Generalization Quotes - Page 5

• Generalization is flawed thinking only when applied to individuals. It is the most accurate way to describe the mass, the Wad. And yours is a democracy, a dictatorship of the Wad.

  Trevanian

  Thinking, Democracy, Way

  Trevanian (2011). “Shibumi”, p.198, Hachette UK

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• The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific "truth." But what is the source of knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations--to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Science, Math, Simple

  Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, Matthew Sands (2015). “The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I: The New Millennium Edition: Mainly Mechanics, Radiation, and Heat”, p.45, Basic Books

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• How can a modern anthropologist embark upon a generalization with any hope of arriving at a satisfactory conclusion? By thinking of the organizational ideas that are present in any society as a mathematical pattern.

  Edmund Leach

  Hope, Math, Thinking

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• Most people traffic in abstractions and generalizations because they are grossly incompetent at culturing their intuition or powers of evidency, refining it to grasp the Thisness (Haecceitas) of what is before them. Thinking is like a Stradivarius that has more potential variations in how it is played than any human can finitely perform or capture.

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Thinking, People

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• I am bad at cultural generalizations but I would venture to say that by a wide margin there is less hypocrisy about sex in France than in America.

  Frederick Wiseman

  Sex, America, Hypocrisy

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

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• I don't want to make vast generalizations about people who go into legal professions, but there are similarities in the barristers that I met and interacted with, in the sense that they tend to be highly eloquent, highly analytical, thinking people who have a very rapid-fire think-before-they-speak button, as it were.

  Rebecca Hall

  Thinking, Fire, People

  Source: collider.com

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• What I think is great about Pippin, specifically, and I wouldn't make this generalization about all musicals, is that it is about how we tell stories and the way stories are very subjective. How we tell some things and leave other things out in the way The Princess Bride is or The Wizard of Oz is, which both have a framing device.

  James Ponsoldt

  Princess, Thinking, Stories

  Source: collider.com

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• Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematise what it reveals. He arrives at two generalisations: No sea-creature is less than two inches long. (2) All sea-creatures have gills. These are both true of his catch, and he assumes tentatively that they will remain true however often he repeats it.

  Arthur Eddington

  Ocean, Sea, Two

  "The Philosophy of Physical Science". Book by Arthur Eddington, 1938.

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• I think it's very difficult to make any single, generalized statements about the press, of course the press is such varied character and quality and to the different media and so on, so a generalization is very difficult.

  Walter Millis

  Character, Thinking, Media

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• There is nothing in the education of the average non-scientific human being to discourage him from the habit of generalizing from little or no evidence, and worse still and far more important, nothing to discourage him from the habit of starting with a generalization and ending up with the individual, instead of the other way round.

  Gwethalyn Graham

  Average, Important, Littles

  Gwethalyn Graham (1944). “Earth and High Heaven”

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• there are people who are born superficial ... They prefer not to have to deal with more than a limited number of oversimplified ideas - they prefer the book reviews to the books, the headlines and the leading paragraph to the full report, the generalization to the facts, and the negative to the positive.

  Gwethalyn Graham

  Book, Ideas, Numbers

  Gwethalyn Graham (1944). “Earth and High Heaven”, Philadelphia and New York : J.B. Lippincott

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• But here’s the thing: Appropriation occurs when a style leads to racist generalizations or stereotypes where it originated, but is deemed as high fashion, cool, or funny when the privileged take it for themselves. Appropriation occurs when the appropriator is not aware of the deep significance of the culture that they are partaking in.

  Amandla Stenberg

  Fashion, Style, Culture

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• Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures of images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action.

  Peter Senge

  World, Action, Assumption

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• The most obvious purpose of college education is to help students acquire information and knowledge by acquainting them with facts, theories, generalizations, principles, and the like. This purpose scarcely requires justification.

  Derek Bok

  College, Principles, Purpose

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• I tend to support and get behind issues instead of candidates, because of the whole 'Super Bowl' generalization of our world - You're on this side, I'm on that side; you're a Republican, I'm a Democrat; you're country music, I'm rock music.

  Brandi Carlile

  Country, Issues, Our World

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• Let me go out on a limb and suggest that those who see hints of a new class ideology developing around information technology are not necessarily wild-eyed. "Bit-twiddlers" are neither exactly proletariat nor bourgeoisie. They may not own the means of production in the sense that Marx argued, but they certainly do have significantly control over those means, in a more profound way than the term "symbols analysts" or "knowledge workers" captures. As a rough generalization, they value science and technological problem-solving elegance equally at least with profit.

  Steven Weber

  Mean, Technology, Class

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• One generalization that is supported both by research and experience is that effective two-way communication is essential to proper functioning of the leader-follower relationship.

  John W. Gardner

  Communication, Two, Leader

  JOHN W. GARDNER (1986). “LEADERSHIP PAPERS/3: THE HEART OF THE MATTER LEADER-CONSTITUENT INTERACTION”

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• The word generalization in literature usually means covering too much territory too thinly to be persuasive, let alone convincing. In science, however, a generalization means a principle that has been found to hold true in every special case.... The principle of leverage is a scientific generalization.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Mean, Special, Literature

  R. Buckminster Fuller (1982). “Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking”, p.26, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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• Data without generalization is just gossip.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Data, Gossip

  Robert M. Pirsig (1991). “LILA An Inquriry into Morals”

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• I'm always loath to make generalizations about what is for children and what isn't. Certainly children's literature as a genre has some restrictions, so certain things will never pop up in a Snicket book. But I didn't know anything about writing for children when I started - this is the theme of naïveté creeping up on us once more - and I sort of still don't, and I'm happy that adults are reading them as well as children.

  Daniel Handler

  Children, Book, Reading

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

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• In a novella, a whole lot of crap can happen, and you can build momentum and suspense and leave room for a surprise or three. Stories are cut down to the most essential elements, and novels (this might be an unfair generalization on my part) are big fat clumsy efforts where the reader can snooze for a couple chapters and miss nothing of consequence. Hence my love for the middle way.

  Robert Reed

  Couple, Cutting, Effort

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• In your 20s - and these are generalizations of course - I feel like I didn't care about as many things or as many people, or even myself, as much. There's more recklessness and more ruthlessness; you're not as considerate of how things land with other people I think.

  Naomi Watts

  Thinking, Land, People

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• As a broad generalization, big businesses have no moral objections to being whores. Getting into bed with Uncle Sam is all a question of price, not principle.

  Jonah Goldberg

  Uncles, Bed, Principles

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• So far, we have been able to study only one evolving system and we cannot wait for interstellar flight to provide us with a second. If we want to discover generalizations about evolving systems, we will have to look at artificial ones.

  John Maynard Smith

  Waiting, Want, Able

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• In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations! Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions. Nor is it necessary to portray many main characters. Let two people be the center of gravity in your story: he and she.

  Anton Chekhov

  Hero, Character, Two

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