Generalities Quotes - Page 3

• Ambiguity lurks in generality, and may thus become an instrument of severity.

  Felix Frankfurter

  May, Instruments, Ambiguity

  "McComb v. Jacksonville Paper Co., 336 U.S. 187". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. February 14, 1949.

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• The opinion I have of the generality of women--who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time, forms a barrier against matrimony which I rejoice in.

  John Keats

  Children, Women, Giving

  John Keats (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of John Keats (Illustrated)”, p.752, Delphi Classics

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• The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Treasure, Safe, Virtuous Woman

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• The word 'security' is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security.

  Hugo Black

  Military, Real, Government

  "New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713". Concurring opinion, 1971.

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• Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ubiquity, Forever, Independence

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1911). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Lectures and biographical sketches”

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• The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbal generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflected from the minds of others.

  William Hazlitt

  Book, Reading, Mind

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Table Talk: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things”, p.46

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• We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities.

  Tim Berners-Lee

  Important, Technique, Fancy

  "Information Management: A Proposal". www.w3.org. March 1989.

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• In the natural sciences, and particularly in chemistry, generalities must come after the detailed knowledge of each fact and not before it.

  Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

  Knowledge, Science, Facts

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• ...the source of all great mathematics is the special case, the concrete example. It is frequent in mathematics that every instance of a concept of seemingly generality is, in essence, the same as a small and concrete special case.

  Paul Halmos

  Science, Essence, Special

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• In this art form, in any art form, generalities are useless.

  Zubin Mehta

  Art, Useless, Crafts

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• It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have preference above the accurate.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Easy, Certain

  David Hume, Tom L. Beauchamp (2000). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: A Critical Edition”, p.6, Oxford University Press

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• Generality is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient of reality; for mere individual existence or actuality without any regularity whatever is a nullity. Chaos is pure nothing.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Reality, Ingredients, Chaos

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1974). “Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce”, p.289, Harvard University Press

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• The Republican nominee-to-be, of course, is also a young man. But his approach is as old as McKinley. His party is the party of the past. His speeches are generalities from Poor Richard's Almanac. Their platform, made up of left-over Democratic planks, has the courage of our old convictions. Their pledge is a pledge to the status quo-and today there can be no status quo.

  John F. Kennedy

  Party, Men, Past

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• History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.

  Howard Nemerov

  Our World, Literature, Way

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• I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness.

  Wilfred Owen

  Reading, Thinking, Vagueness

  Wilfred Owen (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Wilfred Owen (Illustrated)”, p.410, Delphi Classics

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• Generalities don't count and won't help you in football.

  Knute Rockne

  Soccer, Football, Helping

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• Euclid avoids it [the treatment of the infinite]; in modern mathematics it is systematically introduced, for only then is generality obtained.

  Arthur Cayley

  Infinite, Modern, Euclid

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• What profound reward you must glean from studying the world so closely....Too many people turn away from small wonders, I find. There is so much more potency to be found in detail than generalities, but most souls cannot train themselves to sit still for it.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  People, Profound, Soul

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• The generality have considered that disease is but a confused and disordered effort in Nature, thrown down from her proper state, and defending herself in vain.

  Thomas Sydenham

  Nature, Confused, Effort

  Thomas Sydenham, Robert Gordon Latham (1848). “The Works of Thomas Sydenham, M.D.”, p.16

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• Our amended Constitution is the lodestar for our aspirations. Like every text worth reading, it is not crystalline. The phrasing is broad and the limitations of its provisions are not clearly marked. Its majestic generalities and ennobling pronouncements are both luminous and obscure. This ambiguity of course calls forth interpretation, the interaction of reader and text. The encounter with the Constitutional text has been, in many senses, my life's work.

  William J. Brennan

  Reading, Law, Encounters

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• God is basic Fact. He must not be thought of as a featureless generality. He is the most concrete thing there is.

  C. S. Lewis

  Facts, Concrete

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• Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality. Though different traditions may emphasize different aspects, it is only the interplay of these antithetic forces and the struggle for their synthesis that constitute the life, usefulness, and supreme value of mathematical science.

  Richard Courant

  Struggle, Expression, Perfection

  Richard Courant, Herbert Robbins, Ian Stewart (1996). “What is Mathematics?: An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods”, p.23, Oxford University Press, USA

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• For there is a great difference in delivery of the mathematics , which are the most abstracted of knowledges, and policy , which is the most immersed. And howsoever contention hath been moved , touching a uniformity of method in multiformity of matter, yet we see how that opinion, besides the weakness of it, hath been of ill desert towards learning, as that which taketh the way to reduce learning to certain empty and barren generalities; being but the very husks and shells of sciences, all the kernel being forced out and expulsed with the torture and press of the method.

  Francis Bacon

  Learning, Knowledge, Science

  "Collected Works of Francis Bacon".

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• It is told of Faraday that he refused to be called a physicist; he very much disliked the new name as being too special and particular and insisted on the old one, philosopher, in all its spacious generality: we may suppose that this was his way of saying that he had not over-ridden the limiting conditions of class only to submit to the limitation of a profession.

  Lionel Trilling

  Science, Class, Names

  Lionel Trilling, Leon Wieseltier (2009). “The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays”, p.425, Northwestern University Press

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• This is why being a helicopter pilot is so different from being an airplane pilot, and why in generality, airplane pilots are open, clear-eyed, buoyant extroverts, and helicopter pilots are brooding introspective anticipators of trouble. They know if something bad has not happened it is about to.

  Harry Reasoner

  Airplane, Ironic, Different

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