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Incompleteness Quotes

Browse 55 quotes about Incompleteness.

Incompleteness Quotes

“I seriously believed I could escape myself–as long as I made the effort. But I always hit a dead end. No matter where I go, I still end up me. What’s missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I’m still the same old incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I guess that lack itself is as close as I’ll come to defining myself.”

SelfIncompleteness
Book:South of the Border, West of the Sun
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“Thus the perception of the infinite is somehow prior in me to the perception of the finite, that is, my perception of God is prior to my perception of myself. For how would I understand that I doubt and that I desire, that is, that I lack something and that I am not wholly perfect, unless there were some idea in me of a more perfect being, by comparison with which I might recognize my defects?”

SelfInfinityIncompletenessFinitude
Book:Meditations on First Philosophy
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“Gödel (and indeed the whole mathematical community) failed to realise that all valid mathematical axioms must be tautological, i.e. must be shown to have a common root, of which they are equivalent expressions. Any mathematical axioms that are not tautologous automatically fall foul of Cartesian substance dualism, i.e. they imply different ontologies and epistemologies – different and incompatible versions of mathematics – hence cannot be complete and consistent with regard to each other. In other words, Gödel simply came up with an ingenious way of showing that existence must be predicated on monism, and not on dualism or pluralism.”

MathematicsIncompletenessMonismGodel
Book:Gödel Versus Wittgenstein
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“Death takes us by surprise, And stays our hurrying feet; The great design unfinished lies, Our lives are incomplete But in the dark unknown, Perfect their circles seem, Even as a bridge's arch of stone Is rounded in the stream. Alike are life and death, When life in death survives, And the uninterrupted breath Inspires a thousand lives. Were a star quenched on high, For ages would its light, Still traveling downward from the sky, Shine on our mortal sight. So when a great man dies, For years beyond our ken, The light he leaves behind him lies Upon the paths of men.”

DeathDesignSurpriseUnknownHomageCircleCircle Of LifeIncompletenessUnfinished Work
Book:The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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“Gödel’s scheme has nothing to do with mathematics in and of itself. It concerns false approaches (i.e. non-ontological approaches) to the definition of what math is. The incompleteness theorems proved that such approaches are doomed to failure. Gödel didn’t prove a single thing about what math is. What he proved is what’s it’s not. He proved that it definitely isn’t manmade.”

PhilosophyMathIncompletenessGodel
Book:Gödel Versus Wittgenstein
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“There are official searchers, inquisitors. I have seen them in the performance of their function: they always arrive extremely tired from their journeys; they speak of a broken stairway which almost killed them; they talk with the librarian of galleries and stairs; sometimes they pick up the nearest volume and leaf through it, looking for infamous words. Obviously, no one expects to discover anything.”

SciencePerceptionIncompleteness
Book:The Library of Babel
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“A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he's finished.”

MenLoveWisdomHumorFunnyWomenLove IsMarriageMarriedHumorousWittyFinishedWeddingIncompleteHusband And WifeFunny MarriageLove And MarriageAverage ManGood MarriageMarried ManBeing IrishMarriage HumorWedding MarriageInspirational MarriageWedding ToastWeddings And MarriageNewlywedsIncompletenessMarriage JokesMarriage And Love InspirationalWitty MarriageFunny IrishWives LoveFunny Wedding ToastWedding PhrasesShort MarriageFunny Husband And Wife
Author:Zsa Zsa Gabor
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“Metaphysical rebellion is a claim, motivated by the concept of a complete unity, against the suffering of life and death and a protest against the human condition both for its incompleteness, thanks to death, and its wastefulness, thanks to evil.”

HumansSufferingEvilConditionsConceptsClaimsUnityThanksLife And DeathProtestRebellionMotivatedHuman ConditionMetaphysicalIncompletenessWastefulness
Book:The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt
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“Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists... When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.”

