Quotes about exploration (642 quotes, page 2)

“Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Study

“Perhaps my life is nothing but an image of this kind; perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I simply should recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Life , Learning

“I wondered about the explorers who'd sailed their ships to the end of the world. How terrified they must have been when they risked falling over the edge; how amazed to discover, instead, places they had seen only in their dreams.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

World , Dreams

“he dared to explore her withered neck w/his fingertips…her hips w/their decaying bones, her thighs with their aging veins.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Age

“The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

World

“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.”

E.L. Doctorow (1931–2015) novelist, editor, professor

The New York Times (20 October 1985)

Learning

“We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey;”

John Hope Franklin (1915–2009) American historian

World , Travel

“It had been different during his first year of graduate school, when he temporarily forsook physics to explore instead the realm of the senses. Applying logic to the late-blooming quandries of maturity, he had parsed the elements of encounter, banter, negotiation, and consummation, separating and solving the variables one by one until the problem—if not generally solved—did appear to have tractable special solutions.”

David Brin book Earth

Part V (p. 236)
Earth (1990)

School , Problem , Sense , Appearance

“What this book is about is a kind of analysis that is characteristic of a large part of the social sciences, especially the more theoretical part. That kind of analysis explores the relation between the behavior of individuals who compromise some social aggregate, and the characteristics of the aggregate.These situations, in which people's behavior or people's choices depend on the behavior or choices of other people, are the ones that usually don't permit any simple summation or extrapolation of the aggregates. To make that connection we usually have to look at the system of interaction between individuals and their environment, that is, between individuals and other individuals or between individuals and the collectivity.”

Thomas C. Schelling (1921–2016) American economist

Micromotives and Microbehavior (1978).

People , Books , Behavior , Science

“We often hear, “Rape is rape, right?” No. A stranger forcing himself on a woman at knife point is different from a man and woman having sex while drunk and having regrets the morning. What is different? When a woman agrees to a date, she does not make a choice to be sexual, but she does make a choice to explore sexual possibilities. The woman makes no such choice with a stranger or an acquaintance.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 315.

Sex

“With no more frontiers to explore…. the modern, effeminate, bourgeois "First World" states can no longer produce new honor cultures.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

Anarcho-Fascism
A Sky Without Eagles (2014)

World

“The university is a space for would-be adults to explore new ideas, to expand their knowledge, to interrogate power, to learn how to make an argument. A space within which students can be challenged, even upset or shocked or made angry.”

Kenan Malik (1960) English writer, lecturer and broadcaster

Free speech in an age of identity politics (2015)

Idea , Knowledge , Learning , Universe

“"Couples should explore their mutual fantasies." There's no such thing as a mutual fantasy. Yours bore us; ours offend you.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Victory Begins at Home (20 January 2004)

“It can be said, in fact, that research, by exploring the greatest and the smallest, contributes to the glory of God which is reflected in every part of the universe.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Address on the Jubilee of Scientists, 25 May 2000
Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/2000/apr-jun/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20000525_jubilee-science_en.html

God , Universe , Parting

“The relation of politics to personality in this deepening of democracy has a scope broader than the need to economize on political virtue. One way to explore this relation is to consider the bearing of a program like the one outlined here upon two great sources of human sadnessː the loss of vitality and the disproportion between such vitality as we keep and the activities normally available for its expression.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Democracy Realizedː The Progressive Alternative (1998), p. 248

Way , Democracy , Loss , Personality

“Typography tended to alter language from a means of perception and exploration to a portable commodity.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 183

“Demographics need not be destiny. The West became the best not by out-breeding the undeveloped world… but because of human capital; people of superior ideas and abilities, capable of innovation, exploration, science, philosophy.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The ‘We Need To Have A Conversation’ Malarkey,” http://thelibertarianalliance.com/2015/03/30/the-we-need-to-have-a-conversation-malarkey/ The Libertarian Alliance, March 30, 2015.
2010s, 2015
Variant: Demographics need not be destiny. The waning West became what it is not by out-breeding the undeveloped world. We were once great not because of huge numbers, but due to human capital — people of superior ideas and abilities, capable of innovation, exploration, science, philosophy.

People , World , Idea , Science

“Physics is always a gamble; it is a game of exploration. That’s the fun of it. We never know for sure what will happen. Sometimes, we theorists can anticipate, but nature is the final judge.”

David Gross (1941) American particle physicist and string theorist

"Physics is always a gamble" http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/interview/nobel-laureate-david-gross-physics-is-always-a-gamble/article7383717.ece, an interview with David Gross by Shubashree Desikan, The Hindu (2015)

Game , Nature

“There is an appreciated substance to the phrase "ALGOL-like" which is often used in arguments about programming, languages and computation. ALGOL appears to be a durable model, and even flourishes under surgery — be it explorative, plastic, or amputative.”

