Anomalous Quotes & Sayings

Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can Z ever betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has ever seen. — Vladimir Nabokov

Before the land rose out of the ocean, and became dry land, chaos reigned; and between high and low water mark, where she is partially disrobed and rising, a sort of chaos reigns still, which only anomalous creatures can inhabit. — Henry David Thoreau

Islands are havens and breeding grounds for the unique and anomalous. They are natural laboratories of extravagant evolutionary experimentation. — David Quammen

Life on earth survives thanks to diversity, says Sekunda, because changing circumstances means today's winners can suddenly become tomorrow's losers. When the meteor hits, when the Green Revolution fails, when the bees unexpectedly die, the kind of anomalous diversity found in the Galapagos Islands - or in the technology of Japan - is exactly what will save us from the most dangerous failure of all: global success. — Momus

Major sports are major parts of society. It's not anomalous to have people who love sports come from other parts of that society. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Most women in our culture, then, are disordered when it comes to issues of self-worth, self-entitlement, self-nourishment, and comfort with their own bodies; eating disorders, far from being 'bizarre' and anomalous, are utterly continuous with a dominant element of the experience of being female in this culture. — Susan Bordo

To think, analyze and invent are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence. — Jorge Luis Borges

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

Discovery commences with the awareness of anomaly, i.e. with the recognition that nature has somehow violated the paradigm-induced expectations that govern normal science. It then continues with a more or less extended exploration of the area of anomaly. And it closes only when the paradigm theory has been adjusted so that the anomalous has become the expected. — Thomas Kuhn

My work is a fusion of personal experiences and influences - moody atmospheres, victorian-inspired couture, and timeless elements all laced with clandestine symbolism. The figures I paint exist in their own esoteric realm and time, and each painting offers a glimpse into their anomalous world. — Lori Earley

To share Eucharistic communion with someone unbaptized, or committed to another story or system, is odd - not because the sacrament is 'profaned', or because grace cannot be given to those outside the household, but because the symbolic integrity of the Eucharist depends upon its being celebrated by those who both commit themselves to the paradigm of Jesus' death and resurrection and acknowledge that their violence is violence offered to Jesus. All their betrayals are to be understood as betrayals of him; and through that understanding comes forgiveness and hope. Those who do not so understand themselves and their sin or their loss will not make the same identification of their victims with Jesus, nor will they necessarily understand their hope for their vocation in relation to him and his community. Their participation is thus anomalous: it is hard to see the meaning of what is being done. — Rowan Williams

When it got to be time to design the week - a period of time, unlike the day, month, and year, with no intrinsic astronomical significance - it was assigned seven days, each named after one of the seven anomalous lights in the night sky. We can readily make out the remnants of this convention. In English, Saturday is Saturn's day. Sunday and Mo[o]nday are clear enough. Tuesday through Friday are named after the gods of the Saxon and kindred Teutonic invaders of Celtic/Roman Britain: Wednesday, for example, is Odin's (or Wodin's) day, which would be more apparent if we pronounced it as it's spelled, "Wedn's Day"; Thursday is Thor's day; Friday is the day of Freya, goddess of love. The last day of the week stayed Roman, the rest of it became German. — Carl Sagan

Viewer-hungry news outlets manipulate our fear response and our brain's inability to distinguish "real" threats from the abstract and anomalous terrors across the globe that appear within seconds on our smart phones and TVs. We live in an objectively safer world than ever before, but we're bombarded with fear-triggering messages and worried about issues that likely won't affect us and are far from our control. We are arguably consumed with fear. — Margee Kerr

It is anomalous to hold that in order to convict a man the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind, but can extract what is in his stomach. — Felix Frankfurter

In other words, by finding the anomalous event, what you do is you get out ahead of activities. — Stephen Cambone

Monster" is derived from the Latin noun monstrum, "divine portent," itself formed on the root of the verb monere, "to warn." It came to refer to living things of anomalous shape or structure, or to fabulous creatures like the sphinx who were composed of strikingly incongruous parts, because the ancients considered the appearance of such beings to be a sign of some impending supernatural event. Monsters, like angels, functioned as messengers and heralds of the extraordinary. They served to announce impending revelation, saying, in effect, "Pay attention; something of profound importance is happening. — Susan Stryker

He blamed psychopaths for the brutal excesses of capitalism itself, that the system at its cruelest was a manifestation of a few people's anomalous amygdalae. — Jon Ronson

A story, meanwhile, fills out the picture. It uses data, statistical or otherwise, to portray a sense of magnitude; without data, we have no idea how a story fits into the larger scheme of things. A good story also includes the passage of time, to show the degree of constancy or change; without a time frame, we can't judge whether we're looking at something truly noteworthy or just an anomalous blip. And a story lays out a daisy chain of events, to show the causes that lead up to a particular situation and the consequences that result from it. — Steven D. Levitt

