Formulating Quotes & Sayings

Most of the time, strategies should not be formulating strategy at all; they should be getting on with implementing strategies they already have. — Henry Mintzberg

Both the suicidal and non-suicidal are often angry with others. One way to discharge this anger is to fantasize about violent revenge. The insults of daily life often cause fantasies of revenge to flare up and quickly subside. The people with these fantasies usually do not act on them; they are not motives or goals. They are involuntary responses to perceived insult - ways of coping with rage. The suicidal, whether or not they attempt, suffer tremendous and persistent pain and anger. That this pain should find its way into their fantasies and dreams is no surprise. This ideation is not a motive for action; it is an alternative to action. Fantasizing about suicide is an effort to delay or avoid suicide, not the activity of formulating a motive, goal, or intention. Fantasies doubtlessly succeed in preventing many attempts. — David L. Conroy

In trying to evaluate Hopkins' unique contribution to biochemistry it may perhaps be said that he alone amongst his contemporaries succeeded in formulating the subject. Among others whose several achievements in their own fields may have surpassed his, no one has ever attempted to unify and correlate biochemical knowledge so as to form a comprehensible picture of the cell and its relation to life, reproduction and function. — Marjory Stephenson

Words, yes, formulating things, creating something from your heart, it is something very necessary, yes. — Sophie Marceau

Sylvia knew he was only now formulating his settled opinion so as not to have his active brain to give to the discussion. — Ford Madox Ford

The action of the child inventing a new game with his playmates; Einstein formulating a theory of relativity; the housewife devising a new sauce for the meat, a young author writing his first novel; all of these are in terms of definition, Creative, and there is no attempt to set them in some order of more or less Creative. — Carl Rogers

The architecture - the mind - is knitting together. It's sentience. Vague sentience. All these years of formulating machines that know something, while the secret is to create machines that don't know something. — Scott Hutchins

I was also interested in formulating the path of chemical reactions. — Kenichi Fukui

The right way to deal with a budget problem that was years in the making is by formulating a credible plan to reduce the deficit over time and as the economy is able to withstand the necessary fiscal belt-tightening. That is what President Obama is doing. — Christina Romer

A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. — Clifford Geertz

The key to resolving international conflict with a positive outcome includes looking for a win-win situation, finding common ground, formulating proactive strategies, using effective negotiation and communication, and appreciating cultural differences. — Amit Ray

No matter how fast I could do it with the digital camera I don't think I would get the same thing out of it. The passion I have for formulating an idea stands alone. It is the important essence of what I do. — Kim Weston

In literature, too, it is not great achievement to memorize what you have read while not formulating an opinion of your own. — Epictetus

We do not understand democracy in its bourgeois meaning
of babbling, lack of discipline, anarchy. We understand democracy as the active participation of the citizens in formulating and implementing the Party's policy. — Nicolae Ceausescu

Design [is] the emerging ethos formulating and then answering a very new question: What shall we do now, in the face of the chaos that we have created? — John Hockenberry

People with family histories of alcoholism tend to have lower levels of endorphins- the endogenous morphine that is responsible for many of our pleasure responses- than do people genetically disinclined to alcoholism. Alcohol will slightly raise the endorphin level of people without the genetic basis for alcoholism; it will dramatically raise the endorphin level of people with that genetic basis. Specialists spend a lot of time formulating exotic hypotheses to account for substance abuse. Most experts point out, strong motivations for avoiding drugs; but there are also strong motivations for taking them. People who claim not to understand why anyone would get addicted to drugs are usually people who haven't tried them or who are genetically fairly invulnerable to them. — Andrew Solomon

It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them. — Arthur Eddington

He was formulating a plan. He would redeem the dream. I could understand that. It is the universal blessing - and curse - of those who dare. — Rick Yancey

Transmit your vision emotionally by gaining credibility, demonstrating passion, establishing relationships and communicating a felt need. Transmit it logically by confronting reality, formulating strategy, accepting responsibility, celebrating victory and learning from defeat. — John C. Maxwell

I played an integral part in helpings formulating that new vision ... that we must abandon apartheid and accept one united South Africa with equal rights for all, with all forms of discrimination to be scrapped from the statute book. — F. W. De Klerk

Often, simply knowing the answer is the largest hurdle to overcome when formulating a proof. — Clifford A. Pickover

The key to any successful plan is buy-in from the public, and what this process has demonstrated is the importance of including citizens in formulating a consensus plan that preserves our beautiful refuge. — Ron Kind

Foreign policy of a pluralistic democracy like the United States should be based on bipartisanship because bipartisanship is the means and the framework for formulating policies based on moderation and on the recognition of the complexity of the human condition. That has been the tradition since the days of Truman and Vandenberg all the way until recent times. — Zbigniew Brzezinski

Contrary to what I once thought, scientific progress did not consist simply in observing, in accurately formulating experimental facts and drawing up a theory from them. It began with the invention of a possible world, or a fragment thereof, which was then compared by experimentation with the real world. And it was this constant dialogue between imagination and experiment that allowed one to form an increasingly fine-grained conception of what is called reality. — Francois Jacob

America didn't have to fight scarcity and we all felt guilty before people who still had to struggle for bread and freedom in the old way ... We weren't starving, we weren't bugged by the police, locked up in madhouses for our ideas, arrested, deported, slave laborers sent to die in concentration camps. We were spared the holocausts and nights of terror. With our advantages we should be formulating the new basic questions for mankind. But instead we sleep. Just sleep and sleep, and eat and play and fuss and sleep again. — Saul Bellow

The word absurdity is coming to life under my pen; a little while ago, in the garden, I couldn't find it,
but neither was I looking for it, I didn't need it: I thought without words, on things, with things.
Absurdity was not an idea in my head, or the sound of a voice, only this long serpent dead at my feet,
this wooden serpent. Serpent or claw or root or vulture's talon, what difference does it make. And
without formulating anything clearly, I understood that I had found the key to Existence, the key to my
Nauseas, to my own life. In fact, all that I could grasp beyond that returns to this fundamental
absurdity. — Jean-Paul Sartre

[There was] an openness not found on the East Coast and a generosity of spirit. New York was always formulating the correct ways to work and think while back here [in California] we were always eager to be surprised and engaged in new ways. — Eleanor Antin

Entrepreneurship is about formulating a plan and then making choices, both big and small, that will help you to reach the next step of that plan. As — Patrick J. McGinnis

We have to work sincerely and responsibly to thwart any attempt to divide the Arab nation into small groups, with which foreign countries would deal separately. This would eventually be in the interests of Zionism, which stands behind such policies, formulating the relevant theories and promoting distorted information to world politicians, especially in the West, in order to make them adopt an approach which is harmful to the Arab nation and is even against the legitimate interests of their own countries. — Saddam Hussein

if you take a positivist position, as I do, questions about reality don't have any meaning. All one can ask is whether imaginary time is useful in formulating mathematical models that describe what we observe. — Stephen Hawking

Bland friendliness is easier than spending even one joule of energy formulating an opinion on someone fundamentally irrelevant to you. — Elan Mastai

Even today to be civilised is held to be synonymous with being westernised. Advanced countries devote large resources to formulating and spreading ideas and doctrines and they tend to impose on the developing nations their own norms and methods. The pattern of the classical acquisitive society with its deliberate multiplication of wants not only is unsuited to conditions in our countries but is positively harmful. — Indira Gandhi

There is a history of mathematical models of oligopolistic competition dating from Cournot to the theory of games. There is also a literature generated by institutional economists, lawyers, and administrators interested in formulating and implementing public policy. It has been the tendency of these groups to work almost as though the other did not exist. — Martin Shubik

I enjoy singing the songs a certain way, but I don't even know how the writing even began. To me, it's work that is kind of invisible; it's a weird kind of work to have because you're not working, but it's not not work. Formulating your thoughts and making a melody that's catchy enough for people to listen to what you're saying is really hard! — Angel Olsen

The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist. — Winston S. Churchill

From quite early on, I had this idea of compartmentalized identities - 'this is how you are when you are with your mum, and this is how you are when you are with your dad' - so it seemed like I could never absolutely be myself. And the image of myself as compromised and inconsistent made me want to withdraw from the world even further. I had a sense of formulating a paper-mache version of myself to send out in the world, while I sat controlling it remotely from some smug suburban barracks. — Russell Brand

