Obvious Quotes - Page 19

• The truth is, the Science of Nature has been already too long made only a work of the Brain and the Fancy: It is now high time that it should return to the plainness and soundness of Observations on material and obvious things.

  Robert Hooke

  Time, Nature, Science

  Robert Hooke (1906). “Extracts from Micrographia: Or, Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon”

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• Those who actually set out to see the fall of a city or those who choose to go to a front line, are obviously asking themselves to what extent they are cowards. But the tests they set themselves - there is a dead body, can you bear to look at it? - are nothing in comparison with the tests that are sprung on them. It is not the obvious tests that matter (do you go to pieces in a mortar attack?) but the unexpected ones (here is a man on the run, seeking your help - can you face him honestly?).

  James Fenton

  Running, War, Fall

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• It is obvious that all sense has gone out of modern marriage; which is, however, no objection to marriage but to modernity.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Funny, Marriage, Gone

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• Whatever the explanation, it's perfectly obvious that our educational system has nothing to do with education: it's a babysitting service designed to replicate the worst qualities of the parents.

  Stephen R. Donaldson

  Educational, School, Parent

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• An inventor is one who can see the applicability of means to supply demand five years before it is obvious to those skilled in the art.

  Reginald Fessenden

  Art, Mean, Years

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• It seems very strange ... that in the course of the world's history so obvious an improvement should never have been adopted. ... The next generation of Britishers would be the better for having had this extra hour of daylight in their childhood.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Science, History, Childhood

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• It was obvious-to me at any rate-that the answer was to why an enzyme is able to speed up a chemical reaction by as much as 10 million times. It had to do this by lowering the energy of activation-the energy of forming the activated complex. It could do this by forming strong bonds with the activated complex, but only weak bonds with the reactants or products.

  Linus Pauling

  Strong, Energy, Enzymes

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• Sir Hiram Maxim is a genuine and typical example of the man of science, romantic, excitable, full of real but somewhat obvious poetry, a little hazy in logic and philosophy, but full of hearty enthusiasm and an honorable simplicity. He is, as he expresses it, "an old and trained engineer," and is like all of the old and trained engineers I have happened to come across, a man who indemnifies himself for the superhuman or inhuman concentration required for physical science by a vague and dangerous romanticism about everything else.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Philosophy, Real, Science

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• If a person weren't failing in some way, shape or form, would he or she need to blame, justify, or complain? The obvious answer is no.

  T. Harv Eker

  Secret, Complaining, Needs

  FaceBook post by T. Harv Eker from Nov 02, 2010

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• Abstract understanding doesn't mean arbitrary sloshing and messing. Abstract art is controlled visual magic based on laws and methodology. Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery rather that obvious description. Like a good poem, a good abstraction attacks your feelings before your understanding. Abstraction within realism adds zest and excitement to otherwise dull subject matter. Abstract understanding takes time and patience.

  Robert Genn

  Art, Mean, Zest

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• [Science] is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. ... The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Self, Two

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.362, Ballantine Books

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• But it is just this characteristic of simplicity in the laws of nature hitherto discovered which it would be fallacious to generalize, for it is obvious that simplicity has been a part cause of their discovery, and can, therefore, give no ground for the supposition that other undiscovered laws are equally simple.

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, Simple, Discovery

  Bertrand Russell (1981). “Mysticism and Logic, and Other Essays”, p.78, Rowman & Littlefield

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• If the proof starts from axioms, distinguishes several cases, and takes thirteen lines in the text book ... it may give the youngsters the impression that mathematics consists in proving the most obvious things in the least obvious way.

  George Polya

  Book, Obvious Things, Giving

  George Pólya (1968). “Mathematical discovery: on understanding, learning, and teaching problem solving”

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• Some persons have contended that mathematics ought to be taught by making the illustrations obvious to the senses. Nothing can be more absurd or injurious: it ought to be our never-ceasing effort to make people think, not feel.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Science, Thinking, Illustration

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1856). “Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton: A List of All the Ms. Emendations in Mr. Collier's Folio, 1632”, p.23

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• The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. ... It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wilderness lies in wait.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Lying, Waiting

  "Orthodoxy". Chapter VI: "The Paradoxes of Christianity". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1908.

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• It is a curious property of research activity that after the problem has been solved the solution seems obvious. This is true not only for those who have not previously been acquainted with the problem, but also for those who have worked over it for years.

  Edwin Land

  Science, Years, Research

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• Experience teaches, that men are often so much governed by what they are accustomed to see and practice, that the simplest and most obvious improvements . . . are adopted with hesitation, reluctance, and slow gradations.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Education, Men, Practice

  Alexander Hamilton, Donald R. Hickey, Connie D. Clark (2006). “Citizen Hamilton: The Wit and Wisdom of an American Founder”, p.73, Rowman & Littlefield

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• I think the real reason is that life has no meaning. I mean, no obvious meaning. You wake up, you go to work, you do stuff. I think everybody's always looking for something a little unusual that can preoccupy them and help pass the time.

  Susan Orlean

  Real, Mean, Thinking

  Susan Orlean (2000). “The Orchid Thief”, Ballantine Books

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• It's obvious that they're going to want Ali's daughter and Frazier's daughter to fight it out.

  Robert Goulet

  Daughter, Mother, Fighting

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• The more statistically improbable a thing is, the less we can believe that it just happened by blind chance. Superficially, the obvious alternative to chance is an intelligent Designer.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, Intelligent, Alternatives

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• Inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided upon a number, than when it is to fall singly upon one. A spirit of faction . . . will often hurry the persons of whom they were composed into improprieties and excesses for which they would blush in a private capacity.

  James Madison

  Fall, Numbers, Excess

  Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison (2018). “America's Founding Documents: The Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the United States Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and the Bill of Rights”, p.128, First Avenue Editions

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• The most obvious feature of the brain is that it is not homogeneous, but composed of different regions. There are no intrinsic moving parts, no obvious way of knowing where to start to understand what is actually happening, or what functions are taking place.

  Susan Greenfield, Baroness Greenfield

  Moving, Knowing, Brain

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• Whenever we have excess, giving should be our natural response. It should be the automatic decision, the obvious thing to do in light of Scripture and human need.

  Randy Alcorn

  Light, Obvious Things, Giving

  Randy Alcorn (2011). “Money, Possessions, and Eternity”, p.461, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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• President Hinckley is not only a living prophet but also a living seer. He sees things that others do not see. He has the gift of discernment; he is an optimist and a realist. . . . Through President Hinckley's divine guidance, the Church has received many far-reaching blessings, many that are not obvious. I strongly encourage each of you to more closely follow his counsel and guidance, for truly 'a seer hath the Lord raised up unto his people' (Moses 6:36).

  David E. Sorensen

  Blessing, Divine Guidance, People

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• We cannot conceive how the Foetus is form'd in the Womb, nor as much as how a Plant springs from the Earth we tread on ... And if we are ignorant of the most obvious things about us, and the most considerable within our selves, 'tis then no wonder that we know not the constitution and powers of the creatures, to whom we are such strangers.

  Joseph Glanvill

  Spring, Knowledge, Science

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