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Speculation Quotes

Browse 488 quotes about Speculation.

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Speculation Quotes

“The fear of speculation, the ostensible rush from the theoretical to the practical, brings about the same shallowness in action that it does in knowledge. It is by studying a strictly theoretical philosophy that we become most acquainted with Ideas, and only Ideas provide action with vigour and ethical meaning.”

DoeIdeasPhilosophyActionEnergyKnowledgeStudyPracticalsSignificanceEthicalSpeculationTheoreticalShallowness
Author:Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
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“Suicidal thinking, if serious, can be a kind of death scare, comparable to suffering a heart attack or undergoing a cancer operation. One survives such a phase both warier and chastened. When-ten years ago-I emerged from a bad dip into suicidal speculation, I felt utterly exhausted and yet quite fearless of ordinary dangers, vastly afraid of myself but much less scared of extraneous eventualities.”

IfsThinkingYearsHeartKindSufferingFeltDangerSeriousTenOrdinaryYears AgoCancerScaredFearlessOperationsScarePhasesExhaustedSuicidalSpeculationDipHeart Attack
Book:Tigers & Ice: Reflections on Nature and Life
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“But by far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses; in that things which strike the sense outweigh things which do not immediately strike it, though they be more important. Hence it is that speculation commonly ceases where sight ceases; insomuch that of things invisible there is little or no observation.”

HumansLittlesImportantScienceUnderstandingSightStrikesSensesInvisibleCeaseObservationDeceptionSpeculationHindranceDullnessAberration
Book:The Great Instauration
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“With increasing distance, our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly. Eventually, we reach the dim boundary-the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The search will continue. Not until the empirical resources are exhausted, need we pass on to the dreamy realms of speculation.”

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Book:The Realm of the Nebulæ
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“For a long time it has been known that the first systems of representations with which men have pictured to themselves the world and themselves were of religious origin. There is no religion that is not a cosmology at the same time that it is a speculation upon divine things. If philosophy and the sciences were born of religion, it is because religion began by taking the place of the sciences and philosophy.”

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Author:Emile Durkheim
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“Most of the crackpot papers which are submitted to The Physical Review are rejected, not because it is impossible to understand them, but because it is possible. Those which are impossible to understand are usually published. When the great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in a muddled, incomplete and confusing form. To the discoverer himself it will be only half-understood; to everybody else it will be a mystery. For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope.”

FirstsLooksDoeFormScienceHalfImpossibleMysteryCrazyPaperUnderstoodDiscoveryInnovationProgrammingReviewsRejectedGlancesPapersConfusingSpeculationIncompletePublicationNo HopeCrackpots
Author:Freeman Dyson
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“In the last two months I have been very busy with my own mathematical speculations, which have cost me much time, without my having reached my original goal. Again and again I was enticed by the frequently interesting prospects from one direction to the other, sometimes even by will-o'-the-wisps, as is not rare in mathematic speculations.”

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Author:Carl Friedrich Gauss
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“The hybridoma technology was a by-product of basic research. Its success in practical applications is to a large extent the result of unexpected and unpredictable properties of the method. It thus represents another clear-cut example of the enormous practical impact of an investment in research which might not have been considered commercially worthwhile, or of immediate medical relevance. It resulted from esoteric speculations, for curiosity's sake, only motivated by a desire to understand nature.”

Has BeensMightSuccessScienceDesireUnderstandingNatureResultsTechnologyClearCuttingExampleProductsResearchMethodImpactPropertyInvestmentCuriositySakeMedicalPracticalsEnormousUnexpectedMotivatedApplicationWorthwhileUnpredictableSpeculationRelevanceEsotericBasic Research
Author:Cesar Milstein
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“Realizing how often ingenious speculation in the complex biological world has led nowhere and how often the real advances in biology as well as in chemistry, physics and astronomy have kept within the bounds of mechanistic interpretation, we geneticists should rejoice, even with our noses on the grindstone (which means both eyes on the objectives), that we have at command an additional means of testing whatever original ideas pop into our heads.”

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Author:Thomas Hunt Morgan
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“...learning chiefly in mathematical sciences can so swallow up and fix one's thought, as to possess it entirely for some time; but when that amusement is over, nature will return, and be where it was, being rather diverted than overcome by such speculations.”

