Explanation Quotes - Page 16

• With all due respect to the world's great drummers - it ain't brain surgery.

  Micky Dolenz

  Brain, World, Drummer

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• You have to remember, Frank Sinatra is 82 years old, which is 240 in your years. He's lived three lifetimes! He has good and bad days. He can't run ... around as fast as he used to.

  Tom Dreesen

  Running, Bad Day, Years

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• I’m not interested in the words or the meaning of the words. I’m interested in disappearing in it completely, to not be aware of yourself at all. That’s the way music works for me. It’s purely emotional. It goes straight to the heart. There are no explanations. That’s just it.

  Karl Ove Knausgard

  Heart, Emotional, Way

  "In Search of Karl Ove Knausgard". Interview with Jared Levy, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 29, 2015.

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• I do loathe explanations.

  James M. Barrie

  Loathe

  "My Lady Nicotine". Book by James Matthew Barrie. Chapter 16, 1890.

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• Existence is a mystery , and one should accept it as a mystery and not pretend to have any explanation .

  Rajneesh

  Mystery, Accepting, Should

  "Never Born, Never Died". Book by Osho, 2002.

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• The nature of Christ is, I grant it, from one end to another, a web of mysteries; but this mysteriousness does not correspond to the difficulties which all existence contains. Let it be rejected, and the whole world is an enigma; let it be accepted, and we possess a wonderful explanation of the history of man.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Men, Doe, World

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 423, 1895.

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• We injure mysteries, which are matters of faith by any attempt at explanation in order to make them matters of reason.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Order, Matter, Mystery

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”

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• I should say that, in addition to my tree-love (it was originally called The Tree), it arose from my own pre-occupation with the Lord of the Rings, the knowledge that it would be finished in great detail or not at all, and the fear (near certainty) that it would be 'not at all'. The war had arisen to darken all horizons. But no such analyses are a complete explanation even of a short story.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  War, Tree, Details

  Letter to Caroline Everett, June 24, 1957.

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• Jesus doesn't give an explanation for the pain and sorrow of the world. He comes where the pain is most acute and takes it upon himself. Jesus doesn't explain why there is suffering, illness, and death in the world. He brings healing and hope. He doesn't allow the problem of evil to be the subject of a seminar. He allows evil to do its worst to him. He exhausts it, drains its power, and emerges with new life.

  N. T. Wright

  Death, Christian, Hope

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• It would take too long to explain the intimate alliance of contradictions in human nature which makes love itself wear at times the desperate shape of betrayal. And perhaps there is no possible explanation.

  Joseph Conrad

  Betrayal, Long, Making Love

  Joseph Conrad (2015). “Under Western Eyes (Unabridged Deluxe Edition): An Intriguing Tale of Espionage and Betrayal in Czarist Russia From the Renowned Author of Heart of Darkness, Nostromo & The Secret Agent (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)”, p.307, e-artnow

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• Historical science is not worse, more restricted, or less capable of achieving firm conclusions because experiment, prediction, and subsumption under invariant laws of nature do not represent its usual working methods. The sciences of history use a different mode of explanation, rooted in the comparative and observational richness in our data. We cannot see a past event directly, but science is usually based on inference, not unvarnished observation (you don't see electrons, gravity, or black holes either).

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Past, Law, Data

  "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, p. 279, 1989.

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• When we look to presumed sources of origin for competing evolutionary explanations of the giraffe's long neck, we find either nothing at all, or only the shortest of speculative conjectures. Length, of course, need not correspond with importance. Garrulous old Polonius , in a rare moment of clarity, reminded us that "brevity is the soul of wit" (and then immediately vitiated his wise observation with a flood of woolly words about Hamlet 's Madness.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Wise, Long, Soul

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• I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, "If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation." That is why 90% of academic film theory is bullshit. Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

  Roger Ebert

  Wise, Long Ago, Editors

  Roger Ebert (2009). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2010”, p.583, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are obviously wrong.

