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Puzzling Quotes

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Puzzling Quotes

“Famine sometimes increases the number of people who are overweight.”

HumorQuotesFoodHumourQuoteProfoundHungerHungryIronyThoughtfulSatireParadoxThought ProvokingDeepInsightfulIronicAphorismQuotationsMaximsSayingsAdagesProverbsStarvationAphorismsMake You ThinkFamineObesityDietAxiomsAdageOverweightParadoxicalProverbSatiricalSayingEpigramsMalnutritionQuotationGnomeNutrientsFatMaximObeseEpigramGnomesProvoke ThoughtMade Me ThinkPuzzlingAxiomDictumDictumsPuzzleStarveFood ShortageBasic NecessitiesUnderweight
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“People like ourselves may see nothing wondrous in writing, but our anthropologists know how strange and magical it appears to a purely oral people - a conversation with no one and yet with everyone. What could be stranger than the silence one encounters when addressing a question to a text? What could be more metaphysically puzzling than addressing an unseen audience, as every writer of books must do? And correcting oneself because one knows that an unknown reader will disapprove or misunderstand?”

PeopleKnowsWritingMayBookSilenceAudienceKnow HowStrangeReaderConversationOneselfStrangerEncountersUnseenWondrousCorrectingAnthropologistsPuzzling
Book:Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
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“To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to me will be destroyed unread. You must make your way yourself. Why you should be so set on the nearly always disappointing profession is a puzzling question.”

WayShouldWritingProblemStruggleRiskOneselfProfessionPassingPassingsDestroyedHere And NowDisappointingManuscriptsPuzzling
Book:The Amis collection: selected non-fiction, 1954-1990
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“On the geometric level, we see certain physical elements repeated endlessly, combined in an almost endless variety of combinations. It is puzzling to realize that the elements, which seem like elementary building blocks, keep varying, and are different every time that they occur. If the elements are different every time that they occur, evidently then, it cannot be the elements themselves which are repeating in a building or town; these so-called elements cannot be the ultimate "atomic" constituents of space.”

IfsDifferentSeemsCertainRealizingSpaceLevelsBuildingElementsUltimateTownsEndlessBlockVarietyCombinationConstituentsBuilding BlocksPuzzlingGeometric
Author:Christopher Alexander
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“Schizophrenia --its nature, etiology, and the kind of therapy to use for it--remains one of the most puzzling of the mental illnesses. The theory of schizophrenia presented here is based on communications analysis, and specifically on the Theory of Logical Types. From this theory and from observations of schizophrenic patients is derived a description, and the necessary conditions for, a situation called the "double bind"--a situation in which no matter what a person does, he "can't win." It is hypothesized that a person caught in the double bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms”

KindMayPersonsDoeMatterUseWinningSituationConditionsTheoryCommunicationTypeNo Matter WhatRemainsPatientCaughtIllnessMental IllnessObservationAnalysisTherapyDescriptionLogicalSymptomsSchizophreniaCan't WinSchizophrenicPuzzling
Book:Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology
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“Everybody is not going to be squeaky clean. All the guys they are giving these marketing endorsement deals are the ones going out there getting in trouble. That is what is really puzzling to me. They will take a chance on the so call good image guy and they are the ones that go out there and screw it all up. You have not seen my face go across the screen for any off the field problems, period.”

GivingProblemFacesGuyChanceDealsTroubleFieldsPeriodsCleanMarketingScreensGoing OutScrewsTake A ChanceEndorsementsPuzzling
Author:Terrell Owens
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“When common sense sees a puzzling phenomenon it looks for a causal agent. When it sees organization it looks for an organizer. This works amazingly well for purposes ranging from the diagnosis of diseases to the creation of governments. But it cannot account for emergence ... the appearance of complex phenomena not predictable from the basic elements and processes alone.”

WellsLooksGovernmentPurposeProcessCommonCreationDiseaseElementsOrganizationAccountsComplexesAppearanceCommon SenseAgentsPhenomenonPredictableDiagnosisEmergenceOrganizerPuzzling
Book:Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age
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“The daily clinical experience of thousands of massage therapists, physical therapists, and physicians strongly indicates that most of our common aches and pains - and many other puzzling physical complaints - are actually caused by trigger points, or small contraction knots, in the muscles of the body.”

