Permutations Quotes & Sayings

Their books are also different. Works of fiction contain a single plot, with all its imaginable permutations. Those of a philosophical nature invariably include both the thesis and the antithesis, the rigorous pro and con of a doctrine. A book which does not contain its counterbook is considered incomplete. — Jorge Luis Borges

Through all permutations and youthful poetry, I came to believe that the film actor was the great "literateur" of his time. — Jack Nicholson

To be less dumb, remember your propensity for post hoc postulation and the power positive permutations of the placebo effect have to pollute your perspicacity. — David McRaney

Most of my work comes from ideas. I can usually do only a few versions of each idea. Land Art and Body Art were particularly strong concepts which allowed for a lot of permutations. But nevertheless, I found myself wanting to move onward into something else. — Dennis Oppenheim

Color is a big part of what I do. It's like music. There are only so many notes in the scale, but there are endless permutations; there's no limit to the number. Color on the walls or furniture can reflect back and distort the reality of the true colors of lipsticks and eye shadow. — Evelyn Lauder

The responses of friendliness, compassion, and appreciation that I felt ...
all situational permutations of basic goodwill
depended on my mind's being relaxed and alert enough to notice both what was happening around me and what was happening as my internal response. [p.50] — Sylvia Boorstein

Who has that absolute trust, to fling yourself into mortality, to let it do with you as it will, with all the permutations and possibilities of as it will, be it horror or ecstasy or boredom? — Frederick Lenz

Here was a fragment of Goddess myth that, through all its permutations, had somehow escaped being turned on its head. It was the perfect springboard for the sort of novel I wanted to write. — Joan D. Vinge

Watching movies (Titanic, Flirting with Disaster, Mannequin, Thelma and Louise, Rushmore, The Goonies, She's Having a Baby, it mattered very little) was a kind of prayer: She knew the characters as well as she knew herself, as well as she knew anything there was to know, and she could chart and rechart their movements and secrets and misunderstandings endlessly, reflecting in any number of new permutations on all of it, each time. Again and again. They were acquaintances - people she'd known her whole life and understood well, people incapable of letting her down by changing or disappearing or offering up the unexpected. The League of Their Own tears were purely for catharsis. When she was done she would reemerge, reborn. She would make new mistakes. Or maybe none at all. Okay, — Elisa Albert

When you have a situation that's destructive, when there's tremendous inhumanity everywhere, you see how humanity survives in all of its different permutations. — Leslie Cockburn

Hatred was easy. The permutations constant over the years: A stranger at a fair who palmed my crotch through my shorts. A man on the sidewalk who lunged at me, then laughed when I flinched. The night an older man took me to a fancy restaurant when I wasn't even old enough to like oysters. Not yet twenty. The owner joined our table, and so did a famous filmmaker. The men fell into a heated discussion with no entry point for me: I fidgeted with my heavy cloth napkin, drank water. Staring at the wall.

"Eat your vegetables," the filmmaker suddenly snapped at me. "You're a growing girl."

The filmmaker wanted me to know what I already knew: I had no power. He saw my need and used it against me. — Emma Cline

A studio is an absolute labyrinth of possibilities - this is why records take so long to make because there are millions of permutations of things you can do. The most useful thing you can do is to get rid of some of those options before you start — Brian Eno

Rumors had their own classic epidemiology. Each started with a single germinating event. Information spread from that point, mutating and interbreeding - a conical mass of threads, expanding into the future from the apex of their common birthplace. Eventually, of course, they'd wither and die; the cone would simply dissipate at its wide end, its permutations senescent and exhausted.
There were exceptions, of course. Every now and then a single thread persisted, grew thick and gnarled and unkillable: conspiracy theories and urban legends, the hooks embedded in popular songs, the comforting Easter-bunny lies of religious doctrine. These were the memes: viral concepts, infections of conscious thought. Some flared and died like mayflies. Others lasted a thousand years or more, tricked billions into the endless propagation of parasitic half-truths. — Peter Watts

It always amazes me that just when I think there's nothing left to do in photography and that all permutations and possibilities have been exhausted, someone comes along and puts the medium to new use, and makes it his or her own, yanks it out of this kind of amateur status, and makes it as profound and as moving and as formally interesting as any other medium. — Chuck Close

If you have used colour throughout most of your artistic life, try just black and white ... it will take your painting to another dimension where tone and form in all its permutations reign supreme. — David Luiz

When people go to the theater, people say they want something different, but what they really want is something the same with slight permutations. To really not know what is going to happen next is a hard thing. — James Gunn

Fleet Foxes will never, ever, under no circumstances, from now until the world chokes on gas fumes, sign to a major label. This includes all subsidiaries or permutations thereunder. Till we die. — Robin Pecknold

Joy cannot be confused with the mere absence sorrow, misinterpreted as experiencing minimal despair, or misunderstood as living without crippling trepidation. Bliss necessarily encompasses uncompromising acceptance of life's defining permutations. Emotional harmony necessitates beholding the pleasant and unpleasant exigencies of life while expressing unstinting appreciation for the ordinary and the extraordinary events in our lives. Joyfulness transcends the variations in physical and emotional demands exerted upon us. Elation for life allows us to rise above environmental determinates and associated stresses that might otherwise vex our souls including death and other sorrowful events. — Kilroy J. Oldster

