Variable Quotes
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O Woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and
hard to please, And variable as the
shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and
anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel
thou!
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More Variable Quotes
Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness.
Robert Louis Stevenson— 1881Virginibus Puerisque,'Virginibus Puerisque', pt.1.
Les gens du monde et de la Cour donnent aux hommes et aux choses une valeur conventionnelle dont ils s'étonnent de se trouver les dupes. Ils ressemblent à des calculateurs, qui, en faisant un compte, donneraient aux chiffres une valeur variable et arbitraire, et qui, ensuite, dans l'addition, leur rendant leur valeur réelle et réglée, seraient tout surpris de ne pas trouver leur compte.
nicolas chamfort— Maximes et Pensées, #199Both the court and the general public give a conventional value to men and things, and then are surprised to find themselves deceived by it. This is as if arithmeticians should give a variable an arbitrary value to the figures in a sum, and then, after restoring their true and regular value in the addition, be astonished at the incorrectness of their answer.Maxims and Considerations, #199
A function of a variable quantity is an analytic expression composed in any way whatsoever of the variable quantity and numbers or constant quantities.
leonhard euler— §4.
In the abstract world of American economists, equations run both ways; they believe that by changing the sign of a variable from plus to minus or from minus to plus or the price and quantity of x or y, the direction of historical movement can be reversed.
robert gilpin— Chapter Eight, International Finance, p. 336
To every ?-consistent recursive class ? of formulae there correspond recursive class signs r, such that neither v Gen r nor Neg (v Gen r) belongs to Flg (?) (where v is the free variable of r).
kurt gödel— Proposition VI, On Formally Undecidable Propositions in Principia Mathematica and Related Systems I (1931)
— Informally, recursive systems of axioms cannot be complete.
I suppose not many people dress up with insults to go out. We, the homosexuals, have no other choice. Insults are for us almost an epistemological variable: we have learned to know our fellow beings -for, as much as it surprises us, they are our fellow beings- through their insults, and they, on the other hand, have learned to know us in spite of the exhausting job -a hard duty impossed by society- of insulting us.
miss shangay lily— Miss Shangay Lily, Mari, ¿me pasas el poppers?
Truth will triumph. It always does. However, I figure truth is a variable, so we're right back where we started from.
lewis padgett— "Galloway Gallegher" in "The Proud Robot" in Astounding Science-Fiction (October 1943)
In many different fields, empirical phenomena appear to obey a certain general law, which can be called the Law of Large Numbers. This law states that the ratios of numbers derived from the observation of a very large number of similar events remain practically constant, provided that these events are governed partly by constant factors and partly by variable factors whose variations are irregular and do not cause a systematic change in a definite direction.
siméon denis poisson— Statement of Poisson's law also known as the Law of Large Numbers (1837), as quoted by Richard Von Mises (1957). Probability, Statistics and Truth. Allen and Unwin. p. 104-105.
Rather, for all objects and experiences there is a quantity that has an optimum value. Above that quantity, the variable becomes toxic. To fall below that value is to be deprived.
Gregory Bateson— p.56 (Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, 1979)
Convictions are variable; to be always consistent is to be sometimes dishonest.
ambrose bierce— p. 367 (Epigrams)
The potential infinite means nothing other than an undetermined, variable quantity, always remaining finite, which has to assume values that either become smaller than any finite limit no matter how small, or greater than any finite limit no matter how great.
georg cantor— "Mitteilungen" (1887-8)
But progress in knowledge has made us aware of the superficiality of Plato's lumping of individuals and their original powers into a few sharply marked-off classes; it has taught us that original capacities are indefinitely numerous and variable. It is but the other side of this fact to say that in the degree in which society has become democratic, social organization means utilization of the specific and variable qualities of individuals, not stratification by classes.
john dewey— The Platonic Educational Philosophy
The materials of action are variable, but the use we make of them should be constant.
epictetus— How Nobleness of Mind may be consistent with Prudence, Chap. v.
I contend that the continued racial classification of Homo sapiens represents an outmoded approach to the general problem of differentiation within a species. In other words, I reject a racial classification of humans for the same reasons that I prefer not to divide into subspecies the prodigiously variable West Indian land snails that form the subject of my own research.
stephen jay gould— "Why We Should Not Name Human Races—A Biological View", p. 231
Daddy says that, in a dilemma, it is helpful to change any variable, then reexamine the problem.
robert a. heinlein— Chapter 5 (Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958))
That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion.
thomas henry huxley— "Universities, Actual and Ideal" (1874).
O, Woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!
walter scott— Canto VI, st. 30.
There is no effective difference between guessing a variable that is not random, but for which information is partial or deficient (...), and a random one (...). In this sense, guessing (what I don't know, but what someone else may know) and predicting (what has not taken place yet) are the same thing.
nassim nicholas taleb— p. 142 (The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007))
You tell it that it's indicative by appending $!. That's why we made $! such a short variable name, after all.
larry wall— Usenet article <199709081801.LAA20629@wall.org> (1997)
Truth will triumph. It always does. However, I figure truth is a variable, so we're right back where we started from.
— Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore), lines said by "Galloway Gallegher" in "The Proud Robot" in Astounding Science-Fiction (October 1943).
O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597), Act II, scene 2, line 109.
There is no doubt that we cannot do without variable quantities in the sense of the potential infinite. But from this very fact the necessity of the actual infinite can be demonstrated.
— Georg Cantor, in "Über die verschiedenen Ansichten in Bezug auf die actualunendlichen Zahlen" ["Over the different views with regard to the actual infinite numbers"] - Bihand Till Koniglen Svenska Vetenskaps Akademiens Handigar (1886)
The potential infinite means nothing other than an undetermined, variable quantity, always remaining finite, which has to assume values that either become smaller than any finite limit no matter how small, or greater than any finite limit no matter how great.
— Georg Cantor, in "Mitteilungen" (1887-8)
In the abstract world of American economists, equations run both ways; they believe that by changing the sign of a variable from plus to minus or from minus to plus or the price and quantity of x or y, the direction of historical movement can be reversed.
— Chapter Eight, International Finance, p. 336
Public policy does not admit of definition and is not easily explained. It is a variable quantity; it must vary and does vary with the habits, capacities, and opportunities of the public.
— Kekewich, J., Davies v. Davies (1887), L. R. 36 C. D. 364; see also Egerton v. Earl Brownlow, 4 H. L. C. 1.
The unique purpose of geography is to seek comprehension of the variable character of areas in terms of all the interrelated features which together form that variable character.
— Richard Hartshorne (1958) Perspective on the nature of geography. p. 20
Truth will triumph. It always does. However, I figure truth is a variable, so we're right back where we started from.
— Lewis Padgett (a pseudonym used husband and wife Henry Kuttner and Catherine Lucille Moore). in "Galloway Gallegher" in "The Proud Robot" in Astounding Science-Fiction (October 1943)
That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion.
thomas henry huxley— In "Universities, Actual & Ideal".