A colleague who met me strolling rather aimlessly in the beautiful streets of Copenhagen said to me in a friendly manner, "You look very unhappy"; whereupon I answered fiercely, "How can one look happy when he is thinking about the anomalous Zeeman effect?". — Wolfgang Pauli

The imposition of anomalous models and lifestyles are alien to people's identity and, in the end, are irresponsible. — Pope Francis

In order to describe a particular subculture, you might want to portray people who are typical or representative of that subculture; but to dramatize it, to make it an interesting setting for a story, you want to bring someone anomalous into that setting, to see how she conforms to it, and it to her. — Jonathan Dee

A fascinating mystery of nature is manifested in the universal fact of hunting: the inexorable hierarchy among living beings. Every animal is in a relationship of superiority or inferiority with regard to every other. Strict equality is exceedingly improbable and anomalous. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

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

Closing his eyes again, Beck repositions his head on the back of his seat, and in one sure movement, reaches over and grabs my hand. Even with his eyes closed, he knew where to find me. I want to cry for a thousand reasons, laugh for a thousand others; this is my anomalous balance, the place where Beck and I can let the ridiculousness of our collective sentences marinate, and other things, too. It's a singular moment of clarity between two people, and rare or not, I'm not about to let go.
I'm done roaming hillsides.
I've scoured the corners of the earth.
And I've found my people.
God, I'm almost jealous of myself.
Holding Beck's hand in my lap, I find a courage I never knew I had and drop my head on his shoulder. — David Arnold

I saw it on the Twitter of today, on the online boards. There was a huge amount of negative reaction that's been forgotten because the quality eventually shined through. But usually it takes people a while to see what they've got on their plate. And I think, with "Jessica Jones," it's this anomalous thing where, and because of the original property being so good, people saw it right away, which is very unusual. — Jane Espenson

The idea behind the meta-induction is that all of our theories are fundamentally provisional and quite possibly wrong, if we can add that idea to our cognitive toolkit, we will be better able to listen with curiosity and empathy to those whose theories contradict our own. We will be better able to pay attention to counterevidence - those anomalous bits of data that make our picture of the world a little weirder, more mysterious, less clean, less done. And we will be able to hold our own beliefs a bit more humbly, in the knowledge that better ideas are almost certainly on the way. — Kathryn Schulz

But he did not believe ordinary citizens created art. True art was anomalous; it was a rare mutation. It didn't happen simply because one willed it so. He thought it an utter and exasperating waste of an ordinary man's time. — Lily King

I prefer to remain anomalous. — Barbara Kingsolver

We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses. This is an uncomfortable notion which I have gradually come to accept by reading what other survivors have written, including myself, when I re-read my writings after a lapse of years. We, the survivors, are not only a tiny but also an anomalous minority. We are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or returned wordless. — Primo Levi

Clever deceivers rarely tell outright falsehoods. It's too risky. The art of deception is closely related to the magician's craft: it involves knowing how to draw attention to a harmless place, to deflect it away from the action. Deeply entrenched patterns of perceptual, emotional, and cognitive dispositions serve as instruments of deception. A skilled deceiver is an illusionist who knows how to manipulate the normal patterns of what is salient to their audience. He places salient markers - something red, something anomalous, something desirable - in the visual field, to draw attention just where he wants it. — Clancy Martin

I like solitude. I like the anomalous life. I like a quiet life. — Eric Clapton

perhaps it's philosophy that best explains why savoring responsibility leads to fulfillment. The model of happiness perpetuated by the cultural juggernauts of Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and Disneyesque fairy tales of everyday effervescence, broad-smiled contentedness, and perfect relationships is a historically anomalous, and for most, unachievable state. In contrast, we shall return to eudaimonia, the classical Greek concept of happiness that essentially means the "flourishing" or "rich" life. With their devotion to training, meticulousness, and desire for quiet power and accountability, Invisibles understand the value of a life not necessarily of the moment-to-moment happiness that many mistakenly strive for, but of an overall richness of experience, a life grounded in eudaimonic values. — David Zweig

Despite the earnest belief of most of his fans, Einstein did not win his Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, special or general. He won for explaining a strange effect in quantum mechanics, the photoelectric effect. His solution provided the first real evidence that quantum mechanics wasn't a crude stopgap for justifying anomalous experiments, but actually corresponds to reality. And the fact that Einstein came up with it is ironic for two reasons. One, as he got older and crustier, Einstein came to distrust quantum mechanics. Its statistical and deeply probabilistic nature sounded too much like gambling to him, and it prompted him to object that "God does not play dice with the universe." He was wrong, and it's too bad that most people have never heard the rejoinder by Niels Bohr: "Einstein! Stop telling God what to do. — Sam Kean

