Applicability Quotes & Sayings

I had formed the habit of treating those parts of my character that were in any way my responsibility to exhortations so wholesome and sensible as to be comical. As a part of my system of self-discipline, dating from childhood, I constantly told myself it would be better to die than become a lukewarm person, an unmanly person, a person who does not clearly know his likes and dislikes, a person who wants only to be loved without knowing how to love. This exhortation of course had a possible applicability to the parts of my character for which I was to blame, but so far as the other parts were concerned, the parts for which I was not to blame, it was an impossible requirement from the beginning. — Yukio Mishima

Will fluorine ever have practical applications?
It is very difficult to answer this question. I may, however, say in all sincerity that I gave this subject little thought when I undertook my researches, and I believe that all the chemists whose attempts preceded mine gave it no more consideration.
A scientific research is a search after truth, and it is only after discovery that the question of applicability can be usefully considered. — Henri Moissan

The cry that 'fantasy is escapist' compared to the novel is only an echo of the older cry that novels are 'escapist' compared with biography, and to both cries one should make the same answer: that freedom to invent outweighs loyalty to mere happenstance, the accidents of history; and good readers should know how to filter a general applicability from a particular story. — Tom Shippey

A theory is the more impressive the greater is the simplicity of its premises, the more different are the kinds of things it relates and the more extended the range of its applicability. — Albert Einstein

For any truth, if overdone ... if exaggerated, or if carried beyond the limits of its applicability, can be reduced to absurdity. — Vladimir Lenin

Economics operates legitimately and usefully within a 'given' framework which lies altogether outside the economic calculus. We might say that economics does not stand on its own feet, or that it is a 'derived' body of thought - derived from meta- economics. If the economist fails to study meta-economics, or, even worse. If he remains unaware of the fact that there are boundaries to the applicability of the economic calculus, he is likely to fall into a similar kind of error to that of certain medieval theologians who tried to settle questions of physics by means of biblical quotations. Every science is beneficial within its proper limits but becomes evil and destructive as soon as it transgresses them. The — Ernst F. Schumacher

Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul. — Karl Jaspers

Nothing has been as instructive in exploring the notion of authenticity as relearning the work of the great philosophers Aristotle and Plato. We are struck by their applicability to our work as we help companies and people develop their brands. Why do these early philosophers have so much to say that is helpful to modern marketers? We believe it is because they were focused on the fundamental issues of authenticity that we all face: Who are we? Why are we? How should we behave? Asking these questions encourages us to deepen our self-awareness. In particular, this issue of "who are we?" is critical. Knowing who we are is the key to elevating our capacities and performance. — Tom Hayes

Three principles - the conformability of nature to herself, the applicability of the criterion of simplicity, and the "unreasonable effectiveness" of certain parts of mathematics in describing physical reality - are thus consequences of the underlying law of the elementary particles and their interactions. Those three principles need not be assumed as separate metaphysical postulates. Instead, they are emergent properties of the fundamental laws of physics. — Murray Gell-Mann

There is nothing mysterious, as some have tried to maintain, about the applicability of mathematics. What we get by abstraction from something can be returned. — Raymond Louis Wilder

A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms; but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description. — William James

That so far the material has been dealt with in a rather subjective way provokes the question whether a means can be found of handling it objectively. [...] This chapter considers the applicability of the statistical tests employed by Wilson and the general problem whether the Linear B data are suited to statistical analysis. — Jennifer K. McArthur

The plea of good intentions is not one that can be allowed to have much weight in passing historical judgment upon a man whose wrong-headedness and distorted way of looking at things produced, or helped to produce, such incalculable evil; there is a wide political applicability in the remark attributed to a famous Texan, to the effect that he might, in the end, pardon a man who shot him on purpose, but that he would surely never forgive one who did so accidentally. — Theodore Roosevelt

The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life. In instructing, be brief in what you say in order that your readers may grasp it quickly and retain it faithfully. Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full. Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality. — Horace

A theory is more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the
more different are the kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its range of applicability. — Albert Einstein

An inventor is one who can see the applicability of means to supply demand five years before it is obvious to those skilled in the art. — Reginald Fessenden

