Term Quotes - Page 39

• The polls undoubtedly help to decide what people think, but their most important long-term influence may be on how people think. The interrogative process is very distinctly weighted against the asking of an intelligent question or the recording of a thoughtful answer.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Thoughtful, Intelligent, Thinking

  Christopher Hitchens (2014). “For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports”, p.58, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• The terms of peace may be negotiated by political leaders, but the fate of peace is up to each of us.

  Barack Obama

  Peace, Fate, Leader

  Remarks in Town Hall with Youth of Northern Ireland, Belfast Waterfront, Belfast, June 17, 2013.

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• The Mutakallemim... apply the term non-existence only to absolute non-existence, and not to absence of properties. A property and the absence of that property are considered by them as two opposites, they treat, e.g. , blindness and sight, death and life, in the same way as heat and cold. Therefore they say, without any qualification, non-existence does not require any agent, an agent is required when something is produced.

  Maimonides

  Sight, Opposites, Two

  Moses Maimonides (2016). “Guide for the perplexed”, p.1023, Moses Maimonides

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• The longer a line, the more of the time element it contains. Distance is time whereas a surface is apprehended more in terms of the moment.

  Paul Klee

  Distance, Elements, Lines

  Paul Klee (1969). “Paul Klee notebooks”

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• In using the terms play and playfulness, I do not intend to suggest any lack of seriousness; quite the contrary. Anyone who has watched children, or adults, at play will recognize that there is no contradiction between play and seriousness, and that some forms of play induce a measure of grave concentration not so readily called forth by work.

  Richard Hofstadter

  Children, Play, Adults

  Richard Hofstadter (2012). “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life”, p.30, Vintage

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• I'm not committed as a writer, in the usual sense of the term, either religiously or politically. And I'm not conscious of any particular social function. I write because I want to write. I don't see any placards on myself, and I don't carry any banners.

  Harold Pinter

  Writing, Usual, Want

  Harold Pinter (1977). “Plays: two”

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• Here on Earth there was undoubtedly a Christ. One of the reasons he swept in so suddenly and he would go forward so hard is, he had a good assist in back of him in terms of an implant.

  L. Ron Hubbard

  Earth, Christ, Reason

  "Assists". Lecture No. 10 during the confidential Class VIII series of lectures, October 03, 1968.

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• We find sects and parties in most branches of science; and disputes which are carried on from age to age, without being brought to an issue. Sophistry has been more effectually excluded from mathematics and natural philosophy than from other sciences. In mathematics it had no place from the beginning; mathematicians having had the wisdom to define accurately the terms they use, and to lay down, as axioms, the first principles on which their reasoning is grounded. Accordingly, we find no parties among mathematicians, and hardly any disputes.

  Thomas Reid

  Philosophy, Party, Issues

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• In the business world, management is always viewed in terms of productivity. Why? Because productivity is the key to the success of the organization and to your future as a manager.

  Tony Alessandra

  Keys, Organization, World

  Tony Alessandra (1986). “The New Art of Managing People”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

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• Perhaps I became so vague, so exhilarated with vagueness, precisely in order to forestall a recognition of the final term of the syllogism that begins: If one man loves another he is a homosexual; I love a man.

  Edmund White

  Men, Order, Vagueness

  Edmund White (2016). “A Boy's Own Story: Picador Classic”, p.84, Pan Macmillan

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• In long-term relationships ... we are called upon to navigate that delicate balance between separateness and connectedness ... we confront the challenge of sustaining both--without losing either.

  Harriet Lerner

  Long, Challenges, Balance

  Harriet Lerner (2009). “The Dance of Intimacy: A Woman's Guide to Courageous Acts of Change in Key Relationships”, p.2, Harper Collins

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• The history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles.

  Alan Lightman

  Principles, Fundamentals, Causes

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• Any attempt to define literary theory in terms of a distinctive method is doomed to failure.

