Precise Quotes - Page 17

• I am perfectly confident that I could never adequately convey to any other human being the precise reasons why I continue to refrain from suicide - the reasons, that is, why I still find existence enough of a compensation to atone for its dominantly burthensome quality.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Suicide, Quality, Reason Why

  Letter to August Derleth (25 December 1930), quoted in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, (p. 584), 1996.

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• Von Neumann languages do not have useful properties for reasoning about programs. Axiomatic and denotational semantics are precise tools for describing and understanding conventional programs, but they only talk about them and cannot alter their ungainly properties. Unlike von Neumann languages, the language of ordinary algebra is suitable both for stating its laws and for transforming an equation into its solution, all within the "language."

  John Backus

  Law, Understanding, Ordinary

  "Can Programming Be Liberated From the von Neumann Style?". John Backus' 1977 Turing Award lecture, published in "Communications of the ACM", Volume 21, No. 8 (pp. 639-640), August 1978.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Vices, Momentum, Measurement

  "Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik". Book by Werner Heisenberg, 1927.

  55 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.

  Alan Bennett

  Play, People, Mouths

  1991 In the Sunday Times, 24 Nov.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm a good example of wanting to apologize only for my precise share of a problem--as I calculate it, of course--and I expect my husband Steve to apologize for his share, also as I calculate it. Since we're not always of one mind on the math, it can lead to the theater of the absurd.

  Harriet Lerner

  Husband, Math, Mind

  "Waiting For An Apology? Don’t Hold Your Breath" by Harriet Lerner, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 5, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Sage of Toronto... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a "global village" instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle's present vulgarity.

  Guy Debord

  Gossip, Boredom, Sage

  "Comments on the Society of the Spectacle". Book by Guy Debord, 1988.

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the first mechanical clocks were invented, marking off time in crisp, regular intervals, it must have surprised people to discover that time flowed outside their own mental and physiological processes. Body time flows at its own variable rate, oblivious to the most precise hydrogen master clocks in the laboratory. In fact, the human body contains its own exquisite time-pieces, all with their separate rhythms. There are the alpha waves in the brain; another clock is the heart. And all the while tick the mysterious, ruthless clocks that regulate aging.

  Alan Lightman

  Heart, People, Brain

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Dance for Two: Essays”, p.42, Pantheon

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We do not mark out any precise line to be followed in diet; but we do say that in countries where there are fruits, grains, and nuts in abundance, flesh food is not the right food for God's people.

  Ellen G. White

  Country, Nuts, People

  Ellen G. White (2013). “Ellen G. White Review and Herald Articles - Book IV of IV”, p.1165, Lulu Press, Inc

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Excessively precise economic analysis can lead to assessing everything in terms of its easily measurable melt value - the value that thieves get from stealing copper wiring from isolated houses, that vandals got from tearing down Greek temples for the lead joints holding the marble blocks together, that shortsighted timber companies get from liquidating their forests. The standard to insist on is live value. What is something worth when it's working?

  Stewart Brand

  Block, House, Greek

  "Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto". Book by Stewart Brand, 2009.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• A poet is wounded into speech, and he examines these wounds, meticulously, to discover how to heal them. The bad poet harangues at the pain and yowls at the weapons that lacerate him; the great poet explores the inflamed lips of ruined flesh with ice-caked fingers, glittering and precise; but ultimately his poem is the echoing, dual voice reporting the damages.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Pain, Ice, Poetry

  6 Copy quote

• The beginning is never the clear, precise end of a thread, the beginning is a long, painfully slow process that requires time and patience in order to find out in which direction it is heading, a process that feels its way along the path ahead like a blind man the beginning is just the beginning, what came before is nigh on worthless.

  Jose Saramago

  Men, Order, Long

  "The Cave" by Jose Saramago, tr. Margaret Jull Costa, Vintage, (p. 54), 2003.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I returned to poetry as a more precise way to describe the world, more precise than science.

  David Whyte

  World, Way, Precision

  10 Copy quote

• The untranslatable thought must be the most precise.

