143 Quotes About Explanation

How do you explain the wind behind the sails? The waves in the ocean? Roots within the earth? It just is.

In chemistry, our theories are crutches; to show that they are valid, they must be used to walk... A theory established with the help of twenty facts must explain thirty, and lead to the discovery of ten more.

Summers was simply a master explainer, able to deftly boil down the complexities of economic and financial, and to put them in terms the non-expert could understand. He was brilliant at cultivating a sense of control, even as events spun far beyond what could be managed with any certainty. He could will into being the confidence that eluded others, those less self-assured and, maybe sensibly, on humbler terms with the world.

I think that's the way people absorb television. All the explanations in Doctor Who are there if that's your bag, but they're not essential to your enjoyment of it. An awful lot of storytelling isn't really about making people understand — it's about making people care.

We need to know not only what is done but what is purposed and said by those who shape the destines of states and realms." Horace Greeley

The atom can't be seen, yet its existence can be proved. And it is simple to prove that it can't ever be seen. It has to be studied by indirect evidence — and the technical difficulty has been compared to asking a man who has never seen a piano to describe a piano from the sound it would make falling downstairs in the dark.

Ah, well, when you explain it like that, it seems obvious," said Mudge. "Of course, it always seems obvious once it's been explained.

It is very difficult to understand man. It is also very difficult to understand what a man does. If he is able to give an explanation, it may be easier. Even then everything can not be understood. Words have their limitation and comprehension, its limits. So if we are able to understand 25% of what is being said, even that should be deemed, as good communication skills are very good. Beyond this one should not even aspire for.

It is the task of radical thought, since the world is given to us in unintelligibility, to make it more unintelligible, more enigmatic, more fabulous.