Formulating Quotes

Anyone who says the artist's field is all answers and no questions has never done any writing or had any dealings with imageryYou are confusing two concepts: answering the questions and formulating them correctly. Only the latter is required of an author. ~ Anton Chekhov

There is nothing else for it, I shall have to solve my own problems. I always get the feeling that when I solve them for myself I shall have also solved them for a thousand other women. For that very reason, I must come to grips with myself.

All this devouring of books from early youth has been nothing but laziness on my part. I allow others to formulate what I ought to be formulating myself. I keep seeking outside confirmation of what is hidden deep inside me, when I know that I can only reach clarity by using my own words. I really must abandon all that laziness, and particularly my inhibitions and insecurity, if I am ever to find myself, and through myself, find others. I must have clarity, and I must learn to accept myself. Everything feels so heavy inside me, and I want so much to feel light. For years I have bottled everything up, it all goes into some great reservoir, but it will have to come out again, or I shall know that I have lived in vain, that I have taken from mankind and given nothing back. I sometimes feel I am a parasite and that depresses me and makes me wonder if I lead any kind of useful life.

Perhaps my purpose in life is to come to grips with myself, properly to grips with myself, with everything that bothers and tortures me and clamors for inner solution and formulation. For these problems are not just mine alone. And if at the end of a long life I am able to give some form to the chaos inside me, I may well have fulfilled my ow ~ Etty Hillesum

As Christians we face two tasks in our evangelism: saving the soul and saving the mind, that is to say, not only converting people spiritually, but converting them intellectually as well. And the Church is lagging dangerously behind with regard to this second task.

If the church loses the intellectual battle in one generation, then evangelism will become immeasurably more difficult in the next. The war is not yet lost, and it is one which we must not lose: souls of men and women hang in the balance.

For the sake of greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ Himself, as well as for their own sakes, evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence.

Thinking about your faith is indeed a virtue, for it helps you to better understand and defend your faith. But thinking about your faith is not equivalent to doubting your faith.

Doubt is never a purely intellectual problem. There is a spiritual dimension to the problem that must be recognized. Never lose sight of the fact that you are involved in spiritual warfare and there is an enemy of your soul who hates you intensely, whose goal is your destruction, and who will stop at nothing to destroy you.

Reason can be used to defend our faith by formulating arguments for the existence of God or by refuting objections. But though the arguments so developed serve to confirm the truth of our faith, they are not properly the basi ~ William Lane Craig

The purpose of formulating [a] conflict as a game is not that of resolving the conflict by 'solving the game.' It is that of displaying the structure of the conflict and thereby exposing features of it that may be concealed by rhetoric. In particular, appreciation of the peculiar structure of some of the so-called mixed-motive conflicts represented nonzero-sum games may change the conflicting parties' perception of their situation. ~ Anatol Rapoport

When people believe a tale that conflicts with self-checkable evidence it tells me that people undervalue the role of evidence on formulating an internal belief system. Why this is so is not clear, but it enables many people to hold fast to ideas and notions based purely on supposition. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The post-68 left has tended to overvalue the negative capability of remaining in doubt, scepticism and uncertainties - this may be an aesthetic virtue, but it is a political vice. The self-doubt that has been endemic on the left since the 60s is little in evidence on the right – one reason that the right has been so successful in imposing its programme. Many on the left now quail at the thought of formulating a programme, still less "imposing" one. But we have to give up on the belief that people will spontaneously turn to the left, or that neoliberalism will collapse without our actively dismantling it. ~ Mark Fisher

Being bound to one particular storyline such that one's narrative is rigid, does not imply the need to avoid formulating particular other kinds of possibilities. Rather, it involves being stuck in one self-limiting, self-reinforcing set of possibilities. ~ Elizabeth F. Howell