Alan Perlis (1922–1990) American computer scientist

The Synthesis of Algorithmic Systems, 1966

Appearance

“I thought you could write something about me that men can't – What I want written – I do not know – I have no definite idea of what it should be. – but a woman who has lived many things and who sees lines and colors as an expression of living – might say something that a man can't – I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore – Men have done all they can do about it. Does that mean anything to you – or doesn't it?”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

In a letter to Mabel Dodge Luhan, New York 1925; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists, ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 224
1920s

Men , Color , Feeling , Idea

“This dialogue between the ongoing research in brain science and art continue to this day. …Such dialogues could help us explore the mechanisms in the brain that make perception and creativity possible, whether in art, the sciences, the humanities, or everyday life. In a larger sense, this dialogue could help make science part of our everyday experience.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

The Age of Insight (2012)

Life , Art , Sense , Science

“Scientific revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense… that an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature to which that paradigm itself had previously led the way.”

Thomas Kuhn book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), VII. Crisis and the Emergence of Scientific Theories, p. 91 (2012 ed.)

Way , Nature , Sense

“Now a true ocean is the sky’s open floor—that’s the feeling men love in it, the reason they venture upon it, apart from gain or exploration.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 9 (p. 145)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Love , Men , Feeling

“Investigative practice therefore constitutes an area of considerable anxiety within the discipline of psychology. Concern with questions of methodological orthodoxy often takes the place of concern about theoretical orthodoxy when research or its results are discussed and evaluated. These preoccupations with the purity of method frequently deteriorate to a kind of method fetishism or "methodolatry." From this point of view there may be something distinctly subversive about the suggestion that the sphere of methodology is not a realm of pure reason but an area of human social activity governed by mundane circumstances like any other social activity. Nevertheless, the consequences of this suggestion should be explored, for not to do so exposes one to all the risks entailed by a naive and self-deluded style of scientific practice.”

Kurt Danziger (1926) German academic

Source: Constructing the subject: Historical origins of psychological research. 1994, p. 5-6

Question

“We –finally—look upon change, the every-unfolding future, with confidence rather than doubt, hope rather than fear. We, as a people, were born of revolution. And we have lived by change—always a frontier people, exploring—if not new wilderness—then new science and new knowledge.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

1950s, Address at the Philadelphia Convention Hall (1956)

People , Fear , Hope , Confidence

“Outside intelligences, exploring the Solar System with true impartiality, would be quite likely to enter the Sun in their records thus: Star X, spectral class G0, 4 planets plus debris.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"By Jove!" in View from a Height (1963); often misquoted as "Jupiter plus debris".
General sources

Star , Intelligence , Sun

“As a witness of that period, I am also deeply convinced that John Bell indirectly played a crucial role in the progress of the application of quantum mechanics to individual objects, microscopic and mesoscopic. The example of his intellectual freedom, that had led to the recognition of the importance of entanglement, was no doubt an encouragement to those who were contemplating the possibility of developing new approaches, beyond the so-efficient paradigm developed decades earlier. His example opened the gate for new quantum explorations.”

Alain Aspect (1947) French physicist

"Introduction: John Bell and the second quantum revolution" (2004)

Freedom

“Once this was a nation of farmers, builders, inventors, creators, explorers, and thinkers. Now we are a nation of bubblehead academic poseurs, race-guilt hucksters, and keening middle-class "victims" of imaginary wrongs.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

Source: We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism (2009)

“Around 1958, I became aware of H. A. Simon's seminal papers on bounded rationality and was immediately convinced by his arguments. I tried to construct a theory of boundedly rational multigoal decision making. Together with Heinz Sauermann, I worked out an "aspiration adaptation theory of the firm" which was published as a journal article in 1962… More and more I came to the conclusion that purely speculative approaches like that of our paper of 1962 are of limited value. The structure of boundedly rational economic behavior cannot be invented in the armchair, it must be explored experimentally.”

Reinhard Selten (1930–2016) German economist

"Reinhard Selten - Biographical," 1994

Behavior , Decision

“And I tell you that whether or not these projection images are hallucinations, they can be dangerous and you must respect the reality in which they exist. I want to be sure that you realize that some of these constructions will belong to other systems. You are safe as long as you do not meddle. You may explore, and freely, and that is all.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 334, quoting from Session 265

Reality

“And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of this land is hell.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. I (p. 36)

World , Hell , Knowledge , Thinking

“Even the oil companies don't need an incentive of $4 billion to go out and explore. As my grandpop would say, 'They’re doing just fine, thank you.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Speech to national conference of the National Association of Black Journalists, Washington, D.C. (June 20, 2012), quoted in * 2012-06-20 Biden: 'A gaffe is when you tell the truth' Talia Buford Politico

https://www.politico.com/blogs/politico44/2012/06/biden-a-gaffe-is-when-you-tell-the-truth-126866

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Joe Biden / Quotes / 2010s / 2012
2012

“I see it as part of the development of the field. I would always emphasize how much I share with other linguists: I've never either felt particularly distinct or wanted to be distinct. I never saw myself as a theorist; I only became interested in theory, in the first place, because, in the theoretical approaches that I had access to, I didn't find certain areas developed enough to enable me to explore the questions that I was interested in.”