History is anomalous, and there is no way to get used to it. — Terence McKenna

After years of study and personal on-site investigation of UFO reports, I am certain that there is more than ample high-quality observational evidence from highly trained and reliable lay witnesses to indicate that there are unidentified machine-like objects under intelligent control operating in our atmosphere. Such evidence in some cases is supported by anomalous physical effects upon the witnesses, electrical devices, and the environment, as well as by instrumentation such as radar and Geiger counters. — Raymond E. Fowler

How can one avoid despondency if one thinks of the anomalous Zeeman effect? — Wolfgang Pauli

I do not deny certain kinds of biological differences. But I always ask under what conditions, under what discursive and institutional conditions, do certain biological differences - and they're not necessary ones, given the anomalous state of bodies in the world - become the salient characteristics of sex. — Judith Butler

These coupling certainly do not fit with the mainstream idea that genes, or at least organisms, are hell-bent on reproducing themselves. They do fit, however, with the idea of a social role for sex, and they fit with the idea that sexual reproduction is a spandrel, a by-product of some other phenomenon. If Roughgarden is on to something, she believes it could have cultural as well as scientific implications. The orthodoxy of biology has corroded our culture like battery acid, she says, In general, we play out the roles prescribed for us by that culture - aggressive male and coy female - because deviation from its "norm" results in emotional and physical violence, bigotry, personal guilt, and criminalized behaviors. If biology has been getting it wrong though, the new orthodoxy could trigger an infusion of tolerance; perhaps the anomalous prevalence of sexual reproduction will end up having deeper repercussions outside of science than within it. — Michael Brooks

It occurred to Raule that all children were monsters in the world and were instinctively aware of it. They were reminded of their anomalous nature by adults, whom they failed to resemble, and with whose habitations and tools their bodies were at odds. This was surely why the little girl played with the sequins so solemnly and with such intense concentration. She was doing nothing less than conjuring, out of pattern and colour, a world that conformed to her desires and obeyed her will. The boy, on the other hand, showed with the whole attitude of his being that he knew there was only the one world and he would kill it if he could. — K.J. Bishop

After three rings the call's picked up on the other end. "Laura Stodgill here, U.S. Department of Anomalous Devices of Unknown Origin. McSpadden, what do you have for me in your vortex of weirdness? — C. Gockel

An understandable hunger for ... potential clients tempts many [career counseling therapists] to overpromise, like creative writing teachers who, out of greed or sentimentality, sometimes imply that all of their students could one day produce worthwhile literature, rather than frankly acknowledging the troubling truth, anathema to a democratic society, that the great writer, like the contented worker, remains an erratic and anomalous event, ... immune to the methods of factory farming. — Alain De Botton

To think, analyze and invent, he [Pierre Menard] also wrote me, "are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence. To glorify the occasional fulfillment of this function, to treasure ancient thoughts of others, to remember with incredulous amazement that the doctor universal is thought, is to confess our languor or barbarism. Every man should be capable of all ideas, and I believe that in the future he will be." (Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote, 1939) — Jorge Luis Borges

Hitler was such an anomalous character - he was so over-the-top chaotic in his approach to statesmanship, his manner and in the violence which overwhelmed the country initially. I think diplomats around the world ... felt like something like that simply would not be tolerated by the people of Germany. — Erik Larson

Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance. — Henri Bergson

When we talk about books ... we are talking about our approximate recollections of books ... What we preserve of the books we read - whether we take notes or not, and even if we sincerely believe we remember them faithfully - is in truth no more than a few fragments afloat, like so many islands, on an ocean of oblivion ... We do not retain in memory complete books identical to the books remembered by everyone else, but rather fragments surviving from partial readings, frequently fused together and further recast by our private fantasies. ... What we take to be the books we have read is in fact an anomalous accumulation of fragments of texts, reworked by our imagination and unrelated to the books of others, even if these books are materially identical to ones we have held in our hands. — Pierre Bayard

Scatter the names of all those who have ever lived over the surface of the knowable cosmos, and it would remain, for all purposes, as unnamed as it was before the small, anomalous flicker of human life appeared on this small, wildly atypical planet. — Marilynne Robinson

The Baroness found it amusing to go to tea; she dressed as if for dinner. The tea-table offered an anomalous and picturesque repast; and on leaving it they all sat and talked in the large piazza, or wandered about the garden in the starlight. — Henry James

The thing about The Departed, the x-factor that people can't quite put their finger on, is that it deals clearly with class and accent all these things that are fundamental to Boston, but previously anomalous or even prohibited in demotic American films. — William Monahan

When you cross over into the weird stuff, there's no going back. Hector has a theory on it. Calls it the law of 'Anomalous Phenomena Attraction.' He explained it to me once. Didn't really pay attention, but it boils down to 'weird shit pulls in more weird shit. — A. Lee Martinez