Quotes & Sayings About Anomalies

In an ecological perspective, in other words, there are few accidents or anomalies, only outcomes based on system structure and dynamics. Climate change and glittering malls, Calcuttan poverty and sybaritic wealth, biotic impoverishment and economic growth, militarism and terrorism, global domination and utter vulnerability are not different things but manifestations of a single system. — David W. Orr

An anomaly is not an abnormality. Diversity does not signify sickness. — Georges Canguilhem

being then just dinner-time, we went, first into the great kitchen, where every prisoner's dinner was in course of being set out separately (to be handed to him in his cell), with the regularity and precision of clock-work. I said aside, to Traddles, that I wondered whether it occurred to anybody, that there was a striking contrast between these plentiful repasts of choice quality, and the dinners, not to say of paupers, but of soldiers, sailors, labourers, the great bulk of the honest, working community; of whom not one man in five hundred ever dined half so well. But I learned that the 'system' required high living; and, in short, to dispose of the system, once for all, I found that on that head and on all others, 'the system' put an end to all doubts, and disposed of all anomalies. Nobody appeared to have the least idea that there was any other system, but THE system, to be considered. — Charles Dickens

If you are the partner of a man with Asperger's you may be the one who first noticed his anomalies; he may or may not be officially diagnosed. You might be perpetually frustrated at your inability to connect with him on a deep and consistent level. One day you feel as if your relationship is finally on solid ground, and the next day that ground has dropped out from under you. — Rudy Simone

A guide book is addressed to those who plan to follow the traveler, doing what he has done, but more selectively. A travel book, in its purest, is addressed to those who do not plan to follow the traveler at all, but who require the exotic or comic anomalies, wonders and scandals of the literary form romance which their own place or time cannot entirely supply. — Paul Fussell

When circumstances defy order, order should bend or break: anomalies and uncertainties give validity to architecture. — Robert Venturi

Somehow, failures in the public sector are always judged as systematic. The private sector thus exists to ride to the rescue - and their failures are only judged anomalies. A pretty nice arrangement for investors. The only people who suffer are the citizens. — Rick Perlstein

If there is seeing without perceiving, there is also perceiving without seeing. If Ruby B were invisible we could infer her presence from your anomalous wobbling. Brown dwarfs and super-Jupiters and black holes, though hidden from sight, can be inferred from the anomalies they cause in their seeable neighbors. Much divergent behavior, in fact, is caused by invisible companions, although implied existence is not certain existence. Not everyone who stumbles stumbles on an invisible bandicoot. — Amy Leach

Those in the System, would like us to share their belief that all the changes [we are witnessing] are not connected: they are simply anomalies, isolated symptoms to be treated or preferably ignored, before the all-powerful Western capitalist patriarchal model goes on to ever greater heights and grander ejaculations. Most are numb to it, caught in fear, denial or resistance.

But we, Burning Woman, know this process intimately. Amongst Burning Women and Men, there is a fierce, quiet knowing that these are both the death pangs of the old, and the birthing pangs of the new. — Lucy H. Pearce

Before vampires were aesthetically appealing, they were physical anomalies and ostracized outsiders whom we banished to the dark, and they didn't have the appeal that they do now. — Ian Somerhalder

One of the anomalies of modern ecology is the creation of two groups, each of which seems barely aware of the existence of the other. The one studies the human community, almost as if it were a separate entity, and calls its findings sociology, economics and history. The other studies the plant and animal community and comfortably relegates the hodge-podge of politics to the liberal arts. The inevitable fusion of these two lines of thought will, perhaps, constitute the outstanding advance of this century. — Also Leopold

It is an anomaly that we can split the atom, but we are nearly powerless to persuade each other to embrace justice. — Gerry Spence

I don't even know if Stephenie [Meyer] could tell you why she was so fixated on [Twilight] very, very contained story about these very obsessive characters. It's just an anomaly. — Robert Pattinson

The lady ... is an anomaly to which the western nations of this planet have grown accustomed but which would require a great deal of explanation before a Martian could understand her. — Emily James Smith Putnam

And knowing what happens on average is a good place to start. By so doing, we insulate ourselves from the tendency to build our thinking - our daily decisions, our laws, our governance - on exceptions and anomalies rather than on reality — Steven D. Levitt

