Vague Quotes - Page 9

• Melody and harmony are like lines and colors in pictures. A simple linear picture may be completely beautiful; the introduction of color may make it vague and insignificant. Yet color may, by combination with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Music, Beautiful, Simple

  Krishna Dutta, Rabindranath Tagore (1991). “Purabi: A Miscellany in Memory of Rabindranath Tagore 1941-1991”

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• The hypothesis of the supernatural and/or a supreme being is vague, unfounded, and inapplicable in any practical fashion

  PZ Myers

  Fashion, Hypothesis, Practicals

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• I like to keep my private stuff pretty vague.

  Thomas Haden Church

  Stuff

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• Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled wrong.

  Raymond Smullyan

  People, Criticism, Critics

  Raymond M. Smullyan (2013). “The Tao Is Silent”, p.25, Harper Collins

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• From time to time, from the endless flow of our mental imagery, there emerges unexpectedly something that, vague though it may be, seems to carry the promise of a form, a meaning, and, more important, an irresistible poetic charge.

  Leo Lionni

  Promise, Important, Flow

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• Many of the younger generation know my name in a vague way and connect it with grotesque inventions, but don't believe that I ever existed as a person. They think I'm a nonperson, just a name that signifies a tangled web of pipes or wires or strings that suggest machinery. My name to them is like a spiral staircase, veal cutlets, barber's itch — terms that give you an immediate picture of what they mean.

  Rube Goldberg

  Believe, Mean, Thinking

  "Rube Goldberg: Inventions!".

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• Of course the word chaos is used in rather a vague sense by a lot of writers, but in physics it means a particular phenomenon, namely that in a nonlinear system the outcome is often indefinitely, arbitrarily sensitive to tiny changes in the initial condition

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Mean, Outcomes, Tiny

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• The fictive is an emormous territory it turns out, its boundaries vague, and there is little certainty about where it begins and ends.

  Siri Hustvedt

  Littles, Territory, Boundaries

  Siri Hustvedt (2011). “The Summer Without Men: A Novel”, p.87, Macmillan

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• For though we often need to be restored to the small, concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to be reminded of the large, vague, unlimited, unknown

  A. R. Ammons

  Needs, Unlimited, Certain

  A. R. Ammons (1996). “Set in motion: essays, interviews, and dialogues”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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• After all we speak of people 'taking refuge' in vagueness -the more precise you are, in general the more likely you are to be wrong, whereas you stand a good chance of not being wrong if you make it vague enough.

  J. L. Austin

  People, Vagueness, Chance

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• I don't see how it's doing society any good to have so many members walking around with vague memories of algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams and clear memories of hating them.

  Paul Lockhart

  Memories, Hate, Diagrams

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• You can never get rich, or start the creative power into action, by sending out unformed longings and vague desires.

  Wallace D. Wattles

  Creative, Desire, Action

  Wallace D. Wattles, General Press (2016). “The Science of Getting Rich”, p.26, GENERAL PRESS

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• My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often - in fact, mostly - at the expense of everything else in my life.

  Stan Getz

  Music, Spring, Perfection

  Stan Getz (2017). “Stan Getz - Omnibook: For B-flat Instruments”, p.2, Hal Leonard Corporation

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• Vague a l'ame - melancholy yearning for the end of the world.

  Emile M. Cioran

  World, Melancholy, Ends

  "A Short History of Decay". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1949.

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• On vague wording of drone strike criteria: “Are you going to just drop a hellfire missile on Jane Fonda? Are you going to drop a missile on Kent State? That’s gobbledygook.

  Rand Paul

  Drones, Criteria, States

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• People watch movies - and it's vague ideas, it's vague notions, but people pick up on these things, that they are supposed to think certain ways or that they're not supposed to think, basically, and they don't.

  Crispin Glover

  Thinking, Ideas, People

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com. 2003.

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• The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Simplicity, Design, Purpose

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• A man of clear ideas errs grievously if he imagines that whatever is seen confusedly does not exist; it belongs to him, when he meets with such a thing, to dispel the midst, and fix the outlines of the vague form which is looming through it.

  John Stuart Mill

  Persistence, Men, Ideas

  John Stuart Mill (2008). “Utilitarianism and On Liberty: Including 'Essay on Bentham' and Selections from the Writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin”, p.65, John Wiley & Sons

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• I am far from any intention to limit curiosity, or confine the labours of learning to arts of immediate and necessary use. It is only from the various essays of experimental industry, and the vague excursions of mind set upon discovery, that any advancement of knowledge can be expected; and though many must be disappointed in their labours, yet they are not to be charged with having spent their time in vain; their example contributed to inspire emulation, and their miscarriage taught others the way to success.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Miscarriage, Necessary Use

  Samuel Johnson (1889). “Select Essays”

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• I believe that natural history has lost much by the vague general treatment that is so common.

  Ernest Thompson Seton

  Believe, Science, Belief

  Ernest Thompson Seton (2007). “Wild Animals I Have Known”, p.12, Yesterday's Classics

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• Vague memories hang about the mind like cobwebs.

  George Eliot

  Memories, Mind, Cobwebs

  George Eliot (1863). “Romola: In Two Volumes”, p.105

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• There are the two main reasons we don't get our needs met. First, we don't know how to express our needs to begin with and second if we do, we forget to put a clear request after it, or we use vague words like appreciate, listen, recognize, know, be real, and stuff like that.

  Marshall B. Rosenberg

  Real, Communication, Two

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• It’s time to stop being vague. If you wish to be an extraordinary person, if you wish to be wise, then you should explicitly identify the kind of person you aspire to become.

  Epictetus

  Motivational, Wise, Extraordinary Person

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• I think that the fact that a theory so vague, so insufficiently verifiable, and so far from the criteria otherwise applied in "hard" science, could become a dogma, can be explained only on sociological grounds.

  Ludwig von Bertalanffy

  Facts, Dogma, Criteria

  "Perspectives on general system theory: scientific-philosophical studies".

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• Now 'pay equity' has everything to do with pay and nothing to do with equity. It’s based on the vague notion of 'equal pay for work of equal value,' which is not the same as equal pay for the same job.

  Stephen Harper

  Jobs, Equal Pay, Equity

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