Michael Halliday (1925–2018) Australian linguist

Michael Halliday in: G. Thompson (1998) " Interview with M. A. K. Halliday, Cardiff, July 1998 http://www.scielo.br/pdf/delta/v17n1/a06v17n1.pdf". Answer to the question, how he saw his own work as fitting into the development of linguistics.
1970s and later

Question , Parting

“Some poets are more deeply involved than others in the raw experience which lies behind the poem and for them the act of composition is an act of self exploration with the definite goal of enlightenment rather than the ideally depersonalized construction of a beautiful and autonomous object.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Not Without Glory, 1976

Beauty

“We all become great explorers during our first few days in a new city, or a new love affair.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Love

“I'm not exploring. I’m in. And this is the beginning of a marathon”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Referring to his choice not to set up an "exploratory committee" and instead enter the race directly; interview on ABC News after announcing candidacy for the 2008 Democratic president nomination (January 30, 2007)
2000s

“If and when the whole world is secure, we have won a right to explore space, and the oceans. Until we have demonstrated that we can establish a productive and secure earth society, we do not belong anywhere else, nor (I suspect) would we be welcome elsewhere.”

Bill Mollison (1928–2016) Australian permaculturist

Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 14.2

World

“I would like my books to stand as a tool to unbind children from expectations of poetry because it should free the child to self-expression and exploration.”

Masiela Lusha (1985) Albanian actress, writer, author

On why she writes http://www.burbankleader.com/entertainment/tn-blr-masielalusha-20101027,0,7134384.story/

Children , Books

“This case, involving legal requirements for the content and labeling of meat products such as frankfurters, affords a rare opportunity to explore simultaneously both parts of Bismarck's aphorism that 'No man should see how laws or sausages are made.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Community Nutrition Institute v. Block, 749 F.2d 50, 51 (D.C. Cir. 1984) ; decided December 5, 1984.
1980s

Law , Parting

“This cause of exploration and discovery is not an option we choose; it is a desire written in the human heart. We are that part of creation which seeks to understand all creation. We find the best among us, send them forth into unmapped darkness, and pray they will return. They go in peace for all mankind, and all mankind is in their debt.”

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

2000s, 2003, Columbia space shuttle disaster (February 2003)

Peace , Understanding , Heart , Parting

“I never imagined so many people would be enjoying it this much. I wrote this book essentially as a group of fictional characters exploring ideas that I found personally intriguing.”

Dan Brown (1964) American author

"Decoding the Da Vinci Code author" BBC (7 April 2006) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3541342.stm

People , Books , Imagination , Idea

“Rutherford's discovery was the beginning of the science that came to be called nuclear physics. … The projectiles that he used to explore the nucleus were particles produced in the disintegration of radium … discovered by Marie Curie in 1898. The particles are helium nuclei that are emitted at high speed when radium atoms decay … The twenty years between 1909 and 1929 were the era of tabletop nuclear physics. … Small and simple experiments were sufficient to establish the basic laws of nuclear physics.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Law , Science , Speed

“From an explorer who is condemned to seek 'structural properties' of an inaccessible reality, the experiencing organism now turns-into a builder of cognitive structures intended to solve such problems as the organism perceives.”

Ernst von Glasersfeld (1917–2010) German philosopher

Von Glasersfeld (1983) cited in: Gary D. Phye (1996) Handbook of Academic Learning: Construction of Knowledge. p. 360

Problem , Reality

“Science gets most of its information by the process of reductionism, exploring the details, then the details of the details, until all the smallest bits of the structure, or the smallest parts of the mechanism, are laid out for counting and scrutiny. Only when this is done can the investigation be extended to encompass the whole organism or the entire system. So we say.
Sometimes it seems that we take a loss, working this way.”

Lewis Thomas (1913–1993) American physician, poet and educator

"The Tucson Zoo", p. 8
The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)

Way , Science , Loss , Parting

“For example, the great linguist Panini gave the concept for meta-language-and constructed one-thousands of years before computer scientists began exploring the same idea. No one has been able to match him to this day.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Sir Monier Monier-Williams in: Organiser, Volume 52 https://books.google.co.in/books?id=d-Q-AQAAIAAJ, Bharat Prakashan., 2001

Idea

“I think an artist can fit under a few different categories depending on how much you explore your creativity. It can vary from artist to artist from musician to performer to vocalist. I thrive on creativity. So in the long run I want to be an all around entertainer.”

Christina Aguilera (1980) American singer

A Christina Aguilera interview to MSN Live Chat 2000 - Compiled by bignoise.com http://www.bignoisenow.com/christina/msn.html (2000)

Thinking , Dependency

“Postscript: It's a dangerous mission for Lapps, said Ingimundur the Old's Finns in Vatnsdœla Saga, when he sent them on a magic journey to explore Iceland. One poor little part-time tutor from the south has no motorway to guide him when he finds himself in the footsteps of the extraordinary Otto Lidenbrock, who years ago went looking for the Icelander Árni Saknússemm. Professor Lidenbrock followed the trail of this philosopher and alchemist down the crater on Snæfellsjökull all the way to the center of the earth... Perhaps the poor part-time tutor who writes this has yet to go through the center of the earth before Christianity at Glacier is fully explored. But where shall I come up?</b”

Halldór Laxness book Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

Way , Time , Parting

“Getting to Mars is too big an accomplishment for us to feel proud by just by swinging by. We are a nation of enterprise as well as exploration, and we're not about to go there without making something of it.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Page 10
Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007), Foreword to Marc Kaufman's Mars Up Close: Inside the Curiosity Mission https://books.google.com/books/about/Mars_Up_Close.html?ido6XaCwAAQBAJ&hlen. National Geographic. ISBN 978-1-4262-1278-9.

