Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
People have asked me why I made the first chapter of my first novel so long, and in an invented English. The only answer I can come up with that satisfies me is, 'To keep out the scum.'
Any approach to scientific inference which seeks to legitimize it and answer in reponse to complex uncertainty is, for me, a totalitarian parody of a would-be rational learning process.
Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The honest answer is more complex. On some level I was sent. Or inspired. Or called. But my calling, such as it was, wasn't a single booming invitation from above (really, is it ever?).
It’s not good enough to imitate the models proposed for us that are answers to circumstances other than our own. It isn’t even enough to discover who we are. We have to invent ourselves.
Most men are rich in borrowed sufficiency: a man may very well say a good thing, give a good answer, cite a good sentence, without at all seeing the force of either the one or the other.
We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know.
If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer. Otherwise, find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter than you are; then ask him or her what recursion is.
As you see, it is not that I don't know my own mind, I know it very well but only up to a certain point in the matter. I know perfectly well what the question is. It's the answer I want.
We may expect answers to prayer, and should not be easy without them any more than we should be if we had written a letter to a friend upon important business, and had received no reply.
After taking risk into account, do more managers than you’d see by chance outperform with persistence? Virtually every economist who studied this question answers with a resounding 'no.'
Carli Fiorina is really annoying. Hell, they're all annoying. But Fiorina doesn't even pretend to offer up policy answers. She just gives mini stump speeches about how bad everything is.
I deal with cultural issues whether they be in the Middle East, Far East, the Orient or the West. You broach questions in the context of their culture and then present Christian answers.
People often ask how I got interested in the brain; my rhetorical answer is: 'How can anyone NOT be interested in it?' Everything you call 'human nature' and consciousness arises from it.
As the warden of San Quentin, I presided over four executions. After each one, someone on the staff would ask, 'Is the world safer because of what we did tonight?' We knew the answer: No.
Don't look at the superficial success, at the short-term success. Look at the deep spiritual questions that architecture has to answer. Who do you build for? Where? What should you build?
...My friend, there are some things that I cannot tell you. Some I will tell you in time; some, others will tell you; some you may never know, or you may be the first to find the answers.
The best thing I ever did in my life was to ask, 'Do I like everybody?' And the answer was, 'No.' So why should everybody like me? If people are against me, so what? I'm against them too.
When you meditate or pray... both are forms of meditation... you give up control and find the answer and you open yourself to receive God's gift, the universal force, or whatever that is.
But as the clerical pretensions are more exacting than all others, being put forward with an assertion that no answer is possible without breach of duty and sin, so are they more galling.
I think it's a wonderful fact about Judaism - at least about the approach to Judaism I most relate to: There are no universal answers. We don't have it all figured out. God is unknowable.
What I've come to know is that in life, it's not always the questions we ask, but rather our ability to hear the answers that truly enriches our understanding. Never, never stop learning.
I asked, often out loud: Who is tougher than me? The answer was always the same, and even when I knew absolutely there was no way on this earth that it was true, I said it anyway: No one.
When asked Who I Am, the only answer possible is: I am the infinite, the vastness that is the substance of all things. I am no one and everyone, nothing and everything -- just as you are.
I try not to listen to the shoulds or coulds, and try to get beyond expectations, peer pressure, or trying to please - and just listen. I believe all the answers are ultimately within us.
When I see someone who just follows their dream and succeeds, and just does basically what they want to do and doesn't have to answer to anyone, obviously not harming anyone, that's great.
Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open.
All joking aside, I'm a television watcher and I get frustrated with shows sometimes when they set up puzzles and then they don't give answers. It's just more questions and more questions.
We must certainly acknowledge that solitude is a fine thing; but it is a pleasure to have some one who can answer, and to whom we can say, from time to time, that solitude is a fine thing.
I'd like to ask you: what you would prefer us to do? I'd like to ask my colleagues, would any other country act differently? I think the answer is very clear. No one would act differently.
I feel like that religions generally ask the biggest questions. They may not always have the best answers, but they're the zone of human activity that regularly asks the biggest questions.
While our amplified knowledge of genetics - and the increasing precision of the field - does make it tempting to take on celebrity cases, retro-genetics can't always provide clear answers.
Then he leaned down, breath warm on my neck as he whispered his next words. "You've wondered if I felt differently about you since your abilities diminished. Let this serve as your answer.
A lot of our creative flow comes from a place of curiosity and exploration. It often feels like we're excavating and asking questions and not just giving answers but really just exploring.
All of the larger than life questions about our presence here on earth and what gifts we have to offer are spiritual questions. To seek answers to these questions is to seek a sacred path.
That's why history is not an answer to our problem, because history complicates, enlarges every problem of human existence. Now, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries didn't believe this.
I write about moments, and I don't make blanket statements about anything because no one has all the answers; nobody's come up with a foolproof way to do anything when it comes to emotions.
People always ask me, how do you teach core values? The answer is, you don't. The goal is not to get people to share your core values. It's to get people who already share your core values.
I wanted to write a book that would leave open many riddles and mysteries, even to me. Of course in some cases I do know the answers, but in many others I don't know and don't want to know.
There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.
To be an inventor, you have to be willing to live with a sense of uncertainty, to work in this darkness and grope towards an answer, to put up with anxiety about whether there is an answer.
Ultimately faith is the only key to the universe. The final meaning of human existence, and the answers to the questions on which all our happiness depends cannot be found in any other way.
Here lay the political genius of Franklin Roosevelt: that in his own time he knew what were the questions that had to be answered, even though he himself did not always find the full answer.
It's not as if I knew answers which I am going to set down in the form of a novel or a memoir or a sermon. It's, rather, I'm going to search myself for what I might have to say in this area.
One cannot come back too often to the question what is knowledge and to the answer knowledge is what one knows.... Knowledge is the thing you know and how can you know more than you do know.
Scare answers to scare, and force begets force, until at length it comes to be seen that we are racing one against another after a phantom security which continually vanishes as we approach.
When we become leaders, we sometimes think we are now supposed to have the answers. Yes, we may have some answers, but we will be more effective when we engage others and get their opinions.
I am very comfortable not being the expert and actually putting people who work for me forward. I don't need to know all the answers, and I don't need to be the one who's out there up front.
When we are at our wits' end for an answer, then the Holy Spirit can give us an answer. But how can He give us an answer when we are still well supplied with all sorts of answers of our own?
I would argue that religion comes from a desire to get to the questions of, 'Where do we come from?' and 'How shall we live?' And I would say I don't need religion to answer those questions.