Phenomenon Quotes - Page 23

• All interesting issues in natural history are questions of relative frequency, not single examples. Everything happens once amidst the richness of nature. But when an unanticipated phenomenon occurs again and again—finally turning into an expectation—then theories are overturned.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Issues, Interesting, Expectations

  Stephen Jay Gould (1990). “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History”, p.136, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The only good grades I ever got in school before I was kicked out were for creative writing. I thought that fiction might be in my future but then my career took a different path once the Beatles showed me what a blast being in a band could be. Writing my memoir Late, Late at Night reminded me how much I love the craft. So I decided to give fiction a shot again.Magnificent Vibration is the result. I’m still not quite sure where it came from, but once I got going, it practically wrote itself. I’ve heard writers I admire speak of that phenomenon, so maybe I’m on the right track.

  Rick Springfield

  Writing, School, Night

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• A natural response to a natural phenomenon -that is the secret of success in business and management. You will always win if you rely on common sense.

  Konosuke Matsushita

  Success, Winning, Common Sense

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• Elizabeth Taylor is, in my opinion, the greatest actress in film history. She instinctively understands the camera and its nonverbal intimacies. Opening her violet eyes, she takes us into the liquid realm of emotion, which she inhabits by Pisces intuition. Richard Burton said that Taylor showed him how to act for the camera. Economy and understatement are essential. At her best, Elizabeth Taylor simply is. An electric, erotic charge vibrates the space between her face and the lens. It is an extra-sensory, pagan phenomenon.

  Camille Paglia

  Eye, Film History, Space

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays”, p.16, Vintage

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• I met people on college campuses who were defining themselves as genderqueer to express revolutionary feelings, or to communicate their individuality; they were gender fluid without being gender dysphoric. This phenomenon may be culturally significant, but it has only a little bit in common with the people who feel they can have no authentic self in their birth gender.

  Andrew Solomon

  College, Self, People

  Andrew Solomon (2014). “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity”, p.660, Simon and Schuster

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• You see, if the height of the mercury [barometer] column is less on the top of a mountain than at the foot of it (as I have many reasons for believing, although everyone who has so far written about it is of the contrary opinion), it follows that the weight of the air must be the sole cause of the phenomenon, and not that abhorrence of a vacuum, since it is obvious that at the foot of the mountain there is more air to have weight than at the summit, and we cannot possibly say that the air at the foot of the mountain has a greater aversion to empty space than at the top.

  Blaise Pascal

  Believe, Air, Feet

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• The "health, education, and welfare" section of government is another boondoggle. First we manufacture indigent and superfluous people by legal monopolies in land, money and idea patents, erecting tariff barriers to protect monopolies from foreign competition, and taxing laborers to subsidize rich farmers and privileged manufacturers. Then we create "social workers, " etc., to care for them and thereby establish a self-aggravating and permanent institutionalized phenomenon.

  Laurance Labadie

  Government, Self, Health Education

  Laurance Labadie (1978). “Selected Essays”

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• Once you can reproduce a phenomenon, you are well on the way to understanding it.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Understanding, Statistics, Way

  Arthur C. Clarke (2011). “Voices from the Sky”, p.46, Hachette UK

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• A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough.

  William James

  Statistics, Enough, Hypothesis

  William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.462, Library of America

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• The Strange Loop phenomenon occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through levels of some hierarchial system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started.

  Douglas Hofstadter

  Moving, Levels, Strange

  "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid". Book by Douglas Hofstadter, 1979.

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• What are the sources of an illumination? To me, they come after hours of searching and keeping my soul ready. Yet they come in a flash, as a religious phenomenon. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter had such an illumination, beginning my long search for the truth of the story and flashing light into the long two years ahead.

