Quotes about explanation
page 7

“Ultimate explanation no longer means only a story that encompasses everything.”

John D. Barrow (1952–2020) British scientist

New Theories of Everything (2007), Ch. 1, p. 6

“May these explanations of the myths find favour in the eyes of the Gods themselves and the souls of those who wrote the myths.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

IV. That the species of myth are five, with examples of each.
On the Gods and the Cosmos

God, Soul

“That all science is description and not explanation, that the mystery of change in the inorganic world is just as great and just as omnipresent as in the organic world, are statements which will appear platitudes to the next generation.”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Preface to the Second Edition
The Grammar of Science (1900)

World, Science, Appearance, Change

“The holding of a myth explanation of any problem whereon mankind has attained true knowledge is what I term enslaved thought or dogmatism.”

Karl Pearson (1857–1936) English mathematician and biometrician

The Ethic of Freethought (Mar 6, 1883)

Knowledge, Problem

“Why freedom? If we accept that God is love, and that it is human beings who are to respond to this love, the explanation is simple. Love cannot be forced, ordered, or made obligatory. It is necessarily free. If God liberates, it is because he expects and hopes that we will come to know him and love him.”

Jacques Ellul book Anarchy and Christianity

Source: Anarchy and Christianity (1988), p. 39

God, Freedom, Hope, Love

“For several years I have referred to this, hitherto, rare and inaccessible work as the I-told-you-so-book, because it has often been implied that I have invented my explanations of Buddhism out of thin air, thus falsifying its authentic teachings... Yet, despite the occultist flavor of its title, The Secret Oral Teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist Sects is the most direct, no-nonsense, and down-to-earth explanation of Mahayana Buddhism which has thus far been written.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Watts' Foreward to The Secret Oral Teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist Sects (1964)], by Alexandra David Neel

Secret, Books

“It is with considerable disappointment you cannot give the explanation of these aircraft as I felt certain they belonged to our government. They have apparently meant no harm, but used as an instrument of destruction in combination with our atomic bomb the effects could destroy life on our planet. ... We have not taken this lightly. It is to us of very serious concern, as we are as interested in the welfare of our country as you are.”

Kenneth Arnold (1915–1984) American aviator and businessman

In a telegram https://rr0.org/time/1/9/4/7/07/12/Arnold_Telegram/index.html to the Commanding General of Wright Field in Ohio, who requested information on his sighting of June 24, 1947.

Disappointment, Life, Country

“It is with considerable disappointment you cannot give the explanation of these aircraft as I felt certain they belonged to our government. They have apparently meant no harm, but used as an instrument of destruction in combination with our atomic bomb the effects could destroy life on our planet. … We have not taken this lightly. It is to us of very serious concern, as we are as interested in the welfare of our country as you are.”

Kenneth Arnold (1915–1984) American aviator and businessman

Kenneth Arnold in a telegram https://rr0.org/time/1/9/4/7/07/12/Arnold_Telegram/index.html to the Commanding General of Wright Field in Ohio, who requested information on his sighting of June 24, 1947.

Disappointment, Life, Country

“The real explanation of this failure of Hindu-Muslim unity lies in the failure to realize that what stands between the Hindus and Muslims is not a mere matter of difference, and that this antagonism is not to be attributed to material causes. It is formed by causes which take their origin in historical, religious, cultural and social antipathy, of which political antipathy is only a reflection. These form one deep river of discontent which, being regularly fed by these sources, keeps on mounting to a head and overflowing its ordinary channels. Any current of water flowing from another source, however pure, when it joins it, instead of altering the colour or diluting its strength becomes lost in the main stream. The silt of this antagonism which this current has deposited, has become permanent and deep.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)

Water, Failure

“My great pleasure is creation—of this I never tire. Some of my guests have complained of a gentle melancholy which hangs in the air; I agree that the mood exists. The explanation, I believe, arises from the fugacity of beauty, the tragic pavanne to which all of us step.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Palace of Love (1967), Chapter 12 (p. 415)

