Need Explanation Quotes & Sayings

If other people do not understand our behavior - so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being "asocial" or "irrational" in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to "explain," which usually implies that the explanation be "understood," i.e. approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds, your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself - to his reason and his conscience - and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation. — Erich Fromm

I flicked my eyes over to Steve again and saw him straighten. He would need a diversion just to start.
"Explanations?" I bellowed. "Explanations? There's your explanation ... there!" I stabbed a finger dramatically towards the far corner of the room.
Pathetic, really. I mean, talk about the oldest trick in the book. But it's a good book, and the trick would have been cut from subsequent editions if it didn't sometimes work. — Stephen Fry

When you're a liar, a person of low moral fortitude, really any explanation you need to be true can be true. Especially if you're smart enough. You can figure out a way to justify anything. — Samuel Witwer

Religion is not God himself or herself. It is a system of teaching about God, an explanation of God's way to human minds. But God doesn't need explanations to exist. — Ilchi Lee

who probably didn't know any better; to Louise Simonson & Brent Eric Anderson, for "God Loves, Man Kills"; to Eleanor Wood, for reasons that need no explanation; to Betsy Mitchell, for having faith; and Steve Saffel, for keeping both book — Chris Claremont

I don't need any explanation about what you do with your life. You and I ... we grew up together,and that's it. Yeah, we shared a lot of stuff back then, and we were there for each other when it mattered.
But neither one of us can fit into the clothes we used to wear , and this relationship between us is just the same.
It doesn't fit in our lives any longer.
We don't ... fit anymore. And listen., I didn't mean to get pissy in the truck, but I think you need to be clear on this.
You and I? We have a past. That's it.
That's ... all we'll ever have (Blay to Qhuinn) ... — J.R. Ward

It is only because a dreamer has temporarily lost the desire to turn his eyes toward more distant horizons that he believes he inhabits a reality perfectly complete in itself, in need of no further explanation. He does not see that this secondary world rests upon no foundations, has no larger story, and persists as an apparent unity only so long as he has forgotten how to question its curious omissions and contradictions. — David Bentley Hart

If you wanted to show a mirror to people that says, 'You've been drunk on money,' they're not going to want to see it. But if you reflected that mirror on another time they'd be willing to. People will need an explanation of where we are and where we've been, and 'The Great Gatsby' can provide that explanation. — Baz Luhrmann

There's a safe!" Gary said, sticking his head back out. "Great, maybe we'll see who he willed his gold watch to," I said, looking at the zombie's feet, which were still twitching. It was creeping the hell out of me, but at least she wasn't telling me she wanted some Dr. Scholl's or something. "Gun safe, Mike." Gary said as if I were Gary Busey. Does that need any further explanation? "I — Mark Tufo

Climate change hype has grave real world consequences. It gets rich countries to adopt silly policies and to impose devastating eco-imperialism on poor countries. The world's rich millions can afford environmental extremism; its poor billions can't. Climate change pseudo-science about human causality has been exposed repeatedly. What's less appreciated is that there aren't more natural disasters in need of an explanation. — Leon Louw

A God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple. His existence is going to need a mammoth explanation in its own right. — Richard Dawkins

You will reply that reality hasn't the slightest need to be of interest. And I'll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypotheses may not. In the hypothesis you have postulated, chance intervenes largely. Here lies a dead rabbi; I should prefer a purely rabbinical explanation; not the imaginary mischances of an imaginary robber. — Jorge Luis Borges

Yahweh doesn't owe us an explanation for what He does. He's sovereign over all: 'Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens - what can you do? They are deeper than the depths of the grave - what can you know?... If he comes along and confines you in prison... who can oppose him?' So you see? I don't need to know why anymore. — Lynn Austin

That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplification of our culture. — John Kenneth Galbraith

At the heart of sulk lies a confusing mixture of intense anger and an equally intense desire not to communicate what one is angry about. The sulker both desperately needs the other person to understand and yet remains utterly committed to doing nothing to help them do so. The very need to explain forms the kernel of the insult: if the partner requires an explanation, he or she is clearly not worth of one. We should add that it is a privilege to be the recipient of a sulk: it means the other person respects and trusts us enough to think we should understand their unspoken hurt. It is one of the odder gifts of love. — Alain De Botton

