Explanation Quotes - Page 4

• I think it is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality

  Harold Geneen

  Leadership, Business, Reality

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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

  7 Copy quote

• If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation.

  Haruki Murakami

  Life, Ifs

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Mar 19, 2013

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• De Morgan was explaining to an actuary what was the chance that a certain proportion of some group of people would at the end of a given time be alive; and quoted the actuarial formula, involving p [pi], which, in answer to a question, he explained stood for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. His acquaintance, who had so far listened to the explanation with interest, interrupted him and exclaimed, 'My dear friend, that must be a delusion, what can a circle have to do with the number of people alive at a given time?'

  W. W. Rouse Ball

  Death, Science, Circles

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• Beauty is a form of genius -- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Philosophy, Dark Water

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.25, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Astonishment, Gateways

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• Communism to me is one-third practice and two-thirds explanation.

  Will Rogers

  Practice, Two, Communism

  Paula Love, Will Rogers (1972). “The Will Rogers book”, Texian Pr

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• Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations.

  Stephen Hawking

  Beautiful, Simple, Connections

  "Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story'". Interview with Ian Sample, www.theguardian.com.

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• Love is not a product of reasonings and statistics. It just comes-none knows whence-and cannot explain itself.

  Mark Twain

  Love, Knowing, Miracle

  Mark Twain, Howard G. Baetzhold, Joseph B. Mccullough (1996). “The Bible According to Mark Twain”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

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• I would teach the world that science is the best way to understand the world and that for any set of observations, there is only one correct explanation. Also, science is value-free, as it explains the world as it is. Ethical issues arise only when science is applied to technology - from medicine to industry.

  Lewis Wolpert

  Science, Technology, Ethical Issues

  14 Copy quote

• I may have said the same thing before... but my explanation, I am sure, will always be different.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Education, Different

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.152, Wordsworth Editions

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• The more minimal the art, the more maximum the explanation.

  Hilton Kramer

  Art, Kramer, Maximum

  "Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations". 1989.

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• Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. Everything is decided by the interpretation and explanation of the facts, by the ideas and the theories.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Ideas, Facts, Interpretation

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist”, p.465, VM eBooks

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• Being an artist and being a teacher are two conflicting things. When I paint, my work manifests the unexpected... In teaching it's just the opposite. I must account for every line, shape and colour and I am forced to give an explanation of the inexplicable and account for the variety of styles the students present.

  Pierre Alechinsky

  Teacher, Teaching, Artist

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• Scientists are the easiest to fool. ... They think in straight, predictable, directable, and therefore misdirectable, lines. The only world they know is the one where everything has a logical explanation and things are what they appear to be. Children and conjurors-they terrify me. Scientists are no problem; against them I feel quite confident.

  James P. Hogan

  Children, Science, Thinking

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• With old inflation riding the headlines, I have read till I am bleary-eyed, and I can't get head from tails of the whole thing. ... Now we are living in an age of explanations-and plenty of 'em, too-but no two things that's been done to us have been explained twice the same way, by even the same man. It's and age of in one ear and out the other.

  Will Rogers

  Science, Men, Two

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• When life caves in, you do not need reasons -- you need comfort. You do not need some answers -- you need someone. And Jesus does not come to us with an explanation -- He comes to us with His presence.

  Bob Benson

  Jesus, Comfort, Doe

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• The evolutionary explanation for origins, although impossible either to prove or to test scientifically, is nevertheless defended by its proponents on the basis that it is the only explanation which is naturalistic, not involving the 'supernatural' element of a divine Creator.

  Henry M. Morris

  Supernatural Elements, Tests, Impossible

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• It is characteristic of science that the full explanations are often seized in their essence by the percipient scientist long in advance of any possible proof.

  John Desmond Bernal

  Science, Essence, Long

  John Desmond Bernal (1967). “The origin of life”

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• Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of facts will certainly reject my theory.

  Charles Darwin

  Science, Rejection, Weight

  Charles Darwin (1869). “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, p.418

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• Things happen, people change,' is what Amanda said. For her that covered it. You wanted an explanation, and ending that would assign blame and dish up justice. You considered violence and you considered reconciliation . But what you are left with is a premonition of the way your life will fade behind you, like a book you have read too quickly, leaving a dwindling trail of images and emotions, until all you can remember is a name.

  Jay McInerney

  Life, Book, Names

  Jay McInerney (2011). “Bright Lights, Big City”, p.127, Vintage

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• It is the desire for explanations that are at once systematic and controllable by factual evidence that generates science; and it is the organization and classification of knowledge on the basis of explanatory principles that is the distinctive goal of the sciences.

  Ernest Nagel

  Knowledge, Science, Organization

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• The argument advanced by the supporters of the theory of hereditary transmission does not furnish a satisfactory explanation of the cause of the inequalities and diversities of the universe.

  Swami Abhedananda

  Science, Diversity, Doe

  Swami Abhedananda (2005). “Vedanta Philosophy”, p.34, 1st World Publishing

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• Twenty years ago many chemists would have defended the theory of bond arms as a satisfactory explanation because they had become accustomed to thinking of it as unique and as ultimate.

  Henry Margenau

  Science, Unique, Thinking

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• Why it is that animals, instead of developing in a simple and straightforward way, undergo in the course of their growth a series of complicated changes, during which they often acquire organs which have no function, and which, after remaining visible for a short time, disappear without leaving a trace ... To the Darwinian, the explanation of such facts is obvious. The stage when the tadpole breathes by gills is a repetition of the stage when the ancestors of the frog had not advanced in the scale of development beyond a fish.

  Francis Maitland Balfour

  Science, Animal, Simple

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