Freedom is hard to come by. — Victor Robert Lee

Used to be in the old days, only the pulp writers wrote like machines. Now everybody is expected to be literary John Henrys. So in that context someone like me is an anomaly. — Junot Diaz

It is one of the strangest anomalies of life that the absence of fear, and not formal education or brilliance of mind, is the major cause of individual success. — Napoleon Hill

To the young mind, every thing is individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to join two things, and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running underground, whereby contrary and remote things cohere, and flower out from one stem. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The anomaly is that, as a publishing venture, comics are not doing very well. As a venture that supplies other media, they're incredible. — Dennis O'Neil

We love fog because
it shifts old anomalies into the elements
surrounding them. It gives relief from a way of seeing — Eavan Boland

Woody Guthrie was what folks who don't believe in anything would call an anomaly. — Steve Earle

What Positive Input Does Promotes overall balance, or homeostasis. Moves easily through the system, without obstruction or blockages. Generates new neural pathways. Promotes the production of new brain cells. Improves gene expression. Allows every cell to function normally, without anomalies or aberrant behavior. Supports the immune system, increasing resistance to disease. Counteracts the effects over time of entropy and aging. Increases a sense of wellbeing: The person feels healthy, vibrant, and alive. — Deepak Chopra

I think our science is a marvelous tool. Of course it has its politics, its failings, its mistakes, like all other human endeavors, but I think the methodology of our science - using it to postulate and to use the proper approach of creating falsifiable hypotheses and then testing them to see if they ring true, and then progressing by finding the anomalies to our theoretical structure, and then improving our theoretical structure to take care and test the anomalies - is the way to go, because that helps us discover what the universe.is all about and our relationship to it. — Edgar Mitchell

Once people find an explanation for an apparent anomaly, they tend to believe they can now discount it. But explanations are based on analogy with past experiences, experiences that may not apply to the current situation. In the driving story, the prevalence of billboards for Las Vegas was a signal we should have heeded, but it seemed easily explained. Our experience is typical: some major industrial incidents have resulted from false explanations of anomalous events. But do note: usually these apparent anomalies should be ignored. Most of the time, the explanation for their presence is correct. Distinguishing a true anomaly from an apparent one is difficult. — Donald A. Norman

Ancient priests and builders must have known about the earth's magnetism and its strange fluctuations. They located their temples, mounds, and pyramids in the dead center of magnetic anomalies. And they laid out long, arrow-straight tracks or "leys" between these magnetic points. — John A. Keel

Writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger. — Pico Iyer

The inner climate stamps each individual with its character. Every life-form has its own individual anomaly point of health, which makes the orderly reproduction of the species possible. This also explains why the world of parasites increases with fever. — Viktor Schauberger

How I changed my mind about women in leadership came through the gradual piling up of anomalies against a powerful but unsustainable paradigm. — Alan F. Johnson

The women in my family were hardworking matriarchs. But the stories I saw on TV and movies and even in many books said they were anomalies — Kameron Hurley

You, Cono, are part of a new trend of uncovering the genetic basis of human performance anomalies. — Victor Robert Lee

The Rising is not what you imagine, it's not Aberations and Anomalies and rebels and rougues running free. It's a structure. A system. — Ally Condie

Judged by the evolving nineteenth-century ideology of femininity, which emphasized women's roles as nurturing mothers and gentle companions and housekeepers for their husbands, Black women were practically anomalies. Though — Angela Y. Davis

A sea-green sky: lamps blossoming white. This is marginal land: fields of strung wire, of treadless tyres in ditches, fridges dead on their backs, and starving ponies cropping the mud. It is a landscape running with outcasts and escapees, with Afghans, Turks and Kurds: with scapegoats, scarred with bottle and burn marks, limping from the cities with broken ribs. The life forms here are rejects, or anomalies: the cats tipped from speeding cars, and the Heathrow sheep, their fleece clotted with the stench of aviation fuel. — Hilary Mantel

Economics is more than just a way to see patterns or to unravel puzzling anomalies. Its fundamental concern is with the material standard of living of society as a whole and how that is affected by particular decisions made by individuals and institutions. One of the ways of doing this is to look at economic policies and economic systems in terms of the incentives they create, rather than simply the goals they pursue. This means that consequences matter more than intentions - and not just the immediate consequences, but also the longer run repercussions of decisions, policies, and institutions. — Thomas Sowell

