Roughly Speaking Quotes & Sayings

People of superior refinement and of active disposition identify happiness with honour; for this is roughly speaking, the end of political life. — Aristotle.

Intel engineers did a rough calculation of what would happen had a 1971 Volkswagen Beetle improved at the same rate as microchips did under Moore's law. These are the numbers: Today, that Beetle would be able to go about three hundred thousand miles per hour. It would get two million miles per gallon of gas, and it would cost four cents! Intel engineers also estimated that if automobile fuel efficiency improved at the same rate as Moore's law, you could, roughly speaking, drive a car your whole life on one tank of gasoline. What — Thomas L. Friedman

I think, and I've thought this for a long time, that we live, roughly speaking, in the last generation of human beings. — Whitfield Diffie

Roughly speaking, any man with energy and enthusiasm ought to be able to bring at least a dozen others round to his opinion in the course of a year no matter how absurd that opinion might be. We see every day in politics, in business, in social life, large masses of people brought to embrace the most revolutionary ideas, sometimes within a few days. It is all a question of getting hold of them in the right way and working on their weak points. — Aleister Crowley

Roughly speaking: to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

The Sentimentalist, roughly speaking, is the man who wants to eat his cake and have it. He has no sense of honor about ideas; he will not see that one must pay for an idea as well as for anything else. He will have them all at once in one wild intellectual harem, no matter how much they quarrel and contradict each other. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Within the black community, roughly 60 percent of children are born to single moms. Moms don't have the emotional wherewithal to deal with their children. Their English is atrocious. Their speaking is atrocious. The dropout rate is horrendous. — Walter Dean Myers

They do not like to hear such expressions as "Negro literature," "Negro poetry," "African art," or "thinking black"; and, roughly speaking, we must concede that such things do not exist. These things did not figure in the courses which they pursued in school, and why should they? "Aren't we all Americans? Then, whatever is American is as much the heritage of the Negro as of any other group in — Carter G. Woodson

Philosophically speaking, from the Buddhist point of view, both human beings and animals possess what in Tibetan is called shepa, which can be roughly translated as "consciousness," albeit to different degrees of complexity. — Dalai Lama XIV

This purpose had not been preponderantly to make money
it had been rather to learn something and to do something. To learn something interesting, and to do something useful
this was, roughly speaking, the programme he had sketched, and of which the accident of his wife having an income appeared to him in no degree to modify the validity. — Henry James

Most people will solve the problems they know how to solve. Roughly speaking they will solve B+ problems instead of A+ problems. A+ problems are high impact problems for your company but they're difficult problems. — Keith Rabois

Roughly speaking, the greater the value of the metric tensor, the greater the crumpling of the sheet. No mattet how crumpled the sheet of paper, the metric tensor gives us a simple means of measuring its curvature at any point. If we flattened the crumpled sheet completely, then we would retrieve the formula of Pythagoras. — Michio Kaku

California and Italy are about the same size. Roughly speaking, California contains about 150,000 square miles, Italy about 120,000 square miles. They are not dissimilar in physical characteristics. They extend over a long distance from north to south, and each has an extensive coastline. Each is destitute of coal mines. Each produces large quantities of wheat. Each produces citrus and other fruits, olives, wine, and raisins. The climate is about the same, although California's is superior. They are in about the same zone. Rome lies in about the same latitude as San Francisco. Our state is one of the richest and most fertile of all the United States. Yet suppose that California were as populous as Italy - someday it will be. Suppose it had a population of millions. Could California, even with its vast resources, support an army of a quarter of a million men as Italy does? She could do it only as Italy does, by grinding the people into the dust with oppressive taxation. — Jerome Hart

Roughly speaking, this hypothesis asks whether drug use causes some of the diseases officially associated with AIDS, such as immunodeficiency and Kaposi's sarcoma. — Serge Lang

I mean to say, I know perfectly well that I've got, roughly speaking, half the amount of brain a normal bloke ought to possess. And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the love light in her eyes. I don't know how to account for it, but it is so."
"It may be Nature's provision for maintaining the balance of the species, sir. — P.G. Wodehouse

It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future. — A.J. Ayer

Roughly speaking, the more one pays for food, the more sweat and spittle one is obliged to eat with it ... Dirtiness is inherent in hotels and restaurants, because sound food is sacrificed to punctuality and smartness. — George Orwell