Feeling

“I’m basically interested in intervention. The key question for me is: how can you intervene more systemically? Systems approaches make the assumption that things are interconnected. That’s the fundamental starting point. However, we don’t have the privilege of a God’s eye view of that interconnectedness, so there are inevitable limits to understanding, and it is those limits that we call boundaries. So systemic intervention, for me, at a fundamental level, is how to explore those boundaries, and how to take account of the inevitable lack of comprehensiveness and begin to deal with that.”

Gerald Midgley (1960) New Zealand acaedmic

Midgley (2012) Interview with systems thinker Gerald Midgley http://www.shiftn.com/news/detail/interview_with_systems_thinker_gerald_midgley, March 5, 2012.

God , Understanding , Question

“Once upon a time a young man of American background thought he had discovered the Great Secret, the Skeleton Key to the Cosmos, the Absolute Answer to the Age Old Question asked by every Wizard, and Alchemist and Mystic that ever peered curiously into the Perplexing Heavens, by every Doctor and Scientist and Explorer that ever wondered about the Winding Ways of this world, by every Philosopher and Holyman and Politician that ever listened for the Mysterious Song beneath the beat of the Human Heart… the answer to "What Makes It All Go?"”

Ken Kesey book Kesey's Garage Sale

Kesey's Garage Sale (1973)

Secret , Age , World , Way

“WE CAN ONLY ESCAPE THE BLOODY AND IGNORANT NIGHTMARE OF HISTORY BY EXPLORING ALTERNATIVES WHICH TODAY LOOK FRIGHTENINGLY WEIRD.”

Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist

Source: PsyberMagick (1995), p. 46

History

“Returning to the moon is an important step for our space program. Establishing an extended human presence on the moon could vastly reduce the costs of further space exploration, making possible ever more ambitious missions. Lifting heavy spacecraft and fuel out of the Earth's gravity is expensive. Spacecraft assembled and provisioned on the moon could escape its far lower gravity using far less energy, and thus, far less cost. Also, the moon is home to abundant resources. Its soil contains raw materials that might be harvested and processed into rocket fuel or breathable air. We can use our time on the moon to develop and test new approaches and technologies and systems that will allow us to function in other, more challenging environments. The moon is a logical step toward further progress and achievement.”

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

Speech on new space exploration initiatives http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040114-3.html (January 14, 2004)
2000s, 2004

Home , Time

“So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein — more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Victor Frankenstein in Ch. 3
Frankenstein (1818)

World , Way , Soul

“Many forms of new knowledge are potentially dangerous, the energy of the atom being a preeminent example. But instead of curtailing inquiry Western societies have in general assumed that the better policy is to continue exploration in confidence that the rewards can be reaped and the risks managed. It is hard to see why exploration of the human genome and its racial variations should be made an exception to this principle, even though researchers and their audience must first develop the words and concepts to discuss a dangerous subject objectively.”

Nicholas Wade (1942) British writer

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History (2014)

Confidence , Knowledge

“In fact rock, rather than being an example of how freedom can be achieved within the capitalist structure, is an example of how capitalism can, almost without conscious effort, deceive those whom it oppresses…. So effective has the rock industry been in encouraging the spirit of optimistic youth take-over that rock's truly hard political edge, its constant exploration of the varieties of youthful frustration, has been ignored and softened.”

Michael Lydon (1907–1977) Irish politician

"Rock for Sale"; quoted in The Sociology of Rock, Simon Frith, 1978, ISBN 0094602204

Youth , Effort , Freedom

“Hoyt began moving his lips as if he were trying to suck the ice cream off the top of a cone without using his teeth. She tried to make her lips move in sync with his. The next thing she knew, Hoyt had put his hand sort of under her thigh and hoisted her leg up over his thigh. What was she to do? Was this the point she should say, “Stop!”? No, she shouldn’t put it that way. It would be much cooler to say, “No, Hoyt,” in an even voice, the way you would talk to a dog that insists on begging at the table.
Slither slither slither slither went the tongue, but the hand that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it has the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns – oh God, it was not just at the border where the flesh of the breast joins the pectoral sheath of the chest – no, the hand was cupping her entire right – Now! She must say “No, Hoyt” and talk to him like a dog[…]”

Tom Wolfe (1930–2018) American author and journalist

Source: I am Charlotte Simmons (2004), p. 368-9, winner of the 12th annual The Literary Review Bad Sex Award

God , Dogs , Way

“Exploring is fundamentally human; we've done it for thousands of years. It's an expression of something that's the best in us.”

Adam Steltzner (1963) American aerospace engineer

Marc Kaufman. Mars Up Close: Inside the Curiosity Mission. National Geographic page 18. ISBN 978-1-4262-1278-9.