Governmental regulations all carry coercion to some degree, and even where they don't, they habituate man to expect teaching, guidance and help outside himself, instead of formulating his own. ~ Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Design thinking enables business people to avoid mistakes of formulating ideas that, in the future, the customers may not be interested, hence putting the business at risk of experiencing losses. Thus, it applies tools from the world of design and shifting the focus to human behavior. ~ Hibatullah Jawhar

Most of the time, strategies should not be formulating strategy at all; they should be getting on with implementing strategies they already have. ~ Henry Mintzberg

This is what creationists say of evolution, that it's "only" a theory, it hasn't been proved, as though this in itself is grounds for dismissal. This misrepresents the point of formulating a theory, which is to make sense of some body of evidence. ~ Daniel Quinn

The word absurdity is coming to life under my pen; a little while ago, in the garden, I couldn't find it,
but neither was I looking for it, I didn't need it: I thought without words, on things, with things.
Absurdity was not an idea in my head, or the sound of a voice, only this long serpent dead at my feet,
this wooden serpent. Serpent or claw or root or vulture's talon, what difference does it make. And
without formulating anything clearly, I understood that I had found the key to Existence, the key to my
Nauseas, to my own life. In fact, all that I could grasp beyond that returns to this fundamental
absurdity. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

I'm struck by the difficulty I had in formulating it. When I think back now, I ask myself what else it was that I was talking about in Madness and Civilization or The Birth of the Clinic, but power? Yet I'm perfectly aware that I scarcely ever used the word and never had such a field of analyses at my disposal. I can say that this was an incapacity linked undoubtedly with the political situation in which we found ourselves. It is hard to see where, either on the Right or the Left, this problem of power could then have been posed. On the Right, it was posed only in terms of constitution, sovereignty, and so on, that is, in juridical terms; on the Marxist side, it was posed only in terms of the state apparatus. The way power was exercised - concretely, and in detail - with its specificity, its techniques and tactics, was something no one attempted to ascertain; they contented themselves with denouncing it in a polemical and global fashion as it existed among the "other," in the adversary camp. Where Soviet socialist power was in question, its opponents called it totalitarianism; power in Western capitalism was denounced by the Marxists as class domination; but the mechanics of power in themselves were never analyzed. ~ Michel Foucault

Foreign policy of a pluralistic democracy like the United States should be based on bipartisanship because bipartisanship is the means and the framework for formulating policies based on moderation and on the recognition of the complexity of the human condition. That has been the tradition since the days of Truman and Vandenberg all the way until recent times. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

That was the trouble with formulating a system: what could you do but repeat it? ~ Peter Washington

Bland friendliness is easier than spending even one joule of energy formulating an opinion on someone fundamentally irrelevant to you. ~ Elan Mastai

In addition to depoliticization as a mode of dispossessing the constitutive histories and powers organizing contemporary problems and contemporary political subjects - that is, depoliticization of sources of political problems - there is a second and related meaning of depoliticization with which this book is concerned: namely, that which substitutes emotional and personal vocabularies for political ones in formulating solutions to political problems. When the ideal or practice of tolerance is substituted for justice or equality, when sensitivity to or even respect for the other is substituted for justice for the other, when historically induced suffering is reduced to "difference" or to a medium of "offense," when suffering as such is reduced to a problem of personal feeling, then the field of political battle and political transformation is replaced with an agenda of behavioral, attitudinal, and emotional practices. While such practices often have their value, substituting a tolerant attitude or ethos for political redress of inequality or violent exclusions not only reifies politically produced differences but reduces political action and justice projects to sensitivity training, or what Richard Rorty has called an "improvement in manners." A justice project is replaced with a therapeutic or behavioral one. ~ Wendy Brown

This nation's elected leaders owe all Americans the duty of formulating an Iraqi policy based on sound analysis of the actual facts. ~ Charlie Gonzalez

The river of life divides into two branches: being and formulating. ~ Anais Nin

We have the duty of formulating, of summarizing, and of communicating our conclusions, in intelligible form, in recognition of the right of other free minds to utilize them in making their own decisions. ~ Ronald Fisher