  Jane Hirshfield

  Jane Hirshfield (2010). “After: Poems”, p.7, Harper Collins

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Very soon I discovered that if one gets a feeling for no more than a dozen other radiation and nuclear constants, one can imagine the subatomic world almost tangibly, and manipulate the picture dimensionally and qualitatively, before calculating more precise relationships.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Feelings, Nuclear, World

  "Adventures of a Mathematician" by Stanislaw Ulam, Third Edition, (p. 148), 1991.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even if one is familiar with the precise meaning of everything one recites, the act of worship can hardly have any significance at all unless it registers the overall message each part of our prayers is meant to convey.

  Immanuel Jakobovits, Baron Jakobovits

  Prayer, Messages, Worship

  "The Authorised Daily Prayer Book" by Immanuel Jakobovits, Centenary Edition, (p. xiii), 1990.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Brian Turner writes as only a soldier can, of terror and compassion, hurt and horror, sympathy and desire. He takes us into the truth and trauma of the Iraq war in language that is precise, delicate and beautiful, even as it tells of a suicide bomber, a skull shattered by a bullet, a blade in a bloodgroove.

  Andrew Himes

  Beautiful, Suicide, Hurt

  4 Copy quote

• For the existentials, negation is their God. To be precise, that god is maintained only through the negation of human reason. But, like suicides, gods change with men.

  Albert Camus

  Suicide, Men, Atheism

  11 Copy quote

• Timing. We give it many names: Destiny, Fate, Kismet, the will of God. Whatever we call it, lives are changed and molded by it, in small or drastic ways beyond our control. The precise, exquisite influence of timing moves people into new positions as surely as a spring flood rearranges the landscape. It is as unavoidable as life.

  Helen Van Slyke

  Spring, Moving, Fate

  25 Copy quote

• Jim Grimsley's unflinching self-examination of his own boyhood racial prejudices during the era of school desegregation is one of the most compelling memoirs of recent years. Vivid, precise, and utterly honest, How I Shed My Skin is a time-machine of sorts, a reminder that our past is every bit as complex as our present, and that broad cultural changes are often intimate, personal, and idiosyncratic.

  Dinty W. Moore

  School, Past, Self

  4 Copy quote

• We don't know what energy is, any more than we know what information is, but as a now robust scientific concept we can describe it in precise mathematical terms, and as a commodity we can measure, market, regulate and tax it.

  Hans Christian von Baeyer

  Energy, Information, Commodity

  Hans Christian Von Baeyer (2004). “Information: The New Language of Science”, p.11, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The extraordinary language of Nonviolent Communication is changing how parents relate to children, teachers to students, and how we all related to each other and even to ourselves. It is precise, disciplined, and enormously compassionate. Most important, once we study NVC we can't ignore the potential for transformation that lies in any difficult relationship - if we only bother to communicate with skill and empathy.

  Bernie Glassman

  Teacher, Children, Lying

  13 Copy quote

• On Earth Day I made a commitment to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2000. And I asked for a blueprint on how to achieve this goal. In concert with all other nations, we simply must halt global warming. It is a threat to our health, to our ecology, and to our economy. I know that the precise magnitude and patterns of climate change cannot be fully predicted. But global warming clearly is a growing, long-term threat with profound consequences. And make no mistake about it, it will take decades to reverse.

  William J. Clinton

  Mistake, Commitment, Years

  8 Copy quote

• Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others

  Peter Abelard

  Use, Precision

  39 Copy quote

• There is much debate in the scientific community as to the precise sources of global warming.

  Pat Toomey

  Community, Global Warming, Debate

  "Sestak, Toomey on opposite sides of energy debate". www.post-gazette.com. June 14, 2010.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• A ground frequently taken by Christian theologians is that the progress and civilization of the world are due to Christianity; and the discussion is complicated by the fact that many eminent servants of humanity have been nominal Christians, of one or other of the sects. My allegation will be that the special services rendered to human progress by these exceptional men have not been in consequence of their adhesion to Christianity, but in spite of it, and that the specific points of advantage to human kind have been in ratio of their direct opposition to precise Biblical enactments.

  Charles Bradlaugh

  Christian, Taken, Biblical

  Marsden Gibson, Charles Bradlaugh (1889*). “Has Humanity Gained from Unbelief?: Two Nights Debate Between Marsden Gibson and Charles Bradlaugh at Newcastle-on-Tyne”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source