“When learning is in focus, arrangements are made in the environment of the learner that communicate the learning task, and learning resources are made available to learners so that they can explore and master learning tasks.”

Béla H. Bánáthy (1919–2003) Hungarian linguist and systems scientist

Source: Systems Design of Education (1991), p. 110

Communication , Learning

“The natural philosophy of the new developments in the sciences is a systems philosophy. When properly articulated, it can give us both factual and normative knowledge. Exploring such knowledge and applying it in determining our future is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss. For if we do not, another chapter of terrestrial evolution will come to an end, and its unique experiment with rational consciousness will be written off as a failure.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: Introduction to Systems Philosophy (1972), p. 120.

Failure , Nature , Knowledge , Science

“I got just what you're looking for
Yo, I freak it like you like it, then you want some more
Let's explore the bedroom floor
Over and over and over”

Eamon (singer) (1984) American singer

"On & On"
Lyrics, I Don't Want You Back (2004)

“If we are to use effectively these abstract models and this descriptive material, we must have a comparable exploration of the criteria for determining what abstract model it is best to use for particular kinds of problems, what entities in the abstract model are to be identified with what observable entities, and what features of the problem or of the circumstances have the greatest effect on the accuracy of the predictions yielded by a particular model or theory.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

"The Methodology of Positive Economics" (1953)

Problem

“To summarize, the production of information and its use in transactions both incur costs and are thus subject to economizing. In the 1970s, there occurred a revival of interest among economists in the economics of transaction, and Oliver Williamson in particular, building on the earlier work of Ronald Coase and John Commons, has explored the different institutional arrangements that govern transactional choices.”

Max Boisot (1943–2011) British academic and educator

Variant: To summarize, the production of information and its use in transactions both incur costs and are thus subject to economizing. In the 1970s, there occurred a revival of interest among economists in the economics of transaction, and Oliver Williamson in particular, building on the earlier work of Ronald Coase and John Commons, has explored the different institutional arrangements that govern transactional choices.
Source: Knowledge Assets, 1998, p. 235

“There is a difference between the ordinary person who may discuss these things occasionally over a pint of beer at the local pub, or worry about them for a while before dropping off to sleep, and the person who makes a serious lifelong commitment to struggling with them and turns that commitment into a part of his or her very self-definition. For one cannot say, I’ve finished theology; now I’ll move on to another subject. There is a sense in which one might say something similar of Akkadian grammar or the family tree of the Hapsburg dynasty, but one cannot reasonably assert it of exploration into God’s revelation, which is, by definition infinite in its implications for human understanding. To be a theological student in the full sense of those words cannot be a temporary state or a preamble to something else, such as the ministerial priesthood or an all-round education. Rather, it is a solemn engagement to developing over a lifetime the gift of Christian wonder or curiosity, which is the specifically theological mode of faith. As theologians, then, we commit ourselves to the lifelong study and reflection which the satisfaction of such curiosity will need. Our faith is from now on, in St. Anselm’s words, fides quaerens intellectum, “a faith that quests for understanding.””

Aidan Nichols (1948) British theologian

The Shape of Catholic Theology (1991), pp. 18-19.

God , Education , Family , Faith

“The Abolitionists and Socialists, who, alone have explored the recesses of social science, well understand that they can never establish their Utopia until private property is abolished or equalized. The man without property is theoretically, and, too often, practically, without a single right.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857)

Understanding , Science

“The dark net is a world of power and freedom: of expression, of creativity, of information, of ideas. Power and freedom endow our creative and our destructive faculties. The dark net magnifies both, making it easier to explore every desire, to act on every dark impulse, to indulge every neurosis.”

Jamie Bartlett book The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld

The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld (2014)

World , Idea , Freedom

“Furthermore, we are instructed, when we do come across instances of temple destruction, as in the case of Aurangzeb, we have to be circumspect in inferring what has happened and why…. the early monuments – like the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque in Delhi – had to be built in ‘great haste’, we are instructed…Proclamation of political power, alone! And what about the religion which insists that religious faith is all, that the political cannot be separated from the religious? And the name: the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque, the Might of Islam mosque? Of course, that must be taken to be mere genuflection! And notice: ‘available materials were assembled and incorporated’, they ‘clearly came from Hindu sources’ – may be the materials were just lying about; may be the temples had crumbled on their own earlier; may be the Hindus voluntarily broke their temples and donated the materials? No? After all, there is no proof they didn’t! And so, the word ‘plundered’ is repeatedly put within quotation marks!
In fact, there is more. The use of such materials – from Hindu temples – for constructing Islamic mosques is part of ‘a process of architectural definition and accommodation by local workmen essential to the further development of a South Asian architecture for Islamic use’. The primary responsibility thus becomes that of those ‘local workmen’ and their ‘accommodation’. Hence, features in the Qutb complex come to ‘demonstrate a creative response by architects and carvers to a new programme’. A mosque that has clearly used materials, including pillars, from Hindu temples, in which undeniably ‘in the fabric of the central dome, a lintel carved with Hindu deities has been turned around so that its images face into the rubble wall’ comes ‘not to fix the rule’. ‘Rather, it stands in contrast to the rapid exploration of collaborative and creative possibilities – architectural, decorative, and synthetic – found in less fortified contexts.’ Conclusions to the contrary have been ‘misevaluations’. We are making the error of ‘seeing salvaged pieces’ – what a good word that, ‘salvaged ’: the pieces were not obtained by breaking down temples; they were lying as rubble and would inevitably have disintegrated with the passage of time; instead they were ‘salvaged ’, and given the honour of becoming part of new, pious buildings – ‘seeing salvaged pieces where healthy collaborative creativity was producing new forms’.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Faith , Religion , Error , Lying

