Quotes About Explanation

Most theories and ideologies claimed to explain the world, or some aspect of it, but did not in any real sense influence the world. Underneath everything, beneath the layers of explanation that we created, beneath all our elaborate protocols, people still did exactly as they wanted to do. In other words, you did not change human nature by inventing a theory of human nature.

Dantes remained confused and silent by this explanation of the thoughts which had unconsciously been working in his mind, or rather soul; for there are two distinct sorts of ideas, those that proceed from the head and those from the heart.

What's an alligator?" Kaz asked. He'd never seen a figure like the one Claire projected onto the cabinet wall. "It's a reptile that lives in Florida," Claire explained. Kaz didn't know what Florida was, either.

But" doesn't make an apology, it makes an excuse of your behaviour

A person who believes in a particular conceptual system believes that everything can be explained by reference to that conceptual system. Whereas the artist sees the pattern and feels the mystery that looms beyond the pattern. […] Great art is pattern over mystery, it is juggling words over whirlpools of silence.

Existen etapas en las que es útil, o necesario, y, quizá, hasta indispensable. Exactamente lo mismo es aplicable a las teorías que intentan entender los filtros de la Realidad: apegarse a una explicación es un obstáculo, pero en ciertas etapas es útil y hasta necesario contar con una teoría, siempre y cuando ésta abra caminos y amplíen el entendimiento.

No existen dudas ni necesidad de explicaciones. Todo se explica a sí mismo en la vivencia de unificación y en su sabor dulce y luminoso.

What appear to us to be causal explanations are in fact just stories—descriptions of what happened that tell us little, if anything, about the mechanisms at work.

Together, creeping determinism and sampling bias lead commonsense explanations to suffer from what is called the post-hoc fallacy.

we routinely explain social trends in terms of what society "is ready for." But the only way we know society is ready for something is because it happened. Thus, in effect, all we are really saying is that "X happened because that's what people wanted; and we know that X is what they wanted because X is what happened."5

Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency," or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.

The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it.

Science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle.

To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy.

Preaching for life changes requires far less information and more application. Less explanation and more inspiration.

Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.

In the beginning the word was with God; all explanations, physical and moral, rested on the divine. And now for storytellers, even though those patterns of explanation are strictly human, the word has not lost a superhuman power to connect young and old, writer and reader; to connect us with each other and with the causes and consequences of what we do.

I don't rightly know. It just ain't possible to explain some things, maybe even most things. It's interesting to wonder on them and do some speculation, but the main thing is you have to accept it - take it for what it is, and get on with your getting." (91)

Cricket makes no sense to me. I find it beautiful to watch and I like that they break for tea. That is very cool, but I don't understand. My friends from The Clash tried to explain it years and years ago, but I didn't understand what they were talking about.

This compulsion to look back, to explain to myself, to others, why I did what I did—or, worse, to justify why I didn't do something else—is one of the most direct roads to depression we have. Our thoughts, emotions, and attitudes, according to Dr. Andrew Weil in his book Healthy Aging, are "key determinants of how we age." They can threaten the quality of time we bring to the present.

He'd also explained that while you could

Do you think magic exists if it can be explained?

There is no single explanation, and I will not offer either a grand theory or a universal solution. But there is a theme: Given the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all of our societies eventually will.

single explanation, and I will not offer either a grand theory or a universal solution. But there is a theme: Given the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all of our societies eventually will.