Quotes About Explanation

What? What are you talking about?

Like all Holmes's reasoning the thing seemed simplicity itself when it was once explained.

Of course, a sign doesn't mean anything unless you know how to interpret it.

It is because I believe that it is in the power of such nations to lead the world back into the paths of peace that I propose to devote myself to explaining what, in my opinion, can and should be done to banish the fear of war that hangs so heavily over the world.

Galileo soon saw it was easier to explain phenomena like tides if you assumed the earth was not stationary, as Aristotle and Ptolemy had taught, but actually in motion.

Eu înÅ£eleg,dar neputând da explicaÅ£ii f?r? a folosi cuvinte p?gâne,aÅŸ prefera s? tac.

Of the two alternatives - a curved manifold in a Euclidean space of ten dimensions or a manifold with non-Euclidean geometry and no extra dimensions - which is right? I would rather not attempt a direct answer, because I fear I should get lost in a fog of metaphysics. But I may say at once that I do not take the ten dimensions seriously; whereas I take the non-Euclidean geometry of the world very seriously, and I do not regard it as a thing which needs explaining away.

In the view presented by the Madhyamakavatara (Tib. dbu ma la 'jug pa) the dharmadhatu is to be understood exclusively as freedom from conceptual elaboration. The aspect of primordial wisdom is not explained there. This difference should be understood well.

I am perfectly convinced that I have both seen, and heard in a manner which should make unbelief impossible, things called spiritual which cannot be taken by a rational being to be capable of explanation by imposture, coincidence, or mistake.

I know what I saw. And the rational explanation is... it was a UFO. There's UFOs over New York, as the song goes. And I saw another one in the early '80s, and I know other did people did too.

I'm always telling my students that if they can't explain what they are doing, to their grandmothers, then they probably don't understand it themselves.

Love takes the extra time and trouble to give others the courtesy of an explanation. — Janet Graham —

Aside from the faith factor, when it comes to reports of miracles, the historian must seek a natural explanation before considering a supernatural one.

among this pool are these: (a) explanatory power, (b) explanatory scope, (c) plausibility, (d) degree of ad hoc-ness and (e) conformity with other beliefs. The more explanatory power and scope and the more plausibility and conformity with other beliefs an explanation has, the better it is. The less ad hoc (adjusted, contrived, artificial) the explanation, the better as well. The trick is to subject all explanation options to these

Mysterious though the ghost may at first appear, he will always be more easily explained than the dismal story in which malevolent people have tried to picture two brothers killing each other who had worshiped each other all their lives. Believe me, etc.

We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence...on pain of liquidation

He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.

Sir James paused. He did not usually find it easy to give his reasons: it seemed to him strange that people should not know them without being told, since he only felt what was reasonable. At

He once called her his basil plant;* and when she asked for an explanation, said that basil was a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's brains.

Heat is a great agent and a useful word, but considered as a means of explaining the universe it requires an extensive knowledge of differences; and as a means of explaining character sensitiveness is in much the same predicament.

The wonderful thing about maths is it's a totally logical subject, and a pathway has been marked out. I think a lot of these things can be crystallised in something quite essential, that people can get. If I can't explain it, I realise that's probably because I don't completely understand it myself.

Scientists have wonderfully explained the organization of the universe, but that's really all it claims to do, and I think it does that very successfully.