Precise Quotes - Page 23

• Stories come to us as wraiths requiring precise embodiments.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Stories, Embodiment, Wraith

  Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art”, p.35, Zondervan

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• Discoveries are always accidental; and the great use of science is by investigating the nature of the effects produced by any process or contrivance, and of the causes by which they are brought about, to explain the operation and determine the precise value of every new invention. This fixes as it were the latitude and longitude of each discovery, and enables us to place it in that part of the map of human knowledge which it ought to occupy. It likewise enables us to use it in taking bearings and distances, and in shaping our course when we go in search of new discoveries.

  Benjamin Thompson

  Distance, Discovery, Use

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• All distinctions of birth or of rank have been abolished. All citizens, whether native or adopted, are placed upon terms of precise equality. All are entitled to equal rights and equal protection.

  James K. Polk

  Rights, Citizens, Birth

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• Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,
  Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affection,
  Figures pedantical--these summer flies
  Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.

  William Shakespeare

  Summer, Three, Phrases

  'Love's Labour's Lost' (1595) act 5, sc. 2, l. 407

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• Golf is the only game in which a precise knowledge of the rules can earn one a reputation for bad sportsmanship.

  Patrick Campbell, 3rd Baron Glenavy

  Golf, Games, Sportsmanship

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• If you want to build a recursively self-improving AI, have it go through a billion sequential self-modifications, become vastly smarter than you, and not die, you've got to work to a pretty precise standard.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Self, Want, Standards

  "Less Wrong Q&A with Eliezer Yudkowsky: Video Answers". Question 12, lesswrong.com. January 07, 2010.

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• The civil war in Rwanda and other ethnic massacres were an integral part of US foreign policy, carefully staged in accordance with precise strategic and economic objectives.

  Michel Chossudovsky

  War, Economic, Massacres

  "The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order". Book by Michel Chossudovsky, 2003.

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• The initial motive for developing APL was to provide a tool for writing and teaching. Although APL has been exploited mostly in commercial programming, I continue to believe that its most important use remains to be exploited: as a simple, precise, executable notation for the teaching of a wide range of subjects.

  Kenneth E. Iverson

  Believe, Teaching, Writing

  "A Personal View of APL". IBM Systems Journal, 30 (4), 1991.

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• The practice of first developing a clear and precise definition of a process without regard for efficiency, and then using it as a guide and a test in exploring equivalent processes possessing other characteristics, such as greater efficiency, is very common in mathematics. It is a very fruitful practice which should not be blighted by premature emphasis on efficiency in computer execution.

  Kenneth E. Iverson

  Practice, Definitions, Tests

  "Notation as a Tool of Thought". Cvommunications of the ACM, 23 (8), (pp. 444 - 465), August 1980.

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• With the computer and programming languages, mathematics has newly-acquired tools, and its notation should be reviewed in the light of them. The computer may, in effect, be used as a patient, precise, and knowledgeable "native speaker" of mathematical notation.

  Kenneth E. Iverson

  Light, Tools, May

  "Math for the Layman" by Kenneth E. Iverson, Ch. 10, §D, www.cs.trinity.edu. 1999.

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• I never wore a single fedora filming L.A. Noire. It took about an hour and a half to do the hair - it was a very precise process.

  Aaron Staton

  Hair, Half, Fedoras

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• Frankly, as much as I love to improvise, it hasn't been difficult to stick to the script on 'Mad Men.' The writing is so precise, and the story so carefully crafted, that I don't think there's room - or need - for ad libbing. I could never come up with dialogue as lovely as these writers do, anyway.

  Rich Sommer

  Writing, Men, Thinking

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• Michael Jackson was extraordinary. When we worked together on 'Bad,' I was in awe of his absolute mastery of movement on the one hand, and of the music on the other. Every step he took was absolutely precise and fluid at the same time. It was like watching quicksilver in motion. He was wonderful to work with, an absolute professional at all times, and it really goes without saying... a true artist. It will be a while before I can get used to the idea that he's no longer with us.

  Martin Scorsese

  Artist, Ideas, Hands

  "Music World Mourns Michael Jackson's Death: Madonna, Britney, Justin & Many More Paid Tribute". top40-charts.com. June 26, 2009.

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• No historical analogies are exactly precise.

  Rick Perlstein

  Historical, Analogies

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• Among the laws controlling human societies there is one more precise and clearer, it seems to me, than all the others. If men are to remain civilized or to become civilized, the art of association must develop and improve among them at the same speed as equality of conditions spreads.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Art, Men, Law

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1990). “Democracy in America”

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• A winning wave, (deserving note.)
  In the tempestuous petticote,
  A careless shoe-string, in whose tye
  I see a wilde civility,--
  Doe more bewitch me than when art
  Is too precise in every part.

  Robert Herrick

  Art, Winning, Shoes

  Robert Herrick, “Delight In Disorder”

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• They [Americans] want to believe that Good and Evil can be defined in precise categories, that Good is already, or will be easily achieved. ... if this optimism appears too superficial, they will try to create a kind of anti-God: the U.S.S.R. That is Evil, and it only needs to be annihilated to re-establish the reign of Good.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Believe, Evil, Optimism

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• The extent to which we take everyday objects for granted is the precise extent to which they govern and inform our lives.

  Margaret Visser

  Everyday Objects, Granted, Our Lives

  Margaret Visser (2010). “Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Mea”, p.11, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• There's also a way that you have of being precise but also allusive, that works well for me - it's something about the open-hearted way you frame your queries. Instead of feeling daunted or discouraged, I feel excited to give whatever it is a try. This takes a lot of editorial wisdom and confidence - to know just how to get the writer to take that extra chance.

  George Saunders

  Giving, Feelings, Trying

  Interview with Andy Ward, www.slate.com. January 7, 2013.

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• As a lawyer you never speak with emotion. It's about the precise facts.

  Kirsten Gillibrand

  Facts, Emotion, Lawyer

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• What are the precise characteristics of an epigram it is not easy to define. It differs from a joke, in the fact that the wit of the latter dies in the words, and cannot therefore be conveyed in another language; while an epigram is a wit of ideas, and hence, is translatable. Like aphorisms, songs and sonnets, it is occupied with some single point, small and manageable; but whilst a song conveys a sentiment, a sonnet a poetical, and an aphorism a moral reflection, an epigram expresses a contrast.

  William Matthews

  Song, Reflection, Ideas

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• To make a precise scientific description of reality out of words is like trying to build a rigid structure out of pure quicksilver.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Reality, Trying, Structure

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• Words created divergencies between beings, because their precise meanings put an opinion around the idea. Music only retains the highest and purest substance of the idea, since it has the privilege of expressing all, whilst excluding nothing.

  Nadia Boulanger

  Music, Ideas, Privilege

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• So many of the properties of matter, especially when in the gaseous form, can be deduced from the hypothesis that their minute parts are in rapid motion, the velocity increasing with the temperature, that the precise nature of this motion becomes a subject of rational curiosity. Daniel Bernoulli, Herapath, Joule, Kronig, Clausius, &c., have shewn that the relations between pressure, temperature and density in a perfect gas can be explained by supposing the particles move with uniform velocity in straight lines, striking against the sides of the containing vessel and thus producing pressure.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Moving, Perfect, Curiosity

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• It will be a vast boon to mankind when we learn to prophesy the precise dates when cycles of various kinds will reach definite stages.

  Ellsworth Huntington

  Kind, Stage, Boon

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