Explaining Quotes - Page 3

• Writing has been a way of explaining to myself the things I do not understand.

  Rosario Castellanos

  Writing, Way, Has Beens

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• If we go on explaining we shall cease to understand one another.

  Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

  Understanding, Goes On, Ifs

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• I had a clear idea about what time is till I was asked to explain it and ceased to understand it altogether as soon as I began explaining it.

  Saint Augustine

  Ideas, Clear

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• I never thought of myself as explaining cats in general. I simply viewed the cats I have known as characters in my life, often as quirky and complex as the humans with whom I have spent time.

  Marge Piercy

  Character, Cat, Quirky

  Interview with Charlotte Templin, margepiercy.com. May 2004.

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• For the absurd man, it is not a matter of explaining and solving, but of experiencing and describing. Everything begins with lucid indifference.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Matter, Indifference

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.94, Vintage

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• Jesus almost never talked in terms of explaining. He was always using enigmatic stories and difficult metaphors. He was always pulling people into some kind of participation.

  Eugene H. Peterson

  Jesus, Art, People

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• Explaining the $1000 in cash and two watches he was given by two Japanese journalists after he helped arrange a private interview for them with First Lady Nancy Reagan: I didn't accept it. I received it.

  Richard V. Allen

  Acceptance, Two, Watches

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• A defeated nation is always explaining itself. That's why the best storytellers are always from vanquished nations.

  Mark Richard

  Defeated, Storyteller, Nations

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• If it were possible to transfer the methods of physical or of biological science directly to the study of man, the transfer would long ago have been made ... We have failed not for lack of hypotheses which equate man with the rest of the universe, but for lack of a hypothesis (short of animism) which provides for the peculiar divergence of man ... Let me now state my belief that the peculiar factor in man which forbids our explaining his actions upon the ordinary plane of biology is a highly specialized and unstable biological complex, and that this factor is none other than language.

  Leonard Bloomfield

  Men, Long Ago, Peculiar

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• There's something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

  Maya Angelou

  Soul, Succeed, Courageous

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• Evolution as described by Charles Darwin is an scientific theory, abundantly reconfirmed, explaining physical phenomena by physical causes. Intelligent Design is a faith-based initiative in rhetorical argument. Should we teach I.D. in America's public schools? Yes, let's do - not as science, but alongside other spiritual beliefs, such as Islam, Zoroastrianism and the Hindu Idea that Earth rests on Chukwa, the giant turtle.

  David Quammen

  Spiritual, School, Intelligent

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• The highest wisdom has but one science-the science of the whole-the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Men, Creation, Whole

  Leo Tolstoy (2016). “WAR AND PEACE Complete Edition – All 15 Books in One Volume (World Classics Series): The Magnum Opus of the Greatest Russian Novelists and Author of Anna Karenina & The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Including the Biography & Memoirs of the Author)”, p.479, e-artnow

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• A recently reprinted memoir by Frederick Douglass has footnotes explaining what words like 'arraigned,' 'curried' and 'exculpate' meant, and explaining who Job was.   In other words, this man who was born a slave and never went to school educated himself to the point where his words now have to be explained to today's expensively under-educated generation.

  Thomas Sowell

  Jobs, School, Men

  Thomas Sowell (2006). “Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays”, Hoover Inst Press

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• Thanks to the central bank, most "monetary experts" and "leading macro-economists" can, by putting them on the payroll, be turned into government propagandists "explaining," like alchemists, how stones (paper) can be turned into bread (wealth).

  Hans-Hermann Hoppe

  Government, Alchemist, Experts

  "Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe on the Impracticality of One-World Government and the Failure of Western-style Democracy". Interview with Anthony Wile, www.thedailybell.com. March 27, 2011.

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• Although to penetrate into the intimate mysteries of nature and thence to learn the true causes of phenomena is not allowed to us, nevertheless it can happen that a certain fictive hypothesis may suffice for explaining many phenomena.

  Leonhard Euler

  Science, May, Statistics

  Leonhard Euler (1955). “Commentationes mechanicae ad theoriam corporum fluidorum pertinentes 2nd part”, p.80, Springer Science & Business Media

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• We need to raise the level of our game in terms of explaining the planetary warming by infrared absorption of CO2 etc. The missing area of understanding seems to be the actual physical mechanism. Lets target an explanation at an audience that has taken 1 year each of undergraduate physics and chemistry, plus calculus. Once we have something that is convincing at this level, we can work on how to communicate this to the interested public (i.e. those that hang out in the climate blogosphere). Willis Eschenbach’s help is needed in translating this for the WUWT crowd.

  Judith Curry

  Taken, Years, Games

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• Ezra Pound still lives in a village and his world is a kind of village and people keep explaining things when they live in a village.... I have come not to mind if certain people live in villages and some of my friends still appear to live in villages and a village can be cozy as well as intuitive but must one really keep perpetually explaining and elucidating?

  Gertrude Stein

  People, Mind, World

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• He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink.

  John Ray

  Writing, Use, Using Words

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• Does the critic wish to influence the kind of film that costs more than £250,000? It is as if he were to send a postcard to General Motors explaining that he would like them to make a raft next year, or a helicopter, instead of a car.

  Kenneth Tynan

  Years, Car, Wish

  "Footnote on Cinema". "Tynan Right and Left: Plays, Films, People, Places and Events". Book by Kenneth Tynan, p. 260, 1967.

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• Our teaching of mathematics revolves around a fundamental conflict. Rightly or wrongly, students are required to master a series of mathematical concepts and techniques, and anything that might divert them from doing so is deemed unnecessary. Putting mathematics into its cultural context, explaining what is has done for humanity, telling the story of its historical development, or pointing out the wealth of unsolved problems or even the existence of topics that do not make it into school textbooks leaves less time to prepare for the exam. So most of these things aren't discussed.

  Ian Stewart

  Education, Teaching, School

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• I like writing in an illustrative, descriptive way. I prefer describing to rather than explaining.

  Iron & Wine

  Writing, Way, Describing

  Interview with Joe Tangari, pitchfork.com. October 1, 2007.

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• I have this fantasy that the second movie would begin with a brief statement by all of the young actors who had played the children in the first movie, explaining how it had ruined their lives, so we would catch up with Emily Browning drinking heavily in the back of a burlesque bar, and maybe Liam Aiken would be living underneath a bridge, and then instead of the twins who played Sunny, we would just try to find the oldest woman in the world, and get an interview with her sitting in a trailer park.

  Daniel Handler

  Children, Drinking, Bridges

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2005.

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• As this body of knowledge has evolved, a much more critical job for researchers and scientists has evolved into explaining and educating policy makers and the public to the risks of global warming and the possible consequences of action or of no action.

  John Olver

  Jobs, Risk, Body

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• It is because I believe that it is in the power of such nations to lead the world back into the paths of peace that I propose to devote myself to explaining what, in my opinion, can and should be done to banish the fear of war that hangs so heavily over the world.

  Arthur Henderson

  War, Believe, Done

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• Fear and bigotry don’t need explaining. They simply are, like traffic jams and taxes.

  Eileen Wilks

  Fear, Needs, Jam

  Eileen Wilks (2011). “Death Magic”, p.25, Penguin

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