Pleasure, Beauty, Mood

“How sincere and confidential we can be, saying all that lies in the mind, and yet go away feeling that all is yet unsaid, from the incapacity of the parties to know each other, although they use the same words! My companion assumes to know my mood and habit of thought, and we go on from explanation to explanation until all is said which words can, and we leave matters just as they were at first, because of that vicious assumption. Is it that every man believes every other to be an incurable partialist, and himself a universalist? I talked yesterday with a pair of philosophers; I endeavored to show my good men that I love everything by turns and nothing long; that I loved the centre, but doated on the superficies; that I loved man, if men seemed to me mice and rats; that I revered saints, but woke up glad that the old pagan world stood its ground and died hard; that I was glad of men of every gift and nobility, but would not live in their arms. Could they but once understand that I loved to know that they existed, and heartily wished them God-speed, yet, out of my poverty of life and thought, had no word or welcome for them when they came to see me, and could well consent to their living in Oregon, for any claim I felt on them, — it would be a great satisfaction.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

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

God, Understanding, Speed, Sincerity

“I think that’s unfair, Doctor. You certainly don’t expect a man to believe in things that run contrary to his good sense without offering him any reasonable explanation.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Elsewhen

Frost snorted. “I certainly do—if he has observed it with his own eyes and ears, or gets it from a source known to be credible. A fact doesn’t have to be understood to be true. Sure, any reasonable mind wants explanations, but it’s silly to reject facts that don’t fit your philosophy.”
Elsewhen (pp. 161-162)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

Sense, Thinking

“Karma is an unfamiliar word for Western ears. It is the name adopted by Theosophists of the nineteenth century for one of the most important of the laws of nature. Ceaseless in its operation, it bears alike upon planets, systems of planets, races, nations, families, and individuals. It is the twin doctrine to reincarnation. So inextricably interlaced are these two laws that it is almost impossible to properly consider one apart from the other. No spot or being in the universe is exempt from the operation of Karma, but all are under its sway, punished for error by it yet beneficently led on, through discipline, rest, and reward, to the distant heights of perfection. It is a law so comprehensive in its sweep, embracing at once our physical and our moral being, that it is only by paraphrase and copious explanation one can convey its meaning in English. For that reason the Sanskrit term Karma was adopted to designate it.”

William Quan Judge (1851–1896) American occult writer

The Ocean of Theosophy by William Q. Judge (1893), Chapter 11, Karma

Family, Law, Nature, Universe

“Science and Religion both fail to give a reasonable reply. Science does not pretend to be able to give the solution, saying that the examination of things as they are is enough of a task; religion offers an explanation both illogical and unmeaning and acceptable but to the bigot, as it requires us to consider the whole of Nature as a mystery and to seek for the meaning and purpose of life with all its sorrow in the pleasure of a God who cannot be found out. The educated and enquiring mind knows that dogmatic religion can only give an answer invented by man while it pretends to be from God.”

William Quan Judge (1851–1896) American occult writer

The Ocean of Theosophy by William Q. Judge (1893), Chapter 8, Of Reincarnation

God, Religion, Nature, Pleasure

“It is a philosophy, because it puts plainly before us an explanation of the scheme of evolution of both the souls and the bodies contained in our solar system.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

A Textbook of Theosophy (1912), Chapter One

Soul

“It was the mystery of my sexual nature that a body which was the mirror image of mine could be so compelling and feel so unfamiliar. When I was younger, it had seemed urgent to unravel this mystery because I believed that if it could be explained, the haters would stop hating us. Now I believed that they had no more right to an explanation about me than I did about them and, in any case, they would find other reasons to hate. Now I was simply grateful for his body beside me, known and unknown.”

Michael Nava (1954) American writer

Source: Henry Rios series of novels, The Hidden Law (1992), p.55

Hate, Feeling, Nature

“Marxism-Leninism is an explanation of historical events; Marxism-Leninism is a guide for action, Marxism-Leninism is the ideology of the proletariat, which must guide, make its action conscious to overthrow exploiters, to establish a classless society.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Speech (2 December 1971) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1971/esp/f021271e.html

Making love

“Marxism-Leninism is the ideology of the working class, the most complete political doctrine, the most accurate explanation of social and historical problems.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Speech (7 June 1972) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1972/esp/f070672e.html

