Obviousness Quotes

Nothing is obvious in itself. Obviousness is subjective. ~ Rex Stout

the squeeky wheel gets the grease. ~ Josh Billings

The ability of the theist to misunderstand a thing is directly proportional to the obviousness of the thing. ~ Oscar Wilde

This is what I feared for Michael. That his generation, so strong, so well made, so bright and aware beyond its years, would compare itself to us in envy, envy of the clarity of our challenges and the brutish obviousness of our enemies. ~ Steven Pressfield

For if we merely take what obviously appears the line of least resistance, its obviousness will appeal to the opponent also; and this line may no longer be that of least resistance. In studying the physical aspect, we must never lose sight of the psychological, and only when both are combined is the strategy truly an indirect approach, calculated to dislocate the opponent's balance. ~ B.H. Liddell Hart

Opinions about obviousness are to a certain extent a function of time. ~ Albert Einstein

In the Thirties all of us who were young had been united by anger and the obviousness of our plight; in the war we had been united by fear and the obviousness of the danger. But now, prosperous under the bomb, we all seemed to have become atomized. Wherever I looked I saw people trying to live private lives for themselves and their families. Nobody asked the big questions any more. Why think, when the thing to be thought about is so huge it is impossible to think about it? Why ask where you are going, when you know you can't stop even if you wish? Why ask why, when it does no good to know why? ~ Hugh MacLennan

It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of the advantages to the husband's own happiness, offered by this plan, convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption of which I was quite ignorant; otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I wished to act. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Obviousness is always the enemy of correctness. ~ Bertrand Russell

It's not the obviousness or the complexity of the things that's deftly deluding mankind. It's man himself. ~ Pawan Mishra

This was supposed to be the Presidential Suite," she said, gazing into the room at the holes in the wall.
well, even presidents get shot," I said.
I was just going to say that myself," she said, smiling. "But I didn't want to scare you."
I didn't know whether this was interesting
that we were both thinking the same gruesome thing
or even whether it was actually the case. Perhaps it was just rhetorical ESP: Kreskin's Guide to Etiquette. But even if it was true, that we were about to say the same thing, did this connect us in some deep private way? Or was it just a random obviousness shared between strangers? The deeper life between two people I had yet to read with confidence. It seemed a kind of vaporous text that kept revising its very alphabet. An exfoliating narrative, my professors would probably say. The paratext of the possible. ~ Lorrie Moore

People will reveal who they are if you just pay attention. ~ Germany Kent

The idle apprehend more things, are deeper than the industrious: no task limits their horizon; born into an eternal Sunday, they watch- - and watch themselves watching. Sloth is a somatic skepticism, the way the flesh doubts. In a world of inaction, the idle would be the only ones not to be murderers. But they do not belong to humanity, and, sweat not being their strong point, they live without suffering the consequences of Life and of Sin. Doing neither good nor evil, they disdain - spectators of the human convulsion - the weeks of time, the efforts which asphyxiate consciousness. What would they have to fear from a limitless extension of certain afternoons except the regret of having supported a crudely elementary obviousness? Then, exasperation in the truth might induce them to imitate the others and to indulge in the degrading temptation of tasks. This is the danger which threatens sloth, that miraculous residue of paradise. ~ Emil Cioran

It was so completely obvious, and yet what proof was there? It was, Martin thought, like the rabbit which the Hindus see in the moon. It is next to impossible to make people see it; but once they have recognized it, they will never see a face or a man or a woman there again. It is obvious that there is a rabbit in the moon; but obviousness seems too often unsusceptible of proof.
The Case of the Seven of Calvary ~ Anthony Boucher

Hindsight isn't a super power. ~ SE Zbasnik

Truths are not the better nor the worse for their obviousness or difficulty, but their value is to be measured by their usefulness and tendency. ~ John Locke

Dark is dark in the darkness. ~ Chet Williamson

In the end, it's not the obviousness or the complexity of the matters that's deluding mankind. It's man himself. ~ Pawan Mishra

