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Specificity Quotes

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Specificity Quotes

“When you are able to overcome distractions, then you will be able to do something more specific, something more precise and definite with the time that you have.”

WorldLifePurposeTimeHumanityWorkWealthPovertyGreatnessProduceCallingWasteValueProductivityConversionGiftGreatProductConvertDistractionsSpecificityTime MaximizationOvercoming Distraction
Book:How To Become Great Through Time Conversion: Are you wasting time, spending time or investing time?
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“The sky [above Tehran] was like a star-eaten black blanket, and so far as I could read them its constellations were unfamiliar. Lawrence speaks somewhere of drawing 'strength from the depths of the universe'; Malcolm Lowry speaks about the deadness of the stars except when he looked at them with a particular girl; I had neither feeling. The founder of the Jesuits used to spend many hours under the stars; it is hard to be certain whether his first stirrings of scientific speculation or pre-scientific wonder about space and the stars in their own nature were some element in his affinity with starlight, or whether for him they were only a point of departure, but in this matter I think I am about fifty years more modern than Saint Ignatius; stars mean to me roughly what they meant to Donne's generation, a bright religious sand imposing the sense of an intrusion into human language, and arousing a certain personal thirst to be specific.”

LanguageConstellationsStarlightTehranSpecificityJesuitsPoint Of DepartureMalcolm LowrySaint Ignatius
Book:The Light Garden of the Angel King: Travels in Afghanistan with Bruce Chatwin
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“There is a deeper point to be made here, however, having to do with the specificity of everything. One of the great failings of our culture is the nearly universal belief that there can be anything universal. We as a culture take the same approach to living in Phoenix as in Seattle as in Miami, to the detriment of all these landscapes. We turn wild trees to standardized two-by-fours. We turn living fish into fish sticks. But every fish is different from every other fish. Every student is different from every other student. Every place is different from every other place. If we are ever to hope to begin to live sustainably in place (which is the only way to live sustainably), we will have to remember specificity is everything.”

EducationSustainabilityEnvironmentalismSpecificitySustainableLocalisation
Book:Walking on Water: Reading, Writing, and Revolution
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“Where some may see flat, static narratives, I see a spectrum of tonal gradations and realities. What I am creating is literally black portraiture with ballpoint pen ink. I'm looking for that in-between state in an individual where the overarching definition is lost. Skin as geography is the terrain I expand by emphasizing the specificity of blackness, where an individual’s subjectivity, various realities and experiences can be drawn onto the diverse topography of the epidermis. From there, the possibilities of portraying a fully-fledged person are endless.”

MayPersonsStatesRealityIndividualLostBlackPossibilityCreatingSkinsDefinitionsVariousEndlessNarrativeFlatsPensDiverseInkSpectrumGeographyStaticBlacknessSubjectivityTerrainPortrayingPortraitureSpecificityTopographyBallpoint Pens
Author:Toyin Odutola
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“In truth, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” isn't about Sept. 11. It's about the impulse to drain that day of its specificity and turn it into yet another wellspring of generic emotions: sadness, loneliness, happiness. This is how kitsch works. It exploits familiar images, be they puppies or babies - or, as in the case of this movie, the twin towers - and tries to make us feel good, even virtuous, simply about feeling. And, yes, you may cry, but when tears are milked as they are here, the truer response should be rage.”

FeelsShouldTryingMayFeelingsTurnsEmotionCasesSadnessLonelinessCryTearsBabyResponseRageFamiliarFeel GoodImpulseLoudWorking ItVirtuousTwinsTowersExploitsPuppyDrainsKitschGenericSpecificityWellspringSept 11Twin Towers
Author:Manohla Dargis
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“If there is a lack of specificity in Grossman's description of the town and the walkers, and if the story perhaps sometimes becomes lost and confusing, then it is because the landscape and its inhabitants are really shadows, creatures of an interior world, whose journey and whose quest are within. Falling Out of Time is short, and clearly a deeply personal book, but its importance and impact ought not to be underestimated.”

IfsWorldBookSometimesStoriesFallLostJourneyOughtCreaturesShadowImportanceTownsImpactLandscapeDescriptionQuestsInteriorsConfusingWalkersUnderestimatedSpecificity
Author:Ian Sansom
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“The being level speaks the language of art, music, color shape and pattern directly -- a language that requires no words -- is not limited by words -- nor does it have the specificity of words and thus cannot be broken onto parts that can be manipulated or analyzed by the intellect. It must be swallowed, whole not parsed, sorted and justified.”

DoeArtWholeSpeakLanguageLevelsColorBrokenShapesPatternsIntellectJustifiedArt MusicSpecificity
Author:Thomas Campbell
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“I truly believe that to stay home, to learn the names of things, to realize who we live among . . . then I believe a politics of place emerges where we are deeply accountable to our communities, to our neighborhoods, to our home . . . If we are not rooted deeply in place, making that commitment to dig in and stay put . . . then I think we are living a life without specificity, and then our lives become abstractions. Then we enter a place of true desolation.”

IfsThinkingBelieveHomeNamesI BelieveRealizingCommunityOur LivesCommitmentNeighborhoodRootedAbstractionOur CommunityDesolationSpecificity
Author:Terry Tempest Williams
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“The kind of sleep that I had during my own film [Certified Copy] screening in Cannes is different. It's not because of the specificity of the film. It was because of my relationship as an author to this film. Usually when I take my films to festivals, I feel incredibly anxious about them. I wonder how it will be received, how the audience will react. I feel deeply responsible for them. Whereas this time, I didn't have that responsibility on my shoulders.”