Barry Schlenker's self-identity theory (1982) asserts that self-presentation is an attempt to control information about your identity before real or imagined audiences - including yourself. People try to provide explanations of their own conduct; they try to construct an identity that is satisfying to themselves and that explains their behavior in a favorable light. One of the criteria of a good explanation is believability; that is, explanations must fit with existing knowledge. Schlenker argues that people are not motivated to attain cognitive consistency as an end in itself; rather, they need to provide a believable and self -beneficial account of their conduct, and consistency is a by-product of that. The need to provide explanations for your conduct results in the construction of an internally consistent view of reality. — James Kennedy

People need a consistent explanation of the cross of Christ and what it accomplished. Christ's atoning work is the centerpiece of the gospel and the only solution for humanity's estrangement from our Creator. — R.C. Sproul

Rafe couldn't help wishing that passion was for him as a man, rather than an experiment. If only he weren't so ugly. His gaze dropped to his bad arm, studying the diminished scars where Cassandra had cut him. Could she do something about his face? Would she then find him appealing? His mouth twisted into a scowl of self-loathing at the ridiculous thought. He should be grateful that she had the power to heal his arm. He didn't need affection. He needed power to protect his people and defeat his enemies. He needed his arm back. Yet when he looked at her flushed cheeks and lush lips, Rafe couldn't help but want more. Her beauty must be driving him mad. That was the only logical explanation. The — Brooklyn Ann

Someone once said that if you sat a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years, one of them would eventually type out all of Hamlet by chance. But when we find the text of Hamlet, we don't wonder whether it came from chance and monkeys. Why then does the atheist use that incredibly improbable explanation for the universe? Clearly, because it is his only chance of remaining an atheist. At this point we need a psychological explanation of the atheist rather than a logical explanation of the universe. — Peter Kreeft

But to return to my own case, I thought more modestly of my book and it would be inaccurate even to say that I thought of those who would read it as "my" readers. For it seemed to me that they would not be "my" readers but the readers of their own selves, my book being merely a sort of magnifying glass like those which the optician at Combray used to offer his customers - it would be my book, but with its help I would furnish them with the means of reading what lay inside themselves. So that I should not ask them to praise me or to censure me, but simply to tell me whether "it really is like that," I should ask them whether the words that they read within themselves are the same as those which I have written (though a discrepancy in this respect need not always be the consequence of an error on my part, since the explanation could also be that the reader had eyes for which my book was not a suitable instrument). — Marcel Proust

Science needs the intuition and metaphorical power of the arts, and the arts need the fresh blood of science ... Interpretation is the logical channel of consilient explanation between science and the arts. The arts ... also nourish our craving for the mystical. — E. O. Wilson

I don't kill humans any longer."
Relief crept over my body like a drug. I hadn't realized how tightly I'd been holding myself, like a wind-up toy that had been tightened to the point of the spring snapping. "Oh," I managed faintly. He waited while I absorbed his explanation, allowing me to think in silence.
"So," I remarked slowly, "do you get all the, uh, vitamins you need that way?" It was the first thought to cross my mind. — D.S. Williams

From CHAOS?
Trust the imagination. Peace is knowing without need for detailed explanation. Joy is openness to possibility. Sing your humming heart free from the heat of all creation. Swim into cool whirling coloured pools. Sleep on rock of consciousness. — Jay Woodman

Let me end with an explanation of why I believe the move into space to be a human imperative. It seems to me obvious in too many ways to need listing that we cannot much longer depend upon our planet's relatively fragile ecosystem to handle the realities of the human tomorrow. Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving. — Gene Roddenberry

People struggling with life in a fallen world often want explanations when what they really need is imagination. — Paul David Tripp

And my difficulties were these: I found each plant, each new turn in the road, each new turn in the weather, from cold to hot and then back again, each new set of boulders so absorbing, so new, and the newness so absorbing, and I was so in need of an explanation for each thing, that I was often in tears, troubling myself with questions, such as what am I and what is the thing in front of me. — Jamaica Kincaid

All the supernatural yarns need a realist explanation and a supernatural one. — David Mitchell