There are 100 billion neurons in the adult human brain, and each neuron makes something like 1,000 to 10,000 contacts with other neurons in the brain. Based on this, people have calculated that the number of permutations and combinations of brain activity exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe. — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

We know that modern art tends to realise these conditions: in this sense it becomes a veritable theatre of metamorphoses and permutations. A theatre where nothing is fixed, a labyrinth without a thread (Ariadne has hung herself). The work of art leaves the domain of representation in order to become 'experience', transcendental empiricism or science of the sensible. — Anonymous

Life is the blossoming of flowers in the spring, the ripening of fruit in the fall, the rhythm of the earth and of nature. Life is the cry of cicadas signalling the end of summer, migratory birds winging south in a transparent autumn sky, fish frolicking in a stream. Life is the joy beautiful music installs in us, the thrilling sight of a mountain peak reddened by the rising sun, the myriad combinations and permutations of visible and invisible phenomena. Life is all things. — Daisaku Ikeda

Because it is a radical act of freedom, creative achievement is a heroic process that requires, in all its permutations, specific strengths of character. — Robert Grudin

I think a lot about the might-have-beens, the what-ifs. About the little places in history where one tiny, minute change can lead to a new and unimaginable future. It's like chess, so many permutations, probabilities, choices, cross-roads ... I think a lot about the future, our future. And I see uncertainty. — Lavie Tidhar

What of Thought? The Crew had developed a kind of shorthand whereby they could set forth any visions that might come their way. Conversations at the Spoon had become little more than proper nouns, literary allusions, critical or philosophical terms linked in certain ways. Depending on how you arranged the building blocks at your disposal, you were smart or stupid. Depending on how others reacted they were In or Out. The number of blocks, however, was finite.
"Mathematically, boy," he told himself, "if nobody else original comes along, they're bound to run out of arrangements someday. What then?" What indeed. This sort of arranging and rearranging was Decadence, but the exhaustion of all possible permutations and combinations was death.
It scared Eigenvalue, sometimes. He would go in back and look at the set of dentures. Teeth and metals endure. — Thomas Pynchon

The lunatic populism that preceded the Pearl Harbor bombing is astonishing in its permutations, its crisscrossings. Guys like [Catholic priest and controversial radio broadcaster] Father Coughlin and [racist and anti-Semitic agitator and founder of the Christian Nationalist Crusade] Gerald L.K. Smith started out as share-the-wealth socialists. — James Ellroy

It is a quintessential example of the whirling kinetics that drive a Keaton film, in which not just the medium but the human body- the permutations of the sinews, the shock of the limbs -seems infinitely elastic, an unruly instument to be wilded with a cheeky kind of grace. — Edward McPherson

I'm sure there was some part of his soul was intrinsically happy, but he probably had to go through some permutations to really get that to blossom. I'm sure Dad had his challenges, but I think that joy was there from the beginning and he had to find a way to make his life support that and express that. — Jennifer Grant

I could see the combinations and permutations flutter through their minds. This was Boulder. It could easily be two moms. Two dads. A dad, a mom, and an orangutan. Three Amish hipsters and a transgendered Aboriginal mermaid. — Bill Konigsberg

In the early '80s, I was blown away when I began to hear some of the earliest hip-hop songs, and I'm fascinated by all the permutations the genre has gone through. — Simon De Pury

At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans. To perceive this and to do something to change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of perception akin to a religious conversion. Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society. — Arthur Conan Doyle

The entire structure of the human mind blocks out most of infinity. To a certain extent it's necessary because otherwise one would be insane, unless you have a very developed mind to deal with the endless permutations of infinity simultaneously. — Frederick Lenz

It is impossible to manage the health care requirements of tens of millions of American citizens at the federal level. It is impossible to manage all of the permutations of people's economic aspirations and lives through a complex tax code. It is impossible to try to second-guess the market. It is impossible, from a managerial standpoint, for the federal government to do the things it is trying to do today. — Frederick W. Smith

THERE WERE AT least two ways to solve any problem: from the beginning, which was the usual approach; and from the end, which was not. Likewise, every theorem could be proved either directly, using incremental logic, or indirectly, by conjecturing the negative of the hypothesis and demonstrating a contradiction. Thus there were at least four permutations to choose from. — Ethan Canin

Of all the questions I get asked as an undocumented immigrant in the United States, there are two - asked in various permutations via email, social media or in person - that chill me to the bone: 'Why don't you just make yourself legal?' And: 'Why don't you get in the back of the line?' — Jose Antonio Vargas

The Internet and all its lures are much, much harder than anything I've ever encountered. If you're writing on a computer, the very instrument you're writing on is already tainted by the world out there in all its permutations. — Dani Shapiro