  Salman Rushdie

  Simple, Thinking, People

  "Talking with David Frost (Salman Rushdie)". TV Series, November 26, 1993.

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• Quantum mechanics provides us with an approximate, plausible, conjectural explanation of what actually is, or was, or may be taking place inside a cyclotron during a dark night in February.

  Edward Abbey

  Dark, Night, May

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.49, RosettaBooks

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• Even if surrounded with explanations, Auschwitz can never be grasped.

  Gunter Grass

  Auschwitz, Ifs

  "The Boys' Crusade". Book by Paul Fussell (p. 15), September 9, 2003.

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• At a certain stage of misery, you'll try anything to explain what's going on with you, even if you know it doesn't explain a thing and it's one failed explanation after another.

  Philip Roth

  Trying, Misery, Stage

  Philip Roth (2010). “The Humbling”, p.12, Random House

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• Science as we now understand the word is of later birth. If its germinal origin may be traced to the early period when Observation, Induction, and Deduction were first employed, its birth must be referred to that comparatively recent period when the mind, rejecting the primitive tendency to seek in supernatural agencies for an explanation of all external phenomena, endeavoured, by a systematic investigation of the phenomena themselves to discover their invariable order and connection.

  George Henry Lewes

  Agency, Order, Mind

  George Henry Lewes (1864). “Aristotle: a chapter from the history of science including analyses of Aristotle's scientific writings”, p.26, London : Smith, Elder and Company

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• The spontaneous tendency to invoke a Final Cause in explanation of every difficulty is characteristic of metaphysical philosophy. It arises from a general tendency towards the impersonation of abstractions which is visible throughout History.

  George Henry Lewes

  Philosophy, Finals, Causes

  George Henry Lewes (1864). “Aristotle: a chapter from the history of science including analyses of Aristotle's scientific writings”, p.86, London : Smith, Elder and Company

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• So multiverse or not, we still have to come to terms with the origin of the laws of nature. And the only viable explanation here is the divine Mind.

  Antony Flew

  Law, Mind, Divine

  Gary R. Habermas, Antony Flew, David J. Baggett (2009). “Did the Resurrection Happen?: A Conversation with Gary Habermas and Antony Flew”, p.100, InterVarsity Press

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• While about one-third of Americans believe in ghosts, you won't find many exhibits on these spooky beings down at the local science museum. Why? Well, one explanation that you might consider, ghosts are just figments of our highly fertile imaginations!

  Seth Shostak

  Believe, Museums, Imagination

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• Since my moral system rests on my accepted version of the facts, he who denies my moral judgments or my version of the facts, is to me perverse, alien, dangerous. How shall I account for him? The opponent has always to be explained, and the last explanation that we ever look for is that he sees a different set of facts. Such an explanation we avoid, because it saps the very foundation of our own assurance that we have seen life steadily and seen it whole.

  Walter Lippmann

  Looks, Sap, Opponents

  Walter Lippmann (2012). “Public Opinion”, p.69, Courier Corporation

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• Where two factions see vividly each its own aspect, and contrive their own explanations of what they see, it is almost impossible for them to credit each other with honesty.

  Walter Lippmann

  Honesty, Two, Credit

  Walter Lippmann (2012). “Public Opinion”, p.69, Courier Corporation

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• The teacher does best, not when he explains, but when he impels his pupils to seek themselves the explanation.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Teacher, Doe, Pupils

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• The first principle, when you don't know anything about the subject of a thesis, is to let the candidate talk, nodding now and then with an ambiguous smile. He thinks you know, and are counting his mistakes, and it unnerves him... the second principle of conducting an oral, ... is to pretend ignorance, and ask for explanations of very simple points. Of course your ignorance is real, but the examinee thinks you are being subtle, and that he is making an ass of himself, and this rattles him.

  Robertson Davies

  Mistake, Real, Ignorance

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