It's sorcery," Cade said, as if explaining things to a slow child. "That's the explanation." "I'm a scientist," she said. "I need a little more than 'a wizard did it. — Christopher Farnsworth

No matter what stage we are at in our spiritual journey, whether we are beginners or have been traveling a spiritual path for years or decades; and no matter how awakened or asleep we are, there is always absolute truthfulness - the oneness and nothingness - which is our true nature. Our true nature doesn't need any explanation or demonstration to know itself. It just knows because knowing is part of its nature. This true nature resides in everyone. This is the meaning of the statement that everyone is already enlightened. — Ilchi Lee

Because Shadowhunters must also guard mundanes from knowing about our world, you must also sometimes take control of the writing of that history. By this I mean you have to cover things up. You need to provide a plausible explanation for what's happened - one that does not involve demons."
"Like Men in Black," Simon whispered to George. — Cassandra Clare

In ridiculing a pathetic human fallacy, which seeks explanation where none need be sought and which multiplies unnecessary assumptions, one should not mimic primitive ontology in order to challenge it. Better to dispose of the needless assumption altogether. This holds true for everything from Noah's flood to the Holocaust. — Christopher Hitchens

Make it so good and so clear that it doesn't need any further explanation. — Shel Silverstein

God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. — Douglas Adams

Also, he's deathly afraid of hearing something along the lines of "You know, kid, we just had a certain difference of opinion" as the beginning and end of conversation. He's afraid because that's exactly the kind of explanation he usually gets, and it makes him depressed. It interferes with his need to feel grown up. He has all the reasons to be afraid right now. The temptation to get rid of him with a pair of meaningless sentences is overwhelming. The explanations will only invite more questions, and then eventually I will run out of answers. But Smoker is impossible to get rid of. He opens his palm and all of himself is right there on it, and he just hands that to you. You can't throw away this naked soul, pretending like you don't understand what it is you've been offered and why. That's where his power comes from, out of this devastating openness. I've never met anyone like that before. — Mariam Petrosyan

You need to hear what I have to say, she said. Donald waited. What explanation or apology was there? She had taken from him what little Thurman had left behind. Her father had destroyed the world. Anna had destroyed Donald's. He waited to hear what she had to say. — Hugh Howey

Historians need to treat a participant's own explanation of events with a certain scepticism. It is often the statement made with an eye to the future that is the most suspect. — Julian Barnes

When you and I hurt deeply, what we really need is not an explanation from God but a revelation of God. We need to see how great God is; we need to recover our lost perspective on life. Things get out of proportion when we are suffering, and it takes a vision of something bigger than ourselves to get life's dimensions adjusted again — Warren W. Wiersbe

From the beginning, I knew intuitively that if nothing else, music was safe, and that nobody could tell me anything about it. Music didn't need a middleman, whereas all the other things in school needed some kind of explanation. — Eric Clapton

Failure has a thousand explanations. Success doesn't need one. — Alec Guinness

You should know something, Miriam ... God changed our futures yesterday. There's no other explanation for what happened. And it wasn't the first God. If you ever need hlep, you might want to try the second God. — Ted Dekker

I see the origin of the irresistible attraction of metaphor and analogy, the explanation of our strange and permanent need to find similarities in things. I can scarcely refrain from suspecting some ancient, diffused magnetism; a call from the center of things; a dim, almost lost memory, or perhaps a presentiment, pointless in so puny a being, of a universal syntax. — Roger Caillois

And the beauty of the anthropic principle is that it tells us, against all intuition, that a chemical model need only predict that life will arise on one planet in a billion billion to give us a good and entirely satisfying explanation for the presence of life here. — Richard Dawkins

The ordinary logic is also jealous of the explanation of negation as relation, because seeming to take away the principle of contradiction. Plato, as far as we know, is the first philosopher who distinctly enunciated this principle; and though we need not suppose him to have been always consistent with himself, there is no real inconsistency between his explanation of the negative and the principle of contradiction. Neither the Platonic notion of the negative as the principle of difference, nor the Hegelian identity of Being and Not-being, at all touch the principle of contradiction. For what is asserted about Being and Not-Being only relates to our most abstract notions, and in no way interferes with the principle of contradiction employed in the concrete. Because Not-being is identified with Other, or Being with Not-being, this does not make the proposition 'Some have not eaten' any the less a contradiction of 'All have eaten. — Plato

