All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. — Bertrand Russell
An approximate answer to the right problem is worth a good deal more than an exact answer to an approximate problem. — John Tukey
Most important part of doing physics is the knowledge of approximation. — Lev Landau
Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations. — John Von Neumann
It's better to solve the right problem approximately than to solve the wrong problem exactly. — John Tukey
All models are approximations. Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful. However, the approximate nature of the model must always be borne in mind. — George E. P. Box
Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than the exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise. — John Tukey
Vagueness is at times an indication of nearness to a perfect truth. — Charles Ives
A translation can never equal the original; it can approach it, and its quality can only be judged as to accuracy by how close it gets. — Gregory Rabassa
One should always aim at being interesting, rather than exact. — Voltaire
You keep on going until you get it as close to being right as the time and patience of others will allow. — Harrison Ford
Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague. — Vincent Van Gogh
The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise. — Edsger Dijkstra
A poor relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature. — Charles Lamb
Eugene is located in western Oregon, approximately 278 billion miles from anything. — Dave Barry
A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance. — Gian Carlo Menotti
The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race. — Sally Miller Gearhart
Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory. — Yann Martel
One hate crime is committed approximately every hour of every day in this country. — Anna Paquin
The ideal project does not exist, each time there is the opportunity to realize an approximation. — Paulo Mendes da Rocha
Flying from the United States to Tokyo takes approximately as long as law school. — Dave Barry
Every one of us sees 'green' differently. So everything is an approximation of understanding. — Nick Bantock
Truth Approximation Quotes
Science does not aim at establishing immutable truths and eternal dogmas; its aim is to approach the truth by successive approximations, without claiming that at any stage final and complete accuracy has been achieved. — Bertrand Russell
You may consider yourself an individual, but as a cell biologist, I can tell you that you are in truth a cooperative community of approximately fifty trillion single-celled citizens. — Bruce H. Lipton
Experimental science hardly ever affords us more than approximations to the truth; and whenever many agents are concerned we are in great danger of being mistaken. — Humphry Davy
It seems that truth is progressive approximation in which the relative fraction of our spontaneously tolerated residual error constantly diminishes. — Richard Buckminster Fuller
The more perfect the approximation to truth, the more perfect is art. — Maria Montessori
Science is about finding ever better approximations rather than pretending you have already found ultimate truth.
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet. — Richard P. Feynman
It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness when only an approximation of the truth is possible. — Aristotle
Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man. — Bertrand Russell
I hope that I am generous and tolerant, but certainly on the intellectual side I think that there are discoverable truths, and some things that are closer approximations to the truth than others. — Edward Tufte
Words Of Approximation Quotes
I never spent less than two years on the text of one of my picture books, even though each of them is approximately 380 words long. Only when the text is finished ... do I begin the pictures. — Maurice Sendak
There is no last word in research, and that includes climate research. It's never the truth that scientists offer, but only our best possible approximation of reality. But that often gets forgotten in the way the public perceives and describes our work. — Hans von Storch
There are no easy words for the insights of the spirit, and approximate language used in good faith can cause approximate truths to spread like a disease. — Densey Clyne
No two people will ever see or feel things in the same way, Merry. The challenge is to be truthful when you write. Don't approximate. Don't settle for the easiest combination of words. Go searching instead for those that explain exactly what you think. What you feel. — Kate Morton
Meaning Approximation Quotes
The time evolution of human condition approximated as a Gaussian is more that of expanding variance than that of moving mean. — Andrej Karpathy
What happens after death is so unspeakably glorious that our imagination and our feelings do not suffice to form even an approximate conception of it. The dissolution of our time-bound form in eternity brings no loss of meaning. — Carl Jung
Take the so-called standard of living. What do most people mean by "living"? They don’t mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science, in its finite but unbounded wisdom, has succeeded in selling their wives. — E. E. cummings
The word "wilderness" occurs approximately three hundred times in the Bible, and all its meanings are derogatory. — Rene Dubos
We are in danger of valuing most highly those things we can measure most accurately, which means that we are often precisely wrong rather than approximately right — John Banham
With each draft, the work gets better, and usually that means tighter. It means getting the precise word, not the approximate word. — John Dufresne
I conceive, therefore, that a somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment will prove the means of securing an approximation to full employment. — John Maynard Keynes
Since UFO stands for "unidentified flying object", the word ufology means approximately "knowledge about unknown flying objects", and is therefore a "science" whose content is void by definition. Similar considerations hold for parapsychology. — Lucio Russo
Approximate Quotes
Simply from greening our energy system and eliminating fossil fuel pollution, we get so much healthier that the savings in health care alone are enough to pay the costs of the green energy transition and would repay those costs in approximately a decade and a half in savings. — Jill Stein
Approximately 80 % of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources. — Ronald Reagan
The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. — Claude Shannon
It is one thing to take as a given that approximately 70 percent of an entering high school freshman class will not attend college, but to assign a particular child to a curriculum designed for that 70 percent closes off for that child the opportunity to attend college. — James S. Coleman
If those states which did not have right-to-carry concealed gun provisions had adopted them in 1992, approximately 1,570 murders; 4,177 rapes; and over 60,000 aggravate assaults would have been avoided yearly. — John R. Lott Jr.
Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent. — Sigmund Freud
No one knows what the right algorithm is, but it gives us hope that if we can discover some crude approximation of whatever this algorithm is and implement it on a computer, that can help us make a lot of progress. — Andrew Ng
Avoid pulpits, platforms, stages and pedestals. Keep to the hard ground. It is the only way you can judge your approximate status as a man. — Antonio Machado
Domestic violence causes far more pain than the visible marks of bruises and scars. It is devastating to be abused by someone that you love and think loves you in return. It is estimated that approximately 3 million incidents of domestic violence are reported each year in the United States. — Dianne Feinstein
Photography is a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere. — John Szarkowski
I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to the proportions something like this: 94% belongs to the system responsibility of management 6% special — W. Edwards Deming
I just think it's good to be confident. If I'm not on my team why should anybody else be? — Robert Downey, Jr.
P.T. Barnum said a sucker is born every minute, but his estimate was laughably low. — Jonathan Gruber
Independence, the freedom of a self-governing nation, is in my estimation the highest political good, for which any disadvantage, if need be, and any sacrifice are a cheap price. — Enoch Powell
For investing to be reliably successful, an accurate estimate of intrinsic value is the indispensable starting point. — Howard Marks
Although the original skeleton is estimated to be 18,000 years old, a child's radius — Daniel Lieberman
The savage repression of blacks, which can be estimated by reading the obituary columns of the nation's dailies, Fred Hampton, etc., has not failed to register on the black inmates. — George Jackson
Think highly of yourself because the world takes you at your own estimate. — Kurt Hahn
Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience. It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming me. — Carl Rogers
There are now about 1,100 functioning satellites in space, and at least 2,000 non-functioning ones. The Russians and Americans launched approximately 2,400 of the total, Japan and China 100 each, followed by a host of countries with far fewer. Below them are the space stations, where for the first time people live and work semi-permanently outside the confines of the earth’s gravity. — Tim Marshall
We can see several companies trying to mix an image of luxury with a mass-market approach. In order to be able to sell a product at a relatively high price, you have to offer the craftsmanship and quality that goes along with it. There’s an increase in products that have approximately the same look as luxury brands while providing a much lower standard. It’s not counterfeiting, but it is misleading. — Bernard Arnault
Much of the Greek coastline comprises steep cliffs and there are few coastal plains for agriculture. Inland are more steep cliffs, rivers that will not allow transportation, and few wide, fertile valleys. There is too little good agricultural land for Greece to become a major agricultural exporter, or to develop more than a handful of major urban areas containing highly educated, highly skilled, and technologically advanced populations. Its situation is further exacerbated by its location, with Athens positioned at the tip of the peninsula, almost cut off from land trade with Europe. It is reliant on the Aegean Sea for access to maritime trade in the region — but across that sea lies Turkey, a large potential enemy. Greece spends a vast amount of euros, which it doesn’t have, on defense. There are about 1,400 Greek islands 6,000 if you include various rocks sticking out of the Aegean of which approximately 200 are inhabited. It takes a decent navy just to patrol this territory, never mind one strong enough to defer any attempt to take the islands over. The result is a huge cost in military spending that Greece doesn’t have. During the Cold War, the Americans, and to a lesser extent, the British were content to underwrite some of the military requirements in order to keep the Soviet Union out of the Aegean and the Mediterranean. When the Cold War ended, so did the checks. — Tim Marshall
Properly understood, style is not a seductive decoration added to a functional structure; it is of the essence of a work of art. The necessary elements of style are lucidity, elegance, and individuality; these three qualities combine to form a preservative which ensures the nearest approximation to permanence in the fugitive art of letters. — Evelyn Waugh
You existed. You existed now as a fractal. Definition: A fractal is generally a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be broken into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole. Maybe I was a fractal. Maybe the photographer was a fractal. Maybe we were all fractals. — David Levithan
At 42,000' in approximately level flight, a third cylinder was turned on. Acceleration was rapid and speed increased to .98 Mach. The needle of the machmeter fluctuated at this reading momentarily, then passed off the scale. Assuming that the off-scale reading remained linear, it is estimated that 1.05 Mach was attained at this time. — Chuck Yeager
Whereas all humans have approximately the same life expectancy the life expectancy of stars varies as much as from that of a butterfly to that of an elephant. — George Gamow
A worker may be the hammer's master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it is meant to be handled, while the user of the tool can only have an approximate idea. — Milan Kundera
A capitalist is someone who derives a substantial share of his income from his equity in producing companies. On this scale the figures are discouraging. Approximately ninety percent of the capital of this country is owned by five or less percent of the American people. — William F. Buckley, Jr.
Take of London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts, gas leaks 20 parts, dewdrops gathered in a brickyard at sunrise 25 parts; odor of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix. The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle. — O. Henry
So long as the opposing forces are at the outset approximately equal in numbers and moral and there are no flanks to turn, a long struggle for supremacy is inevitable. — Douglas Haig
Six traits of effective leaders: 1. Make others feel important 2. Promote a vision 3. Follow the golden rule 4. Admit mistakes 5. Criticize others only in private 6. Stay close to the action Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire. — Christian Nestell Bovee
Over the long run, the price of gold approximates the total amount of money in circulation divided by the size of the gold stock. If the market price of gold moves a long way from this level, it may indicate a buying or selling opportunity. — Ray Dalio
In Conclusion
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