Genius is power, talent is applicability. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why does everyone take for granted that we don't learn to grow arms, but rather, are designed to grow arms? Similarly, we should conclude that in the case of the development of moral systems; there's a biological endowment which in effect requires us to develop a system of moral judgment and a theory of justice, if you like, that in fact has detailed applicability over an enormous range. — Noam Chomsky

Contrary to common belief, the presumption of innocence applies only inside a courtroom. It has no applicability elsewhere, although the media do not seem to be aware of this. — Vincent Bugliosi

All of the important acts of creation and destruction involve the issuance of words and the application of signature. — Bryant McGill

In recent years, academics, policy-makers, and experts have raised the question of the applicability of peacetime environmental law in times of armed conflict. — Widad Akreyi

Compliance with Laws, Rules and Regulations Employees must follow applicable laws, rules and regulations at all times. Employees with questions about the applicability or interpretation of any law, rule or regulation, should contact the Legal Department — Anonymous

when a consensus forms around the universal applicability of a conclusion from a specific model, the critical assumptions of which are likely to be violated in many settings - as with perfect competition, say, or full consumer information - we have a problem. — Dani Rodrik

Although, fanciful's origin circa 1627 made me still love the word, even if I'd ruined its applicability to my connection with Snarl. (I mean DASH!) Like, I could totally see Mrs. Mary Poppencock returning home to her cobblestone hut with the thatched roof in Thamesburyshire, Jolly Olde England, and saying to her husband, "Good sir Bruce, would it not be wonderful to have a roof that doesn't leak when it rains on our green shires, and stuff?" And Sir Bruce Poppencock would have been like, "I say, missus, you're very fanciful with your ideas today." To which Mrs. P. responded, "Why, Master P., you've made up a word! What year is it? I do believe it's circa 1627! Let's carve the year
we think
on a stone so no one forgets. Fanciful! Dear man, you are a genius. I'm so glad my father forced me to marry you and allow you to impregnate me every year. — Rachel Cohn

I'm working on several theories," I said. "But I'm currently favoring the hypothesis that the moon has a seemingly arbitrary effect on magic because it likes to piss me off." "That's a theory with a high degree of applicability to other spheres of life," he said. "Yes it is," I said, and we spontaneously fist — Ben Aaronovitch

Our assent to the hypothesis implies that it is held to be true of all particular instances. That these cases belong to past or to future times, that they have or have not already occurred, makes no difference in the applicability of the rule to them. Because the rule prevails, it includes all cases. — William Whewell

Every word or concept, clear as it may seem to be, has only a limited range of applicability. — Werner Heisenberg

The language of intrinsic human rights represented a significant advance beyond the previous language of world religions in terms of its universal applicability and its thiswordliness. — Immanuel Wallerstein

The religious stories, the religious truths, the spiritual principles - obviously, they don't change. But as you get older and you experience more, you recognize the applicability, the profundity, and the fundamental truths of spiritual principles in ways that you couldn't when you simply were living a less dimensional life. — Marianne Williamson

Since 2001, the U.S. government has abandoned its role as a champion of human rights and has perpetrated terrible and illegal abuses in prisons in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, sent prisoners secretly to other nations to be tortured, denied the applicability of the Geneva Convention restraints, and severely restricted time-honored civil liberties within our own country. Certain political leaders of other nations, who are inclined to perpetrate human rights abuses to quiet dissenting voices and were previously restrained by positive influence from Washington, now feel free to emulate or exceed the abuses approved by American leaders. — Jimmy Carter

This presentation is dealing the question of the modern relevance of God's Law today. What I propose to do is defended the notion of the applicability of God's Law; when the law is properly interpreted according to its Old Testament setting, and adapted to new covenantal conditions.
-Theological Bootcamp II, The Intention of God's Law — Kenneth L. Gentry Jr.

From the physician, as emphatically the student of Nature, is expected not only an inquiry into cause, but an investigation of the whole empire of Nature and a determination of the applicability of every species of knowledge to the improvement of his art. — John Gorrie

The applicability of the Establishment Clause to public funding of benefits to religious schools was settled in Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing, which inaugurated the modern era of establishment doctrine. — David Souter