To create a collection, you need a narrative - an explanation to tell the team. — Dries Van Noten

The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticism of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from it's indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence. — Thomas Jefferson

A great deal of the universe does not need any explanation. Elephants, for instance. Once molecules have learnt to compete and to create other molecules in their own image, elephants, and things resembling elephants, will in due course be found roaming around the countryside ... Some of the things resembling elephants will be men. — Peter Atkins

Yet opponents should not herald the demise of evangelicalism. Although much of popular evangelicalism cannot intellectually meet the analyses that call it into question as a viable explanation for human origins and destiny, for most evangelicals it does not need to. Because of the transition from comprehending their religion as a set of doctrines to conceptualizing their religion as an emotional relationship with God, evangelicals have actually made their religion more resilient to intellectual challenges. Calling into question evangelicalism's intellectual foundation ultimately does not undermine the religion because for many evangelicals their adherence was never about those foundations anyway. Evangelicalism becomes true because it FEELS true. Modern evangelicalism has largely transitioned to a new form of truth, one based not on intellectual assent to propositions but on emotional connections. — Todd M. Brenneman

No need for explanation you know your scenario... I know my scenario. — Deyth Banger

As for slavery, there is no need for me to speak of its bad aspects. The only thing requiring explanation is the good side of slavery. I do not mean indirect slavery, the slavery of proletariat; I mean direct slavery, the slavery of the Blacks in Surinam, in Brazil, in the southern regions of North America. Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. ... Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance. — Karl Marx

A story is told of one of the most revered abbots of fourth-century Egypt, Pachomius the Great, who refused to see his sister Maria when she came to visit him. The explanation was his own urgent need to avoid someone who might entangle him in the bonds of family feeling, and he was even praised for his self-control in being able to forgo the pleasure of her visit. It is not surprising that women sometimes found the self-involvement of male ascetics irritating. — Kate Cooper

(Ren's) eyes were sad but resigned. "And where will you go?"
I couldn't keep the fear out of my reply. "I don't know."
"Please don't do this," he whispered. "Come back with me. We'll talk to Logan; there has to be an explanation. The Keepers need us; we're the alphas. We'll figure this out. They won't hurt you. I won't let them. — Andrea Cremer

Just as I know the usual rules of law enforcement, I also know the exceptions and invoke those frequently. I don't feel a need to bog the reader down with an explanation of why the procedures are realistic, as long as I know that there is, in fact, an explanation. — Alafair Burke

Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United States. — Bertrand Russell

We need to know not only what is done but what is purposed and said by those who shape the destines of states and realms." Horace Greeley — Harold Holzer

Sorry," she said, "I got out as fast as I could, but I had to stay and socialize. Protocol, you know."
"Explain protocol," Nell said. This was how she always talked to the Primer.
"At the place we're going, you need to watch your manners. Don't say 'explain this' or 'explain that.'"
"Would it impose on your time unduly to provide me with a concise explanation of the term protocol?" Nell said.
Again Rita made that nervous laugh and looked at Nell with an expression that looked like poorly concealed alarm. — Neal Stephenson

One explanation was offered by Alice Miller: "Many people continue to pass on the cruel deeds and attitudes to which they were subjected as children, so that they can continue to idealize their parents."16 Her premise is that we have a powerful, unconscious need to believe that everything our parents did to us was really for our own good and was done out of love. It's too threatening for many of us even to entertain the possibility that they weren't entirely well-meaning - or competent. So, in order to erase any doubts, we do the same things to our own children that our parents did to us. — Alfie Kohn

Our true nature doesn't need any explanation or demonstration to know itself. It just knows because knowing is part of its nature. — Ilchi Lee

I didn't sleep with Brodick," she blurted out. "I have no need for a priest."
"Yes, you did too."
"Alec, it isn't polite to contradict your elders."
"But, Mama ... "
"Hush, sweetheart."
Gillian glared at Brodick. He could easily correct this horrid misunderstanding if he would only offer a quick explanation.
He wasn't inclined. He winked at her. "I didn't know a face could get that red," he remarked.
"Do explain," she demanded.
"Explain what?" he asked, feigning innocence.
She turned to Judith. "We were camping ... and it isn't what it sounds like ... I did sleep, and when I awakened ... they were all there ... "
"They?" Iain asked.
"His soldiers."
"You slept with his soldiers too? — Julie Garwood