Being bound to one particular storyline such that one's narrative is rigid, does not imply the need to avoid formulating particular other kinds of possibilities. Rather, it involves being stuck in one self-limiting, self-reinforcing set of possibilities. — Elizabeth F. Howell

Frankie, I'm fully awake and more curious than George. If we hang up I'll lie here formulating a million reasons for your call, none of them your truth, and that would drive me crazy. You wouldn't do that to the guy who has your grandmother's old phone number, would you? Trust me, you can tell me anything. - Emerson — Liza M. Wiemer

The hope of a new politics does not lie in formulating a left-wing reply to the right-it lies in rejecting conventional political categories. — Christopher Lasch

The book deals with the problems of philosophy and shows, as I believe, that the method of formulating these problems rests on the misunderstanding of the logic of our language. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

One of the more difficult things about being a judge is as you're listening to the evidence, you have to be formulating how you're going to explain your evaluation of that evidence. — Steven Pacey

As time went by we developed a sort of ideology without ever formulating it as such. I've always said that we are documenting the sacred buildings of Calvinism. Calvinism rejects all forms of art and therefore never developed its own architecture. The buildings we photograph originate directly from this purely economical thinking. — Bernd Becher

Making an investment decision is like formulating a scientific hypothesis and submitting it to a practical test. The main difference is that the hypothesis that underlies an investment decision is intended to make money and not to establish a universally valid generalization. — George Soros

I take a sun bath and listen to the hours, formulating, and disintegrating under the pines, and smell the resiny hardihood of the high noon hours. The world is lost in a blue haze of distances, and the immediate sleeps in a thin and finite sun. — Zelda Fitzgerald

Sandals. The Sufi teacher Ghulam-Shah was asked what pattern he used in formulating his courses for disciples. He said: 'Barefoot until you can get sandals, sandals until you can manage boots. — Idries Shah

The fact that all normal children acquire essentially comparable grammars of great complexity with remarkable rapidity suggests that human beings are somehow specially designed to do this, with data-handling or 'hypothesis-formulating' ability of unknown character and complexity. — Noam Chomsky

The optimum amount of sugar in a product became known as the 'bliss point.' Food inventors and scientists spend a huge amount of time formulating the perfect amount of sugar that will send us over the moon and send products flying off the shelves. — Michael Moss

When people believe a tale that conflicts with self-checkable evidence it tells me that people undervalue the role of evidence on formulating an internal belief system. Why this is so is not clear, but it enables many people to hold fast to ideas and notions based purely on supposition. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

You are right to demand that an author be conscious of what he is doing, but you are confusing two concepts: solving the problem and correctly formulating the problem. Only the latter is required of the artist. — Anton Chekhov

The purpose of formulating [a] conflict as a game is not that of resolving the conflict by 'solving the game.' It is that of displaying the structure of the conflict and thereby exposing features of it that may be concealed by rhetoric. In particular, appreciation of the peculiar structure of some of the so-called mixed-motive conflicts represented nonzero-sum games may change the conflicting parties' perception of their situation. — Anatol Rapoport

In formulating any philosophy the first consideration must always be: What can we know? That is, what can we be sure we know, or sure that we know we knew it, if indeed it is at all knowable. Or have we simply forgotten it and are too embarrassed to say anything? Descartes hinted at the problem when he wrote, 'My mind can never know my body, although it has become quite friendly with my legs. — Woody Allen

I must make MAGICK the essential factor in the life of ALL. In presenting this book to the world, I must then explain and justify my position by formulating a definition of MAGICK and setting forth its main principles in such a way that ALL may understand instantly that their souls, their lives, in every relation with every other human being and every circumstance, depend upon MAGICK and the right comprehension and right application thereof. — Aleister Crowley

This nation's elected leaders owe all Americans the duty of formulating an Iraqi policy based on sound analysis of the actual facts. — Charlie Gonzalez

Anyone who says the artist's field is all answers and no questions has never done any writing or had any dealings with imageryYou are confusing two concepts: answering the questions and formulating them correctly. Only the latter is required of an author. — Anton Chekhov

