Explains Quotes

The mediocre teacher tells.
The good teacher explains.
The superior teacher demonstrates.
The great teacher inspires.
- William Arthur Ward

Related topics: Lesson

The Four Stages of Public Opinion
I (Just after publication): The novelty is absurd
and subversive of Religion and Morality.
The propounder both fool and knave.
II (Twenty years later): The Novelty is absolute Truth
and will yield a full and satisfactory
explanation of things in general -
The propounder a man of sublime genius and perfect virtue.
III (Forty years later): The Novelty won't explain
things in general after all, and therefore is a wretched failure.
The propounder a very ordinary person advertised by a clique.
IV (A century later): The Novelty a mixture of truth and error.
Explains as much as could reasonably be expected.
The propounder worthy of all honor
in spite of his share of human frailties,
as one who has added to the permanent possessions of science.
- Thomas Henry [T. H.] Huxley

Nothing I say can explain to you Divine Love
Yet all of creation cannot seem to stop talking about it.
- Rumi

Love is an endless mystery,
for it has nothing else to explain it.
- Rabindranath Tagore

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you can't explain it simply,
you don't understand it well enough.
- Albert Einstein

The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it.
- Mark Twain

A politician needs the ability to
foretell what is going to happen
tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year.
And to have the ability afterwards
to explain why it didn't happen.
- Winston Churchill

When we remember we are all mad,
the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
- Mark Twain

Never ascribe to malice that which is
adequately explained by incompetence.
- Napoleon

Time to Die:
A Zen teacher had a rare and priceless teacup.
One day, his precocious student accidentally broke the cup.
Hearing the footsteps of his teacher,
the student held the pieces of the cup behind his back.
When the master appeared, he asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the teacher.
"Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
The student showed the shattered cup, saying,
"It was time for your cup to die."
- Traditional Zen Koan

Being is the great explainer.
- Henry David Thoreau

For centuries, theologians have been explaining
the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
- H. L. Mencken

Interesting.
You Earth people glorify organized violence for 40 centuries,
but you imprison those who employ it privately.
- the character Spock in the television series Star Trek

The African is my brother but he is
my younger brother by several centuries.
- Albert Schweitzer

The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.
- Susan Sontag

The most interesting information comes from children,
for they tell all they know and then stop.
- Mark Twain

Success is never so interesting as struggle
- Willa Cather

I wanted to see exotic Vietnam, the jewel of Southeast Asia.
I, uh, I wanted to meet interesting
and stimulating people of an ancient culture,
and kill them.
- the movie Full Metal Jacket

A lot of presidential memoirs, they say, are dull and self-serving.
I hope mine is interesting and self-serving.
- William J. Clinton

It is an interesting question how far men
would retain their relative rank
if they were divested of their clothes.
- Henry David Thoreau

Move out of your comfort zone. You can only
grow if you are willing to feel awkward and
uncomfortable when you try something new.
- Brian Tracy

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
- Robert F. Kennedy

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph
is for enough good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke

We have only this moment,
sparkling like a star in our hand -
and melting like a snowflake.
- Marie B. Ray

Nothing in life is to be feared.
It is only to be understood.
- Marie Curie

There are no facts, only interpretations.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Darkness cannot drive out darkness;
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate;
only love can do that.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

People only see what they are prepared to see.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are only two or three human stories,
and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely
as if they had never happened before.
- Willa Cather

Majority rule only works if you're also
considering individual rights,
because you can't have five wolves and one sheep
voting on what to have for dinner.
- Larry Flynt

You're only here for a short visit.
Don't hurry. Don't worry.
And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.
- Walter Hagen

One can not reflect in streaming water.
Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.
- Lao Tzu

The essence of all religions is one.
Only their approaches are different.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition,
is not only a waste of energy
but the worst habit you could possibly have.
- Dale Carnegie

Life is an adventure.
I can only wonder what treasure
awaits at the top of the path.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Life only
appears to be
rushing toward us
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Hate is never conquered by hate,
Hate is only conquered by love.
- The Buddha

Friendship is born at that moment
when one person says to another,
"What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
- C. S. Lewis

Choose Inner Peace.
Nothing is worth losing your inner peace.
Take action as circumstances require,
but never surrender your inner peace.
Stop. Breathe deeply.
Close your eyes and breathe deeply again.
Then, and only then, take action -
from a peaceful heart.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Play with life, laugh with life,
dance lightly with life,
and smile at the riddles of life,
knowing that life's only true lessons
are writ small in the margin.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all
is the person who argues with him.
- Stanislaw Jerszy Lec

Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only
by the man who is as well organized
in his individuality as the mass itself.
- Carl Jung

The only way to discover the limits of the possible
is to go beyond them into the impossible.
- Arthur C. Clarke

You have to accept whatever comes
and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage
and with the best that you have to give.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Yesterday is dead. Tomorrow is a dream.
Today - each today - is where the action is
where all of life occurs.
Today IS your life - your only life.
Life today to the fullest.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The only place where your dream becomes impossible
is in your own thinking.
- Robert H. Schuller

There is only one way... to get anybody to do anything.
And that is by making the other person want to do it.
- Dale Carnegie

It is only through labor and painful effort,
by grim energy and resolute courage,
that we move on to better things.
- Theodore Roosevelt

There's no wrong, only discovery...
- Byron Katie

Non-violence means avoiding not only external physical violence
but also internal violence of spirit.
You not only refuse to shoot a man,
but you refuse to hate him.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves,
and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.
- Henry David Thoreau

I never worry about action, but only about inaction.
- Winston Churchill

Commitment cannot be taught;
it can only be caught.
I refer to the crusading spirit.
Without the crusading spirit,
you may have the starting power
but not the staying power.
- Jimmy Yen

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was,
Thank you, that would suffice.
- Meister Eckhart

The only source of knowledge is experience.
- Albert Einstein

An idea that is developed and put into action
is more important than
an idea that exists only as an idea.
- The Buddha

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

The distinction between the past, present and future
is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
- Albert Einstein

Yesterday is ashes.
Tomorrow is green wood.
Only today does the fire burn brightly.
- Eskimo Proverb

Men are not prisoners of fate,
but only prisoners of their own minds.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Life can only be understood backwards;
but it must be lived forwards.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Yesterday is a canceled check;
tomorrow is a
promissory note;
today is the only cash you have;
so spend it wisely.
- Kay Lyons

There is no "right", there is no "wrong" -
there are only points of view.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys
the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist,
and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.
- Albert Schweitzer

The only gift is a portion of thyself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mind what people do, not only what they say,
for deeds will betray a lie.
- Terry Goodkind

When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous.
We are timid only when
there is something we can still cling to.
- Carlos Castaneda

Example is not the main thing in influencing others.
It is the only thing.
- Albert Schweitzer

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie