Speculation Quotes - Page 13

• If a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world, than from historical records, or from speculation, wherein the heart withers.

  William Butler Yeats

  Powerful, Heart, Destiny

  William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran, George Bornstein (2007). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays”, p.51, Simon and Schuster

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• When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense - as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms - but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Philosophy, Silly, Law

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.310, Harvard University Press

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• If you defend a behavior by arguing that people are programmed directly for it, then how do you continue to defend it if your speculation is wrong, for the behavior then becomes unnatural and worthy of condemnation. Better to stick resolutely to a philosophical position on human liberty: what free adults do with each other in their own private lives is their business alone. It need not be vindicated and must not be condemned by genetic speculation.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Philosophical, People, Liberty

  Stephen Jay Gould (1992). “Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History”, p.267, W. W. Norton & Company

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• In love as in speculation there is much filth; in love also, people think only of their own gratification; yet without love there would be no life, and the world would come to an end.

  Emile Zola

  Love, Thinking, People

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• speculation is carried on in safety, but, when it comes to action, fear causes failure.

  Thucydides

  Safety, Causes, Action

  Thucydides, Victor Davis Hanson, Robert B. Strassler (2008). “The Landmark Thucydides”, p.66, Simon and Schuster

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• Anyone wanting a new house picks one from among those built on speculation or still in process of construction. The builder no longer works for his customers but for the market.

  Karl Marx

  House, Construction, Process

  Karl Marx (1997). “Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: .. Karl Marx: Capital vol.II”

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• Now let the matter rest as it is, or as it may be, what avail useless speculations? What is to occur we do not know; still in so far we do! what God wills!

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Useless, May, Matter

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1866). “The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1769-1791)”, p.131

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• I believe the calculation of the quantity of probability might be improved to a very useful and pleasant speculation, and applied to a great many events which are accidental, besides those of games; only these cases would be infinitely more confused, as depending on chances which the most part of men are ignorant of.

  John Arbuthnot

  Confused, Believe, Men

  John Arbuthnot (1770). “Miscellaneous Works of the Late Dr. Arbuthnot”, p.260

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• If we choose a weak and foolish speculation as a primary textbook illustration (falsely assuming that the tale possesses a weight of history and a sanction of evidence), then we are in for trouble - as critics properly nail the particular weakness, and then assume that the whole theory must be in danger if supporters choose such a fatuous case as a primary illustration.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Illustration, Weakness, Nails

  Stephen Jay Gould (1999). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History”, Three Rivers Press (CA)

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• In his anti-Darwinian book... (and eponymously named The Neck of the Giraffe ), Francis Hitching tells the story... "The need to survive by reaching ever higher for food is, like so many Darwinian explanations of its kind, little more than a post hoc speculation." Hitching is quite correct, but he rebuts a fairy story that Darwin was far too smart to tell - even though the tale later entered our high school texts as a "classic case" nonetheless.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Smart, Book, School

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• Avoid all refined speculations; confine yourself to simple reflections, and recur to them frequently. Those who pass too rapidly from one truth to another feed their curiosity and restlessness; they even distract their intellect with too great a multiplicity of views. Give every truth time to send down deep root into the heart.

  Francois Fenelon

  Heart, Reflection, Simple

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• Each new ontological theory, propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to be untenable, has been followed by a new criticism leading to a new scepticism. All possible conceptions have been one by one tried and found wanting; and so the entire field of speculation has been gradually exhausted without positive result: the only result reached being the negative one above stated, that the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown.

  Herbert Spencer

  Reality, Criticism, Negative

  Herbert Spencer (1920). “Synthetic Philosophy ...: First principles. 1920. [v.2-3] The principles of biology. v.1, rev. & enl. ed., 1921”

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• Homeric mind is ingenuity, practical intelligence. There is no Rodin-like deep thinking, no mathematical or philosophical speculation. Odysseus thinks with his hands.

  Camille Paglia

  Philosophical, Thinking, Hands

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson”, Vintage

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• Reading is not a straightforward linear movement, a merely cumulative affair: our initial speculations generate a frame of reference within which to interpret what comes next, but what comes next may retrospectively transform our original understanding, highlighting some features of it and backgrounding others.

  Terry Eagleton

  Reading, Understanding, Movement

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.67, John Wiley & Sons

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• The main object of the work was to present such a survey of the advances already made in physical knowledge, and of the mode in which they have been made, as might serve as a real and firm basis for our speculations concerning the progress of human knowledge, and the processes by which sciences are formed.

  William Whewell

  Real, Progress, Might

  William Whewell (1847). “History of the Inductive Sciences: I. The Greek school philosophy, with reference to physical science. II. The physical sciences in ancient Greece. III. Greek astronomy. IV. Physical science in the middle ages. V. Formal astronomy after the stationary period”, p.10

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• The night ... it is filled with bestial watchmen, trammeling the extremities and the interstices of the timeless city, portents fallen, constellated deities plummeting in ash and smoke, roaming the apocryphal cities, the cities of speculation and reconstituted disorder, of insemination and incipience, swept round with the dark.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Dark, Night, Cities

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• Vague and mysterious forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard or misapplied words with little or no meaning have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance and hindrance of true knowledge.

  John Locke

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Long

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• Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from those rules, is consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous, and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it.

  Adam Smith

  Practice, Principles, Banking

  Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart (1843). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.104

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• A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils. It undermines the virtues necessary for the support of the social system, and encourages propensities destructive to its happiness. It wars against industry, frugality, and economy, and it fosters the evil spirits of extravagance and speculation.

  Daniel Webster

  Wisdom, War, Evil

  Daniel Webster, Edward Everett (1853). “Speeches in the convention to amend the constitution of Massachusetts ; Speeches in Congress”, p.394

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• I'm a professional artist, that's how I make my living. So I watch the market. There is, it seems to me, a lot of pure financial speculation, and I don't think that's terribly healthy. Though as long as the money is getting back to the artist, I think that's good. I'm very happy younger artists can make money faster than we could. And we were making it faster than a generation before us.

  Brice Marden

  Artist, Thinking, Long

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• I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities, a total renunciation of every speculation of my own, and with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors, who have left us the inheritance of so happy a Constitution and so flourishing an empire, and, what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims and principles which formed the one and obtained the other.

  Edmund Burke

  Profound, Perfect, Principles

  Edmund Burke (1852). “The Works and Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke”, p.269

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• When the great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in muddled, incomplete and confusing form. ... For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope.

  Freeman Dyson

  Crazy, Innovation, Confusing

  Freeman Dyson (2013). “FROM EROS TO GAIA”, p.138, Pantheon

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• Without the instruments and accumulated knowledge of the natural sciences... humans are trapped in a cognitive prison. They are like intelligent fish born in a deep shallowed pool. Wondering and restless, longing to reach out, they think about the world outside. They invent ingenious speculations and myths about the origin of the confining waters, of the sun and the sky and the stars above , and the meaning of their own existence. But they are wrong, always wrong because the world is too remote from ordinary experience to be merely imagined.

  E. O. Wilson

  Stars, Intelligent, Thinking

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• We must observe that the knowledge of God which we are invited to cultivate is not that which, resting satisfied with empty speculation, only flutters in the brain, but a knowledge which will prove substantial and fruitful whenever it is duly perceived and rooted in the heart.

  John Calvin

  Heart, Brain, Knowledge Of God

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• Consciously paying more for a stock than its calculated value - in the hope that it can soon be sold for a still-higher price - should be labelled speculation

  Warren Buffett

  Should, Higher, Stills

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