Top 100 Explanation Quotes
#2. It strikes me that people want to be engaged, and that those who go into a bookstore in a time of crisis are much more likely to be looking for explanation than for escapism.
Michael Korda
#4. For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.
Leo Tolstoy
#5. Passion impels our deeds; ideology supplies the explanations.
Mason Cooley
#6. The simplest explanation usually sounds right and is far
more convincing than any complicated explanation could
hope to be.
Scott Adams
#7. Neither the good nor the true is self-realizing, so it is not generally a sufficient explanation of why people believe that X that X is true, or of why people do Y that Y is good.
Raymond Geuss
#8. What they don't tell you when you get sober is that if you manage to stay that way, you will bury your friends. Not everyone gets to have a whole new shiny-but-messy life like I have, and I've never come up with a satisfying explanation for why that is.
Nadia Bolz-Weber
#9. Your explanation depresses me," I said.
"Your nonsense depresses me," said Simple.
Langston Hughes
#10. There seems to be no mainframe explanation for the PC world in which we're living.
William J. Clinton
#11. Strings of coincidence can strengthen us in the determination to follow our deepest intuitions even when they run counter to conventional wisdom and logic and cannot be subjected to rational explanation.
Robert Moss
#13. There's a Reasonable Explanation' is definitely a place you can go, a destination.
Deb Caletti
#15. An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.
C.S. Lewis
#16. Well, the only logical explanation is that all of my clothes shrunk!
Van Krishna
#17. A lot of the lyrics I write involve images that just swing the song in a way that feels really good to me and there isn't a literal explanation. They're not riddles for the listener to solve.
Matt Berninger
#18. Unemployment is like a headache or a high temperature - unpleasant and exhausting but not carrying in itself any explanation of its cause.
William Beveridge
#19. As I write, there is a craze for what is called psychoanalysis, or the cure of diseases by explaining to the patient what is the matter with him: an excellent plan if you happen to know what is the matter with him, especially when the explanation is that there is nothing the matter with him.
George Bernard Shaw
#20. (..) she cried and cried and cried, there weren't any napkins nearby so I ripped the page from the book - "I don't speak. I'm sorry." - and used it to dry her cheeks, my explanation and apology ran down her face like mascara (..)
Jonathan Safran Foer
#21. Even T.E. Lawrence, who hardly knew the meaning of fear, was by Sassoon's own account, terrified after only five minutes of his driving; 'my methods of turning from side roads into main roads were abrupt in those days' Sassoon added by way of explanation.
Jean Moorcroft Wilson
#22. In True Balance Sonia Choquette takes the mystery out of staying balanced, both physically and spiritually. She offers a clear explanation of our chakras and how they influence our daily lives.
Salle Merrill Redfield
#23. James Croll, the Scottish janitor and self-taught polymath whose theories concerning Earth's orbit provided the first plausible explanation for how ice ages might have started.
Bill Bryson
#24. Now, with the message sent, the words said, she wanted to call them back, to censor, to rearrange them, to make a prettier sentence, a fairer explanation of her soul.
Ray Bradbury
#25. We need to know not only what is done but what is purposed and said by those who shape the destines of states and realms." Horace Greeley
Harold Holzer
#26. You should know something, Miriam ... God changed our futures yesterday. There's no other explanation for what happened. And it wasn't the first God. If you ever need hlep, you might want to try the second God.
Ted Dekker
#27. I certainly enjoy going on stage and lecturing and talking to Congress. That's a personality explanation. And given government proposals, I thought I had a clear view that they were antagonistic to human freedom.
Whitfield Diffie
#28. The farther we go, the more the ultimate explanation recedes from us, and all we have left is faith.
Vaclav Hlavaty
#29. I like you but you mightn't feel the same way about me, and I wouldn't blame you. To save us both from any awkward moments I've figured out an easy way to do this. Nod if you're even slightly interested in getting to know me. Write a ten page explanation if you're not.
Bill Condon
#30. Nothing is altered and in spite of God's mercy I am still alone. Though my suffering seems senseless I am still in agony. There is no explanation of my life. Indeed there was not, nor was this what he'd meant to convey.
Malcolm Lowry
#31. Religion began as a natural explanation of the universe. The problem started when people refused to accept new evidence.
B.B. King
#32. Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United States.
Bertrand Russell
#33. Moist realized that there had to be an explanation for this, but the only one he could think of now was: It's strange.
Terry Pratchett
#34. Every single phenomenon in the world, has a physical explanation underneath it. Finding the explanation depends on how far you are willing to go.
Abhijit Naskar
#35. All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of visual impressions.
Joseph Conrad
#36. Poetry is a series of explanations of life, fading off into horizons too swift for explanations.
Carl Sandburg
#37. We must turn away from work that replaces experience and pleasure with explanation.
Walter Darby Bannard
#38. The only explanation that came to her was that gentlemen were obviously odd beings, and she should not even attempt to understand them.
Jen Turano
#39. What one must not do is to rule out the supernatural as the one impossible explanation.