Problem

“When you understand the basic change taking place in any one major area, it is easier to make sense of the others. This discovery of a new pattern transcends explanation. The shift is qual-itative, sudden, the result of neurological processes too rapid and complex to be tracked by the conscious mind. Although logical explanations can be laid out up to a point, the seeing of a pattern is not sequential but all-at-once. If a new concept does not click into place for you on first encounter, read on. As you move through the book you will come upon many related ideas, connections, examples, metaphors, analogies, and illustrative stories. In time, patterns will emerge, the shifts will occur. From the new perspective, old questions may seem suddenly irrelevant.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter One, The Conspiracy

Time, Reading, Understanding, Question

“For years, when I was the culture editor at Indian Country Today Media Network, we requested interviews with Warren, but not once did she accept our numerous invitations for comment or explanation regarding her alleged ancestry. She simply ignored us.”

Elizabeth Warren (1949) 28th United States Senator from Massachusetts

Simon Moya-Smith, I am a Native American. I have some questions for Elizabeth Warren https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/opinions/elizabeth-warren-native-heritage-where-has-she-been-moya-smith/index.html, CNN.com, October 15, 2018

Country

“Bobby Seale is going through all types of physical and mental torture. But that’s alright, because we said even before this happened, and we’re going to say it after this and after I’m locked up and after everybody’s locked up, that you can jail revolutionaries, but you can’t jail the revolution. You might run a liberator like Eldridge Cleaver out of the country, but you can’t run liberation out of the country. You might murder a freedom fighter like Bobby Hutton, but you can’t murder freedom fighting, and if you do, you’ll come up with answers that don’t answer, explanations that don’t explain, you’ll come up with conclusions that don’t conclude, and you’ll come up with people that you thought should be acting like pigs that’s acting like people and moving on pigs. And that’s what we’ve got to do. So we’re going to see about Bobby regardless of what these people think we should do, because school is not important and work is not important. Nothing’s more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all.”

Fred Hampton (1948–1969) African-American activist

Excerpt from Democracy Now http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/12/4/watch_the_assassination_of_fred_hampton.

School, Country, Freedom, People

“I have tried to find some explanation that does not rely on logic, but once the borders of rationality have been removed I cannot imagine what should take their place. How does one begin to measure? What standards should one apply?”

Sean Russell (1952) author

The prince understood what she meant. Once reason was no longer your guide, you were like a man stranded in a featureless landscape. There were no landmarks to use. One direction was as likely to yield results as any other.
Source: Sea Without a Shore (1996), Chapter 26 (p. 353)

Imagination

“In analyzing organization work, a single chart can frequently express more than any amount of detailed written explanation. First of all, clearly define author- ities within your establishment; then chart those authorities simply and graphically, so that every workman knows to whom he is responsible, and every executive knows who is responsible to him. Place this chart conspicuously in every department where each employee can see it. In case of disputed authority, final proof is immediately at hand. There is then no loop-hole through which a neglectful workman, foreman or executive can crawl no longer does he have the excuse that he thought somebody else was going to do it.”

Clinton Edgar Woods (1863) American engineer

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

“That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation. Go and study it.”

Hillel the Elder (-112–9 BC) Mishnah rabbi

דעלך סני לחברך לא תעביד. זו היא כל התורה כולה, ואידך פירושה הוא: זיל גמור
D'`alakh s'nai l'khavrekh la ta`avaid. Zo hi kol hatora kulahh, ve'idakh perusha hu: zil g'mor
Babylonian Talmud, tractate Shabbat 31a

Study, Hate

“The metaphysical explanation is that Roger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws.”

Roger Federer (1981) Swiss tennis player

David Foster Wallace, author in 2006 article in the New York Times titled Federer as Religious Experience http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html?pagewanted=all

Parting, Appearance, Law

“If we want to postulate a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution, that deity must have been vastly complex in the first place. The creationist, whether a naive Bible-thumper or an educated bishop, simply postulates an already existing being of prodigious intelligence and complexity. If we are going to allow ourselves the luxury of postulating organized complexity without offering an explanation, we might as well make a job of it and simply postulate the existence of life as we know it!”

Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker

Source: The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 11 “Doomed Rivals” (p. 316)

Intelligence, World, Education, Life

“Once you grasp the staggering differences between black and white neighborhoods, it becomes much easier to explain a whole realm of phenomena. Take the achievement gap between middle-class black students and their white peers. It’s easy to look at this and jump to cultural explanations—that this is a function of black culture and not income or wealth. But, when we say middle-class black kids are more likely to live in poor neighborhoods, what we’re also saying is that they’re less likely to have social networks with professionals, and more likely to be exposed to violence and crime. This can have serious consequences. Youthful experimentation for a white teenager in a suburb might be smoking a joint in a friend’s attic. Youthful experimentation for a black teenager might be hanging out with gang members.”

Jamelle Bouie (1987) American columnist and political correspondent

Down and Out, 2014

Wealth, Youth

“It is hardly necessary for me to say that I do not believe in the supernatural; everything that happened has a perfectly rational explanation, obvious to any man with the slightest knowledge of psychology.”

Arthur C. Clarke book Dog Star

Dog Star, p. 786
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

Knowledge

“The psychology of the times following the publication of Darwin's works was so strong that most thinking men could not then be brought to admit that there were any alternative explanations of the phenomena of progressive development in life — human, animal, or plant life — to the scheme of transformism which he set forth.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Ch 3
Man in Evolution (1941)

Time, Strong, Animals, Thinking

“To an atheist […], there is no all-seeing all-loving god to keep us free from harm. But atheism is not a recipe for despair. I think the opposite. By disclaiming the idea of the next life, we can take more excitement in this one. The here and now is not something to be endured before eternal bliss or damnation. The here and now is all we have, an inspiration to make the most of it. So atheism is life-affirming, in a way religion can never be. Look around you. Nature demands our attention, begs us to explore, to question. Religion can provide only facile, ultimately unsatisfying answers. Science, in constantly seeking real explanations, reveals the true majesty of our world in all its complexity. People sometimes say "There must be more than just this world, than just this life."”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

But how much more do you want? We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they’re never going to be born. The number of people who could be here, in my place, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here, the number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist. We are privileged to be alive and we should make the most of our time on this world. End of the part 2: "The Virus of Faith" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMUG6qd98wc The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)

Despair, God, Love, Religion

“A few centuries from now, if involuntary suffering still exists in the world, the explanation for its persistence won't be that we've run out of computational resources to phase out its biological signature, but rather that rational agents – for reasons unknown – will have chosen to preserve it.”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

" The Radical Plan to Phase out Earth's Predatory Species https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-radical-plan-to-eliminate-earths-predatory-species-1613342963", io9, 30 Jul. 2014

World, Suffering

“I won’t bother to offer explanations because the media is determined to distort all I say.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

quoted in Madhu Purnima Kishwar: Modi, Muslims and Media. Voices from Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, Manushi Publications, Delhi 2014.
2014

“'Because it's there' could never be enough of an explanation for entering politics. ... My focus on work comes from my own childhood and my own personal experience.
My parents, particularly Dad, taught me through word and deed that the world does not owe you a living.
That you should expect throughout your life to be required to earn what you intend to spend.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

From the autobiography

Childhood, Personality, Parent, World

“We learn about worlds when they do not accommodate us. Not being accommodated can be pedagogy. We generate ideas through the struggles we have to be in the world; we come to question worlds when we are in question. When a question becomes a place you reside in, everything can be thrown into question: explanations you might have handy that allow you to make sense or navigate your way through unfamiliar as well as familiar landscapes no longer work.”

Sara Ahmed (1969) Australian and British academic

Source: "An Affinity of Hammers" (2016), p. 22

Question, Learning, World, Way

“I think we must allow that dephlogisticated air is in reality nothing but dephlogisticated water, or water deprived of its phlogiston; or, in other words, that water consists of dephlogisticated air united to phlogiston; and that inflammable air is either pure phlogiston, as Dr. Priestley and Mr. Kirwan suppose [and as Cavendish formerly supposed], or else water united to phlogiston; since, according to this supposition, these two substances united together form pure water. On the other hand, if the first explanation be true, we must suppose that dephlogisticated air consists of water united to a little nitrous acid and deprived of its phlogiston; but still the nitrous acid in it must make only a very small part of the whole, as it is found, that the phlogisticated air, which it is converted into, is very small in comparison of the dephlogisticated air.”

