Watching a whole cluster of friends, and my own mother, die over quite a short space of time convinced me that purely materialist 'explanations' for our mysterious human existence simply won't do - on an intellectual level.
A. N. Wilson
For the better part of two centuries, outsiders have been offering explanations that range from racist to learned-sounding - the supposed inferiority of blacks, the heritage of slavery, overpopulation - for why Haiti remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
Adam Hochschild
Sometimes the fantasy writers set their novels in an ancient Earth, sometimes a parallel Earth, or, quite often, they offered no explanation at all as to the temporal and geographic location.
Adrian McKinty
Just as I know the usual rules of law enforcement, I also know the exceptions and invoke those frequently. I don't feel a need to bog the reader down with an explanation of why the procedures are realistic, as long as I know that there is, in fact, an explanation.
Alafair Burke
In the 'Revelation Space' books, the spaceships are a bit old and rusty, and things go wrong, and they don't work quite how they're meant to. And people asked why I did it this way, and groping around for an explanation, I said that I grew up in Barry, this post-industrial sea town full of rusting infrastructure.
Alastair Reynolds
I think it's an interesting thing to me, because we have this desire for everything to be explained to us. But if you go through your daily actions, very little ends up having a written-down explanation for why things happen, or why people do specific things.
Alice Sebold
Asking questions is what brains were born to do, at least when we were young children. For young children, quite literally, seeking explanations is as deeply rooted a drive as seeking food or water.
Alison Gopnik
I don't believe in inspiration at all. We live in a world that demands explanation. And fiction has the capability to offer explanations for things.
Alvaro Enrigue
I must say, I always - from experience, when I watch TV shows and I see characters leave without a proper explanation or leave with not enough time, I get irritated. I like it when there's a clean-cut reason or a defining moment where they have to go. Whether that's death or not, I think that's subjective.
Alycia Debnam-Carey
I'm generalizing wildly, but academic books find safety in explanations that reduce the chaos of social life.
Amitava Kumar
Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.
Anais Nin
Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god, but a great rock, and the sun a hot rock.
Anaxagoras
I don't owe any explanations for anybody I'm fighting.
Andre Ward
The Rose is without an explanation; She blooms, because She blooms.
Angelus Silesius
The clearest explanation for the failure of any marriage is that the two people are incompatible; that is, that one is male and the other female.
Anna Quindlen
Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we're atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.
Anthony Hopkins
We all dream. We dream vividly, depending on our nature. Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we're atheist.
Whichever theory we adopt to give a rational explanation of human existence, that theory must take into account and explain the mental nature we see at work in all modern communities.
Arthur Keith
It is not history, theology or mythology that interest me. It is the fact that history, theology or mythology could have alternative interpretations or explanations. I try to connect the dots between the past and the present.
Ashwin Sanghi
One can quite understand vegetarianism. One can quite understand meat-eating. But it is difficult to understand why a person who is a flesh-eater should object to one kind of flesh, namely cow's flesh. This is an anomaly which call for explanation.
B. R. Ambedkar
If you wanted to show a mirror to people that says, 'You've been drunk on money,' they're not going to want to see it. But if you reflected that mirror on another time they'd be willing to. People will need an explanation of where we are and where we've been, and 'The Great Gatsby' can provide that explanation.
I guess something that I've noticed from American acts who had success in touring is more of an explanation as to their music. Which is I think quite funny. I think British acts might like to leave more to the imagination - maybe a bit more obscure perhaps - a bit more shy.
There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.
Mark Ruffalo is Mark Ruffalo - no explanation needed. He has the biggest heart of anyone I've ever met, and he's sort of the Dave Schultz of the entertainment industry.
Disagreement does not necessarily have to be overcome. It may remain an important and constitutive feature of our relations to others and also be seen as something that is merely to be expected in the light of the best explanations we have of how such disagreement arises.
I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm - not all - that religion used to fill.
Tax dollars intended for science education must not be used to teach creationism as any sort of real explanation of nature, because any observation or process of inference about our origin and the nature of the universe disproves creationism in every respect.
There's a difference between telling a story and not providing an explanation because you just don't do it well or pull it off.
No one faith is necessarily superior to another. All explanations are valid and in some respects when it comes to the big mysteries of life.
The universe is incredibly wondrous, incredibly beautiful, and it fills me with a sense that there is some underlying explanation that we have yet to fully understand. If someone wants to place the word 'God' on those collections of words, it's OK with me.
The five steps in teaching an employee new skills are preparation, explanation, showing, observation and supervision.
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.
We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.
Now I say I'm a diarist with an explanation I'll get back to you on. Someday I may try and write in memoir form.
The difference between a tool and a machine is not capable of very precise distinction; nor is it necessary, in a popular explanation of those terms, to limit very strictly their acceptation.
On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.
Whenever you're faced with an explanation of what's going on in Washington, the choice between incompetence and conspiracy, always choose incompetence.
Anytime somebody loses a presidential election, there are lots of explanations.
Vice, by comparison with terrible accidents, has its own peculiar explanation. For, in a way, it does occur in accordance with the rationale of nature, and its occurrence is not, so to speak, useless in relation to the whole world. For otherwise, the good would not exist, either.
Bigotry has always been the poison of America, and we oughta do everything to eradicate it with no excuses or explanations.
What I don't like so much is to give explanations about people's behaviour... I'm not interested in making conclusions. I would never think about myself or anyone else, 'Well, this happened, this happened, this happened, so this must be the result.' It doesn't work like that with me.
Along with my colleagues Mark Warner and Sheldon Whitehouse, I have been working to end the process of secret holds, which is when senators anonymously block legislation or nominations without explanation.
We work for the public, and I believe that if a senator wants to block a piece of legislation or a nominee, they owe the public an explanation.
There's a lot of places where the image of a cube as a thing of power is pertinent. I don't know why that is. I don't have any mythic explanation for it, but it seems to work for people.
I kind of hate over-explanation in comics.
Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description.
There's no need to go out in public and give explanations. As long as you know what's going on between two different individuals and what kind of relationship they share, I don't feel that the world really needs to know about it.
We should get used to the idea that we'll probably never be able to find - and confirm - a good explanation of the ultimate origin of the universe, though I see no reason to believe that we can't press much further on this question than we have managed to date.
In fact, when you get right down to it, almost every explanation Man came up with for anything until about 1926 was stupid.