The hope of a new politics does not lie in formulating a left-wing reply to the right-it lies in rejecting conventional political categories. ~ Christopher Lasch

The book deals with the problems of philosophy and shows, as I believe, that the method of formulating these problems rests on the misunderstanding of the logic of our language. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

No matter how fast I could do it with the digital camera I don't think I would get the same thing out of it. The passion I have for formulating an idea stands alone. It is the important essence of what I do. ~ Kim Weston

Words, yes, formulating things, creating something from your heart, it is something very necessary, yes. ~ Sophie Marceau

Perhaps you are just close to what you have been waiting for all along and ideas start formulating in your mind and advising you to "give up". Tell them "not me". ~ Israelmore Ayivor

His eyes remained on Isobel as he began a slow backward walk. He was doing it again, speaking to her with his eyes. She remained trapped in his stare, trying to hear him, to read the underlying message. Finally his gaze broke from hers and he turned away, walking off through the cafeteria doors.
There was a pause before Gwen spoke. "Let me guess," she said. "Right now, you're trying to decide if that was hot or annoying." She paused, as though formulating her own opinion ... "It was so totally hot. ~ Kelly Creagh

Do you want to have a humble share in perpetuating wisdom among men, in gathering up the inheritance of the ages, in formulating the rules of the mind for the present time, in discovering facts and causes, in turning men's wandering eyes towards first causes and their hearts towards supreme ends, in reviving if necessary some dying flame, in organizing the propaganda of truth and goodness? That is the lot reserved for you. It is surely worth a little extra sacrifice; it is worth steadily pursuing with jealous passion. ~ Antonin Sertillanges

In formulating any philosophy the first consideration must always be: What can we know? That is, what can we be sure we know, or sure that we know we knew it, if indeed it is at all knowable. Or have we simply forgotten it and are too embarrassed to say anything? Descartes hinted at the problem when he wrote, 'My mind can never know my body, although it has become quite friendly with my legs. ~ Woody Allen

A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. ~ Clifford Geertz

One of the more difficult things about being a judge is as you're listening to the evidence, you have to be formulating how you're going to explain your evaluation of that evidence. ~ Steven Pacey

People with family histories of alcoholism tend to have lower levels of endorphins- the endogenous morphine that is responsible for many of our pleasure responses- than do people genetically disinclined to alcoholism. Alcohol will slightly raise the endorphin level of people without the genetic basis for alcoholism; it will dramatically raise the endorphin level of people with that genetic basis. Specialists spend a lot of time formulating exotic hypotheses to account for substance abuse. Most experts point out, strong motivations for avoiding drugs; but there are also strong motivations for taking them. People who claim not to understand why anyone would get addicted to drugs are usually people who haven't tried them or who are genetically fairly invulnerable to them. ~ Andrew Solomon

The right way to deal with a budget problem that was years in the making is by formulating a credible plan to reduce the deficit over time and as the economy is able to withstand the necessary fiscal belt-tightening. That is what President Obama is doing. ~ Christina Romer

In literature, too, it is not great achievement to memorize what you have read while not formulating an opinion of your own. ~ Epictetus

From quite early on, I had this idea of compartmentalized identities - 'this is how you are when you are with your mum, and this is how you are when you are with your dad' - so it seemed like I could never absolutely be myself. And the image of myself as compromised and inconsistent made me want to withdraw from the world even further. I had a sense of formulating a paper-mache version of myself to send out in the world, while I sat controlling it remotely from some smug suburban barracks. ~ Russell Brand

We do not understand democracy in its bourgeois meaning
of babbling, lack of discipline, anarchy. We understand democracy as the active participation of the citizens in formulating and implementing the Party's policy. ~ Nicolae Ceausescu

The action of the child inventing a new game with his playmates; Einstein formulating a theory of relativity; the housewife devising a new sauce for the meat, a young author writing his first novel; all of these are in terms of definition, Creative, and there is no attempt to set them in some order of more or less Creative. ~ Carl Rogers