C.S. Lewis
#40. We work only with things that don't exist, with lines, planes, bodies, atoms, units of time, units of space - how is explanation even possible if we begin by making everything into an image, our image! It
Friedrich Nietzsche
#41. The discrepancy between the modern observance and the prescriptions of the Rule had struck me ever since the novitiate, and no satisfactory explanation had ever been given to me. People said that man had changed: the weakness of people's health no longer allows us to fast. Was it true?
Adalbert De Vogue
#42. Now, that is very interesting history," said Jack, well pleased; "and I understand it perfectly all but the explanation.
L. Frank Baum
#43. No, the truth must be something we understand at once, without an introduction or explanation, but so common and familiar that we don't always realize it's around us.
Saul Bellow
#44. Doctors have come from distant cities just to see me stand over my bed disbelieving what they're seeing They say I must be one of the wonders of god's own creation and as far as they can see they can offer no explanation - NATALIE MERCHANT,
R.J. Palacio
#45. The fact that many things have no explanation ought to prevent them from happening; but it doesn't.
Ashleigh Brilliant
#46. Stay close 2 those who sing, tell stories, and enjoy life, and those eyes sparkle wiz happiness is contagious and will always manage 2 find a solution, whereas logic can find only an explanation 4 the mistake made. me!! ;)
Paulo Coelho
#47. I'm consumed with curiosity because if I know Dirk, he probably sent his family a two-tine note - "I'm getting married. I'll be there in a week," - and no further explanation whatsoever."
Skif laughed, and admitted that that was just about what Dirk had written, word for word.
Mercedes Lackey
#48. I was glad that our venerable, almost formless religions, drained of all intransigence and purged of savage rites, linked us mysteriously to the most ancient secrets of man and of earth, not forbidding us, however, a secular explanation of facts and a rational view of human conduct.
Marguerite Yourcenar
#49. Dialogue is the ideal means of showing what is between the characters. It crystallizes relationships. It should, ideally, be so effective as to make analysis or explanation of the relationships between the characters unnecessary.
Elizabeth Bowen
#50. Staring down at his button fly, he tried to find another explanation. Maybe he'd thrown a clot? A cock clot ... or maybe ... shit ... There was no way he could be attracted to another female.
J.R. Ward
#51. me an explanation, first, of the towering eccentricity of man among the brutes; second, of the vast human tradition of some ancient happiness; third, of the partial perpetuation of such pagan joy
G.K. Chesterton
#52. A detective with his murder mystery, a chemist seeking the structure of a new compound, use little of the formal and logical modes of reasoning. Through a series of intuitions, surmises, fancies, they stumble upon the right explanation, and have a knack of seizing it when it once comes within reach.
Gilbert N. Lewis
#53. The whole purpose of screenwriting is to convey everything through action and dialogue and not explanation and exposition. To me, there are movies where voiceover works really well because it does something more than exposition; it actually becomes a tonal element of the movie.
Jonathan Tropper
#54. That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplification of our culture.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#55. The argument advanced by the supporters of the theory of hereditary transmission does not furnish a satisfactory explanation of the cause of the inequalities and diversities of the universe.
Swami Abhedananda
#56. We spent a few hours struggling to come up with better explanations, but each suggestion was shot down almost as soon as it was made. The suggestions became wilder, eventually to the point of silliness.
Donald G. Firesmith
#57. My words are a whisper, your deafness a shout.
Jethro Tull
#58. You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was, 'But we've always done it this way.' A million dead people can't have been wrong, can they?
Terry Pratchett
#59. It continues to defy explanation why liberals who theoretically love liberty, equality, tolerance and moderation, should find so much to despise in their own country, which represents the fullest expression of those virtues anywhere on the globe.
Mona Charen
#60. Friendship is the complete explanation of what a Cheetah Girl is - if you have that true friendship, you can conquer anything you want.
Sabrina Bryan
#61. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.
Hunter S. Thompson
#62. Fact explains nothing. On the contrary, it is fact that requires explanation.
Marilynne Robinson
#63. I tend to think too much, Bast. My greatest successes came from decisions I made when I stopped thinking and simply did what felt right. Even if there was no good explanation for what I did." He smiled wistfully. "Even if there were very good reasons for me not to do
what I did.
Patrick Rothfuss
#64. The minister was an honest man so far as he knew himself and honesty, and did not relish this form of submission. But he did not ask himself where was the difference between accepting the word of man and accepting man's explanation of the word of God!
George MacDonald
#65. I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are obviously wrong.
Salman Rushdie
#66. The evolutionary explanation for origins, although impossible either to prove or to test scientifically, is nevertheless defended by its proponents on the basis that it is the only explanation which is naturalistic, not involving the 'supernatural' element of a divine Creator.
Henry M. Morris
#67. The doctrine stating signs and wonders are no longer needed because we have the Bible was created by people who hadn't seen God's power and needed an explanation to justify their own powerless churches.
Bill Johnson
#68. Experimentation without mathematical explanation is blind; mathematical explanation without experimentation is empty.
