Quotes for All
Properly understood, style is not a seductive decoration added to a functional structure; it is of the essence of a work of art. The necessary elements of style are lucidity, elegance, and individuality; these three qualities combine to form a preservative which ensures the nearest approximation to permanence in the fugitive art of letters. Evelyn … Read more
Personally, I don’t see old economics and behavioural economics as opposed. It is useful to assume people are rational as a good approximation to their long term behaviour, but it would be unwise not to think how in practice their behaviour may deviate from that simplifying assumption. Evan Davis
Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half … Read more
[A]n Obama presidency would be an amusing approximation of the Carter administration, complete with vaporous moralizing and foreign policy bungling. Emmett Tyrrell
I hope that I am generous and tolerant, but certainly on the intellectual side I think that there are discoverable truths, and some things that are closer approximations to the truth than others. Edward Tufte
No matter how consummate a work of art may seem, it is only an approximation of the original conception. It is the artist’s consciousness of this discrepancy between his conception and the realization that assures his progress. Edgard Varese
Take the so-called standard of living. What do most people mean by \”living\”? They don’t mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science, in its finite but unbounded wisdom, has succeeded in selling their wives. e. e. cummings
Science is about finding ever better approximations rather than pretending you have already found ultimate truth. A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. Friedrich Nietzsche
Change the attitude toward errors. Think of an object’s user as attempting to do a task, getting there by imperfect approximations. Don’t think of the user as making errors; think of the actions as approximations of what is desired. Donald A. Norman
I don’t believe that we are what we do although many thinkers argue otherwise. I believe that what we do is, very often, a poor approximation of what we are — an imperfect manifestation of a much better totality. Even the best of us sometimes bite off, as it were, less than we can chew. … Read more