Quotes About Description

In classical physics, science started from the belief – or should one say, from the illusion? – that we could describe the world, or least parts of the world, without any reference to ourselves.

Science is analytical description, philosophy is synthetic interpretation.

Grove Health Center, trilled the woman on the end of the line. She had the vocal automisation that comes to people whose job description might as well read: 'Ceaseless repetition'.

Nicolson described the great aviator thus: 'he is and always will be not only a schoolboy hero, but a schoolboy.' It explains a great deal.

Shirlee opened the teak doors and ushered me in. A thickset man, 40s, swarthy, unshaven, in a loose v-neck t-shirt and carefully

A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms; but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description.

there is but a single reality out there, and science is getting increasingly better at describing it.

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species.

The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in words--that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity, but even of a single people, appears to be impossible.

The loathing which Nekhludoff felt increased with the reading of the description. Katiousha's life, the sanies running from the nostrils, the eyes that came out of their sockets, and his conduct toward her—all seemed to him to belong to the same order, and he was surrounded and swallowed up by these things.

I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others it's for others to use.

When you are describing, A shape, or sound, or tint; Don't state the matter plainly, But put it in a hint; And learn to look at all things, With a sort of mental squint.

To dismiss as non-existent what happens to be indescribable is to equate existence with information. Can a color be described solely in terms of its mathematical determinable wave length? No matter how accurate this abstract description may be, it gives no indication of color as a subjective experience. So with pain. To deny the existence or importance of pain because it is too private to be described-is that an example of scientific objectivity?

Putin is sometimes described as a revanchist, seeking to recreate the Soviet Union. That is a useful shorthand, but it is not really accurate.

What is it that the scientist finds useful in being able to relate a positive description of behavior to the solution of a maximizing problem? That is what a good deal of my own early work was about.

You kind of alluded to it in your introduction. I mean, for the last 300 or so years, the exact sciences have been dominated by what is really a good idea, which is the idea that one can describe the natural world using mathematical equations.

I've had it with those women - women! - who seek to undermine the serious work of women in Israeli politics by describing them as 'attractive and elegant' but utterly vacant.

Part of my plan was not only to introduce all useful animals that I possibly could into this part of Australia, but also the most valuable plants of every description.

I have always felt that the truth is prophetic, and that if you describe precisely what you see and give it life with your imagination, then what you write ought to have lasting value, no matter what the mood of your prose.

Mary? said an officer who was carrying a large potted plant in the manner of someone who thinks it is well outside his job description.

The teacher of history's work should be, ideally, not simply a description of past cultures, but a performance of the culture in which we live and are increasingly taking our being.

In many ways, string theory attempts to go beyond Einstein's dream... an all-encompassing description of nature that works at large distances where gravity becomes important as well as small distances where quantum mechanics is important.

The most lively fancy aided by the strongest description cannot equal the reality of the opera.