“After all these years, I am still involved in the process of self-discovery. It's better to explore life and make mistakes than to play it safe. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.”

Sophia Loren (1934) Italian actress

Quoted in Words of Wisdom and Quotables Quotes (2007) by Dr. A.N.P. Ummerkutty.

Life , Parting

“The love of wisdom in its wholeness requires exploration of the sources of the things we take for granted, including the thinking that has sorted out all the various disciplines, making demarcations between fields as well as envisioning what is to be done within them.”

Harvey Flaumenhaft (1938) American writer

Preface to Masterworks of Discovery series (2011)

Love , Wisdom , Thinking

“During this period I was able to carry out only one project of real interest to me. Pure Oil was a fully integrated oil company in the sense that they engaged in exploration for oil, construction of oil wells, production of crude oil, transportation to refineries, distribution of refinery products to company owned storage facilities and to gas stations. We developed a linear programming model of the whole network hoping to discover the optimum allocation to and from connected nodes in order to meet required deliveries at minimum cost. Then we collected all the data needed by our model and ran the model. The computations took several days and the results were disappointing: The optimum allocations were not significantly different from their current practices. Is it possible that we had discovered a system of human beings in which everyone knew the payoff functions and constraints, and, over time, had evolved behavior patterns that enabled them to achieve near optimum performance? Or was it possible that our model was not detailed enough as it was based so closely on current practice that no new behavior could emerge? Or was our data incorrect? This was disappointing but great experience.”

A. Wayne Wymore (1927–2011) American mathematician

Systems Movement: Autobiographical Retrospectives (2004)

Hope , Disappointment , Behavior , Sense

“I’ve been vegan since 1988, and over that time, my relationship with cooking has ebbed and flowed. I am very happy to eat very simply; I love to be able to taste the incredible produce I find. I enjoy making simple harmonies from whatever is seasonal. When I have people over though, I love exploring spices. Just because a meal is plant-based doesn’t mean it can’t be a flavor power-house.”

Bellamy Young (1970) American artist

"Bellamy Young", interview with The New Potato (2 October 2013) http://www.thenewpotato.com/2013/10/02/bellamy-young-2015/2/.

Love , People , Time , Housing

“Rilke used to say that no poet would mind going to gaol, since he would at least have time to explore the treasure house of his memory. In many respects Rilke was a prick.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

From the preface, p. 9
Memoirs, Unreliable Memoirs (1980)

Memory , Time , Housing

“An eye from another world; a smell-detector, investigating the path ahead. We don't often see a snail that way, and that's because we've only recently had the tiny lenses and electronic cameras that we need to explore this miniature world. But when we meet its inhabitants face to face, we suddenly realise that their behaviour can be just as meaningful to us as the behaviour of many animals more our own size.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Opening narration
Life in the Undergrowth (2005)

World , Way , Animals

“to men and women there falls the task of exploring truth with their reason, and in this their nobility consists.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Encyclical Fides et Ratio, 14 September 1998
Source: www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio_en.html

Women , Men , Truth

“The mazurka provided him with a repertoire of motifs, rhythms, and sonorities outside the main Italian, French, and German traditions of European music: he used it to create a series of works within this tradition which are absolutely personal—marginal works which challenge the center.
They are the most eccentric and original of Chopin's works. We shall never know exactly what and how much Chopin took directly from the popular folk tradition and how much he invented, but it does not matter: his originality is revealed as much in what he selected as in what he imagined. The folk dances gave him the possibility of exploring new harmonies, of exploiting the emotional effect of obsessive repetition, and of developing a new form of rubato.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 7 : Chopin: From the Miniature Genre to the Sublime Style

Music , Imagination , Dance , Personality

“OK, let's go and explore the rest of the world, and how easy is it to put together music through found objects and stuff, and people, and ideas and certain electricity, certain environments.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Interview http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/m-i-a-s-global-party-the-futuristic-pop-star-on-her-decades-journey-20091229#ixzz1i1EWoIDV on Kala to Rolling Stone (2009)
Sourced quotes

People , World , Music , Idea

““Simple old-fashioned death, the kind that predated the singularity, used to be the inevitable halting state for all life-forms. Fairy tales about afterlives notwithstanding.” A dry chuckle: “I used to try to believe a different one before breakfast every day, you know, just in case Pascal’s wager was right—exploring the phase-space of all possible resurrections, you know? But I think at this point we can agree that Dawkins was right. Human consciousness is vulnerable to certain types of transmissible memetic virus, and religions that promise life beyond death are a particularly pernicious example because they exploit our natural aversion to halting states.””

