Explanations Quotes

• Success requires no explanations. Failure permits no alibis.

  

  Napoleon Hill
  • Success
  • Failure
  • Alibis

• I hate all explanations; they who make them deceive either themselves or the other party,-generally both.

  

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • I Hate
  • Deceive
  • Explanations

• Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.

  

  Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Forget
  • Explanations
  • Human Actions

• Every articulate family ... generates its own stories, explanations and myths to illuminate the differences in temperament and talent among its children, the lines of allegiance and influence between parent and child.

  

  Elizabeth Fishel
  • Children
  • Family
  • Stories

• Americans get very simple explanations of what happens to them.

  

  Mick Jagger The Rolling Stones
  • Simple
  • Happens
  • Americans

• I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.

  

  Abraham Lincoln
  • Fear
  • Explanations
  • Explanatory

• Iran has not provided any explanations that enable the agency to clarify the outstanding practical measures.

  

  Yukiya Amano
  • Iran
  • Measures
  • Explanations

• On a motif such as was indicated by Reti one cannot build the plan of a whole well contested game; it is too meagre, too thin, too puny for such an end. Reti's explanations, wherever they are concerned with an analysis which covers a few moves, are correct and praiseworthy. But when he abandons the foundations of analysis in order to draw too bold, too general a conclusion, his arguments prove to be mistaken.

  

  Emanuel Lasker
  • Game
  • Plan
  • Moves

• Here I beg you to observe in passing that the scruples that prevented ancient writers from using arithmetical terms in geometry, and which can only be a consequence of their inability to perceive clearly the relation between these two subjects, introduced much obscurity and confusion into their explanations.

  

  Rene Descartes
  • Writers
  • Relation
  • Confusion

• We have tried for centuries to look deeper and deeper into finding causes and explanations, and suddenly, when we go to the very depths, to the behavior of individual particles of individual quanta, we find that this search for a cause comes to an end. There is no cause. In my eyes, this fundamental indeterminateness of the universe has not really been integrated into our worldview yet.

  

  Anton Zeilinger
  • Worldview
  • Explanations
  • Quanta

• Of course there is always a reason for fluctuations, but the tape does not concern itself with the why and wherefore. It doesn't go into explanations. I didn't ask the tape why when I was fourteen, and I don't ask it to-day, at forty. The reason for what a certain stock does to-day may not be known for two or three days, or weeks, or months. But what the dickens does that matter? Your business with the tape is now not tomorrow. The reason can wait. But you must act instantly or be left.

  

  Edwin Lefevre
  • Business
  • Reason
  • Tape

• Practice each of the techniques of karate repeatedly. Learn the explanations of every technique well, and decide when and in what manner to apply them when needed. Enter, counter, withdraw is the rule for torite.

  

  Anko Itosu
  • Practice
  • Technique
  • Explanations

• In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy and confusion.

  

  Ishmael Beah
  • Sky
  • Answers
  • Explanations

• There are alternate explanations for everything.

  

  James Cook
  • Everything
  • Explanations
  • Alternate

• Don't try to steer the boat. Don't open shop for yourself. Listen. Keep silent. You are not God's mouthpiece. Try to be an ear, And if you do speak, ask for explanations.

  

  Rumi
  • God
  • Speak
  • Listen

• It is the desire for explanations that are at once systematic and controllable by factual evidence that generates science; and it is the organization and classification of knowledge on the basis of explanatory principles that is the distinctive goal of the sciences.

  

  Ernest Nagel
  • Science
  • Knowledge
  • Desire

• Even good excuses, really good ones, don't help very much. Explanations, on the other hand, are both scarce and useful. And accurate forecasts and insightful intuition are priceless.

  

  Seth Godin
  • Intuition
  • Excuses
  • Forecasts

• I've always wondered where explanations end and excuses begin.

  

  Errol Morris
  • Excuses
  • Wondered
  • Explanations

• Some who support more coercive strategies assume that children will run wild if they are not controlled. However, the children for whom this is true typically turn out to be those accustomed to being controlled— those who are not trusted, given explanations, encouraged to think for themselves, helped to develop and internalize good values, and so on. Control breeds the need for more control, which is used to justify the use of control.

  

  Alfie Kohn
  • Children
  • Control
  • Support

• This life journey has led me to love mystery and not feel the need to change it or make it un-mysterious. This has put me at odds with many other believers I know who seem to need explanations for everything.

  

  Richard Rohr
  • Journey
  • Believers
  • Explanations