There are certain truths which stand out so openly on the roadsides of life, as it were, that every passer-by may see them. Yet, because of their obviousness, the general run of people disregard such truths or at least they do not make them the object of any concious knowledge. People are so bliend to some of the simplest facts in everyday life that they are highly surprised when somebody calls attention to what everybody ought to know. ~ Adolf Hitler

Our love is not new
It has its roots in the sky
Our love has overcome
The darkest of the stars
Our love goes daily
Because it lives in obviousness. ~ Emmanuelle Soni-Dessaigne

Anyone with half a mind could see that," said Tiffany.
Miss Tick sighed. "Yes. But sometimes it's so hard to find half a mind when you need one. ~ Terry Pratchett

My hatred of crowds, the obviousness of crowds, of anything en masse. Is this why I like little-known books? A general desire to escape the main world. ~ John Fowles

Never assume the obvious is true. ~ William Safire

There's a depth of meaning all on its own in awareness being gentled. From within the subtlety of being gentled, the level of perception changes. Instead of perceiving the obviousness of experience, you're able as awareness to perceive most subtle meaning. ~ John De Ruiter

If any one asks: 'Why should I accept the results of valid arguments based on true premisses?' we can only answer by appealing to our principle. In fact, the truth of the principle is impossible to doubt, and its obviousness is so great that at first sight it seems almost trivial. Such principles, however, are not trivial to the philosopher, for they show that we may have indubitable knowledge which is in no way derived from objects of sense. The ~ Bertrand Russell

The one sure thing about Marbury is that it's a horrible place. But so is right here, too. And there's certain benefit in the obviousness of its brutality, because in Marbury there's no doubt about the nature of things: good and evil, or guilt and innocence, for example. Not like here, where you could be sitting in the park next to a doctor or someone and not have any idea what a sick and dangerous sonofabitch he really is. Because we always expect things to be proper, even if we haven't learned our fucking lesson that it just doesn't work out like that all the time. ~ Andrew Smith

Wonder acts upon a man like a shock, he is "moved" and "shaken", and in the dislocation that succeeds all that he had taken for granted as being natural or self-evident loses its compact solidity and obviousness; he is literally dislocated and no longer knows where he is. If this were only to involve the man of action in all of us, so that a man only lost his sense of certainty of everyday life, it would be relatively harmless; but the ground quakes beneath his feet in a far more dangerous sense, and it is his whole spiritual nature, his capacity to know, that is threatened. It is an extremely curious fact that this is the only aspect of wonder, or almost the only aspect, that comes to evidence in modern philosohpy, and the old view that wonder was the beginning of philosophy takes on a new meaning: doubt is the beginning of philosophy. . . . The innermost meaning of wonder is fulfilled in a deepened sense of mystery. It does not end in doubt, but is the awakening of the knowledge that being, qua being, is mysterious and inconceivable, and that it is a mystery in the full sense of the word: neither a dead end, nor a contradiction, nor even something impenetrable and dark. Rather, mystery means that a reality cannot be comprehended because its light is ever-flowing, unfathomable, and inexhaustible. And that is what the wonderer really experiences. . . . Since the very beginning philosophy has always been characterized by hope. Philosophy never claimed to be a superior form of ~ Josef Pieper

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Despite her light skin, despite the obviousness that more of her ancestors had owned slaves than had been them, how could she lose? We're open like that. We like to know that people love us; we don't care how they look. ~ Tiphanie Yanique

Well, you can't break an unbreakable vow," said Ron.
"I figured that out myself, funnily enough. ~ J.K. Rowling

Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

"The people" is that massive portion of a society that lives by its pathetic subjection to sheer immediacy or self-obviousness, and that therefore uncritically seizes upon the most simplistic and abstract ways of filling its vacuous self-consciousness. Not philosophy but dogma and rhetoric, not rationality but indoctrination and conditioning, provide the cultural junkfood by which the Many perfunctorily slake their thirst and hunger. ~ Kenny Smith