Variables Quotes

• To be is to be the value of a variable.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Good Life, Values

  Journal of Philosophy, 21 Dec. 1939

  58 Copy quote

  Show source

• Beauty is variable, ugliness is constant.

  Douglas Horton

  Beauty, Imperfect, Constant

  58 Copy quote

• 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”

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• One man's constant is another man's variable.

  Alan Perlis

  Men, Constant, Programmers

  Alan J. Perlis (1975). “Introduction to computer science”

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Time is a series of fluctuating variables.

  Terence McKenna

  Series

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• How are we to adjudicate among rival ontologies? Certainly the answer is not provided by the semantical formula "To be is to be the value of a variable"; this formula serves rather, conversely, in testing the conformity of a given remark or doctrine to a prior ontological standard.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Doctrine, Answers, Rivals

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Roger F. Gibson (2004). “Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine”, p.189, Harvard University Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Forrest Griffin

  Mma, Worry

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• These prin­ciples laid down as in variable rules: that one must pay a card sharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat any one, but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he adhered to them, Vronsky felt that his heart was at peace and he could hold his head up.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Husband, Lying, Heart

  8 Copy quote

• O, swear not by the moon, the fickle moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circle orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable

  William Shakespeare

  Moon, Circles, Fickle

  'Romeo And Juliet' (1595) act 2, sc. 2, l. 107

  72 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was supposed to have a script, and had mislaid it. I was supposed to hear cues, and no longer did. I was meant to know the plot, but all I knew was what I saw: flash pictures in variable sequence, images with no 'meaning' beyond their temporary arrangement, not a movie but a cutting-room experience.

  Joan Didion

  Cutting, Rooms, Scripts

  Joan Didion (2013). “The White Album”, p.6, Zola Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe that it may be normal, healthy, and even productive to experience mild to moderate depression from time to time as part of the variable emotional spectrum, either as an appropriate response to situations or as a way of turning inward and mentally chewing over problems to find solutions.

  Andrew Weil

  Believe, Emotional, Healthy

  4 Copy quote

• Sexist grammar burns into the brains of little girls and young women a message that the male is the norm, the standard, the central figure beside which we are all deviants, the marginal, the dependent variables. It lays the foundation for androcentric thinking, and leaves men safe in their solipsistic tunnel-vision.

  Adrienne Rich

  Girl, Men, Thinking

  Adrienne Rich (1995). “On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978”, p.134, W. W. Norton & Company

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are here because over billions of years, countless variables fell into place, any of which could have taken another path. We are essentially a beautiful fluke, as are the millions of other species with which we share this planet. Our cells are composed of atoms and dust particles from distant galaxies, and from the billions of living organisms that inhabited this planet before us.

  Wendy Mass

  Beautiful, Taken, Cells

  Wendy Mass (2010). “Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life”, p.109, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Abstraction brings the world into more complex, variable relations; it can extract beauty, alternative topographies, ugliness, and intense actualities from seeming nothingness.

  Jerry Saltz

  Topography, Alternatives, World

  "Ask an Art Critic: Jerry Saltz Answers Your Questions About George Condo, Online Art Fairs, and What Abstraction Really Is" by Jerry Saltz, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 24, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Trust your gut instinct over spreadsheets. There are too many variables in the real world that you simply can't put into a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets spit out results from your inexact assumptions and give you a false sense of security. In most cases, your heart and gut are still your best guide.

  Naveen Jain

  Trust, Real, Heart

  23 Copy quote

• On the Internet, companies are scale businesses, characterized by high fixed costs and relatively low variable costs. You can be two sizes: You can be big, or you can be small. It's very hard to be medium. A lot of medium-sized companies had the financing rug pulled out from under them before they could get big.

  Jeff Bezos

  Two, Size, Cost

  "Online Extra: Q&A with Amazon's Jeff Bezos". Interview with Robert D. Hof, www.bloomberg.com. March 26, 2001.

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• Change is one of the scariest things in the world and yet it is also one of those variables of human existence that no one can avoid.

  Aberjhani

  Nature, Fear, Humanity

  7 Copy quote

• All variables are independent.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Independent

  4 Copy quote