The object . . . is to discover methods of condensing information concerning large groups of allied facts into brief and compendious expressions suitable for discussion. — Francis Galton
MONUMENT, n. A structure intended to commemorate something which either needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated. — Ambrose Bierce
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. — Ambrose Bierce
Writing an upbeat aphorism is a temptation, but decorum forbids. — Mason Cooley
A computation is a process that obeys finitely describable rules. — Rudy Rucker
Action, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell character. — Johann Kaspar Lavater
An aphorism is a personal observation inflated into a universal truth, a private posing as a general. — Stefan Kanfer
OVATION, n. n ancient Rome, a definite, formal pageant in honor of one who had been disserviceable to the enemies of the nation. A lesser "triumph." — Ambrose Bierce
The definition of definition is at bottom just what the maxim of pragmatism expresses. — Charles Sanders Peirce
Short Notation Quotes
Black is now in desperate need of a good idea. Or, to put it standard chess notation, +- — Mark Dvoretsky
We never notate our music, so you can try to replicate it, but you don't really have it. — Thurston Moore
I've never thought to notate my songs...I tend to just have to remember them. — Scout Niblett
I counted to ten slowly, using binary notation. — Robert A. Heinlein
I wrote music as soon as I knew notation. — Harrison Birtwistle
When I write a paper, I change my notation much more than I change my concepts. — Leslie Lamport
Poems are rough notations for the music we are. — Rumi
Notation Image Quotes
Musical Notation Quotes
The true self seeks release, not constraint. It doesnt want to be corseted in a sonnet or made to learn a system of musical notations. It wants liberation, which is why very often it fastens on the novel, for the novel seems spacious, undefined, free. — Rachel Cusk
Sometimes I write them down in musical notation as a trigger to remind me about certain directions to go. Or I can be specific about a sound I'm looking for. — Harold Budd
In contrast, traditional classical music starts from an abstract musical schema. This is then notated and only expressed in concrete sound as a last stage, when it is performed. — Pierre Schaeffer
The music is notated first, the text follows. I might have to wait until the right kind of text or form arises. I often see the poems as “scores.” — Anne Waldman
When you think about a composer you know like Wagner or Pier Boulez or something like that most of the issues a composer is working with are about discreet, notated music that someone else will play. — DJ Spooky
Saying directors don't write because they don't type is very wrong, it's like saying Dylan doesn't write music because he doesn't write notation. — William Monahan
The notation is more important than the sound. Not the exactitude and success with which a notation notates a sound; but the musicalness of the notation in its notating. — Cornelius Cardew
There is no pattern the human mind can devise that does not exist already within the bounds of nature...Everything we do, see, write, notate, all are an echo of the deep seams of the universe. Music is the invisible world made visible through sound. — Kate Mosse
Because Music is a language that lives in the spiritual realms, we can hear it, we can notate it and create it, but we cannot hold it in our hands — Joy Harjo
Double Quotes
Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning. — Paulo Coelho
God, how patient are Thy poor! These corporations and masters of manipulation in finance heaping up great fortunes by a system of legalized extortion, and then exacting from the contributors-to whom a little means so much-a double share to guard the treasure! — Sayings
Life is too short to miss out on the beautiful things like a double cheeseburger. — Channing Tatum
There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses. And he can double the reward on my head! — John Hancock
Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble! — William Shakespeare
I would have met Jesus sooner if not for Christians who led double lives. — Keith Green
Some are born virtuous, some become virtuous. To be good by nature is indeed fortunate but to become good is like walking on a double-edged sword; it takes a longer time and is more painful. — Umera Ahmed
Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles. — Steve Jobs
If I asked for a cup of coffee, someone would search for the double meaning. — Mae West
You've got to invite Native Americans to the table, and Asians, and Chicanos. You cannot keep us in the back room anymore and give us notations on paper saying this is what you deserve. You have to invite us to the table because America is ours, too. — Jimmy Santiago Baca
There is no "End" to be written, neither can you, like an architect, engrave in stone the day the garden was finished. A painter can frame his picture, a composer can notate his coda, but a garden is always on the move. — Mirabel Osler
I was eventually persuaded of the need to design programming notations so as to maximize the number of errors which cannot be made, or if made, can be reliably detected at compile time. — Tony Hoare
Perhaps we see equations as simple because they are easily expressed in terms of mathematical notation already invented at an earlier stage of development of the science, and thus what appears to us as elegance of description really reflects the interconnectedness of Nature's laws at different levels. — Murray Gell-Mann
The reason it's worth standing up for punctuation is not that it's an arbitrary system of notation known only to an over-sensitive elite who have attacks of the vapours when they see it misapplied. The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning. — Lynne Truss
It is worth noting that the notation facilitates discovery. This, in a most wonderful way, reduces the mind's labour. — Gottfried Leibniz
the whole purport of literature...is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world. — Thornton Wilder
My being a teacher had a decisive influence on making language and systems as simple as possible so that in my teaching, I could concentrate on the essential issues of programming rather than on details of language and notation. — Niklaus Wirth
I got into one of the Scottish classical styles called piobaireachd, which is a very old music that started around the 1700s or something. I really got into this music. After that, I started to compose bagpipe music in my notations. Then I started building bagpipes by myself, and then I started to perform with the instrument myself in the 1980s. — Yoshi Wada