A fearful instance of the ill consequences attending upon irascibility - alive, with the qualifications of the dead - dead, with the propensities of the living - an anomaly on the face of the earth - being very calm, yet breathless. — Edgar Allan Poe

Cleopatra had one great advantage. She lived at a time when female sovereigns were not anomalies. And when women enjoyed rights they would not again enjoy for another 2,000 years. You could call them early feminists, if I may use a dirty word. — Stacy Schiff

Early Chinese thinkers had taken variety at face value. They had favored diversification and collected anomalies instead of trying to explain them away. — Paul Feyerabend

If you want to make better theory, you've got to use the best that's available and look through the lens of another discipline to see if you can uncover more anomalies. By looking at the phenomena of failure from the perspective of sales, marketing, finance, general management, and the equity markets, I was able to see things that Rebecca [Henderson] hadn't. — Clayton Christensen

When I walk in the door sometimes, I'm already an anomaly. Because I'm working in a genre that African-American's don't typically engage in. — Kevin Grevioux

Coincidence", he finally said. "Statisticans looking for connections can always find odd coincidences and statistical anomalies, if they try hard enough. — Brandon Sanderson

You have to turn over a lot of rocks to find those little anomalies. You have to find the companies that are off the map - way off the map. — Warren Buffett

What took you so long? Waiting for Buddha? — Victor Robert Lee

The universe was a disorderly mess, the only interesting bits being the organised anomalies. Hackworth had once taken his family out rowing on the pond in the park, and the ends of the yellow oars spun off compact vortices, and Fiona, who had taught herself the physics of liquids through numerous experimental beverage spills and in the bathtub, demanded an explanation for these holes in water. She leaned over the gunwale, Gwendolyn holding the sash of her dress, and felt those vortices with her hands, wanting to understand them. The rest of the pond, simply water in no particular order, was uninteresting. — Neal Stephenson

Anomaly is when you don't fit the expected norm. Like "wait what is this?! It doesn't belong here." Its what the system never planned for but now has to adapt to. Its Neo in The Matrix. — LeCrae

All humans make mistakes. But there is no room or allowance in the fevered world of conspiracy theorists for mistakes, human errors, anomalies, or plain incompetence, though the latter, from the highest levels on down, is endemic to our society. — Vincent Bugliosi

The universe consists primarily of dark matter. We can't see it, but it has an enormous gravitational force. The conscious mind - much like the visible aspect of the universe - is only a small fraction of the mental world. The dark matter of the mind, the unconscious, has the greatest psychic gravity. Disregard the dark matter of the universe and anomalies appear. Ignore the dark matter of the mind and our irrationality is inexplicable. — John Brockman

Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true. — Zach Helm

Though infested with many bewildering anomalies, photographs are considered our best arbiters between our visual perceptions and the memory of them. It is not only their apparent 'objectivity' that grants photographs their high status in this regard, but our belief that in them, fugitive sensation has been laid to rest. — Max Kozloff

Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person till he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only when he insists on being treated as the most easterly of western peoples instead of the most westerly of easterns that he becomes a racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle. — Rudyard Kipling

You are one of life's
anomalies
and this is
how I fell. — Yrsa Daley-Ward

Our categories are important. We cannot organize a social life, a political movement, or our individual identities and desires without them. The fact that categories invariably leak and can never contain all the relevant "existing things" does not render them useless, only limited. Categories like "woman," "butch," "lesbian," or "transsexual" are all imperfect, historical, temporary, and arbitrary. We use them, and they use us. We use them to construct meaningful lives, and they mold us into historically specific forms of personhood. Instead of fighting for immaculate classifications and impenetrable boundaries, let us strive to maintain a community that understands diversity as a gift, sees anomalies as precious, and treats all basic principles with a hefty dose of skepticism. — Gayle Rubin

The more perfect music we have, the more attractive the peculiarities and anomalies of human performance become. Perfection is a second rate idea. — T Bone Burnett