  Terry Eagleton

  Literary Theory, Method, Doomed

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.172, John Wiley & Sons

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• Ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Ideas, Action, Aspiration

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.14, Routledge

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• Every aspect of personal life is radically affected by the quality of general life, and yet the general life is seen at its most important in completely personal terms.

  Raymond Williams

  Important, Quality, Life Is

  Raymond Williams (2001). “The Long Revolution”, p.305, Broadview Press

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• The existing confusion of conflicting creeds and sects is fitly represented by the term "Babylon," which prophecy (Revelation 14:8) applies to the world-loving churches of the last days.

  Ellen G. White

  Confusion, Church, World

  Ellen G. White “The Conflict of the Ages Story, Vol. 1. Patriarchs and Prophets—Illustrated”, Digital Inspiration

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• We have restricted humans from giving 'free' food to bears and dolphins because we know that such feeding would make them dependent and lead to their extinction. But when it comes to our own species, we have difficulty seeing the connection between short-term kindness and long-term cruelty; we give women money to have more children, making them more dependent with each child and discouraging them from developing the tools to fend for themselves. The real discrimination against women, then, is 'free feeding'.

  Warren Farrell

  Children, Kindness, Real

  Warren Farrell (1993). “The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable Sex”

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• The first attempts to consider the behavior of so-called "random neural nets" in a systematic way have led to a series of problems concerned with relations between the "structure" and the "function" of such nets. The "structure" of a random net is not a clearly defined topological manifold such as could be used to describe a circuit with explicitly given connections. In a random neural net, one does not speak of "this" neuron synapsing on "that" one, but rather in terms of tendencies and probabilities associated with points or regions in the net.

  Anatol Rapoport

  Doe, Neurons, Systematic

  "The bulletin of mathematical biophysics" by Anatol Rapoport, (pp. 145-157), 1948.

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• Whether sociology can ever become a full-fledged "science" (a description of a class of events predictable on the basis of deductions from a constant rationale) depends on whether the terms which sociologists employ to describe events can be analyzed into quantifiable observables.

  Anatol Rapoport

  Class, Events, Sociology

  "The bulletin of mathematical biophysics" by Anatol Rapoport, (p. 183), 1949.

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• (Game theory is) essentially a structural theory. It uncovers the logical structure of a great variety of conflict situations and describes this structure in mathematical terms. Sometimes the logical structure of a conflict situation admits rational decisions; sometimes it does not.

  Anatol Rapoport

  Games, Decision, Doe

  "Prisoner's dilemma: A study in conflict and cooperation" by Anatol Rapoport, Albert S. Chammah, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, (p. 196), 1965.

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• In alchemical treatises, the formula L'Oeuvre au Noir ... designates what is said to be the most difficult phase of the alchemist's process, the separation and dissolution of substance. It is still not clear whether the term applied to daring experiments on matter itself, or whether it was understood to symbolize trials of the mind in discarding all forms of routine and prejudice. Doubtless it signified one or the other meaning alternately, or perhaps both at the same time.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Mind, Alchemist, Prejudice

  "The Abyss". Book by Marguerite Yourcenar, Author's note, p. 367, 1968.

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• 1) Différance is the systematic play of differences, of the traces of differences, of the spacing by means of which elements are related to each other. This spacing is the simultaneously active and passive (the a of différance indicates this indecision as concerns activity and passivity, that which cannot be governed by or distributed between the terms of this opposition) production of the intervals without which the "full" terms would not signify, would not function.

  Jacques Derrida

  Mean, Play, Differences

  "Positions" by Jacques Derrida, University of Chicago Press, (p. 21), 1982.

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• In terms of earthly life as you understand it, it is overly optimistic to imagine that eventually all illnesses will be conquered, all relationships be inevitably fulfilling, or to foresee a future in which all people on earth are treated with equality and respect.

  Jane Roberts

  Optimistic, People, Earth

  "The Way Toward Health". Book by Jane Roberts, Chapter 9, 1997.

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• 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.

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• I do not believe there is a long-term future for the privately rented sector in its present form.

  Anthony Crosland

  Believe, Long, Form

  Speech in Eastbourne, November 20, 1975.

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