I have this rather amazing report which, roughly speaking, says I was the worst student the biology master had ever taught. — John Gurdon

Roughly speaking, I think it's accurate to say that a corporate elite of managers and owners governs the economy and the political system as well, at least in very large measure. — Noam Chomsky

Aristotle's metaphysics, roughly speaking, may be described as Plato diluted by common sense. He is difficult because Plato and common sense do not mix easily. — Bertrand Russell

Roughly speaking, when you are dealing with business firms operating in a competitive system, you can assume that they're going to act rationally. Why? Because someone in a firm who buys things at $10 and sells them for $8.00 isn't going to last very long in that firm. — Ronald Coase

I view the work I've done related to statistics and economics as, roughly speaking, how to do something without having to do everything. — Lars Peter Hansen

Modern art has to be what is called 'intense.' it is not easy to define being intense; but, roughly speaking, it means saying only one thing at a time, and saying it wrong. — G.K. Chesterton

Roughly speaking, the President of the United States knows what his job is. Constitution and custom spell it out, for him as well as for us. His wife has no such luck. The First Lady has no rules; rather each new woman must make her own. — Shana Alexander

hardly anyone knows what vainglory is anymore. If anything, people use the word "vain" or "vanity" today to mean being conceited or puffed up about yourself (usually in an unjustified way) - roughly speaking, it's a form of pride equivalent to having an inflated sense of your worth or importance. — Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung

There was of course no point in trying to monitor Eisman. He saw himself as a crusader, a champion of the underdog, an enemy of sinister authority. He saw himself, roughly speaking, as Spider-Man. — Michael Lewis

Walter Wagner, the man who had gone to court to stop the Large Hadron Collider from beginning operations. A serious charge had been leveled: the LHC was a hazard to the very existence of life on earth. JO: So, roughly speaking, what are the chances the world is going to be destroyed? Is it one in a million, one in a billion? WW: Well, the best we can say right now is about a one-in-two chance. JO: Hold on a second. It's ... fifty-fifty? WW: Yeah, fifty-fifty ... If you have something that can happen, and something that won't necessarily happen, it's going to either happen, or it's going to not happen, and, so, the best guess is one in two. JO: I'm not sure that's how probability works, Walter. — Sean Carroll

The Eater of Socks,' moaned the Senior Wrangler, with his eyes shut. 'How many tentacles would you expect it to have?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'I mean, roughly speaking? — Terry Pratchett

Those who speak of harmony and consensus should beware of what one might call the industrial chaplain view of reality. The idea, roughly speaking, is that there are greedy bosses on one side and belligerent workers on the other, while in the middle, as the very incarnation of reason, equity and moderation, stands the decent, soft-spoken, liberal-minded chaplain who tries selflessly to bring the two warring parties together. But why should the middle always be the most sensible place to stand? Why do we tend to see ourselves as in the middle and other people as on the extremes? After all, one person's moderation is another's extremism. People don't go around calling themselves a fanatic, any more than they go around calling themselves Pimply. Would one also seek to reconcile slaves and slave masters, or persuade native peoples to complain only moderately about those who are plotting their extermination? What is the middle ground between racism and anti-racism? — Terry Eagleton

Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of people in the world ... the division follows lines of real psychological cleavage. I do not offer it lightly. It has been the fruit of more than eighteen minutes of earnest reflection and research. — G.K. Chesterton

Roughly speaking: objects are colourless — Ludwig Wittgenstein

I spent half my life, roughly speaking, doing the study of nature in many aspects and half of my life studying completely artificial shapes. And the two are extraordinarily close; in one way both are fractal. — Benoit Mandelbrot

But, in fact, the self-help movement still divides, roughly, into two camps. There is Empowerment - broadly speaking, the idea that you are fully responsible for all you do, good and bad. And, in contrast, there is Victimization, which sells the idea that you are not responsible for what you do (at least not the bad things). Victimization and Empowerment represent the yin and the yang of the self-help movement. — Steve Salerno

Mission motto, sir," said Carrot cheerfully. "Morituri Nolumus Mori. Rincewind suggested it."
"I imagine he did," said Lord Vetinari, observing the wizard coldly. "And would you care to give us a colloquial translation, Mr Rincewind?"
"Er ... " Rincewind hesitated, but there really was no escape. "Er ... roughly speaking, it means, 'We who are about to die don't want to', sir. — Terry Pratchett