History is running very fast in my country. — Victor Robert Lee

Even to-day the masses of the Negroes see all too clearly the anomalies of their position and the moral crookedness of yours. You may marshal strong indictments against them, but their counter-cries, lacking though they be in formal logic, have burning truths within them which you may not wholly ignore, O Southern Gentlemen! — W.E.B. Du Bois

We are rational creatures, Professor Jove explained; hope is irrational. We thus set ourselves up for one dispiriting fall after the next. Anger and depression are not diseases or dysfunctions or anomalies; they are perfectly rational responses to the myriad avoidable disappointments that begin in a thoroughly irrational hope. — Shalom Auslander

The supposed reality of misfiring synapses, chemical imbalances, frontal lobe anomalies and the like - did not sway her desire for escape into an alternate universe - where she could discover fascinating things about her inner world - or where she could hide from the real world. — Kelly Proudfoot

But by providing the background picture - the universal situational awareness that we desire - by showing the anomalies, the Space-Based Radar will change the nature of how we do our analysis and our intelligence. — Stephen Cambone

A great deal of creativity is about pattern recognition, and what you need to discern patterns is tons of data. Your mind collects that data by taking note of random details and anomalies easily seen every day: quirks and changes that, eventually, add up to insights. — Margaret Heffernan

The fundamental act of medical care is assumption of responsibility. Surgery has assumed responsibility for disease which is largely acute, local or traumatic. This is responsibility for the entire range of injuries and wounds, local infections, benign and malignant tumors, as well as a large fraction of those pathologic processes and anomalies which are localized in the organs of the body. The study of surgery is a study of these diseases, the conditions and details of their care. — Francis Daniels Moore

In the corporate realm, where several laws are in operation, implementation receives a blow when it comes to interpretation and understanding the spirit and purpose of any particular law that may have been designed and promulgated for meeting a particular purpose in the light of the anomalies prevalent in the sector at any given point of time.Thus I would call for establishing a sagacious method of study of law, and study of interpretation of statutes so as to develop the legal fabric. — Henrietta Newton Martin

Gary Klein is a renowned and expert researcher on decision-making and cites the following aspects that experts have the ability to see which novices do not.196 1. Experts see patterns that novices do not detect. 2. Experts see anomalies - events that did not happen. 3. Experts see the big picture (situational awareness). 4. Experts create opportunities and improvisations. 5. Experts have the ability to predict future events using their previous experiences. 6. Experts see differences too small for novices to detect. 7. Experts know their own limitations. With an understanding of the differences between the experienced and the novice, we can begin to design a plan to overcome the shortfalls. Fortunately, understanding that it isn't a "matter of intelligence, but a matter of experience" means that we can systematically set about gaining the experience necessary. — Patrick Van Horne

War is a thing of fearful and curious anomalies ... It has shown that government by men only is not an appeal to reason, but an appeal to arms; that on women, without a voice to protest, must fall the burden. It is easier to die than to send a son to death. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

entropy is always lurking on the borders of information-rich anomalies, — Cesar Hidalgo

How to achieve such anomalies, such alterations and re-fashionings of reality so what comes out of it are lies, if you like, but lies that are more than literal truth. — Vincent Van Gogh

It's in the anomalies that nature reveals its secrets. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

An aging beau. He has probably tried to screw half his staff and doubtless attributes to his charm the few successes that are simply statistical anomalies. — Pierre Lemaitre

Every science is made up entirely of anomalies rearranged to fit. — R.A. Lafferty

As it happens I've spent a night and a day going through your records. Fascinating stuff." Kempis took a roll of parchment from his cloak and tossed it onto the desk. "You know what really bugs me?" Enli steepled his hands. "I'm on tenterhooks." "Anolamies." "Anomalies?" "Them too. — Marc Turner

As Harold took a bite of Bavarian Sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be okay. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy ... there are Bavarian Sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin ... or a kind and loving gesture ... or a subtle encouragement ... or a loving embrace ... or an offer of comfort ...
And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties which we assume only accessorize our days, are in fact here for a much nobler and larger cause. They are here to save our lives. — Zach Helm