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Book:An Exposition of the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England
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“As historians, we refuse to allow ourselves these vain speculations which turn on possibilities that, in order to be reduced to actuality, suppose an overturning of the Universe, in which our globe, like a speck of abandoned matter, escapes our vision and is no longer an object worthy of our regard. In order to fix our vision, it is necessary to take it such as it is, to observe well all parts of it, and by indications infer from the present to the past.”

WellsMatterPastScienceOrderTurnsUniverseVisionPossibilityObjectsRegardRefuseWorthyObservationVainHistorianAbandonedGlobesSpeculationTurn-onIndicationActualitySpecks
Author:Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
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“I have read various articles on the fourth dimension, the relativity theory of Einstein, and other psychological speculation on the constitution of the universe; and after reading them I feel as Senator Brandegee felt after a celebrated dinner in Washington. "I feel," he said, "as if I had been wandering with Alice in Wonderland and had tea with the Mad Hatter."”

IfsFeelsSaidScienceUniverseReadingFeltPsychologyTheoryConstitutionMadVariousDinnerPsychologicalWanderTeaDimensionsArticlesFourthSenatorsSpeculationRelativityWonderland
Author:Charles Lane Poor
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“[Theory is] an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation confidently but provisionally - taking it as their best available view of reality, at least unil some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along.”

MeanHas BeensFactsRealityMightViewsAcceptingTheoryFitDegreesEvidenceScientistEmbraceAvailableExperimentsStatementsObservationDataExplanationExpertsSpeculationKnowledgeableUnreliableDreamy
Author:David Quammen
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“Not only did he teach by accomplishment, but he taught by the inspiration of a marvelous imagination that refused to accept the permanence of what appeared to others to be insuperable difficulties: an imagination of the goals of which, in a number of instances, are still in the realms of speculation.”

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Author:Edwin Howard Armstrong
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“In arriving at a decision in a question of doubt, the apostles in the Acts were guided solely by their sense of the Spirit behind the action, not by any speculations as to consequences which might ensue. And so they found the truth.”

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Book:The Ministry of the Spirit: Selected Writings of Roland Allen
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“Socialist thought owes its appeal to the young largely to its visionary character; the very courage to indulge in Utopian thought is in this respect a source of strength for socialism which traditional liberalism sadly lacks. Speculation about general principles provides an opportunity for the play of the imagination of those who are unencumbered by much knowledge of the facts of present-day life. Their ideas suffer from inherent contradictions, and any attempt to put them into practice must produce something utterly different from what they expect.”

IdeasDifferentPhilosophyPlayCharacterFactsYoungPoliticalSufferingOpportunityImaginationPrinciplesPracticeProduceSourceEconomicsSocialismTraditionalAppealsLiberalismContradictionInherentSocialistSpeculationIndulgeVisionariesPresent DayIndulge InUtopianDay LifeSource Of Strength
Author:Friedrich August von Hayek
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“It is not always the most brilliant speculations nor the choice of the most exotic materials that is most profitable. I prefer Monsieur de Reaumur busy exterminating moths by means of an oily fleece; or increasing fowl production by making them hatch without the help of their mothers, than Monsieur Bemouilli absorbed in algebra, or Monsieur Leibniz calculating the various advantages and disadvantages of the possible worlds.”

WorldMeanHelpingScienceMotherChoicesMaterialsAdvantageBusyProductionsVariousOilBrilliantSpeculationProfitableDisadvantagesExoticAlgebraMothsCalculatingFowlFleeceAdvantages And Disadvantages
Author:Noel-Antoine Pluche
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“In my view, our approach to global warming exemplifies everything that is wrong with our approach to the environment. We are basing our decisions on speculation, not evidence. Proponents are pressing their views with more PR than scientific data. Indeed, we have allowed the whole issue to be politicized-red vs blue, Republican vs Democrat. This is in my view absurd. Data aren't political. Data are data. Politics leads you in the direction of a belief. Data, if you follow them, lead you to truth.”

IfsWholePoliticalBeliefDecisionViewsIssuesEnvironmentRepublicanApproachEvidenceRedBlueDemocratClimate ChangeAbsurdDataGlobal WarmingSpeculation
Author:Michael Crichton
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