  Carson McCullers

  Lonely, Religious, Heart

  Carson McCullers, Carlos L. Dews (2001). “Illumination and night glare: the unfinished autobiography of Carson McCullers”, Univ of Wisconsin Pr

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• Of course the word chaos is used in rather a vague sense by a lot of writers, but in physics it means a particular phenomenon, namely that in a nonlinear system the outcome is often indefinitely, arbitrarily sensitive to tiny changes in the initial condition

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Mean, Outcomes, Tiny

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• Marriage is going to disappear, should disappear. And now the point is coming in the history of humanity where it becomes possible that marriage can disappear. It is already an outmoded phenomenon, it has lived too long and it has created nothing but misery. Marriage should disappear and love should flower again. One should live with insecurity and freedom. That I call intelligence.

  Rajneesh

  Marriage, Flower, Long

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• To me, marriage is a dead thing. It is an institution, and you cannot live in an institution; only mad people live in institutions. It is a substitute for love. Love is dangerous: to be in love is to be in a storm, constantly. You need courage and you need awareness, and you are to be ready for anything. There is no security in love; love is insecure. Marriage is a security: the registry office, the police, the court are behind it. The state, the society, the religion - they are all behind it. Marriage is a social phenomenon. Love is individual, personal, intimate.

  Rajneesh

  Marriage, Insecure, Love Is

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• It is a way to avoid difficulties, but whenever you avoid difficulties and challenges you have avoided growth also. Married people never grow. Lovers grow, because they have to meet the challenge every moment - and with no security. They have to create an inner phenomenon. With security you need not bother to create anything; the society helps.

  Rajneesh

  Marriage, People, Challenges

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• The peculiar interest of magic squares and all lusus numerorum in general lies in the fact that they possess the charm of mystery. They appear to betray some hidden intelligence which by a preconceived plan produces the impression of intentional design, a phenomenon which finds its close analogue in nature.

  Paul Carus

  Lying, Squares, Design

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• The mathematical phenomenon always develops out of simple arithmetic, so useful in everyday life, out of numbers, those weapons of the gods: the gods are there, behind the wall, at play with numbers.

  Le Corbusier

  Wall, Simple, Play

  Le Corbusier (1968). “The modulor: a harmonious measure to the human scale, universally applicable to architecture and mechanics”

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• Every phenomenon on earth is symbolic, and each symbol is an open gate through which the soul, if it is ready, can enter into the inner part of the world, where you and I and day and night are all one.

  Hermann Hesse

  Night, Soul, One Day

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• What a searching preacher of self-command is the varying phenomenon of health.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Self, Healthy, Preacher

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.22, Modern Library

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• But then you become closed. Then you start dying as far as your intelligence is concerned because intelligence needs the open sky, the wind, the air, the sun in order to grow, to expand, to flow. To remain alive it needs a constant flow; if it becomes stagnant it becomes slowly slowly a dead phenomenon.

  Rajneesh

  Order, Wind, Sky

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• If this is understood then things become very clear. Misery makes you special. Happiness is a universal phenomenon, there is nothing special about it.

  Rajneesh

  Ego, Special, Misery

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• The experience of bliss will give you an insight into the very phenomenon of beauty. Not only does it make you beautiful, it suddenly transforms the whole world. The whole world becomes beautiful because the world reflects you, it is a mirror.

  Rajneesh

  Beauty, Beautiful, Mirrors

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• Like it or not - and often we don't - power is a pervasive phenomenon. From midnight decisions in the Oval Office that risk the lives of young Americans to quarrels over the kitchen table, power is part of every human equation. Yes, it can be - and often is - abused, in business as in all arenas of endeavor. But it can also be used to do great good for great numbers. And as a career-building tool, the slow and steady (and subtle) amassing of power is the surest road to success.

  Tom Peters

  Business, Power, Numbers

  Tom Peters (2010). “The Pursuit of Wow!: Every Person's Guide to Topsy-Turvy Times”, p.43, Vintage

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• Production is not something physical, material, and external; it is a spiritual and intellectual phenomenon.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Spiritual, Business, Intellectual

  Ludwig Von Mises (1963). “Human action: a treatise on economics”

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• Above all, faith is grounded in one's body, in one's humanity, and in one's animal nature. It is an biological phenomenon and not a psychic creation

  Alexander Lowen

  Faith, Animal, Psychics

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