BodyPainCommonTherapyMusclesInjuryPhysiciansComplaintsAcheTriggersTherapistsKnotsMassageClinicalsPuzzlingContractionsAches And PainsPhysical TherapistMassage Therapists
Book:The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook: Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief
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“There is no point in trying to remember your dreams ... There is only the unspeakable joy of eavesdropping on your spirit, catching tiny glimpses of its independent life, resting for a moment in its wisdom, puzzling, laughing sometimes, over what it's up to, what it makes of you.”

TryingSometimesMomentsDreamRememberJoySpiritLaughingIndependentTinyYour DreamsGlimpseCatchingNo PointUnspeakablePuzzlingEavesdroppingNo Point In TryingIndependent Life
Author:Marsha Norman
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“Money is a mystery. Not only is our behavior with respect to money sometimes puzzling and erratic, but our feelings about money are often contradictory, illogical, deep-rooted, and scarcely known even to our most secret selves. We are getting better at handling money, but what it means to us, how we use it to express ourselves, and how it can help us become all that we are meant to be remain murky issues.”

MeanSelfSometimesHelpingUseFeelingsMoneySecretKnownIssuesMysteryBehaviorGet BetterMeant To BeRootedContradictoryIllogicalPuzzlingErratic
Author:Rosalie Maggio
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“I think that the best of my generation...have reversed the customary rules of the game and have grown more radical as they have gotten older - a disconcerting but healthy sign. To be sure, there are many youngish old fogies around and even the most illustrious of these, William Buckley, is blessed by a puzzling, recondite but undeniable charm, almost as if beneath that patrician exterior an egalitarian was signaling to get out.”

IfsThinkingGamesGenerationsHealthyBlessedRadicalCharmMy GenerationExteriorPuzzlingRules Of The Game
Author:William Styron
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“We tend to think that, in a traditional organisation, people are producing results because management wants results, but the essence of a high-quality organisation is people producing results because they want the results. It's puzzling we find that hard to understand, that if people are really enjoying, they'll innovate, they'll take risks, they'll have trust with one another because they are really committed to what they're doing and it's fun”

PeopleIfsThinkingWantHardFunEnjoyResultsQualityRiskEssenceManagementStrategyCommittedTraditionalOrganisationHigh QualityPuzzlingProducing Results
Author:Peter Senge
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“The world is a puzzling place today. All these banks sending us credit cards, with our names on them. Well, we didn't order any credit cards! We don't spend what we don't have. So we just cut them in half and throw them out, just as soon as we open them in the mail. Imagine a bank sending credit cards to two ladies over a hundred years old! What are those folks thinking?”

PeopleThinkingWorldYearsWellsTwoTodayOrderNamesHalfCuttingImagineHundredFolksCreditDebtCardsMailOld PeopleCredit CardPuzzling
Book:Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years
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“Wittgenstein imagined that the philosopher was like a therapist whose task was to put problems finally to rest, and to cure us ofbeing bewitched by them. So we are told to stop, to shut off lines of inquiry, not to find things puzzling nor to seek explanations. This is intellectual suicide.”

ProblemLinesIntellectualTasksPhilosophicalSuicidePhilosopherCuresAnalysisExplanationInquiryTherapistsPuzzlingBewitched
Book:Essays in Quasi-Realism
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“Indeed, it is that ambiguity and ambivalence which often is so puzzling in women--the quality of shifting from child to woman, theseeming helplessness one moment and the utter self-reliance the next that baffle us, that seem most difficult to understand. These are the qualities that make her a mystery, the qualities that provoked Freud to complain, "What does a woman want?”

WantChildrenDoeSelfMomentsSeemsNextDifficultQualityMysteryComplainingSelf RelianceRelianceShiftingAmbiguityHelplessnessOften IsWomen WantProvokedAmbivalencePuzzling
Author:Lillian B. Rubin
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“What's somewhat puzzling is that Churchill himself knew what the reaction would be to any sort of aerial attack on cities, because in 1938 he said that in a future war British cities would be attacked by bombing, and that the response would be that all men would want to join the fight because they would be so incensed by this cowardly manner of attack. Which is a very natural response: when something drops on you from the air and blows up a bunch of buildings and kills people in their sleep, the reaction is going to be rage, confusion, and a search for something to destroy in retaliation.”