Presently, I sense within me the slightest touch. The harmony of one chord lingers in my mind. It fuses, divides, searches
but for what? I open my eyes, position the fingers of my right hand on the buttons, and play out a series of permutations.
After a time, I am able, as if by will, to locate the first four notes. They drift down from inward skies, softly, as early morning sunlight. They find me; these are the notes I have been seeking.
I hold down the chord key and press the individual notes over and over again. The four notes seem to desire further notes, another chord. I strain to hear the chord that follows. The first four notes lead me to the next five, then to another chord and three more notes.
It is a melody. Not a complete song, but the first phrase of one. I play the three chords and twelve notes, also, over and over again. It is a song, I realize, I know. — Haruki Murakami

They were mere permutations of known quantities. There was no roundness or fullness in this world he now inhabited, everything was a dead shape mental arrangement, without life or being. — D.H. Lawrence

You grab the core essence of a true problem and swaddle it in the mad glittery ribbons of fantasy - and therein you find glorious new permutations of conflict. Reality expressed in mind-boggling ways. Reach for fantasy. Find the reality. — Chuck Wendig

You've clearly been charged with hiring a jack-of-all-trades. And Dr. Auden is that mythical creature you seek: fully qualified to teach British and American literature, women's studies, composition, creative writing, intermediate parasailing, advanced sword swallowing, and subcategories and permutations of the above. — Julie Schumacher

Life is full of permutations and combinations. Sometimes the order you do things matter sometimes it doesn't, but in order to find the solution in life you must work through each possibility presented to find your opportunity. — Gregory Willis

Edison was by far the most successful and, probably, the last exponent of the purely empirical method of investigation. Everything he achieved was the result of persistent trials and experiments often performed at random but always attesting extraordinary vigor and resource. Starting from a few known elements, he would make their combinations and permutations, tabulate them and run through the whole list, completing test after test with incredible rapidity until he obtained a clue. His mind was dominated by one idea, to leave no stone unturned, to exhaust every possibility. — Nikola Tesla

There are as many kinds of kisses as there are people on earth, as there are permutations and combinations of those people. No two people kiss alike - no two people fuck alike - but somehow the kiss is more personal, more individualized than the fuck. — Diane Di Prima

Feature-length film comedy is harder to pull off than the episodic sitcom - it doesn't have the same factory machinery up and running, teams of writers putting familiar characters through permutations - but that doesn't explain the widening quality gap that makes movie humor look like a genetic defective. — James Wolcott

For the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. And although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it. — Walter Lippmann

Everything is repeated, in a circle. History is a master because it teaches us that it doesn't exist. It's the permutations that matter. — Umberto Eco

A story unwritten is without beginning or end. But in its potential lies another story; and in the heartbeat before pen meets page, both stories exist at once, reflecting endless permutations of the other, before one of them disappears forever. — Nenia Campbell

Without question, love in its various permutations is what we need more of in this world. The idea that the concept of marriage will be sullied by same-sex marriage is ridiculous. Heterosexuals haven't been doing that well at it on their own. — Hugh Hefner

But is it not already an insult to call chess anything so narrow as a game? Is it not also a science, an art, hovering between these categories like Muhammad's coffin between heaven and earth, a unique yoking of opposites, ancient and yet eternally new, mechanically constituted and yet an activity of the imagination alone, limited to a fixed geometric area but unlimited in its permutations, constantly evolving and yet sterile, a cogitation producing nothing, a mathematics calculating nothing, an art without an artwork, an architecture without substance and yet demonstrably more durable in its essence and actual form than all books and works, the only game that belongs to all peoples and all eras, while no one knows what god put it on earth to deaden boredom, sharpen the mind, and fortify the spirit? — Stefan Zweig

The world becomes an apparently infinite, yet possibly finite, card game. Image combinations, permutations, comprise the world game. — Jim Morrison

It's all arbitrary. Had Faye attended a different school. Had her parents moved away. Had Peggy been sick that day. Had she chosen a different boy. And on and on. A thousand permutations, a million possibilities, and almost all of them kept Faye from sitting here in the sand with Henry. — Nathan Hill

And maybe I can let go of the sting and resentment of the path not taken, because the path not taken isn't just the inverse of who I am. It's an infinitely branching system that represents all the permutations of my life... — Blake Crouch

Once you become an elaborate and well-developed culture, anything from Rome or the Etruscans, for that matter, the food starts to become a representation of what the culture is. When the food can transcend being just fuel, that's when you start to see these different permutations. — Mario Batali

The human brain, it has been said, is the most complexly organised structure in the universe and to appreciate this you just have to look at some numbers. The brain is made up of one hundred billion nerve cells or "neurons" which is the basic structural and functional units of the nervous system. Each neuron makes something like a thousand to ten thousand contacts with other neurons and these points of contact are called synapses where exchange of information occurs. And based on this information, someone has calculated that the number of possible permutations and combinations of brain activity, in other words the numbers of brain states, exceeds the number of elementary particles in the known universe. — V.S. Ramachandran

More and more I'm aware that the permutations are not unlimited. — Russell Hoban

Let's face it: pop music in its myriad permutations will always be sexually presumptuous, racially controversial and, frequently, politically charged. — Dan Hill