I was also interested in formulating the path of chemical reactions. ~ Kenichi Fukui

The gladiator is formulating his plan in the arena or essentially Too late. ~ Seneca The Younger

The following two examples bear witness to the same state of mind: a certain believer asks God for various favors not because he wishes to obtain them but "to obey the divine command" expressed in the Koran - as if in commanding or permitting personal prayer God was not considering the ends of this prayer and as if He could appreciate a form of obedience that disregarded the sufficient reason for the act commanded or permitted! In this case "command" is actually a rather grand word, for in reality God does not command us to have needs or make requests of Him but rather invites us out of mercy to ask Him for what we lack; we can pray for our daily bread or for a cure just as we can pray for inward graces, but there is no question of praying for the sake of praying because God ordered for the sake of ordering. The second example is the following: another believer, unlike the first, begins with the idea that everything is predestined, and he therefore abstains from formulating any prayers, in spite of the "divine command" this time, because "everything that must happen will happen anyway" - as if God would give Himself the trouble of commanding or permitting superfluous attitudes and as if prayer too were not predestined! ~ Frithjof Schuon

You are right to demand that an author be conscious of what he is doing, but you are confusing two concepts: solving the problem and correctly formulating the problem. Only the latter is required of the artist. ~ Anton Chekhov

if you take a positivist position, as I do, questions about reality don't have any meaning. All one can ask is whether imaginary time is useful in formulating mathematical models that describe what we observe. ~ Stephen Hawking

There is a history of mathematical models of oligopolistic competition dating from Cournot to the theory of games. There is also a literature generated by institutional economists, lawyers, and administrators interested in formulating and implementing public policy. It has been the tendency of these groups to work almost as though the other did not exist. ~ Martin Shubik

[There was] an openness not found on the East Coast and a generosity of spirit. New York was always formulating the correct ways to work and think while back here [in California] we were always eager to be surprised and engaged in new ways. ~ Eleanor Antin

The most important question for every client is "W X ho are you?" I'm not as interested in an answer as I am in teaching a process that the girl can use for the rest of her life. The process involves looking within to find a true core of self, acknowledging unique gifts, accepting all feelings, not just the socially acceptable ones, and making deep and firm decisions about values and meaning. The process includes knowing the difference between thinking and feeling, between immediate gratification and long-term goals, and between her own voice and the voices of others. The process includes discovering the personal impact of our cultural rules for women. It includes discussion about breaking those rules and formulating new, healthy guidelines for the self. The process teaches girls to chart a course based on the dictates of their true selves. The process is nonlinear, arduous, and discouraging. It is also joyful, creative and full of surprises. ~ Mary Pipher

He was formulating a plan. He would redeem the dream. I could understand that. It is the universal blessing - and curse - of those who dare. ~ Rick Yancey

This was undoubtedly one of symmetry's greatest success stories. Glashow, Wienberg, and Salam managed to unmask the electromagnetic and weak forces by recognizing that underneath the differences in the strengths of these two forces (the electromagnetic force is about a hundred thousand times stronger within the nucleus) and the different masses of the messenger particles lay a remarkable symmetry. The forces of nature take the same form if electrons are interchanged with neutrinos or with any mixture of the two. The same is true when photons are interchanged with the W and Z force-messengers. The symmetry persists even if the mixtures vary from place to place or from time to time. The invariance of the laws under such transformations performed locally in space and time has become known as gauge symmetry. In the professional jargon, a gauge transformation represents a freedom in formulating the theory that has no directly observable effects-in other words, a transformation to which the physical interpretation is insensitive. Just as the symmetry of the laws of nature under any change of the spacetime coordinates requires the existence of gravity, the gauge symmetry between electrons and neutrinos requires the existence of the photons and the W and Z messenger particles. Once again, when the symmetry is put first, the laws practically write themselves. A similar phenomenon, with symmetry dictating the presence of new particle fields, repeats itself with the strong nuclear force ~ Mario Livio