All right, McCauley. Just what the hell are you doing in bed with my sister? I need an explanation, and a good one!" "There's a damned good one," he said lightly, addressing Jesse but his eyes narrowing on Daniel. "She's my wife. — Heather Graham

A great photograph needs no explanation; it functions by suggestion. There is no need to be explicit. — Mary Ellen Mark

Love is a sensation caused by temptation when a guy sticks his location into a girl's destination to increase the population for the next generation. Do you understand my explanation or do you need a demonstration? — A. J. McLean

I'm sorry. No." Her mouth continued to move, too fast, pouring out a stream of
explanation and apology.
Jim didn't need to understand all the words. "Sorry, sorry, sorry, but no," they all said. — Bonnie Dee

God is one answer to our need to explain ourselves, to make sense of ourselves. But the moment you just accept yourself, then no explanation is needed, and god is everything together and nothing in particular. — Adrienne Maree Brown

I don't accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me 'Well, you haven't been there, have you? You haven't seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid' - then I can't even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we'd got, and we've now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don't think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don't think the matter calls for even-handedness at all. — Douglas Adams

Can't it just exist without an explanation? Why do we have to assign meaning to art? Do we need to understand everything? Maybe it exists to evoke feelings and emotions
period. Not to mean something. — Matthew Quick

There is no pleasure like leaving
before dawn in last night's clothes.
Light snow or thick dew in the grass-
no one's passed this way before.
The note you left needed only a few words,
no explanation where lies could creep in.
Your eyes, blinked clear, won't squint or glance off,
it's the stars that turn their faces away.
He or she is or is not the one you love
and you cannot stay. The dark
turns to mist and the mist cannot stay
but for once there's no need for alarm.
You're getting a good head start.
Maybe the world isn't made of dust.
Maybe you won't make another mistake.
You're as young as you'll ever be. — Dean Young

Our challenge as introverts is to adopt the attitude, based on the introversion assumption, that your need to retreat requires no explanation - it is self-evident. — Laurie A. Helgoe

So why are you here?"
He lifted his hands and made as if to lay them on her arms, but just before they touched he stopped and let them fall. Then, simply, as though it were all the explanation she could ever need, he said, "Because I love you. — Aprilynne Pike

Love seeks nothing other than its own expression. Love never changes. It doesn't need explanation. It is the space between two people that makes them yearn for someone who becomes God. — Vatsal Surti

Life is mundane, and does not need a weird explanation. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

We need to raise the level of our game in terms of explaining the planetary warming by infrared absorption of CO2 etc. The missing area of understanding seems to be the actual physical mechanism. Lets target an explanation at an audience that has taken 1 year each of undergraduate physics and chemistry, plus calculus. Once we have something that is convincing at this level, we can work on how to communicate this to the interested public (i.e. those that hang out in the climate blogosphere). Willis Eschenbach's help is needed in translating this for the WUWT crowd. — Judith Curry

Abraham didn't say, "What do you want?" He didn't say, "Yes?" He answered with a statement: "Here I am." Whatever God needs or wants, Abraham is wholly present for Him, without conditions or reservations or need for explanation. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Without need for excuse or elaborate theodicies, malevolence explains the world that is, and by the strength and rigidity of this explanation an imprint - an outline - of the Creator who cherishes His anonymity is revealed. — John Zande

I think, that you can meet someone one day, who possesses the eyes you never had but always needed; the vision to see backwards and forwards and all around, the other wing that you need to complete your flight. And I think it can just happen, suddenly, without explanation! And then I think, it would be good to keep that person, you'll always have those eyes, and always have two wings. — C. JoyBell C.

