Quotes about detail

page 9

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. Yes, every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear and tear it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii, evince how much it has been used. How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate, whether we had better know them, — had better let their peddling-carts be driven, even at the slowest trot or walk, over that bridge of glorious span by which we trust to pass at last from the farthest brink of time to the nearest shore of eternity! Have we no culture, no refinement, — but skill only to live coarsely and serve the Devil? — to acquire a little worldly wealth, or fame, or liberty, and make a false show with it, as if we were all husk and shell, with no tender and living kernel to us? Shall our institutions be like those chestnut-burs which contain abortive nuts, perfect only to prick the fingers?

Address to the Harvard Alumni Association to the Class of '61, in Speeches (1913), p. 96.
1910s

Pages 72-73
The Revolution Will Be Digitised: Dispatches From the Information War, 1st Edition
Context: When a politician claims for example that 'crime is down' since he implemented a certain policy, it is the professional investigative journalist who knows the raw data on which this statement is based (criminal incident reports) and who asks for verification. He or she can then go to other sources to question the veracity of the data. The reason I specialise in the intricate details of bureaucracy isn't because I have a passion for paper-pushers, but rather because I need to know all the types of information collected, by whom and where they are stored so I can get my hands on them. A statement isn't a fact. Even when the person making the statement is an authority he or she still needs to provide evidence or proof that what they say is the truth and a professional journalist should be asking for this proof and supplying it for public scrutiny. All this accumulating of statements, data and information which then has to be verified takes time. But this is the only thing a journalist does that marks him out as a professional. It's the only reason anyone would choose a well-known newspaper's website over an unknown blog. The newspaper as a brand has built up, over time, a reputation for challenging the powerful and giving people meaningful, true information. The press is not like any other business and what it sells shouldn't just be rehashed press releases or celebrity gossip, but the civic information necessary for people to understand their society and participate in it. It is a check on political and financial power, or at least it should be.

Source: Life of Pythagoras, Ch. 1 : Importance of the Subject
Context: Since wise people are in the habit of invoking the divinities at the beginning of any philosophic consideration, this is all the more necessary on studying that one which is justly named after the divine Pythagoras. Inasmuch as it emanated from the divinities it could not be apprehended without their inspiration and assistance. Besides, its beauty and majesty so surpasses human capacity, that it cannot be comprehended in one glance. Gradually only can some details of it be mastered when, under divine guidance we approach the subject with a quiet mind. Having therefore invoked the divine guidance, and adapted ourselves and our style to the divine circumstances, we shall acquiesce in all the suggestions that come to us. Therefore we shall not begin with any excuses for the long neglect of this sect, nor by any explanations about its having been concealed by foreign disciplines, or mystic symbols, nor insist that it has been obscured by false and spurious writings, nor make apologies for any special hindrances to its progress. For us it is sufficient that this is the will of the Gods, which all enable us to undertake tasks even more arduous than these. Having thus acknowledged our primary submission to the divinities, our secondary devotion shall be to the prince and father of this philosophy as a leader.

Vol. XI, p. 62
Posthumous publications, The Collected Works
Context: I think we must see this very clearly right at the beginning — that if one would solve the everyday problems of existence, whatever they may be, one must first see the wider issues and then come to the detail. After all, the great painter, the great poet is one who sees the whole — who sees all the heavens, the blue skies, the radiant sunset, the tree, the fleeting bird — all at one glance; with one sweep he sees the whole thing. With the artist, the poet, there is an immediate, a direct communion with this whole marvellous world of beauty. Then he begins to paint, to write, to sculpt; he works it out in detail. If you and I could do the same, then we should be able to approach our problems — however contradictory, however conflicting, however disturbing — much more liberally, more wisely, with greater depth and colour, feeling. This is not mere romantic verbalization but actually it is so, and that is what I would like to talk about now and every time we get together. We must capture the whole and not be carried away by the detail, however pressing, immediate, anxious it may be. I think that is where the revolution begins.

Source: On Liberty (1859), Ch. 1: Introductory
Context: Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.

