Explanation Quotes - Page 3

• I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Fear, Ambiguity

  Abraham Lincoln (1992). “The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln”, Plume

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• Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.

  Jared Diamond

  Optimistic, Writing, Past

  "The New Humanists: Science at the Edge" by John Brockman, Barnes & Noble Publishing, (p. 31), 2003.

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• There is a great deal of unmapped country within us.

  George Eliot

  Country, Self, Ability

  'Daniel Deronda' (1876) bk. 3, ch. 24

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• The difference between a tool and a machine is not capable of very precise distinction; nor is it necessary, in a popular explanation of those terms, to limit very strictly their acceptation.

  Charles Babbage

  Differences, Tools, Machines

  Charles Babbage (1841). “On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures”, p.12

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• I'm not satisfied with the explanations I get from tv or from school.

  Erykah Badu

  School, Tvs, Satisfied

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• In fact, when you get right down to it, almost every explanation Man came up with for anything until about 1926 was stupid.

  Dave Barry

  Funny, Stupid, Science

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• The five steps in teaching an employee new skills are preparation, explanation, showing, observation and supervision.

  Bruce Barton

  Business, Teaching, Skills

  "Making Monitoring and Evaluation Systems Work: A Capacity Development Toolkit". Book by Marelize Görgens-Albino and Jody Zall Kusek, p. 347, 2009.

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• This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Philosophy, Men, World

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• On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.

  Charles Darwin

  Inspirational, Views, Ordinary

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)”, p.5428, Delphi Classics

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• We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Tired, Harvard, Aristocratic

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• Now I say I'm a diarist with an explanation I'll get back to you on. Someday I may try and write in memoir form.

  Carrie Fisher

  Writing, Trying, May

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• Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.

  Galileo Galilei

  Simple, Reality, Naked

  Galileo Galilei (2010). “Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences”, p.4, Cosimo, Inc.

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• People would ask me why I was doing what I was doing - but I always told them that I just loved to skate. There was no other explanation.

  Nancy Kerrigan

  People, Doing Me, Ask Me

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• There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Order, Evil, Atheism

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

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• The clearest explanation for the failure of any marriage is that the two people are incompatible; that is, that one is male and the other female.

  Anna Quindlen

  Marriage, Two, People

  Anna Quindlen (2010). “Living Out Loud”, p.78, Ballantine Books

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• If some really acute observer made as much of egotism as Freud has made of sex, people would forget a good deal about sex and find the explanation for everything in egotism.

  Wallace Stevens

  Sex, People, Political

  Holly Stevens, Wallace Stevens (1977). “Souvenirs and prophecies: the young Wallace Stevens”, Random House Inc

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• If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Women, Rights, Tests

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2008). “A Vindication of the Rights of Women & a Vindication of the Rights of Men”, p.17, Cosimo, Inc.

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• It is so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil when he is the only explanation of it.

  Ronald Knox

  Stupid, Believe, Civilization

  Let Dons Delight ch. 8 (1939)

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• Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god but a great rock and the sun a hot rock.

  Anaxagoras

  God, Moon, Rocks

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• The art has to make it on its own, without explanations, and it’s the same for poetry. If the poem or the painting has to be explained, then it’s a failure in communication.

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  Art, Communication, Painting

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• Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

  William Shakespeare

  Memorable, Disease And Death, Political

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 1, sc. 4, l. 90

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• A superstition is a premature explanation that overstays its time.

  George Iles

  Science, Statistics, Superstitions

  George Iles (1918). “Canadian Stories”

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• And the actual achievements of biology are explanations in terms of mechanisms founded on physics and chemistry, which is not the same thing as explanations in terms of physics and chemistry.

  Michael Polanyi

  Achievement, Chemistry, Physics

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• The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.

  Orson Scott Card

  Training, Important, No Hope

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• There is a strong tendency in explanatory prose to invoke quantities of tension, energy, and whatnot to explain the genesis of pattern. I believe that all such explanations are inappropriate or wrong.

  Gregory Bateson

  Strong, Believe, Energy

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