A work of art does not need an explanation. The work has to speak for itself. The work may be subject to many interpretations, but only one was in the mind of the artist. Some artists say to make the work readable for the public is an artist's responsibility, but I don't agree with that. The only responsibility to be absolutely truthful to the self. My work disturbs people and nobody wants to be disturbed They are not fully aware of the effect my work has on them, but they know it is disturbing. — Louise Bourgeois

Even if these researchers do see the need to address the problem immediately, though they have obligations and legitimate interests elsewhere, including being funded for other research. With luck, the ideas discussed in Good Calories, Bad Calories may be rigorously tested in the next twenty years. If confirmed, it will be another decade or so after that, at least, before our public health authorities actively change their official explanation for why we get fat, how that leads to illness, and what we have to do to avoid or reverse those fates. As I was told by a professor of nutrition at New York University after on of my lectures, the kind of change I'm advocating could take a lifetime to be accepted. — Gary Taubes

God's Love EXPLANATION: Just as Hosea went after his unfaithful wife to bring her back, so the Lord pursues us with his love. His love is tender, loyal, unchanging, and undying. No matter what, God still loves us. IMPORTANCE: Have you forgotten God and become disloyal to him? Don't let prosperity diminish your love for him or let success blind you to your need for his love. Restoration EXPLANATION: Although God will discipline his people for sin, he encourages and restores those who have repented. True repentance opens the way to a new beginning. God forgives and restores. IMPORTANCE: There is still hope for those who turn back to God. No loyalty, achievement, or honor can be compared to loving him. Turn to the Lord while the offer is still good. No matter how far you have strayed, God is willing to forgive you. — Anonymous

Honk!" he yelled. "Honk honk honk honk honk honk honk!"
His classmates agreed. — Lev Grossman

How do you explain why the sun rises every morning? How do you explain the stars in the sky? How do you understand why no two snowflakes are alike? Some things just are, baby. And this is one of them. I can't give you pretty, dressed-up answers that are so polished they don't even sound sincere. I can only tell you that for me, it's you. It's always going to be you and nobody else. Fuck explaining it. I don't need an explanation. I just need you. — Maya Banks

Life may not always fall into neat chapters, and you may not always get the satisfying ending you're looking for, but sometimes a good explanation is all the rewrite you need. — Harlan Coben

She's what my mother used to call "plain," by which she meant an unremarkable-looking girl who was worse off than "the ugly ones." That's how she would say it, and her explanation for such a vile statement couldn't have been more logical. At least in her limited way of thinking, and also in Dorothy's because she shares the same point of view. Pretty girls don't try at all because they don't have to. Ugly girls try harder for obvious reasons. That leaves plain girls, which usually is synonymous with smart girls, and they need to try but don't know any better or can't be bothered. — Patricia Cornwell

I took care of young adults with cystic fibrosis when I was in my residency training and found this to be a disease that was desperately in need of some explanation. — Francis Collins

Also, the world contains a lot of people. The statistics of power-law distributions and the events of the past two centuries agree in telling us that a small number of perpetrators can cause a great deal of damage. If somewhere among the world's six billion people there is a zealot who gets his hands on a stray nuclear bomb, he could single-handedly send the statistics through the roof. But even if he did, we would still need an explanation of why homicide rates fell a hundredfold, why slave markets and debtors' prisons have vanished, and why the Soviets and Americans did not go to war over Cuba, to say nothing of Canada and Spain over flatfish. — Steven Pinker

The idea of Zen is to catch life as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. I raise my hand ; I take a book from the other side of the desk ; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighbouring wood: - in all these I am practising Zen, I am living Zen. No wordy discussions is necessary, nor any explanation. I do not know why - and there is no need of explaining, but when the sun rises the whole world dances with joy and everybody's heart is filled with bliss. If Zen is at all conceivable, it must be taken hold of here. — D.T. Suzuki

The Natural Laws rarely change, but on certain occasions they would do something extraordinary, without explanation. In the end, they don't need to answer to anyone, least of all us. — Dan Cuthbert

How then do we recover from depression and despair? It is only by crying out to God and accepting His helping hands that are we able to overcome our greatest sorrows. When we finally choose to lay down our wills and surrender our complaints, trusting in His goodness, we permit Him to mold and work into us the very image of His son, Jesus Christ. Through our yielding to His sovereignty and by declaring His right to have His way in all things, without the slightest need for an explanation, we enter into an even deeper and more intimate walk. — Cheryl Zelenka