Interview in The Hindu (2013)
Context: The improved understanding of the equations of hydrodynamics is general in nature; it applies to all quantum field theories, including those like quantum chromodynamics that are of interest to real world experiments. I think this is a good (though minor) example of the impact of string theory on experiments. At our current stage of understanding of string theory, we can effectively do calculations only in particularly simple — particularly symmetric — theories. But we are able to analyse these theories very completely; do the calculations completely correctly. We can then use these calculations to test various general predictions about the behaviour of all quantum field theories. These expectations sometimes turn out to be incorrect. With the string calculations to guide you can then correct these predictions. The corrected general expectations then apply to all quantum field theories, not just those very symmetric ones that string theory is able to analyse in detail.

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science"
Context: The new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn facts. All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in 'irreducible and stubborn facts'; all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament, who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles. It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty of our present society.

Letter to James Robertson (20 April 1831)
1830s
Context: With respect to the words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the "Articles of Confederation," and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted.

Introduction to The Path (1999), based on ideas presented in Thinking and Destiny (1946) by Harold W. Percival, p. 11
Context: It is my conviction that basic Reality is not all that perplexing. What seems difficult to assimilate are the manifold details of Reality, not its fundamental elements.

The Principles of Anarchism
Context: My mind is appalled at the thought of a political party having control of all the details that go to make up the sum total of our lives. Think of it for an instant, that the party in power shall have all authority to dictate the kind of books that shall be used in our schools and universities, government officials editing, printing, and circulating our literature, histories, magazines and press, to say nothing of the thousand and one activities of life that a people engage in, in a civilized society.

Journals of Søren Kierkegaard 1A 8, 1834
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s
Context: The reason I cannot really say that I positively enjoy nature is that I do not quite realize what it is that I enjoy. A work of art, on the other hand, I can grasp. I can — if I may put it this way — find that Archimedian point, and as soon as I have found it, everything is readily clear for me. Then I am able to pursue this one main idea and see how all the details serve to illuminate it.

On the character "Thunder Jim Wade" in "The Poison People" in Thrilling Adventures (July 1941) using the pseudonym "Charles Stoddard."
Short fiction
Context: A casual eye might have seen nothing extraordinary in Wade as he moved lithely across the meadow toward the Thunderbug. He was tall, lean and rangy, looking rather like a college boy on a vacation, with his brown, almost youthful face and tousled dark hair, so deep-black that it was almost blue.
A closer inspection would have shown more significant details. There was an iron hardness underlying Wade’s face, like iron beneath velvet. His jet eyes were decidedly not those of a boy. There was a curious quality of soft depth to them, although sometimes that black deep could freeze over with deadly purpose.

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)
Context: The people at the bottom do not have the larger, global view, but at the top they do not have the local view of all the details, many of which can often be very important, so either extreme gets poor results.

Interview for InConversation http://www.abc.net.au/rn/inconversation/stories/2007/1998485.htm (16 August 2007), by Robyn Williams, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Context: One of my complaints is that you've got far more scientists than ever before but the pace of discovery has not increased. Why? Because they're all busy just filling in the details of what they think is the standard story. And the youngsters, the people with different ideas have just as big a fight as ever and normally it takes decades for science to correct itself. But science does correct itself and that's the reason why science is such a glorious thing for our species.

Directive (1947)
Context: Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry –
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there's a story in a book about it…

1950s, The Chance for Peace (1953)
Context: The details of such disarmament programs are manifestly critical and complex. Neither the United States nor any other nation can properly claim to possess a perfect, immutable formula. But the formula matters less than the faith -- the good faith without which no formula can work justly and effectively. The fruit of success in all these tasks would present the world with the greatest task, and the greatest opportunity, of all. It is this: the dedication of the energies, the resources, and the imaginations of all peaceful nations to a new kind of war. This would be a declared total war, not upon any human enemy but upon the brute forces of poverty and need. The peace we seek, founded upon decent trust and cooperative effort among nations, can be fortified, not by weapons of war but by wheat and by cotton, by milk and by wool, by meat and timber and rice. These are words that translate into every language on earth. These are the needs that challenge this world in arms.