Henry Cavendish (1731–1810) British natural philosopher, scientist, and an important experimental and theoretical chemist and physicist

pp. 171-172. https://books.google.com/books?id=ygqYnSR3oe0C&pg=PA171 The Scientific Papers of the Honourable Henry Cavendish, F.R.S (1921), Experiments on Air By (1784)

Water, Thinking, Reality, Making love

“And this is the only explanation of the dreadful intensity with which men of modern times strive to stupefy themselves, with spirits, tobacco, opium, cards, reading newspapers, traveling, and all kinds of spectacles and amusements. These pursuits are followed up as an important, serious business. And indeed they are a serious business. If there were no external means of dulling their sensibilities, half of mankind would shoot themselves without delay, for to live in opposition to one's reason is the most intolerable condition. And that is the condition of all men of the present day. All men of the modern world exist in a state of continual and flagrant antagonism between their conscience and their way of life. This antagonism is apparent in economic as well as political life. But most striking of all is the contradiction between the Christian law of the brotherhood of men existing in the conscience and the necessity under which all men are placed by compulsory military service of being prepared for hatred and murder—of being at the same time a Christian and a gladiator.”

Leo Tolstoy The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Source: The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), Chapter V, Contradiction Between our Life and our Christian Conscience

Time, Law, Reading, Business

“People change just in a blink! You won’t get any explanation for that. They change in front of your eyes or behind of your eyes. Just they change unconditionally.”

Salman Aziz (1993) Bangladeshi independent author and artist

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8897537-people-change-just-in-a-blink-you-won-t-get-any

Change, People

“I come without explanations or solutions. I can only tell you what I’ve seen.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2020's, Speech during a 9/11 commemoration at the Flight 93 National Memorial

“Reader, if you don’t know what a database is, rest assured that an explanation of the concept would in no way increase your enjoyment in reading this account. If you do know, you will thank me for sparing you the details.”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

Diachronicle: Days 57–221 (winter, year 0)
Source: The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (2017)

Reading, Way

“The purpose of this book is exactly expressed in its title, “The Key to Theosophy,” and needs but few words of explanation. It is not a complete or exhaustive text-book of Theosophy, but only a key to unlock the door that leads to the deeper study.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book The Key to Theosophy

Source: The Key to Theosophy (1889)

Study, Books

“If a theory claims to be able to explain some phenomenon, but does not generate even an attempt at an explanation, then it should be banished.”

Michael J. Behe (1952) American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate

Source: Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996), p. 186

“Because physical theories typically predict numerical values, an improvement in experimental precision reduces the tolerance range and hence increases corroborability. In most psychological research, improved power of a statistical design leads to a prior probability approaching ½ of finding a significant difference in the theoretically predicted direction. Hence the corroboration yielded by "success" is very weak, and becomes weaker with increased precision. "Statistical significance" plays a logical role in psychology precisely the reverse of its role in physics. This problem is worsened by certain unhealthy tendencies prevalent among psychologists, such as a premium placed on experimental "cuteness" and a free reliance upon ad hoc explanations to avoid refutation.”

Paul E. Meehl (1920–2003) American psychologist

Source: [Theory-testing in psychology and physics: A methodological paradox, Philosophy of Science, 34, 2, 1967, 103–115, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/288135]

Problem, Success

“People predict by making up stories.
People predict very little and explain everything.
People live under uncertainty whether they like it or not.
People believe they can tell the future if they work hard enough.
People accept any explanation as long as it fits the facts.
The handwriting was on the wall. It was just the ink that was invisible.
People often work hard to obtain information they already have and avoid new knowledge.
Man is a deterministic device thrown into a probabilistic Universe. In this match, surprises are expected.
Everything that has already happened must have been inevitable.
A part of good science is to see what everyone else can see but think what no one else has ever said.
The difference between being very smart and very foolish is often very small.
So many problems occur when people fail to be obedient when they are supposed to be obedient, and fail to be creative when they are supposed to be creative
The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.
It is sometimes easier to make the world a better place than to prove you have made the world a better place.”

Amos Tversky (1937–1996) Israeli psychologist

Source: Notes made by Tversky for a scientific paper, c.1972. Michael Lewis. "The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed the World". Penguin, 2016 (ISBN 9780141983035).

Knowledge, Problem, Thinking, People