Form is all we have to help us cope with fundamentally chaotic facts and assaults. Formulating something is a great start. I trust form, trust my feeling or capacity to find the right form for something. Even if that is only by being well organized. That too is form. — Gerhard Richter

Governmental regulations all carry coercion to some degree, and even where they don't, they habituate man to expect teaching, guidance and help outside himself, instead of formulating his own. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

This is what creationists say of evolution, that it's "only" a theory, it hasn't been proved, as though this in itself is grounds for dismissal. This misrepresents the point of formulating a theory, which is to make sense of some body of evidence. — Daniel Quinn

That was the trouble with formulating a system: what could you do but repeat it? — Peter Washington

The gladiator is formulating his plan in the arena or essentially Too late. — Seneca The Younger

The pleasure in complete domination over another person (or other animate creature) is the very essence of the sadistic drive. Another way of formulating the same thought is to say that the aim of sadism is to transform man into a thing, something animate into something inanimate, since by complete and absolute control the living loses one essential quality of life - freedom. — Erich Fromm

Writings by philosophers and psychologists on the differences between intelligence and wisdom might also encourage you to become a better listener. Intelligent people say lots of smart things and produce the right answers to questions more often than less intelligent people, but they are not necessarily good listeners. In contrast, wise people are better listeners and are better at formulating questions than people who aren't so wise.6 So, if you and your firm want to get smarter, the wise thing to do is to shut up, listen, and learn to ask smart questions - not to keep showing off how much you know and how fast you can think. — Robert I. Sutton

Perhaps you are just close to what you have been waiting for all along and ideas start formulating in your mind and advising you to "give up". Tell them "not me". — Israelmore Ayivor

If it is plausible that ideology will in general serve as a mask for self-interest, then it is a natural presumption that intellectuals, in interpreting history or formulating policy, will tend to adopt an elitist position, condemning popular movements and mass participation in decision making, and emphasizing rather the necessity for supervision by those who possess the knowledge and understanding that is required (so they claim) to manage society and control social change. — Noam Chomsky

Formulating the proposal is about 80% of the actual time of the process. In the end, the time spent filming, editing and postproduction is a very small proportion of the total time you spend in the production of the film. — Francis Alys

To me, that is the essence of me as a photographer. It is those ideas, working with them, formulating them and eventually putting them down on paper, photographing them and then going on to the next step. — Kim Weston

The essential task ahead requires formulating an adequate doctrine, upholding principles that have been thoroughly studied, and, beginning from these, giving birth to an Order. This elite, differentiating itself on a plane that is defined in terms of spiritual virility, decisiveness, and impersonality, and where every naturalistic bond loses its power and value, will be the bearer of a new principle of a higher authority and sovereignty; it will be able to denounce subversion and demagogy in whatever form they appear and reverse the downward spiral of the top-level cadres and the irresistible rise to power of the masses. From this elite, as if from a seed, a political organism and an integrated nation will emerge, enjoying the same dignity as the nations created by the great European political tradition. Anything short of this amounts only to a quagmire, dilettantism, irrealism, and obliquity. — Julius Evola

When I started formulating the first Frank comic, I knew I wanted it to be something that was beyond time and specific place. I felt that having the characters speak would tie it to 20th-century America, because that would be the idiom of the language they would use, the language I use. — Jim Woodring

His eyes remained on Isobel as he began a slow backward walk. He was doing it again, speaking to her with his eyes. She remained trapped in his stare, trying to hear him, to read the underlying message. Finally his gaze broke from hers and he turned away, walking off through the cafeteria doors.
There was a pause before Gwen spoke. "Let me guess," she said. "Right now, you're trying to decide if that was hot or annoying." She paused, as though formulating her own opinion ... "It was so totally hot. — Kelly Creagh

People looking up at her
at her smooth pretty vivacious face
had no way of knowing about the painfully articulated resolves formulating in her mind. — Betty Smith

Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them. — Susan Sontag

We have the duty of formulating, of summarizing, and of communicating our conclusions, in intelligible form, in recognition of the right of other free minds to utilize them in making their own decisions. — Ronald Fisher

The river of life divides into two branches: being and formulating. — Anais Nin