Context: To draw up in advance an exact and detailed plan is to deprive our minds of the pleasures of the encounter and the novelty that comes from executing the work. It is to make the execution insipid for us and consequently impossible in works that depends on enthusiasm and imagination. Such a plan is itself a half-work. It must be left imperfect if we want to please ourselves. We must say it cannont be finished. In fact, it must not be for a very good reason: it is impossible. We can, however, draw up such plans for works whose execution and accomplishment are a mechanical thing, a thing that depends above all others on the hand. This is suitable and even very useful for painters, for sculptors. Their senses, with each stroke of the brush or chisel, will find this novelty that did not exist for their minds. Forms and colors, which the imagination cannot represent to us as perfectly as the eye can, will offer the artist a horde of these encounters which are indispensable to giving genius pleasure in work. But the orator, the poet, and the philosopher will not find the same encouragement in writing down what they have already thought. Everything is one for them. Because the words they use have beauty only for the mind and, having been spoken in their head in the same way they are written on the page, the mind no longer has anything to discover in what it wants to say. A plan, however is necessary, but a plan that is vague, that has not been pinned down. We must have above all the notion of the beginning, the end, and the middle of our work. That is to say, we must choose its pitch and range, its pauses, and its objectives. The first word must give the color, the beginning determines the tone; the middle rules the measure, the time, the space, and the proportions.

In a letter to George Gamow, 1958, commenting on Werner Heisenberg's claim to a journalist that Pauli and Heisenberg have found a unified field theory, "but the technical details were missing"; as quoted in Hyperspace : A Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension (1995) by Michio Kaku, p. 137

As quoted in an interview with José Rodriguez (c. 1936) in Schoenberg‎ (1971) by Merle Armitage, p. 149
after 1930
Context: I see the work as a whole first. Then I compose the details. In working out, I always lose something. This cannot be avoided. There is always some loss when we materialize. But there is compensating gain in vitality.

IX. On Providence, Fate, and Fortune.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: It is impossible that there should be so much providence in the last details, and none in the first principles. Then the arts of prophecy and of healing, which are part of the cosmos, come of the good providence of the Gods.

Failed London Garden Bridge project cost £53m https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-47228698, BBC News, 13 February 2019
2010s, 2019

Urvashi Butalia, Katha: Short Stories by Indian Women

Sri Aurobindo, (From an introduction to a book entitled Speeches and Writings of Tilak.), quoted from Sri Aurobindo, ., Nahar, S., Aurobindo, ., & Institut de recherches évolutives (Paris). India's rebirth: A selection from Sri Aurobindo's writing, talks and speeches. Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives. 3rd Edition (2000). https://web.archive.org/web/20170826004028/http://bharatvani.org/books/ir/IR_frontpage.htm

Friedrich Engels, in his The Dialectics of Nature
A - F

On observing Richard Chavez creating the UFW flag (as quoted in “Pioneering Chicano artist José Montoya dies” https://www.vidaenelvalle.com/news/article28206523.html in Vida en la Valle; 2013 Oct 3)

About the state and technology

Arundhati Roy, To the Jaffri Family, An Apology . May 27, 2002 . Quoted from The God of false things : How Arundhati Roy creates fake news and gets away with it https://www.opindia.com/2017/05/the-god-of-false-things-how-arundhati-roy-creates-fake-news-and-gets-away-with-it/

Source: Initiation Into Hermetics (1956), p. 10

Koenraad Elst, On Modi Time : Merits And Flaws of Hindu Activism In Its Day Of Incumbency – 2015 Ch 17
The Hindus' (2009), About her book 'The Hindus

Source: The Laundry Files, The Rhesus Chart (2014), Chapter 1, “Prologue: One Month Ago” (p. 2; ellipsis represents elision of one sentence of description)

On adjusting to film writing in “An Interview with Tsitsi Dangarembga: An excerpt” https://brickmag.com/an-interview-with-tsitsi-dangarembga/ in Brick Magazine (December 2012)

Peter J. Rabinowitz in Fanfare - The Magazin for Serious Record Collectors, USA, January/February 2011, Chopin-Schumann Anniversary Edition 2010 in the interpretation of Burkard Schliessmann, Volume 34, Number 3, p. 255

To an agent, as reported in The First Partner: Hillary Rodham Clinton (1999) by Joyce Milton, p. 259
Attributed

As quoted in The Private Albert Einstein (1992) by Peter A. Bucky and Allen G. Weakland, p. 86
Attributed in posthumous publications