Bill Bryson
#69. For me this book was a very practical explanation of one man's experience of Enlightened awareness in in the face of or in light of dogma-oriented wisdom.
Janwillem Van De Wetering
#70. Who then will explain the explanation?
Lord Byron
#71. It's hard to believe that you're really here, so I just pretend that you're not here.
Edie Brickell
#72. The spontaneous tendency to invoke a Final Cause in explanation of every difficulty is characteristic of metaphysical philosophy. It arises from a general tendency towards the impersonation of abstractions which is visible throughout History.
George Henry Lewes
#73. Stupidity trumps Machiavelli almost every time when you are looking for an explanation.
Robert Foster Bennett
#74. And finally she had sobbed the only truth there was into her mother's shoulder, the only explanation: the Tucks were her friends. She had done it because - in spite of everything, she loved them.
Natalie Babbitt
#75. That's what teaching is, the art of explanation: presenting the right information in the right order in a memorable way.
Taylor Mali
#76. Any theory which causes solipsism to seem just as likely an explanation for the phenomena it seeks to describe ought to be held in the utmost suspicion.
Iain M. Banks
#77. as might have been expected, in the dinner-jacket he had worn on the previous evening. His explanation was characteristic. 'Most extraordinary,' he said, in his slightly high-pitched voice.
Margery Allingham
#78. As a writer, you paint strokes and leave suggestions so readers can create their own pictures. That allows you to know someone by a small action and it saves countless pages of explanation.
Mary Higgins Clark
#79. Obama's explanation for the slowdown in economic growth is that the public sector is hurting, and that's where Washington must step in and act.
John Podhoretz
#80. 'Endgame' resists narrative and even thematic explanation. How you play it has to reflect this. If you decide something too much in advance, you forget the element that gives the play life - the audience.
Simon McBurney
#81. I'm not used to people sticking around when things go bad," she said, by way of explanation.
Alexander Freed
#82. When a hypothesis enters a scientist's mind, he checks it by calculation and experiment, that is, by the mimicry and the pantomime of truth. It's plausibility infects others, and the hypothesis is accepted as the true explanation for the given phenomenon, until someone finds its faults.
Vladimir Nabokov
#83. The existence of mysterious relations between all these different domains is the most striking and delightful feature of mathematics (having no rational explanation).
Vladimir Arnold
#84. Kissi frowned ar him, then looked at me for explanation. I widened my eyes, grimaced: the look women give each other when they're embarrassed of the men they're with.
Gillian Flynn
#85. Whatever the explanation, it's perfectly obvious that our educational system has nothing to do with education: it's a babysitting service designed to replicate the worst qualities of the parents.
Stephen R. Donaldson
#86. Do not make me laugh, stupid Jew." Pontius Pilate had said upon hearing Anna's explanation. "Your tribal God, Yahweh. Is a very weak God if he has allowed your people to become vassals of mighty Rome.
Viktor Shel
#87. I don't doubt that the explanation for consciousness will arise from the mercilessly scientific account of psychology and neuroscience, but, still, isn't it neat that the universe is such that it gave rise to conscious beings like you and me?
Paul Bloom
#88. So much for perfect love. Because you can blink your eyes and it can vanish, without explanation, leaving you with only your memories and your tears.
Sarah Jio
#89. I do not know how we could run so far and so fast and so long. We did not run with our own strength but with strength from God. That is the only explanation. The
Lopez Lomong
#90. I had to get back to dealing with facts. One fact was that something bizarre was going on, but I'd be far more likely to find an explanation in a modern book on string theory than in an ancient tome on the spirit world.
Hilary Duff
#91. An explanation." Sicarius regarded her intently. "Clarify the situation with the emperor. I could not understand the incoherent jumble you spit out before falling unconscious.
Lindsay Buroker
#92. It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it (i.e. the Book of Revelations), and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherence of our own nightly dreams.
Thomas Jefferson
#93. Man is even as steel, the essence of which is hidden: through admonition and explanation, good counsel and education, that essence will be brought to light. If, however, he be allowed to remain in his original condition, the corrosion of lusts and appetites will effectively destroy him.
Baha'u'llah
#94. On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.
Charles Darwin
#95. When I looked around me, fate seemed to be the only explanation for what was happening.
Ji-li Jiang
#96. People struggling with life in a fallen world often want explanations when what they really need is imagination.
Paul David Tripp
#97. It'd be a poor kind of world where there was just one explanation for things.
Rhiow
Diane Duane
#98. Few words in any language carry such a load of meaning as 'honor.' It is an old word, unchanged even in its spelling from classical Latin to modern English. Spoken or written, it does not seem to require much explanation; most people think they know what it means.
Edmund Morgan
#99. I am, I cried. I am, I said. And I am lost.
Neil Diamond
#100. Suppose cats became philosophers, they would see a cat universe and have a cat solution of the problem of the universe, and a cat ruling it. So we see from this that our explanation of the universe is not the whole of the solution.
Swami Vivekananda