PeopleMenWantSaidWarWould BeFightingNaturalSleepCitiesAirBuildingResponseBlowBritishRageReactionsBunchConfusionBombingCowardlyRetaliationPuzzling
Author:Nicholson Baker
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“There is nothing puzzling ... about America's gratuitously aggressive foreign policy or about the oligarchs' successful efforts to drag the Republic into five wars. What an aggressive foreign policy accomplishes by slow degrees, a state of war accomplishes in a trice. Overnight [war] kills reform, overnight it transforms insurgents into traitors and the Republic into an imperiled realm. Overnight it strangles free politics, distracts and overawes the citizenry. Overnight it blasts public hope.”

WarStatesAmericaEffortSuccessfulFivePolicyDegreesAccomplishReformRealmsRepublicAggressiveForeign PolicyDragBlastTraitorCitizenryInsurgentPuzzling
Author:Walter Karp
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“From my student days I found him a compelling and fascinating, though often puzzling, figure. It's a lifelong fascination now and I don't expect that to stop! His vision of God, God's faithfulness, God's purposes and so on is so much bigger and richer than almost any subsequent Christian thinker has ever managed. In addition, I have always loved ancient history, especially the history of the early Roman empire, and of course Paul fits right into that.”

ChristianPurposeCoursesFoundVisionFiguresStudentsFitBiggerAncientFascinatingEmpiresThinkerCompellingFaithfulnessFascinationLifelongRoman EmpirePuzzlingAncient HistoryGod's Faithfulness
Author:N. T. Wright
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“It's a wonderful thing to be able to create your own world whenever you want to. Writing is very pleasurable, very seductive, and very therapeutic. Time passes very fast when I'm writing-really fast. I'm puzzling over something, and time just flies by. It's an exhilarating feeling. How bad can it be? It's sitting alone with fictional characters. You're escaping from the world in your own way and that's fine. Why not?”

WorldWayWantWritingCharacterFeelingsAbleWonderfulFineSittingWhy NotWonderful ThingsEscapingSeductiveExhilaratingTherapeuticTime PassesPuzzlingFictional CharacterSitting AloneExhilarating Feeling
Author:Woody Allen
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“When I first began examining the global-warming scare, I found nothing more puzzling than the way officially approved scientists kept on being shown to have finagled their data, as in that ludicrous "hockey stick" graph, pretending to prove that the world had suddenly become much hotter than at any time in 1,000 years. Any theory needing to rely so consistently on fudging the evidence, I concluded, must be looked on not as science at all, but as simply a rather alarming case study in the aberrations of group psychology.”

WorldWayYearsFirstsFoundCasesStudyPsychologyGroupsTheoryProveEvidenceScientistSticksDataRelyGlobal WarmingHockeyPretendingScareConsistentlyApprovedExaminingAberrationPuzzlingHotterGraphsCase StudiesHockey Sticks
Author:Christopher Booker
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“A more appropriate expansion is the statement "it is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies" a transcript of a talk to a writers conference in Australia in 1996, where I had been asked to talk on "writers and intellectual responsibility" - a question that I said I found "puzzling," because I knew of nothing to say about it beyond truisms, though these were perhaps worth affirming because they are "so commonly denied, if not in words, then in consistent practice."”

IfsSaidLyingFoundSpeakResponsibilityPracticeIntellectualStatementsConsistentAppropriateAustraliaDeniedExpansionConferencesSpeak The TruthAffirmingTruismPuzzling
Author:Noam Chomsky
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“I try to weave a secret into each plot. It's the thread that holds the rest of the story fabric together. In fact, it's the reason for the story. I hint at the secret early on. Immediately I want the reader to get the feeling that something here isn't quite right. It helps maintain the suspense if a puzzling element is introduced in the first few pages of the book, but the answer isn't revealed until the final ones. Hopefully, readers want to know what the heck is really going on, and it's the desire to find out that keeps them turning pages.”

TryingBookReasonHelpingFeelingsTogetherDesireSecretHopefullyPuzzling
Author:Sandra Brown
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“She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.”

MindHandsSweetKissingMouthsBoxesCornersEastTinyLovelyPuzzlingWendyLovely Lady
Book:Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) (Annotated Edition)
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