FeelsKindDifferentFilmMy OwnSleepResponsibilityWonderAudienceResponsibleShouldersCopiesAnxiousFestivalsScreeningSpecificityCannes
Author:Abbas Kiarostami
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“Not that I ever felt the necessity of proving that all human beings suffer the same way, feel joy the same way, but it happened on my way - when I get close to these people, just by the simple intervention of translation I can actually reach them and ask them something, and their reaction is as I expected. I see that the relationship goes so smoothly, and I realize that cultural languages and specificities are nothing but simple obstacles that you can easily overcome. It's obvious that human beings are the same wherever they are.”

PeopleWayFeelsHumansI CanJoySufferingAsksLanguageFeltRealizingHuman BeingsSimpleHappenedProveOvercomingObviousObstaclesExpectedReactionsMy WayInterventionTranslationsSpecificity
Author:Abbas Kiarostami
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“Not possessing definite geographical boundaries, at least in the East - its distinction from Asia is problematic, considering that two large countries, Russia and Turkey, stretch between the two continents - , Europe, from the beginning, has defined itself from the perspective of the constitutive specificity of its philosophical principles: the freedom of the Greek cities as opposed to the Asian despotic regimes. Although these principles were often contradicted and reversed into their opposite, the idea of Europe is inseparable from them.”

TwoIdeasCountryCitiesPrinciplesPerspectiveEuropeOppositesPhilosophicalEastRussiaBoundariesDefinedGreekDistinctionRegimesContinentsConsideringDefiniteAsiaTurkeysAsianInseparablePossessingSpecificity
Author:Roberto Esposito
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“Important element is deeply understanding our curriculum. Most teachers know what they're going to cover this week or this term. Few of us can specify precisely what students should know, understand, and be able to do as a result of any particular learning experience or set of learning experiences. Without that specificity, alignment between content, assessment, and instruction is weak.”

KnowsShouldImportantAbleUnderstandingTermResultsTeacherWeekStudentsParticularElementsWeakInstructionAlignmentAssessmentCurriculumLearning ExperienceSpecificity
Author:Carol Ann Tomlinson
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“We have to be careful that we don't keep multiplying disorders and diluting them. I think there is a difference. People talk about Asperger's as high-functioning autism, which I think it is. But it does have some of its own characteristics, like the preservation of language, particularly, which may be right brain dysfunction instead of left brain dysfunction, and we lose something in that, as things lose their specificity, and we keep diluting things. I'm not sure that's helpful.”

PeopleThinkingMayDoeLeftLanguageLosesDifferencesBrainCarefulNot SureCharacteristicsHelpfulDisorderBe CarefulAutismPreservationDysfunctionAspergersMultiplyingSpecificityLeft Brain
Author:Darold Treffert
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“I think one of the problems with the definition of autism is we keep expanding it. It started as "early infantile autism", and then it became "autism", and now it's "autism spectrum disorder". I'm not opposed to that from the standpoint of trying to broaden our vistas, and so forth. But from a research point of view, the term autism is lost in specificity.”

ThinkingTryingProblemLostTermViewsResearchDefinitionsPoint Of ViewDisorderAutismExpandingSpectrumStandpointVistasInfantileSpecificity
Author:Darold Treffert
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“Few scientists acquainted with the chemistry of biological systems at the molecular level can avoid being inspired. Evolution has produced chemical compounds exquisitely organized to accomplish the most complicated and delicate of tasks. Many organic chemists viewing crystal structures of enzyme systems or nucleic acids and knowing the marvels of specificity of the immune systems must dream of designing and synthesizing simpler organic compounds that imitate working features of these naturally occurring compounds.”

DreamScienceLevelsKnowingDesignEvolutionTasksScientistStructureInspiredComplicatedAccomplishFeaturesOrganizedChemistryChemicalsDelicateCrystalsAcidImmuneCompoundsImmune SystemChemistSpecificityEnzymesChemical CompoundsOrganic Compounds
Author:Donald Cram
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“In its most primitive form, life is, therefore, no longer bound to the cell, the cell which possesses structure and which can be compared to a complex wheel-work, such as a watch which ceases to exist if it is stamped down in a mortar. No, in its primitive form life is like fire, like a flame borne by the living substance;-like a flame which appears in endless diversity and yet has specificity within it;-which can adopt the form of the organic world, of the lank grass-leaf and of the stem of the tree.”

IfsWorldLifeFormScienceLife IsWatchesFireTreeDiversityStructureComplexesBoundsEndlessCeaseCellsSubstanceGrassFlamesWheelsPrimitiveStemLeafsLife Is LikeTree Of LifeMortarSpecificity
Author:Martinus Beijerinck
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“Sex almost always disappoints me in novels. Everything can be said or done now, and that's what I often find: everything, a feeling of generality or dispersal. But in my experience, true sex is so particular, so peculiar to the person who yearns for it. Only he or she, and no one else, would desire so very much that very person under those circumstances. In fiction, I miss that sense of terrific specificity.”

WritingPersonsSaidDoneFeelingsDesireSexFictionNovelMissingParticularCircumstancesPeculiarTerrificDisappointGeneralitiesSpecificity
Author:Anatole Broyard
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