The five steps in teaching an employee new skills are preparation, explanation, showing, observation and supervision.
—Bruce Fairchild Barton (1886–1967) American Author, Advertising Executive, Politician
A premature attempt to explain something that thrills you will destroy your perceptivity rather than increase it, because your tendency will be to explain away rather than seek out.
—Edwin Herbert Land (1909–1991) American Polaroid Inventor
The simplest explanation is that it doesn’t make sense.
—William Buechner (1914–85) American Nuclear Physicist
Explaining metaphysics to the nation – / I wish he would explain his explanation.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
And do you accept the idea that there is no explanation?
—Julio Cortazar (1914–84) Argentine-French Novelist, Translator, Short Story Writer
Don’t confuse hypothesis and theory. The former is a possible explanation; the latter, the correct one. The establishment of theory is the very purpose of science.
—Martin H. Fischer
There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) (1870–1916) British Short Story Writer, Satirist, Historian
I may have said the same thing before…but my explanation, I am sure, will always be different.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
When there is no explanation, then give it a name, which immediately explains everything.
—Martin H. Fischer
You don’t need an explanation for everything, Recognize that there are such things as miracles—events for which there are no ready explanations. Later knowledge may explain those events quite easily.
—Harry Browne (1933–2006) American Author, Economist, Politician
Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god, but a great rock, and the sun a hot rock.
—Anaxagoras (500–428 BCE) Ionian Philosopher
The persons of their world lived in an atmosphere of faint implications and pale delicacies, and the fact that he and she understood each other without a word seemed to the young man to bring them nearer than any explanation would have done.
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
We operate with nothing but things which do not exist, with lines, planes, bodies, atoms, divisible time, divisible space—how should explanation even be possible when we first make everything into an image, into our own image!
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test: though a different opinion prevails in this country.
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) English Writer, Feminist
Every European visitor to the United States is struck by the comparative rarity of what he would call a face, by the frequency of men and women who look like elderly babies. If he stays in the States for any length of time, he will learn that this cannot be put down to a lack of sensibility—the American feels the joys and sufferings of human life as keenly as anybody else. The only plausible explanation I can find lies in his different attitude to the past. To have a face, in the European sense of the word, it would seem that one must not only enjoy and suffer but also desire to preserve the memory of even the most humiliating and unpleasant experiences of the past.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.
—Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian Astronomer, Physicist, Mathematician
And beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.
—C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) Irish-British Academic, Author, Literary Scholar
No explanation ever explains the necessity of making one.
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, Philosopher
The only correct actions are those that demand no explanation and no apology.
—Red Auerbach (1917–2006) American Basketball Coach
Do not seek the because – in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.
—Anais Nin (1903–77) French-American Essayist
If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
—C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) Irish-British Academic, Author, Literary Scholar
To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.
—Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) Italian Catholic Priest, Philosopher, Theologian
The best argument is that which seems merely an explanation.
—Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American Self-Help Author
Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible.
—Eugene Ionesco (1909–94) Romanian-born French Dramatist
Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a parent to his child?
—William Godwin (1756–1836) British Social Philosopher, Novelist
On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.
—Charles Darwin (1809–82) English Naturalist
Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.
—Salman Rushdie (b.1947) Indian-born British Novelist
Leave a Reply