Speculation Quotes - Page 2

• .. that a rule, which, in speculation, may seem the most advantageous to society, may yet be found, in practice, totally pernicious and destructive.

  David Hume

  Practice, May, Ethics

  David Hume, Tom L. Beauchamp (2006). “An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals: A Critical Edition”, p.20, Oxford University Press

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• Facts are important to me, not emotions. I would caution against speculation.

  Alexander Lebedev

  Important, Facts, Emotion

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Book, Civilization, Literature History

  Barbara Wertheim Tuchman, Center for the Book, Authors' League of America (1980). “The Book: A Lecture Sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and the Authors' League of America, Presented at the Library of Congress October 17, 1979”, Library of Congress

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• One of the peculiarities of recent speculation, especially in America, is that ideas are abandoned in virtue of a mere change of feeling, without any new evidence or new arguments. We do not nowadays refute our predecessors, we pleasantly bid them good-bye.

  George Santayana

  Ideas, Bye, America

  George Santayana (2015). “Character and Opinion in the United States”, p.8, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble... to give way to hope, fear and greed.

  Benjamin Graham

  Hope, Time, Money

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• It was while teaching philosophy that I saw how easily one can say ... what one wants to say. ... In fact, I became particularly aware if the dangers of speculation ... It's so much easier than digging out the facts. You sit in your office and build a system. But with my training in biology, I felt this kind of undertaking precarious.

  Jean Piaget

  Philosophy, Teaching, Office

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• Human speculation is no match for divine revelation.

  Johnny Hunt

  Leadership, Christian, Church

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• The artist must paint as he would speak. I don’t want people to speculate what I mean, I want them to understand.

  David Alfaro Siqueiros

  Mean, Artist, People

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• I always hate speculation on the news, so I don't want to be somebody who speculates.

  Angelina Jolie

  Hate, News, Want

  "CNN interviews Angelina Jolie". Interview with Arwa Damon, edition.cnn.com. February 7, 2008.

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• Speculation is a parasite feeding upon values, creating none.

  Andrew Carnegie

  Creating, Feeding, Parasites

  Andrew Carnegie (2015). “The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie”, p.125, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• The Orient and Islam have a kind of extrareal, phenomenologically reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert. From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing th orient could not do was to represent itself. Evidence of the Orient was credible only after it had passed through and been made firm by the refining fire of the Orientalist’s work.

  Edward Said

  Fire, Islam, Experts

  Edward W. Said (2014). “Orientalism”, p.283, Vintage

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• In a sense, photographs are highly literary, and the photographer, like the writer, has to be both a master of craft and a visionary. Patient accumulation of facts and then speculation about their meaning is the nature of authorship in both mediums.

  Peter C Bunnell

  Visionaries, Crafts, Facts

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• Mathematics does not grow through a monotonous increase of the number of indubitably established theorems but through the incessant improvement of guesses by speculation and criticism, by the logic of proofs and refutations.

  Imre Lakatos

  Numbers, Criticism, Doe

  Imre Lakatos (1976). “Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery”, p.5, Cambridge University Press

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• Though we [Humanists] take a strict position on what constitutes knowledge, we are not critical of the source of ideas. Often intuitive feelings, hunches, speculation, and flashes of inspiration prove to be excellent sources of novel approaches, new ways of looking at things, new discoveries, and new information. We do not disparage those ideas derived from religious experience, altered states of consciousness, or the emotions; we merely declare that testing these ideas against reality is the only way to determine their validity as knowledge.

  Fred Edwords

  Religious, Inspiration, Reality

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• Religion without philosophy is sentiment, or sometimes fanaticism, while philosophy without religion is mental speculation.

  A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

  Philosophy, Sometimes, Sentiments

  A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1976). “Bhagavad-Gita as it is: Abridged edition with translations and elaborate purports”

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• [Theory is] an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation confidently but provisionally - taking it as their best available view of reality, at least unil some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along.

  David Quammen

  Mean, Reality, Views

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• Scientists who think science consists of unprejudiced data-gathering without speculation are merely cows grazing on the pasture of knowledge.

  Peter Medawar

  Knowledge, Science, Past

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• A man who is all theory is like "a rudderless ship on a shoreless sea." ... Theories and speculations may be indulged in with safety only as long as they are based on facts that we can go back to at all times and know that we are on solid ground.

  Elisha Gray

  Knowledge, Science, Men

  Elisha Gray (1899). “Nature's Miracles: Familiar Talks on Science”, W. Briggs ; Montreal : C.W. Coates ; Halifax : S.F. Huestis, [19--?]

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• One important idea is that science is a means whereby learning is achieved, not by mere theoretical speculation on the one hand, nor by the undirected accumulation of practical facts on the other, but rather by a motivated iteration between theory and practice.

  George E. P. Box

  Mean, Hands, Practice

  "Science and Statistics". Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 71, No. 356, (p. 791), December, 1976.

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• I am myself an empiric in natural philosophy, suffering my faith to go no further than my facts. I am pleased, however, to see the efforts of hypothetical speculation, because by the collisions of different hypotheses, truth may be elicited and science advanced in the end.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Philosophy, Effort, Suffering

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, cont”, p.260

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• Divinity consists in use and practice, not in speculation.

  Martin Luther

  Practice, Use, Divinity

  Martin Luther, Alexander Chalmers (1872). “The Table Talk of Martin Luther”, p.179

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• The single most effective way to get rid of rumor and speculation is to be transparent.

  Phil Cooke

  Rumor, Way, Transparent

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• It's better to be talked about than to be forgotten. (In other words, if you are the subject of gossip or speculation, enjoy it! Don't let someone else's negative energy control you!).

  Robin Meade

  Being Yourself, Gossip, Energy

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• But by far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses; in that things which strike the sense outweigh things which do not immediately strike it, though they be more important. Hence it is that speculation commonly ceases where sight ceases; insomuch that of things invisible there is little or no observation.

  Francis Bacon

  Science, Sight, Understanding

  Francis Bacon (2012). “The Great Instauration”, p.36, Simon and Schuster

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• There is no hope for any speculation that does not look absurd at first glance.

  Niels Bohr

  Doe, Looks, Firsts

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