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 9 (“Survivor”), pp. 396-397

Life , Death , Religion , Fashion

“Miracle: The miracle exists on earth, not in the skies. Truly walking the Noble Path as explored and taught by the Buddha would change our whole life for better. This is the way to bring a real miracle in the suffering world.”

Thich Nhat Tu (1969) Vietnamese philosopher

Engaged Buddhism, Social Change and World Peace (2014)

Life , World , Way , Suffering

“It is impossible for the behavior of a single, isolated individual to reach a high degree of rationality. The number of alternatives he must explore is so great, the information he would need to evaluate them so vast that even an approximation to objective rationality is hard to conceive. Individual choice takes place in rationality is hard to conceive… Actual behavior falls short in at least three ways, of objective rationality:”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947

Way , Behavior

“International human rights is an issue basic to the quality of future life and deserving of extensive exploration. The effectiveness of this exploration may be increased by the use of an integrated, multifaceted format which is not only cross-cultural and/or cross-national but also interdisciplinary. Such an approach can reduce the tendency to treat human rights issues in an oversimplified manner.”

Vera Mae Green (1928–1982) American anthropologist and academic

Nelson; Green, Jack; Vera Mae (1980). International Human Rights: Contemporary Issues. Stanforville, NY: Human Rights Publishing Group. ISBN 0-930576-37-3.

Life , Future

“This volume explores the construction of collective identities as they relate to social movements and power struggles in the network society. It also deals with the transformation of the state, politics, and democracy under the conditions of globalization and new communication technologies. The understanding of these processes aims to provide new perspectives for the study of social change in the Information Age.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Preface to the 2010, p. xvii
The Power of Identity (1997)

Age , Democracy , Communication , Understanding

“Many schools are now introducing computers into the educational curriculum. Within 10 years it is predicted that computers will play a significant role in every classroom in North America. The question is, how will they be used? Many educators have been focusing on the use of computers for drill and programmed instruction—to provide individualized practice and instruction in the usual curriculum areas. There is another use for computers in education which some educators, myself included, find more exciting. These involve using the computer:
• to provide an environment in which learning can be intrinsically motivating and fun.
• to allow children to discover, explore and create knowledge.
• to help develop skills of thinking and problem solving.
• to make some of the most powerful ideas of the burgeoning computer culture accessible and tangible to children at an early age.
If you have ever watched a child playing good video games or if you play them yourself, then you know the powerful motivation that graphics displays can create. As I’ve watched children play these games, every bit of their attention focused on the screen, I’ve often thought how wonderful it would be to harness this motivation and channel it toward intellectual growth and learning…”

Michael Friendly (1945) American psychologist

Michael Friendly. Advanced Logo: A Language for Learning. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 1988. Preface

Children , Age , Education , School

“For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature. While the President’s plan envisages humans traveling away from Earth and perhaps toward Mars at some time in the future, the lack of developed rockets and spacecraft will assure that ability will not be available for many years.
Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft operation provides, the USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity. America must decide if it wishes to remain a leader in space. If it does, we should institute a program which will give us the very best chance of achieving that goal.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

Open letter on NASA cuts (2010)

Travel , Chance , Time , Future

“Prose uses the medium of language whilst poetry serves language and explores it.”

Michael Schmidt (poet) (1947) American poet

The Great Modern Poets, London, 2006

“The poet's need to try to find his own voice, a recognizable individual voice that carries the signature of his voice in almost every line... the unique tone being the consequence of the poet's rigorous search for truth ( his truth(, his absolute fidelity to the nature of the experience he was exploring.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

A Proper Gentleman, 1977

Truth , Search , Nature

“It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have "hack value."”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

On Hacking (2002) http://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html
2000s

Thinking

“Spring. All the things an artist must be: poet, explorer of nature, philosopher! And now I have become a bureaucrat as well as by compiling a large, precise catalogue of all my artistic productions ever since my childhood. I have left out only the school drawings, studies of nudes, etc., because they lack creative self-sufficiency.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary entry (Spring 1911), # 895, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968
1911 - 1914

School , Spring , Nature , Study

“People ache to believe that we human beings are vastly different from all other species — and they are right! We are different. We are the only species that has an extra medium of design preservation and design communication: culture. … We have language, the primary medium of culture… In a few short millennia — a mere instant in biological time — we have already used our new exploration vehicles to transform not only our planet but the very process of design development that created us.”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

People , Communication , Time

“Hannan and Freeman examine the ecology of organizations by exploring the competition for resources and by trying to account for rates of entry and exit and for the diversity of organizational forms. They show that the destinies of organizations are determined more by impersonal forces than by the intervention of individuals by the intervention of individuals.”

John H. Freeman (1944–2008) (1944-2008) US-American sociologist and organizational theorist

Michael T. Hannan and John Freeman. Organizational ecology. Harvard University Press, 1993; Abstract.