Look, cell phone geolocation data shows very few clustering anomalies for this hour and climate. And that's holding up pretty much across all major metro areas. It's gone down six percentage points since news of the Karachi workshop hit the Web, and it's trending downward. If people are protesting, they aren't doing it in the streets." He circled his finger over a few clusters of dots. "Some potential protest knots in Portland and Austin, but defiance-related tag cloud groupings in social media put us within the three-sigma rule - meaning roughly sixty-eight percent of the values lie within one standard deviation of the mean. — Daniel Suarez

The positive heuristic of the programme saves the scientist from becoming confused by the ocean of anomalies. — Imre Lakatos

Lenin in a top hat and frock coat would be a far greater anomaly than the Grand Lama of Thibet or a Zulu chief in that costume. — Wyndham Lewis

We tend to think of dangers and uncertainties as anomalies in the continuum of life, or irruptions of unpredictable forces into a largely predictable world. I suggest the contrary: that dangers and uncertainties are an inescapable dimension of life. In fact, as we shall come to understand, they make life matter. They define what it means to be human. — Arthur Kleinman

It was Matthews, of course, for whom the verdict was the greatest disaster. Not only had he failed to escape from Bedlam, but the anomalies of the case made it highly unlikely that he would have the chance to appeal again. His family and friends had assembled an impeccable case, most of which had been ignored. — Mike Jay

It is an anomaly that information, the one thing most necessary to our survival as choosers of our own way, should be a commodity subject to the same merchandising rules as chewing gum. — A.J. Liebling

We can never be like it was at Penn State with Joe Paterno. That was an anomaly in an of itself. — James Brown

In socialism, private property is anathema, and equal distribution of income the first consideration. In capitalism, private property is cardinal, and distribution left to ensue from the play of free contract and selfish interest on that basis, no matter what anomalies it may present. — George Bernard Shaw

Religion itself is an absurdity and an anomaly, and paganism is acceptable only because it represents that purely orgiastic phase of religion farthest from reality. — H.P. Lovecraft

For a film to be viable, it has to survive this process of scrutiny. I think most filmmakers have obsessive-compulsive tendencies and would be completely unemployable in any other job - so it's great to be able to channel your psychological anomalies into something productive and creative. — James Marsh

De Selby likens the position of a human on the earth to that of a man on a tight-wire who must continue walking along the wire or perish, being, however, free in all other respects. Movement in this restricted orbit results in the permanent hallucination known conventionally as 'life' with its innumerable concomitant limitations, afflictions and anomalies. — Flann O'Brien

You kinda want to look for the anomalies. You don't actually want to look for the expected behaviour. — Keith Rabois

I am a spectacle, an anomaly even among the anomalies. — Tahereh Mafi

And that singular anomaly, the lady novelist
I don't think she'd be missed
I'm sure she'd not be
missed! — W.S. Gilbert

Here is Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of science, describing the way scientists react when their pet theories are unraveling: "What scientists never do when confronted by even severe and prolonged anomalies," Kuhn wrote, " ... . [is] renounce the paradigm that led them into crisis." Instead, he concluded, "A scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternate candidate is available to take its place." That is, scientific theories very seldom collapse under the weight of their own inadequacy. They topple only when a new and seemingly better belief turns up to replace it. — Kathryn Schulz

Many treatments have turned out over the years to be no better than placebos, and placebos, we have learned, are now known to be one of the strongest anomalies of the mind. — David McRaney

She was like him, trying to embrace the moon while making her way in the world through instinct and drive that came only from within, because she had only herself. — Victor Robert Lee

Costume designers don't care about trends. They appreciate, above so many other qualities, that tailoring is everything, which is a mantra for the way I dress. Ladies: The most important thing in clothing is to find a good, inexpensive tailor, because clothes at the stores are made for bodies that are anomalies. — Ginnifer Goodwin

It is generally agreed by philosophers of science that important contributions which have a revolutionary impact on science are often methodologically inadequate, reveal many anomalies, and may indeed be factually erroneous. — Hans Eysenck

If the theory accurately predicts what they [scientists] see, it confirms that it's a good theory. If they see something that the theory didn't lead them to believe, that's what Thomas Kuhn calls an anomaly. The anomaly requires a revised theory - and you just keep going through the cycle, making a better theory. — Clayton Christensen

There is often seen this anomaly in women, especially in those of childish natures,
that they possess at once great promptness and unskilfulness in falsehood. — Alphonse Daudet