ethical criteria remain unshaken. Falsehood is never better than truth, theft better than than honesty, treachery better than loyalty, cowardice better than courage.

  Harry Emerson Fosdick

  Loyalty, Truth, Honesty

  Harry Emerson Fosdick (1952). “A faith for tough times”

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• The object of geometry in all its measuring and computing, is to ascertain with exactness the plan of the great Geometer, to penetrate the veil of material forms, and disclose the thoughts which lie beneath them? When our researches are successful, and when a generous and heaven-eyed inspiration has elevated us above humanity, and raised us triumphantly into the very presence, as it were, of the divine intellect, how instantly and entirely are human pride and vanity repressed, and, by a single glance at the glories of the infinite mind, are we humbled to the dust.

  Benjamin Peirce

  Lying, Inspiration, Science

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• Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them. He must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.

  Francis Parkman

  Taken, Character, History

  Francis Parkman, David Levin (1983). “France and England in North America: Pioneers of France in the New World. The Jesuits of North America in the seventeenth century. La Salle and the discovery of the Great West. The old régime in Canada”, p.16, Library of America

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• When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again.

  Anne Lamott

  Absurdity Of Life, Dancing, Laughing

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.237, Anchor

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• On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Knowledge, Fake, Branches

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• Theories of "natural law" and the "law of nations" are another excellent example of discussions destitute of all exactness. [...] "Natural law" is simply that law of which the person using the phrase approves[....]

  Vilfredo Pareto

  Law, Example, Phrases

  Vilfredo Pareto (1942). “Non-logical conduct”

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• Exactness in little things is a wonderful source of cheerfulness.

  Frederick William Faber

  Details, Littles, Little Things

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