Speculation Quotes - Page 14

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• I understand the gist of your speculation,' said Rhialto. 'It is most likely nuncupatory.

  Jack Vance

  Gist, Said

  Jack Vance (2000). “Rhialto the Marvellous”, p.601, Macmillan

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• It reveals to me the causes of many natural phenomena that are entirely incomprehensible in the light of the generally accepted hypotheses. To refute the latter I collected many proofs, but I do not publish them ... I would dare to publish my speculations if there were people men like you.

  Galileo Galilei

  Science, Men, Light

  Letter to Johannes Kepler, 1596.

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• You cannot exist as a $20 billion company with speculation.

  Eike Batista

  Billions, Company

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• When we come to images or memories or thoughts, speculation, while always closely related to practice, is more explicit, and it is in fact not immediately obvious that such processes can be described in any sense as practical.

  Samuel Alexander

  Memories, Practice, Facts

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• He didn't say anything more, just waited for me to tell him what I'd been thinking. It was pure speculation, and I was opening myself up to ridicule by saying anything at all. I sat on the stool and realized that I had my loyalties, too.

  Patricia Briggs

  Loyalty, Thinking, Say Anything

  Patricia Briggs (2011). “The Mercy Thompson Collection”, p.172, Penguin

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• I have never indulged our society's misguided notion that my personal life is relevant to my work, so any reporting surrounding that is necessarily hearsay, speculation or fantasy.

  Billy Crudup

  Our Society, Fantasy, Life Is

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• You can get on with your job. I'm going to get on with mine. And mine is to deliver for the people of Northern Ireland, that's what they expect from me and I'm not going to be deflected by interesting academic or media speculation or attempts to take the whole debate back.

  Peter Hain

  Jobs, Media, People

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• Gout produces calculus in the kidney... the patient has frequently to entertain the painful speculation as to whether gout or stone be the worst disease. Sometimes the stone, on passing, kills the patient, without waiting for the gout.

  Thomas Sydenham

  Waiting, Gout, Disease

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• Establishing a 0.03 percent Wall Street speculation fee, similar to what we had from 1914-1966, would dampen the dangerous level of speculation and gambling on Wall Street, encourage the financial sector to invest in the productive economy and reduce the deficit by more than $350 billion over 10 years.

  Bernie Sanders

  Wall, Gambling, Years

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, eight abstract speculations, a quadrilateral equation, two axioms, and a limerick. That's raw intelligence for you.

  Jonathan Stroud

  Eight, Two, Twenties

  Jonathan Stroud (2005). “Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book Three: Ptolemy's Gate”, Disney-Hyperion

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• one of the most mysterious of semi-speculations is, one would suppose, that of one Mind's imagining into another

  John Keats

  Mind, Mysterious

  Beth Lau, John Keats (1998). “Keats's Paradise Lost”, p.74, University Press of Florida

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• An isolated person requires correspondence as a means of seeing his ideas as others see them, and thus guarding against the dogmatisms and extravagances of solitary and uncorrected speculation. No man can learn to reason and appraise from a mere perusal of the writing of others. If he live not in the world, where he can observe the public at first hand and be directed toward solid reality by the force of conversation and spoken debate, then he must sharpen his discrimination and regulate his perceptive balance by an equivalent exchange of ideas in epistolary form.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Mean, Writing, Reality

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• Life must be something more than dilettante speculation.

  Anna Julia Cooper

  Dilettantes

  Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.194, Rowman & Littlefield

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• LIVE. If you live, god will live with you. If you refuse to run his risks, he'll retreat to that distant heaven and be merely a subject for philosophical speculation.

  Paulo Coelho

  Running, Philosophical, Heaven

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• Mystery is an inescapable ingredient of mathematics. Mathematics is full of unanswered questions, which far outnumber known theorems and results. It's the nature of mathematics to pose more problems than it can solve. Indeed, mathematics itself may be built on small islands of truth comprising the pieces of mathematics that can be validated by relatively short proofs. All else is speculation.

  Ivars Peterson

  Islands, Ontology, May

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• Though my books are written from a historical perspective, I have goon so far back that I am in the realm of prehistorical speculation rather than simple historical fact to weave my stories around.

  Jean M. Auel

  Book, Simple, Perspective

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• The ceiling on taxation of capital gains reflects the national belief that speculation is a more worthwhile way to make a living than work.

  Calvin Trillin

  Ceilings, Taxation, Way

  Calvin Trillin (1987). “Uncivil liberties”, Penguin Group USA

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• The Christ within who is our hope of glory is not a matter of theological debate or philosophical speculation. He is not a hobby, a part-time project, a good theme for a book, or a last resort when all human effort fails. He is our life, the most real fact about us. He is the power and wisdom of God dwelling within us.

  Brennan Manning

  Real, Book, Philosophical

  Brennan Manning (2015). “Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging”, p.130, NavPress

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• Almost all rich veins of original and striking speculation have been opened by systematic half-thinkers.

  John Stuart Mill

  Intellectual, Intelligence, Veins

  John Stuart Mill (2008). “Utilitarianism and On Liberty: Including 'Essay on Bentham' and Selections from the Writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin”, p.67, John Wiley & Sons

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