The precision provided (or enforced) by programming languages and their execution can identify lacunas, ambiguities, and other areas of potential confusion in conventional [mathematical] notation. — Kenneth E. Iverson
By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race. — Alfred North Whitehead
Imagine someone so infatuated by a band that they have every different pressing of every album the band made. Most of the time, the only difference in the album is the matrix number or a different 'made in' notation on the back cover or label. This is enough to make some people extremely excited. Actually, much more than excited. — Henry Rollins
This ambiguity is another example of a growing problem with mathematical notation: There aren't enough squiggles to go around. — Jim Blinn
The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation. — Elias Canetti
I paint to rest from the phenomena of the external world-to pronounce and to make notations of its essences with which to verify the inner eye. — Morris Graves
It is important to distinguish the difficulty of describing and learning a piece of notation from the difficulty of mastering its implications. [...] Indeed, the very suggestiveness of a notation may make it seem harder to learn because of the many properties it suggests for exploration. — Kenneth E. Iverson
As the mother teaches her children how to express themselves in their language, so one Gypsy musician teaches the other. They have never shown any need for notation. — Franz Liszt
What happens with notation is that it reduces things to a language which isn't necessarily appropriate to them. In the same way that words do, you get a much cruder version of what was actually intended. — Brian Eno
In fact, quite a lot of what I do has to do with sound texture, and, you can't notate that. You can't notate the sound of "St. Elmo's Fire." There's no way of writing that down. That's because musical notation arose at a time when sound textures were limited. If you said violins and woodwind that defined the sound texture; if I say synthesizer and guitar it means nothing - you're talking about 28,000 variables. — Brian Eno
We're living in a time when pretty much anything can happen in the music world. There are a lot of musical languages in which people work. When I think of common practice I think back to the time I was studying the flute, where I learned that in the Baroque period many things were not notated, since they were understood - that was because of common practice. — Jennifer Higdon
Once the settlement is completed, the credit card company will report it to the credit bureaus, which will then make a notation on your credit report that that account was paid by settlement. That's going to signal to future lenders that you left the last guy hanging. That's why, as with bankruptcy, debt settlement is an extreme option, one you shouldn't take lightly. It's not just an easy, cheap way to eliminate debt. — Jean Chatzky
If I'm not in an environment where I can record, it's great to be able to write something down, to be able to know how to do that, to be able to write notation. You grab a piece of paper and there it is. It's the cheapest recording equipment you can buy: a piece of manuscript paper and a pencil! — John Petrucci
I often say that Bernhard, W.G. Sebald, and Javier Marías are my stylistic holy trinity, prose writers who amaze me with their notation of consciousness and voice. — Garth Greenwell
One main reason why the separate nature of the science of operations has been little felt, and in general little dwelt on, is the shifting meaning of many of the symbols used in mathematical notation. First, the symbols of operation are frequently also the symbols of the results of operations. — Ada Lovelace
It's the vision of the composer that we have to determine, and not the absolute mathematical adherence of the score. In my experience, there have been occasions where I feel that a composer has not notated something as they meant to have it represented. — Marc-Andre Hamelin
Every composer understands and uses the system of notation differently, and that's what makes you appreciate the trouble they go through in doing so. — Marc-Andre Hamelin
The process of putting intangible thoughts into an imperfect system of notation - which is difficult enough, depending on your ideas - acquaints you with how best to express your ideas so that it is as clear as possible to the performer. — Marc-Andre Hamelin
It should be pointed out that none of Cardew's works ever gave total freedom to the performer. The instructions were a guide which focused each individual's creative instinct on a problem to be solved - how to interpret a particular system of notation using one's own musical background and attitudes. — John Tilbury
That this subject [of imaginary magnitudes] has hitherto been considered from the wrong point of view and surrounded by a mysterious obscurity, is to be attributed largely to an ill-adapted notation. If, for example, +1, -1, and the square root of -1 had been called direct, inverse and lateral units, instead of positive, negative and imaginary (or even impossible), such an obscurity would have been out of the question. — Carl Friedrich Gauss
All my paintings are usually done in drawing form, very small. I make notations in drawings first, and then I make a collage for color. But drawing is always my notation. — Ellsworth Kelly
During the process of stepwise refinement, a notation which is natural to the problem in hand should be used as long as possible. — Niklaus Wirth
I'm far more often annoyed than delighted by previous readers' marks in used books, so I assume that my notations will be equally annoying to future readers, and avoid making them. — J. Robert Lennon
composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations. — Ned Rorem
With the computer and programming languages, mathematics has newly-acquired tools, and its notation should be reviewed in the light of them. The computer may, in effect, be used as a patient, precise, and knowledgeable "native speaker" of mathematical notation. — Kenneth E. Iverson
The properties of executability and universality associated with programming languages can be combined, in a single language, with the well-known properties of mathematical notation which make it such an effective tool of thought. — Kenneth E. Iverson
The utility of a language as a tool of thought increases with the range of topics it can treat, but decreases with the amount of vocabulary and the complexity of grammatical rules which the user must keep in mind. Economy of notation is therefore important. — Kenneth E. Iverson
In Conclusion
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