IfsLoveLifeFeelsFirstsHas BeensTwoBookTodayLostHalfImagineSadnessSadAbsenceVolumeMissing SomeoneIncompleteOther HalfFeeling LonelyLack Of LoveIncompletenessAbsence Love
Author:Edmond de Goncourt
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“There is something servile in the interpretation of sin as crime which infringes the will of God and calls for legal proceedings on the part of God. Sin is dividedness, a state of deficiency, incompleteness, dissociation, enslavement, hatred, but it is not disobedience and not formal violation of the will of God.”

StatesSinCrimeHatredGods WillInterpretationFormalViolationDisobedienceDissociationDeficiencyProceedingEnslavementIncompleteness
Author:Nikolai Berdyaev
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“...Bliss is not something to be got. On the other hand you are always Bliss. This desire [for Bliss] is born of the sense of incompleteness. To whom is this sense of incompleteness? Enquire. In deep sleep you were blissful. Now you are not so. What has interposed between that Bliss and this non-bliss? It is the ego. Seek its source and find you are Bliss.”

HandsDesireBornSleepSourceEgoBlissIncompletenessDeep Sleep
Book:Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi
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“Obviously loss of family is huge and critical, but I think really it's more about losing a sense of family. The horror of that kind of incompleteness. Writing this book, I tried not to think about my father, which does no one any good fictionally. I did try to imagine not just the horror of that moment, but the horror of having witnessed it, and the lifelong void. And I think that's what's so frightening.”

ThinkingWritingTryingKindDoeBookMomentsFatherLossImagineHugeHorrorLosingCriticalThat MomentVoidFrighteningLifelongIncompleteness
Author:Chang-Rae Lee
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“To admit the existence of a need in God is to admit incompleteness in the divine Being. Need is a creature-word and cannot be spoken of the Creator. God has a voluntary relationg to everything He has made, but He has no Necessary relation to anything outside of Himself. His interest in His creatures arises from His sovereign good pleasure, not from any need those creatures can supply nor from any completeness they can dring to Him who is complete in himself.”

NeedsMadeInterestPleasureExistenceDivineCreaturesRelationCreatorAriseSovereignCompletenessIncompletenessCreator God
Author:Aiden Wilson Tozer
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“I think of the snarling, cruel exchange back on the hovercraft. The bitterness that followed. But all I say is "I can't believe you didn't rescue Peeta." "I know," he replies. There's a sense of incompleteness. And not because he hasn't apologized. But because we were a team. We had a deal to keep Peeta safe. A drunken, unrealistic deal made in the dark of night, but a deal just the same. And in my heart of hearts, I know we both failed. "Now you say it," I tell him. "I can't believe you let him out of your sight that night," says Haymitch.”

ThinkingKnowsBelieveHeartMadeI CanNightDarkDealsTeamMy HeartSafeSightBitternessRescuePeetaHaymitchIncompletenessSnarlingHovercrafts
Author:Suzanne Collins
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“Part of the inner world of everyone is this sense of emptiness, unease, incompleteness, and I believe that this in itself is a word from God, that this is the sound that God’s voice makes in a world that has explained him away. In such a world, I suspect that maybe God speaks to us most clearly through his silence, his absence, so that we know him best through our missing him.”

KnowsWorldBelieveSpeakI BelieveSoundVoiceSilenceMissingAbsenceEmptinessSuspectsInner WorldIncompletenessMissing Him
Book:Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons
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“There are days when I am convinced that Heaven starts already, now, in this ordinary life just as it is, in all its incompleteness, yet, this is where Heaven starts.. see within yourself, if you can find it. I walked through the field in front of the house, lots of swallows flying, everywhere! Some very near me..it was magical. "We are already one, yet we know it not.”

IfsKnowsWisdomHouseHeavenFrontsFieldsOrdinaryConvincedFlyingOrdinary LifeIncompleteness
Author:Thomas Merton
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“Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise. Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world ... That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God's new world, which he has thrown open before us.”