“The attitude of the true scientist towards the real limits of human understanding was unforgettably impressed on me in early youth by the obviously unpremeditated words of a great biologist; Alfred Kuhn finished a lecture to the Austrian Academy of Science with Goethe's words, "It is the greatest joy of the man of thought to have explored the explorable and then calmly to revere the inexplorable." After the last word he hesitated, raised his hand in repudiation and cried, above the applause, "No, not calmly, gentlemen; not calmly!"”

Konrad Lorenz book On Aggression

Source: On Aggression (1963), Ch. XII : On the Virtue of Scientific Humility

Youth , Understanding , Science , Joy

“I need to explore and discover and so that has given me, really, to some what seems like courage, but really it's just in my stars, there's nothing I can do about it.... I guess I'll just take my award and run now.”

Joni Mitchell (1943) Canadian musician

Said on being inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, www.chartattack.com (January 29, 2007)

Star , Courage

“Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,
Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold;
His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore,
Search not his bottom, but survey his shore.”

John Denham Cooper's Hill

Cooper's Hill, Line 165.

Search , Wealth

“If rugged individualists would throw away the right to fight for special privilege and would cooperate in a collective endeavor to secure plenty for everybody, they would have time, energy, and desire to explore higher pathways of living.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Property (1935)

Time , Fight

“.. Africa: it's a magic word that lends itselfs to suppositions and sets amateur explorers to dreaming. I want to try to be 'at home' on this bit of foreign [Arab] soil.”

Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) French painter

as quoted by Sarah Anderson, in Between Sea and Sahara: An Orientalist Adventure, Eugène Fromentin, (1859) - in 'Preface'; transl. Blake Robinson; publisher I.B. Tauris 2004, p. 4

Dreams , Home

“The Buddha Fa” is most profound; among all the theories in the world, it is the most intricate and extraordinary science. In order to explore this domain, humankind must fundamentally change its conventional thinking. Otherwise, the truth of the universe will forever remain a mystery to humankind, and everyday people will forever crawl within the boundary delimited by their own ignorance.”

Li Hongzhi (1951) Chinese religious leader and dissident

Zhuan Falun http://www.falundafa.org/book/eng/zflus.html

People , Truth , World , Thinking

“How much has to be explored and discarded before reaching the naked flesh of feeling.”

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) French composer

As quoted in Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 351

Feeling

“…you go home and maybe on the evening news you see something that reminds you that you're exploring space. Something that reminds me that I am one of a four-hundred member squad that is flying a spacecraft, exploring the solar system. Every once in a while you step back and you see that this is really amazing.”

Claudia Alexander (1959–2015) American geophysicist and planetary scientist

Source: Interview and photograph of Alexander by Max S. Gerber http://www.msgphoto.com/scientists/alexander.html,

Home , Flying

“So often, below the word spoken, is the thing known and unspoken. My characters tell me so much and no more, with reference to their experience, their aspirations, their motives, their history. Between my lack of biographical data about them and the ambiguity of what they say lies a territory which is not only worthy of exploration but which it is compulsory to explore.”

Harold Pinter (1930–2008) playwright from England

13
Writing for the Theatre (1962)

History , Motivation

“No artist's masterpiece can match a mother's creation of a successful child, one who has been freed to explore and to grow. … Success is measured not only by who we are, but by what gifts we give. As the old chief said, "The gift is not complete until it is given again."”

Gerry Spence (1929) American lawyer

Ah, the mother whose gift to the world is a person!
Source: Give Me Liberty! (1998), Ch. 17 : Success Redefined, p. 194

World , Success , Personality

“On the other hand, the artist has much to do in the realm of color construction, which is so little explored and so obscure, and hardly dates back any farther than to the beginning of Impressionism.”

Robert Delaunay (1885–1941) French painter

Quote in: Herschel Browning Chipp Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics http://books.google.co.in/books?id=zvbyDtOaNVgC&pg=PA318, University of California Press, 1968, p. 318
1915 - 1941

Color

“For the majority, I take it, who live all their lives with such obtuse faculties of thinking, it is a difficult thing to perform this feat of mental analysis and of discriminating the material vehicle from the immanent beauty, … Owing to this men give up all search after the true Beauty. Some slide into mere sensuality. Others incline in their desires to dead metallic coin. Others limit their imagination of the beautiful to worldly honours, fame, and power. There is another class which is enthusiastic about art and science. The most debased make their gluttony the test of what is good. But he who turns from all grosser thoughts and all passionate longings after what is seeming, and explores the nature of the beauty which is simple, immaterial, formless, would never make a mistake like that when he has to choose between all the objects of desire; he would never be so misled by these attractions as not to see the transient character of their pleasures and not to win his way to an utter contempt for every one of them. This, then, is the path to lead us to the discovery of the Beautiful. All other objects that attract men's love, be they never so fashionable, be they prized never so much and embraced never so eagerly, must be left below us, as too low, too fleeting, to employ the powers of loving which we possess; not indeed that those powers are to be locked up within us unused and motionless; but only that they must first be cleansed from all lower longings; then we must lift them to that height to which sense can never reach.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 11

Love , Men , Pleasure , Beauty

Quotes about exploration page 2

Quotes about exploration
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