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Nominalist and Realist

Letter to The Times with Henry Usborne (22 January 1954), p. 7
1950s

On not planning her stories in advance in “In a rare interview, Elena Ferrante describes the writing process behind the Neapolitan novels” https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-elena-ferrante-interview-20180517-htmlstory.html in Los Angeles Times (2018 May 17)

Letter to Maurice Thorez resigning from the French Communist Party, October 24, 1956

On the subjects that she most likes to write about in “An Interview with Annie Proulx” https://www.missourireview.com/article/an-interview-with-annie-proulx/ in The Missouri Review (1999 Mar 1)
Personal life and writing career

Reincarnation & Christianity https://www.theosophical.org/files/resources/articles/ReincarnationChristianity.pdf (1967)

He cannot be subjected to conscription, or forced military service, save by the written orders of the highest military authority of the department, under such regulations as the President or Congress may prescribe. Domestic servants, blacksmiths, carpenters, and other mechanics, will be free to select their own work and residence, but the young and able-bodied negroes must be encouraged to enlist as soldiers in the service of the United States, to contribute their share toward maintaining their own freedom, and securing their rights as citizens of the United States.
1860s, 1865, Special Field Order No. 15 (January 1865)

Tipu Sultan's address on 1788, Quoted in The Sword of Tipu Sultan, by Bhagwan S Gidwani https://books.google.com.sa/books?id=EimPBAAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PT262#v=onepage&q&f=true
From Tipu Sultan's Decrees

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)

This contradiction was first pointed out by David Frawley
The Rigveda and the Avesta (2008)

Michael Witzel – An Examination of his Review of my Book (2001)

The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis (2000), Chapter 8 : Misinterpretations of Rigvedic History

Source: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019), p. 345

"The Problem Is Not “Fake News.” It’s the Noise That Drowns Out the News". Truthout https://truthout.org/articles/the-problem-is-not-fake-news-its-the-noise-that-drowns-out-the-news/ (9 February 2019)

Jo nodded. No surprise there. Sex had sold stuff ever since stuff had been around.
Source: The Vastalimi Gambit (2013), Chapter 3

The object of administrative study should be to discover, first, what government can properly and successfully do, and secondly, how it can do these proper things with the utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost both of money and of energy.
Source: "The Study of Administration." 1937, p. 29

The Kid from Hoboken: An Autobiography by Bill Bailey (1993)

Source: Literary Vision, p. 152

Michael Brooks in: "Neutrino misbehaviour suggested 50 years ago"

Harold Mitchell, a medical doctor, an expert on human vulnerability to the H-bomb’s effects, told me when the study first began: “Why are they wasting their time going through all this shit? You know goddamned well that a bomb this big is going to blow the fucking city into the next county. What more do you have to know?” I had to agree with him.
F*** You! Mr. President: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb (2006)

Sri Aurobindo, (From an introduction to a book entitled Speeches and Writings of Tilak.), quoted from Sri Aurobindo, ., Nahar, S., Aurobindo, ., & Institut de recherches évolutives (Paris). India's rebirth: A selection from Sri Aurobindo's writing, talks and speeches. Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives. 3rd Edition (2000). https://web.archive.org/web/20170826004028/http://bharatvani.org/books/ir/IR_frontpage.htm

Source: Computer architecture (1972), p. 155

In clean-cut form, his duties and relations to other men of the organization are laid down once and for all, and responsibility rests on the right man. Failure so to specify responsibilities inevitably means confusion all down the line.
Source: Industrial organization (1914), p. 24-25

After working with Satyajit Ray, working in Bombay was confusing: Sharmila Tagore

Joseph Goebbels, diary entry, March 2, 1945

Robert H. Jackson

Speech delivered at Barisal on 14th October 1917. Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.
About others

For the moment – an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by – I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand in suspense any longer, inquired anxiously "Can you see anything?", it was all I could do to get out the words "Yes, wonderful things".
Tutankhamen and the Glint of Gold http://www.fathom.com/feature/190166/index.html
Diary, 26 November 1922.

review of The Mercenary by Jerry Pournelle http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/the-hunter-and-the-bear, 2016
2010s

Thornton Wilder, A preface for Our Town (1938)