To fall in love is a legendary action that doesn't need any explanation. — Auliq Ice

That was the marvelous thing about going back to one's roots; there was no need for explanation. — Alexander McCall Smith

One year, on vacation in Hawaii, I was relaxing at a beach, watching whales in the distance, when a fisherman, obviously a local, drove up in his pick-up truck. He got out with a dozen fishing rods. Not one. A dozen. He baited each hook, cast all the lines into the ocean, and set the rods in the sand. Intrigued, I wandered over and asked him for an explanation. "It's simple," he said. "I love fish but I hate fishin'. I like eatin', not catchn'. So I cast out 12 lines. By sunset, some of them will have caught a fish. Never all of 'em. So if I only cast one or two I might go hungry. But 12 is enough so some always catch. Usually there's enough for me and extras to sell to local restaurants. This way, I live the life I want." The simple fellow had unwittingly put his finger on a powerful secret. The flaw in most businesses, that keeps them always in desperate need - which suppresses prices - is: too few lines cast in the ocean. — Dan S. Kennedy

You don't need an explanation for everything, Recognize that there are such things as miracles - events for which there are no ready explanations. Later knowledge may explain those events quite easily. — Harry Browne

Let's just say it's magic." "Let's just say that I need a little more explanation than that if I'm going to go along with this." John sighed. "Okay, have you heard of nanotechnology?" "Yeah. Microscopic robots, right?" "Right, and imagine they can make millions of these robots and embed them in a liquid, so that you now have a liquid infused with the power of all these machines. Got it?" "All right." "Now imagine if, instead of tiny robots, it's magic. — David Wong

The days of my youth I remember as nearly always in need of explanation, and not as much fun as advertised in the promotions for board games and breakfast cereal. — Lewis H. Lapham

Like a wildflower, poetry does not need explanation. It only needs to touch our emotions. — Debasish Mridha

Many of us will also find it hard to abandon our belief that in man himself there dwells an impulse towards perfection, which has brought him to his present heights of intellectual prowess and ethical sublimation, and from which it might be expected that his development into superman will be ensured. But I do not believe in the existence of such an inner impulse, and I see no way of preserving this pleasing illusion. The development of man up to now does not seem to me to need any explanation differing from that of animal development, and the restless striving towards further perfection which may be observed in a minority of human beings is easily explicable as the result of that repression of instinct upon which what is most valuable in human culture is built. — Sigmund Freud

When life caves in, you do not need reasons
you need comfort. You do not need some answers
you need someone. And Jesus does not come to us with an explanation
He comes to us with His presence. — Bob Benson

Among the famous sayings of the Church fathers none is better known than Augustine's, "Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee." The great saint states here in few words the origin and interior history of the human race. God made us for Himself: that is the only explanation that satisfies the heart of a thinking man, whatever his wild reason may say. Should faulty education and perverse reasoning lead a man to conclude otherwise, there is little that any Christian can do for him. For such a man I have no message. My appeal is addressed to those who have been previously taught in secret by the wisdom of God; I speak to thirsty hearts whose longings have been wakened by the touch of God within them, and such as they need no reasoned proof. Their restless hearts furnish all the proof they need. — Anonymous

Equally widespread is the opposite doctrine of an "eternal antisemitism" in which Jew-hatred is a normal and natural reaction to which history gives only more or less opportunity. Outbursts need no special explanation because they are natural consequences of an eternal problem. That this doctrine was adopted by professional antisemites is a matter of course; it gives the best possible alibi for all horrors. If — Hannah Arendt

I don't like the idea of "understanding" a film. I don't believe that rational understanding is an essential element in the reception of any work of art. Either a film has something to say to you or it hasn't. If you are moved by it, you don't need it explained to you. If not, no explanation can make you moved by it. — Federico Fellini

There are an awful lot of things going on that need understanding and explanation, but - to put it mildly - the world is a mess. — Madeleine Albright

Clarity is like casting light. Clarity allows us to see better and eases the path of understanding. And just as one light source need not deny the illumination of another but can add to it, the understanding gained through one explanation can stand to gain from another, even if it is different in approach. The truth is more exclusive... — Cyrus Panjvani