Quotes About Analysis

Too often students are being taught to read as if literature were some kind of ethics class or civics class—or worse, some kind of self-help manual. In fact, the important thing is the way the writer uses the language.

the truth is that grammar is always interesting, always useful. Mastering the logic of grammar contributes, in a mysterious way that again evokes some process of osmosis, to the logic of thought.

Every so often I'll hear writers say that there are other writers they would read if for no other reason than to marvel at the skill with which they can put together the sort of sentences that move us to read closely, to disassemble and reassemble them, much the way a mechanic might learn about an engine by taking it apart.

Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

And inquiries into nature have the best result when they begin with physics and end in mathematics.

And generally let every student of nature take this as a rule: that whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion, and that so much the more care is to be taken in dealing with such questions to keep the understanding even and clear.

Read Not to Contradict Or Confute Nor To Believe Or Take For Granted But To Weigh And Consider Oh the side of my high school building

All approaches at a higher level are suspect until confirmed at the molecular level.

Seeing is a vigorous, pattern-seeking process.

A lot of historical writing has been characterized as ODTAA—"one damn thing after another"—without an effort to extract general rules or causal theories that can be applied in other circumstances.

Has any historian sought to question why the wagonmaster of America's westward-bound pioneers 'circled' the wagons instead of 'squaring' or 'triangulating' them for a better defense strategy in fighting-off Indian raids on the plains:

ésta es una ciudad donde, en los últimos cuarenta años, los valores de la gente han ido cambiando más rápidamente que en el resto del país. ¿Por qué? Porque aquí están las universidades más grandes y más importantes, y eso lo cambia todo: eso incrementa el número de personas que piensan, que critican y analizan; se vuelven más sensibles y tolerantes.

No problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking.

Perhaps the most important role for a second is analyzing adjourned positions jointly with the player. Sometimes this means all-night sessions, so that the player has a variety of tactics to employ when play is resumed the next day. Soviet players were traditionally serviced by a team of seconds, each performing an assigned task. For example, there could be an endgame specialist, an opening theoretician, a physical trainer, a "go-for," and sometimes a psychologist.

Policymakers have to make judgments based on the best intelligence they get.

Intelligence is not a science.

And I argued with that intelligence estimate and I think it is a responsibility of policymakers to use their best judgment on the basis of the intelligence they've received.

Truth is subject to too much analysis.

Change is superficial. Transformation is deep. It alters our perception of reality and therefore causes everything in our life to shift. Transformation is what happens when we live our life rather than analyze it.

Our analysis suggests that ratcheting up the use of traffic stops as a crime fighting strategy has little positive effect on crime but dramatically negative effects on racial disparities, on alienation and trust in the minority community, and on community cooperation with the police.

A good athlete always mentally replays a competition over and over, even in victory, to see what might be done to improve the performance the next time.

The true work of the critic is not to make his hearer believe him, but agree with him

Perhaps nothing has changed in the course of history as much as historians.

Lorenz was the charismatic, flamboyant thinker—he didn't conduct a single statistical analysis in his life—while Tinbergen did the nitty-gritty of actual data collection.