WorldWayMeanMadeChristianJoySpiritualityJesusChristJusticePleasureBehindsSunCreationJesus ChristSatisfiedSettlingThrownSentimentsNew WorldIntrospectionVengeanceTombsBrokennessClamorIncompleteness
Author:N. T. Wright
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“Isolated facts and experiments have in themselves no value, however great their number may be. They only become valuable in a theoretical or practical point of view when they make us acquainted with the law of a series of uniformly recurring phenomena, or, it may be, only give a negative result showing an incompleteness in our knowledge of such a law, till then held to be perfect.”

KnowsGivingMayFactsLawScienceValuesPerfectResultsViewsNumbersKnowledgeNegativeSeriesValuablePoint Of ViewPracticalsExperimentsIsolatedTheoreticalRecurringIncompleteness
Book:Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays
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“The words graphic designer, architect, or industrial designer stick in my throat, giving me a sense of limitation, of specialisation within the specialty, of a relationship to society and form itself that is unsatisfactory and incomplete. This inadequate set of terms to describe an active life reveals only partially the still undefined nature of the designer.”

LifeGivingStillsFormTermNatureRelationshipSocietySpecialDesignIndustryLimitsSticksActiveArchitectureSensesLimitationDesignerThroatArchitectRevealingGraphicDescribingInadequateIncompleteGraphic DesignSpecialtyUnsatisfiedSpecializationGraphic DesignerActive LifeIncompletenessUndefinedWordingCreative Industries
Author:Alvin Lustig
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“In the isolation of his clear, cold intellect, the sceptic abides in a glacial and spectral universe. No glow from the affections lights up the frost and shadow of the grave. He feels no prophecy in the thrill of the human heart-in the incompleteness of nature. He believes merely in things tangible, and sees only in the daytime. He will not confess the authenticity of that paler light of faith which was meant to shine when the sunshine of reason falls short, and the firmament of mystery is over our heads.”

FeelsBelieveHumansHeartReasonLightFaithFallUniverseClearMysteryColdShadowShiningAffectionIntellectGravesAuthenticityIsolationSunshineBelieve In MeProphecyThrillHuman HeartTangibleFrostLight UpDaytimeFirmamentScepticIncompleteness
Author:Edwin Hubbel Chapin
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“The reason why the romantic love relationship is such an intense and universally sought-after experience is that it seems to offer liberation from a deep-seated state of fear, need, lack, and incompleteness that is part of the human condition in its unredeemed and unenlightened state.”

NeedsHumansStatesReasonSeemsRomanceConditionsOffersExperienceIntenseLiberationReason WhyHuman ConditionRomantic LoveLove RelationshipIncompleteness
Book:The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
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“Remember one very fundamental thing about life: Any experience that has not been lived will hang around you, will persist: "Finish me! Live me! Complete me!" There is an intrinsic quality in every experience that it tends and wants to be finished, completed. Once completed, it evaporates; incomplete, it persists, it tortures you, it haunts you, it attracts your attention. It says, "What are you going to do about me? I am still incomplete - fulfill me!"”

WantLifeInspirationalStillsWisdomRememberSpiritualAttentionQualityWiseWise WordsWords Of WisdomExperienceFundamentalsFinishedPersistenceTortureSpiritual WisdomLife ExperiencePersistFulfillingRelaxationHauntingIncompleteWise Man Once SaidCompletenessCompletingIncompletenessEvaporationComplete Me
Author:Rajneesh
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“The ecstatic state of wholeness is bound to be transient because it has no part in the total pattern of ‘adaptation through maladaptation’ which is characteristic of our species…the hunger of imagination, the desire and pursuit of the whole, take origin from the realization that something is missing, from awareness of incompleteness.”

StatesWholeDesireImaginationAwarenessMissingSpeciesBoundsHungerPatternsPursuitRealizationCharacteristicsWholenessAdaptationTransientEcstaticIncompleteness
Book:Solitude a Return to the Self
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“How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. . . . We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know; God wants us to realize his presence, not in unsolved problems but in those that are solved. . . . God is no stop-gap; he must be recognized as the center of life, not when we are at the end of our resources.”

KnowsWantEndsGodUseProblemRealizingResourcesGapsWant UKnowing GodIncompletenessUnsolved Problems
Author:Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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