Source: Autobiography (1873)

https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/36/mode/1up pp. 36–37

Quote, early 1930's; as quoted by Jonathan Jones in his article 'André in wonderland'; The Guardian / Culture, 16 June, 2004 https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2004/jun/16/1
In the early 1930's Dalí was judged by a surrealist 'high court' at André Breton's flat; Dali was accused of 'counter-revolutionary actions' because of his supposed political sympathy for fascism. Dalí claimed that he was being an honest and pure surrealist, recording the unexpurgated contents of his psychic life - which this quote should illustrate.
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1920 - 1930

Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 12. Nice Guys Finish First

August 1909, Popular Science Monthly Volume 75, Article:"The Varificational Factor in Handwriting", p. 150-151
about Handwriting

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 1 : Why Anthropology?

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 1 : Why Anthropology?

Preface
Geometry and the Imagination (1952)

1940s, Excerpt, A Propos of Measuring a Mobile (1943)

As quoted in[Rockey Fleming, Alexandra, Meet the Inspiring Author Who Writes Books He Wanted to Read Growing Up: 'Every Kid Knows Fear', https://people.com/human-interest/jason-reynolds-author-long-way-down/, People, 10 March 2020, October 24, 2017]

"Introduction". p.6, 7 [Page numbers per the 2017 Little, Brown hardback UK edition.]
Theft by Finding: Diaries, Volume 1 (1977-2002) (2017)

‘To Mr. Attwood’, Political Register (5 May 1821), p. 343
1820s

But if I don’t understand, Morrow thought sourly, then you can control me. Arbitrarily. And that’s what I find hard to accept.

Chapter 8 (p. 649)
Ring (1994)

Source: Feet of Clay; Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus (1996, 1997), Chapter 7 "The Jesuit and Jesus" (p. 147)

"NYT’s Exposé on the Lies About Burning Aid Trucks in Venezuela Shows How U.S. Government and Media Spread Pro-War Propaganda" (10 March 2019)

And I realized that all this Buddhism was a STRAIN at telling the untellable emptiness yet that nothing was truer, a perfect paradox.

Meditation in the Woods (1958)

Quoted in * 2020-03-27

Trump claims Asian Americans are angry at 'what China has done' to U.S.

Kimmy Yam

Yahoo News / NBC News

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-claims-asian-americans-angry-190959445.html
2020s, 2020, March

Source: On how politics still seeps into peoples’ personal lives in “INTERVIEWS: Kamila Shamsie” https://bookpage.com/interviews/21570-kamila-shamsie-fiction#.Xc2ItmNKjcs in BookPage (2017 Aug 1)

Source: Mary, the Mother of Jesus: An Essay (1912), Ch. II. "Mary in the Scriptures", pp. 18, 21

The Romance of Commerce (1918), A Representative Business of the Twentieth Century

The Romance of Commerce (1918), A Representative Business of the Twentieth Century

Source: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 8, p. 182

Note in the first chapter of an 1814 version of The Story of the Stone, as quoted by Liu Zaifu in Reflections on "Dream of the Red Chamber", trans. Shu Yunzhong (Cambria Press, 2008), p. 197

As quoted in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (1884 - 1888) edited by Robert Underwood Clarence C. Buel, Vol. II, p. 297
Q him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow…]]

Reincarnation & Christianity (1967)

...One of the scenarios for the very long term history ...is the heat death of the universe where everything... becomes thermodynamically boring... equilibrium. People say that's a really bad outcome, but actually... it's an outcome where there's all this computation going on... molecules bouncing around in very complicated ways, doing this very elaborate computation. It just happens to be a computation that right now, we haven't found ways to understand... [O]ur brains... and our mathematics and our science... haven't found ways to tell an interesting story about that. It just looks boring to us.
Stephen Wolfram: Fundamental Theory of Physics, Life, and the Universe (Sep 15, 2020)

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (2012), Chapter 1 (p. 21)

On Actors and the Art of Acting (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1875) p. 13

TALKING WITH CREATURE EFFECTS LEGEND CHRIS WALAS…OR AS I KNOW HIM, UNCLE CHRIS https://www.starwars.com/news/talking-with-creature-effects-legend-chris-walas-or-as-i-know-him-uncle-chris (March 1, 2016)

Original: (it) Nella vita di una persona assumi un ruolo fondamentale, quando diventi il suo dettaglio principale.
Source: prevale.net