Variables Quotes

If there are four equations and only three variables, and no one of the equations is derivable from the others by algebraic manipulation then there is another variable missing.

Talcott Parsons

Missing, Three, Four

TALCOTT PARSONS (1949). “THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIAL ACTION”

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To be is to be the value of a variable.

Willard Van Orman Quine

Good Life, Values

Journal of Philosophy, 21 Dec. 1939

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Beauty is variable, ugliness is constant.

Douglas Horton

Beauty, Imperfect, Constant

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It simply isn't true, for example, that being big is in general better for fitness than being small except when there are effects of interacting variables; or that flying slow and high is in general better for fitness than flying fast and low except when there are effects of interacting variables; or that being monogamous is in general better for fitness than being polygamous... except when there are effects of interacting variables... It's not that the underlying generalizations are there but imperceptible in the ambient noise.

Jerry Fodor

Flying, Example, Noise

Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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That’s the thing about a human life-there’s no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Life Lesson, Groups, Way

Elizabeth Gilbert (2009). “Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything”, p.54, Bloomsbury Publishing

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The variables vary too much and the constants aren't as constant as they seem.

Robert Anton Wilson

Too Much, Constant, Seems

"Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy". Book by Robert Anton Wilson, 1979.

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Time is a series of fluctuating variables.

Terence McKenna

Series

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Based on my own personal experience – both as an investor in recent years and an expert witness in years past – rarely do more than three or four variables really count. Everything else is noise.

Martin J. Whitman

Past, Years, Experts

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As the variable capital always stays in the hands of the capitalist in some form or other, it cannot be claimed in any way that it converts itself into revenue for anyone .

Karl Marx

Hands, Way, Form

Karl Marx (1978). “Capital: a critique of political economy”

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A man of variable mind is not one man, but several men in one; he multiplies himself as often as he changes his taste and manners; he is not this minute what he was the last, and will not be the next what he is now; he is his own successor.

Jean de la Bruyere

Men, Mind, Lasts

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Control all the variables you can... don't worry about the rest.

Forrest Griffin

Mma, Worry

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Unlike Hegel's progress model of history, which moves by stages, each containing its own logic of growth and decline, the economic model develops as the simple function of one money-variable over time, with a long-term trend which increases monotonically.

John Carroll

Moving, Simple, Economic Models

John Carroll (2010). “Break-Out from the Crystal Palace: The Anarcho-Psychological Critique: Stirner, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky”, p.135, Taylor & Francis

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In the abstract world of American economists, equations run both ways; they believe that by changing the sign of a variable from plus to minus or from minus to plus or the price and quantity of x or y, the direction of historical movement can be reversed.

Robert Gilpin

Running, Believe, Historical

Robert Gilpin (2016). “The Political Economy of International Relations”, p.336, Princeton University Press

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Universal coding for computers is sought that uses relative addresses and a pseudocode and that assembles and translates, printing out a directory of final addresses of key commands, variables, and constants.

Saul Gorn

Keys, Finals, Use

"Planning Universal Semi-Automatic Coding". Book by Saul Gorn, 1954.

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Significant changes in the growth rate of money supply, even small ones, impact the financial markets first. Then, they impact changes in the real economy, usually in six to nine months, but in a range of three to 18 months. Usually in about two years in the US, they correlate with changes in the rate of inflation or deflation."
"The leads are long and variable, though the more inflation a society has experienced, history shows, the shorter the time lead will be between a change in money supply growth and the subsequent change in inflation.

Milton Friedman

Real, Years, Significant Change

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With a live performance, you feel nervous because there's a sense it could do well or badly based on how well you are performing, whereas the only variable with a film premiere is technical, which invariably you have very little control over, whether the sound is good, whether the acoustics of the room are good.

Richard Ayoade

Sound, Littles, Rooms

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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In [chess], where the pieces have different and "bizarre" motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex, is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound

Edgar Allan Poe

Errors, Profound, Pieces

Edgar Allan Poe (2008). “Edgar Allan Poe Annotated and Illustrated Entire Stories and Poems”, p.352, Bottletree Books LLC

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the English, although partakers in the most variable and quixotic climate in the world, never become used to its vagaries, but comment upon them with shock and resentment as if all their lives had been spent in the predictable monsoon.

Ruth Rendell

Weather, England, Climate

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The chief point we must remember is that the great and rapid advance of the physical sciences took place in fields where it proved that explanation and prediction could be based on laws which accounted for the observed phenomena as functions of comparatively few variables - either particular facts or relative frequencies of events.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Law, Events, Fields

Friedrich August von Hayek's Prize Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 11, 1974.

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the modes of speech are scarcely more variable than the modes of silence.

Hannah More

Silence, Speech, Conversation

Hannah More (1853). “Poems, sacred dramas, essays”, p.278

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As a social and as a personal force, religion has become a dependent variable. It does not originate; it reacts. It does not denounce; it adapts. It does not set forth new models of conduct and sensibility; it imitates. Its rhetoric is without deep appeal; the worship it organizes is without piety. It has become less a revitalization of the spirit in permanent tension with the world than a respectable distraction from the sourness of life.

C. Wright Mills

Atheism, World, Doe

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Despite all the variables and advise, like love and marriage it seemed to me that learning to cast ought to be a lot easier than it was.

Jessica Maxwell

Lakes, Sea, Fishing

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Does religious conviction provide a powerful reason for killing? Undeniably it often does. It also often provides the sole compelling reason for refusing to kill, or for being merciful, or for seeking peace; only the profoundest ignorance of history could prevent one from recognizing this. For the truth is that religion and irreligion are cultural variables, but killing is a human constant.

David Bentley

Religious, Powerful, Ignorance

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Colour is as variable and evanescent in the form of pigment as in visible nature.

Walter J. Phillips

Color, Pigment, Form

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Karmic progression implies that we are kind of alliterating steps to life. There's alliteration, a kind of rhythmic structure. Once we're in time and space, the variable structures are somewhat limited.

Frederick Lenz

Space, Steps, Kind

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