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Analogy Quotes

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Analogy Quotes

“But no. That was analogy rather than homology. What in the humanities they would call a heroic simile, if he understood the term, or a metaphor, or some other kind of literary analogy. And analogies were mostly meaningless — a matter of phenotype rather than genotype (to use another analogy). Most, of poetry and literature, really all the humanities, not to mention the social sciences, were phenotypic as far as Sax could tell. They added up to a huge compendium of meaningless analogies, which did not help to explain things, but only distorted perception of them. A kind of continuous conceptual drunkenness, one might say. Sax himself much preferred exactitude and explanatory power, and why not? If it was 200 Kelvin outside why not say so, rather than talk about witches’ tits and the like, hauling the whole great baggage of the ignorant past along to obscure every encounter with sensory reality? It was absurd.”

AnalogyObfuscation
Book:Green Mars
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“Listen. Even before I found out about you and Devlen, I realized we couldn’t be together. Now brace yourself, I’m going to use a weather analogy.” I groaned. He quirked a smile. “You’re all energy and excitement and then you blow away. Being with you is like being on the coast, dancing in the storms. Breathless activity, followed by calm. I have that with my job.” He brushed my hair from my eyes. “After you sacrificed your magic I thought you would be content to stay uninvolved in Sitian affairs and be with me. But you rushed off, jumping right back into the maelstrom. I don’t have the energy to deal with storms on both fronts—pun intended. I need someone steadier.” Tears ran down my face. He hugged me. “And I’ll offer to render aid whenever needed because I know you wouldn’t ask. After all, I don’t want to miss out on all the fun.”

WeatherAnalogyKadeOpal CowanNo Hard FeelingsStill Friends
Book:Spy Glass
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“Popular-science news about quantum mechanics is to me as baffling as it is frustrating. Hand me an equation, and I can deal with it. But if you tell me that quantum mechanics allows one to separate a cat from its grin or that an experiment shows "an irreconcilable mismatch between the friends and the Wigners," I'll back out of the room quietly before anyone demands I explain this mess. I have suffered through countless well-intended introductions to quantum mechanics featuring quantum shoes, quantum coins, quantum boxes, and entire zoos of quantum animals that went in and out of those boxes. If you actually understand those explanations, I salute you, because if I hadn't known already how quantum mechanics works, I still wouldn't know.”

Quantum MechanicsAnalogyPopular Science
Book:Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions
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“It's crazy that her tester pancake turned out to be perfect," I finally said. "Her what?" Cat chuckled. "You know, the tester pancake," I explained, hoping that the preceding glasses of wine wouldn't make this analogy impossible to follow. "Like, when you're making pancakes, you don't just start off by dumping all the pancake batter onto the griddle and assuming everything will be okay. You have to start with one and then test it out to see--- is the griddle hot enough? Is the batter not too thick or not too loose? Does the butter melt at the right sizzle? Does the batter have the right ratio of blueberries---" "You mean chocolate chips---" she interjected. "I mean blueberries for my fictional theoretical pancakes, thank you very much. Anyway," I said, clearing my throat, "you need the tester pancake to help you adjust. Not to mention you might spend years refining your pancake recipe to get to the one you want." "But sometimes the tester just works," Cat argued wholeheartedly. Such a hidden sap. It made no sense, since she---like me--- had essentially been single since college. But I knew she was a softie beneath her badass consulting and math-brain exterior. "Besides," she said, "they always say when you know, you know.”

RelationshipsPancakesAnalogyTester
Book:Recipe for Second Chances
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“Suppose every life was written as a storybook; assuming this was true, the only storybook each person would completely know is their own. I know my own story, as I own my own thoughts and my own consciousness. Hence, I have not finished reading the books of other lives, because I am still writing my own. Therefore, since I live in and am the main character of my own book, I appear to be at the center of life itself. From my vantage point, I’m at the center of the world—I have not finished the stories of others, because I’m at the center of my own. This is why I compare myself to the midpoint formula: the midpoint does not begin a line nor end the line, but rather becomes a part of it—from an individualistic vantage point, I am a part of or even at the center of life itself.”

LifePhilosophyCreativeMathAnalogyMidpoint
Book:For the Intellect
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“Bannister's mile remains a touchstone in the history of athletics not because Bannister set an unbreachable record - currently, the fastest mile is a good fifteen seconds under Bannister's. For generations, four minutes was thought to represent an intrinsic physiological limit, as if muscles could inherently not be made to move any faster or lungs breathe any deeper. What Bannister proved was that such notions about intrinsic boundaries are mythical. What he broke permanently was not a limit, but the idea of limits.”

LimitsAnalogyRoger BannisterBannister S MileFour Minute MileIntrinsic Boundaries
Book:The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
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“What I was, and still partially am, is socially disorientated. My social equilibrium is out of whack, punched out like I was in a boxing match, and only recently have I felt like I can actually differentiate life phases and recognize if my life is moving, spinning, or standing still. Later we will see if I’ll go full circle with this boxing analogy and end up being punch-drunk in twenty-plus years. There are so many hits you can take, but I am optimistic since I’ve learned how to roll with the punches.”

BoxingAnalogyIntersexSex ChangePussified
Book:Pussified: A sex change story I didn't have the balls to tell
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“The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions. And even a cursory glance at the history of the biological sciences during the last quarter of a century is sufficient to justify the assertion, that the most potent instrument for the extension of the realm of natural knowledge which has come into men's hands, since the publication of Newton's ‘Principia’, is Darwin's ‘Origin of Species.”

ScienceGoalBusinessKnowledgeHistoryOceanIntellectualInfiniteMetaphorBiologyJustificationNewtonUnknownPossessionsOrigin Of SpeciesDarwinAnalogySolidityCharles DarwinIsaac NewtonPrincipiaIllimitableInexplicability
Author:Thomas Henry Huxley
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“Le savant doit ordonner ; on fait la science avec des faits comme une maison avec des pierres ; mais une accumulation de faits n'est pas plus une science qu'un tas de pierres n'est une maison. The Scientist must set in order. Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.”

InspirationalFactsScienceOrderScientistAnalogy
Book:Science and Hypothesis
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“Faced with our addiction to oil, what does our leadership say? Get more of it! Strange when you consider their answer to drug dependence is to cut off the supply.”

PoliticsAddictionOilDependenceDrugsAnalogyGas Prices
Book:When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden: What the Government Should be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism
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“I am like someone who is building a bridge. But it is no ordinary bridge. On one bank I stand ...... That is the present and there I have already driven in the first poles. And from this bank I am going to build my bridge, floating in space toward the other bank that I often see not at all and otherwise only see as in a fog. Only now and then I see it quite clearly in my dreams. And then I do not know if this bank means the past or the future. This question then awakes in me: Have I only had a past or have I not had any past at all, or do I only have a future and no past?”

PastDreamsIdentityFutureQuestionsOntologyGender IdentityPast And FutureAnalogy
Book:Lili: A Portrait of the First Sex Change
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“I realized, when I saw the forest burning, how fascinating the firelight is. It's beautiful, and people stare at it, don't they? It destroys things and kills people, but humans love it. Is it because they crave their own destruction, Sam? I want to understand your kind. I am going out into the wider world, and I must learn. But first things first. First, to escape this shell, this egg in which I have gestated, all eyes will be on the fire, all eyes blinded by the smoke, and when I walk out of here, out into your large world with its billions, no one will even see. It's the beauty of light, don't you see, Sam? It reveals, but it also distracts and blinds. It's even better than darkness.”

InspirationalRealityLightHumanityDarknessFirePerceptionMetaphorHuman ConditionAnalogy
Book:Light
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