Vagueness Quotes

• Human relations are built on feeling, not on reason or knowledge. And feeling is not an exact science; like all spiritual qualities, it has the vagueness of greatness about it.

  Amelia Barr

  Love, Spiritual, Greatness

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• Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness.

  Stendhal

  Math, Hypocrisy, Mathematics

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• Vagueness is at times an indication of nearness to a perfect truth.

  Charles Ives

  Perfect, Indication

  Charles Ives (2004). “Essays Before a Sonata”, p.35, 1st World Publishing

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• A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, People, Littles

  "Souvenirs sur Degas (Memories of Degas)". Book by Georges Jeanniot, 1933.

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• Ask a man which way he is going to vote, and he will probably tell you. Ask him, however, why, and vagueness is all.

  Bernard Levin

  Men, Political, Politics

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• Vagueness and procrastination are ever a comfort to the frail in spirit.

  John Updike

  Procrastination, Comfort, Spirit

  John Updike (2009). “In the Beauty of the Lilies: A Novel”, p.39, Random House

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• I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness.

  Wilfred Owen

  Reading, Thinking, Satisfaction

  Wilfred Owen (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Wilfred Owen (Illustrated)”, p.410, Delphi Classics

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• We cannot afford to have any large section of the business world in doubt whether they have broken the laws or not, and we cannot let the laws become a dead letter through vagueness. In this view it is clear that an administrative commission can render invaluable service.

  John Bates Clark

  Views, Law, Broken

  John Bates Clark, John Maurice Clark (1914). “The Control of Trusts”

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• But, as we have before been led to remark, most of Mr. Darwin's statements elude, by their vagueness and incompleteness, the test of Natural History facts.

  Richard Owen

  Elude Us, Tests, Facts

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• You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin , or even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.

  Walt Whitman

  Nature, Travel, Flower

  Walt Whitman (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Walt Whitman (Illustrated)”, p.1321, Delphi Classics

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• Maybe vagueness has been good for me. The word means two different things in Tokyo and Osaka, you know. In Tokyo it means stupidity, but in Osaka they talk about vagueness in a painting and in a game of Go.

  Yasunari Kawabata

  Mean, Games, Two

  Yasunari Kawabata (2015). “The Master of Go”, p.87, Random House

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• You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.

  Pablo Picasso

  Inspirational, Artist, Ideas

  Pablo Picasso (1972). “Picasso on art: a selection of views”, Viking Adult

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• If you can't be kind, at least be vague.

  Judith Martin

  Inspirational, Kindness, Advice

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• For parlor use, the vague generality is a life saver.

  George Ade

  Life, Communication, Use

  George Ade (1901). “Forty Modern Fables”, p.44, Library of Alexandria

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• None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error.

  Bertrand Russell

  Errors, Belief

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.129, Psychology Press

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• The future gets no say in who we are.

  Buddy Wakefield

  Future, Fate, Destiny

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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, Chance, Speak

  14 Copy quote

• Noise is the typographical error and the poorly designed page...Ambiguity is noise. Redundancy is noise. Misuse of words is noise. Vagueness is noise. Jargon is noise.

  William Zinsser

  Errors, Marketing, Jargon

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• William James used to preach the "will-to-believe." For my part, I should wish to preach the "will-to-doubt." None of our beliefs are quite true; all at least have a penumbra of vagueness and error. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

  Bertrand Russell

  Believe, Errors, Opposites

  "Sceptical Essays". Book by Bertrand Russell, Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda, 1928.

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• The more I read, the less I admire modern theology. the more I study the productions of the new schools of theological teachers, the more I marvel that men and women can be satisfied with such writings. There is a vagueness, a mistiness, a shallowness, an indistinctness, a superficiality, an aimlessness, a hollowness about the literature of the 'broader and kinder systems', as they are called, which to my mind stamps their origin on their face. They are of the earth, earthy.

  J. C. Ryle

  Teacher, Writing, School

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• To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.

  George Orwell

  Art, Latin, Struggle

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• To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words.... Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence.

  George Orwell

  Art, Struggle, Writing

  George Orwell (1968). “The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: As I please, 1943-1945”

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• Conventions of generality and mathematical elegance may be just as much barriers to the attainment and diffusion of knowledge as may contentment with particularity and literary vagueness... It may well be that the slovenly and literary borderland between economics and sociology will be the most fruitful building ground during the years to come and that mathematical economics will remain too flawless in its perfection to be very fruitful.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Years, Perfection, Contentment

  "Samuelson's Foundations: The Role of Mathematics in Economics". Journal of Political Economy, Volume 56, June 1948.

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• In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.

  George Orwell

  Party, Writing, Squares

  George Orwell (2001). “Orwell and Politics”, p.459, Penguin UK

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• The extreme nature of dominant-end views is often concealed by the vagueness and ambiguity of the end proposed.

  John Rawls

  Views, Ends, Ambiguity

  John Rawls (2009). “A Theory of Justice”, p.485, Harvard University Press

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