Yquotes.com

 

And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,
But, like a hawk encumber'd with his hood,
Explaining metaphysics to the nation –
I wish he would explain his Explanation.
--
Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819-24), Canto 1, Dedication, line 13.

 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

» Samuel Taylor Coleridge - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

The first question we should face is: What is the aim of a physical theory? To this question diverse answers have been made, but all of them may be reduced to two main principles:
"A physical theory," certain logicians have replied, "has for its object the explanation of a group of laws experimentally established."
"A physical theory," other thinkers have said, "is an abstract system whose aim is to summarize and classify logically a group of experimental laws without claiming to explain these laws...
Now these two questions — Does there exist a material reality distinct from sensible appearances? and What is the nature of reality? — do not have their source in experimental method, which is acquainted only with sensible appearances and can discover nothing beyond them. The resolution of these questions transcends the methods used by physics; it is the object of metaphysics.
Therefore, if the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics...
Now, to make physical theories depend on metaphysics is surely not the way to let them enjoy the privilege of universal consent.

 

Pierre Duhem

 

The struggle goes on for an explanation, and prayer is the means by which the explanation will correspond to the way he prays about it. One person struggles with all his might against the explanation that would make himself guilty-no, it was all dispensation providence, all from God in order to test, to purify, to try the lover. Another struggles in order that the explanation may explain his guilt to him, so that the passage of freedom will not seem an illusion, but that the chasmic separation of guilt may make the blessedness of reconciliation all the more inward. One person asks that the explanation will unite him to the race and that the explanation will lie in the fate common to all, which is meaningful for the whole, another that the explanation will consider him outside the relation of others in order to select him for solitary pain, but also for solitary election.

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

 

Of all obstacles to a thoroughly penetrating account of existence, none looms up more dismayingly than “time.” Explain time? Not without explaining existence. Explain existence? Not without explaining time. To uncover the deep and hidden connection between time and existence, to close on itself our quartet of questions, is a task for the future.

 

John Archibald Wheeler

 

I never dwell on past mistakes… There is too much to plan for the future to waste time complaining.  Elsie Mendl was a great friend of mine for many, many years.  And I remember the creed by which she lived: Never complain, never explain.  Just think of the people you know who are always explaining their mistakes.  It merely rubs the whole thing in.  You’re reminded again of the mistake. And no one believes the explanation anyway.

 

Cary Grant