Things We Can't Explain Quotes & Sayings

How can we assert and test hypotheses if there are no such things as assertions that can be evaluated as true or false? How can we design experiments if there is not such thing as design? How can we explain anything if we do not assert anything and if others cannot understand it? — Angus J.L. Menuge

I don't quite know... but... something needs to change in my life. The incident earlier today... it's left me in a very odd mood. I'm not sure what needs to occur, or how, or when.. but I can feel it. It's almost... I feel so damned restless. I can't adequately explain it, even to you, because I'm not sure what I'm talking about. But... something's out there, and I need to be ready for it."
Alistair was still, expression strange and unreadable. "And are you?"
"Am I what?"
"Ready for change. And before you reply, let me caution you: fate, or destiny, or God, or whatever you call it, has an uncanny way of supplying what you ask for. But the strangest thing is, often we don't consider the ramifications of our request. There's an old saying that warns some things in life are not for the faint of heart. So, I'll ask again: are you ready for this... this change? Even if it turns your life completely and irrevocably upside down? — D.R. Ranshaw

It seems to me that we can't explain all the truly awful things in the world like war and murder and brain tumors, and we can't fix these things, so we look at the frightening things that are closer to us and we magnify them until they burst open. Inside is something that we can manage, something that isn't as awful as it had a first seemed. It is a relief to discover that although there might be axe murderers and kidnappers in the world, most people seem a lot like us: sometimes afraid and sometimes brave, sometimes cruel and sometimes kind. — Sharon Creech

We're fascinated by things we can't figure out, by the things that don't have a right or wrong answer. Even when we can't explain them, we need to make some sort of sense out of them - create lists, find connections, map it out. Maybe that's why, when we can't seem to figure out all sorts of other more commonplace mysteries (like why we all keep looking at the sky as if it might talk to us), we still need to try.
We think maybe it's a lot like love, that need to make sense of the sky. We don't know why we need it, we can't explain it when it happens or when it doesn't, but we need it like we need air or food.
So we keep looking for it. — Kim Culbertson

There's no way to explain to a child that the line between good and evil isn't nearly as black and white as a fairy tale would leave you to believe. That an ordinary person can turn into a villain, under the right circumstances. That sometimes we dragon slayers do things we aren't proud of. — Jodi Picoult

Reverend Easter waved her hand dismissively. "It doesn't matter to God what we call ourselves, or even what we call Him. We're the only ones who care about that. But as an Episcopalian and not an evangelical," she said, with a knowing look at Hannah, "I'll answer your question with another question, or rather, with a bunch of them, which is how we tend to do things. How else do you explain the miracle of your beating heart, the compassion of strangers, the existence of Mozart and Rilke and Michelangelo? How do you account for redwoods and hummingbirds, for orchids and nebulas? How can such beauty possibly exist without God? And how can we see it and know it's beautiful and be moved by it, without God?" Hannah — Hillary Jordan

How seriously would we take person who said, "I have faith in Adolf Hitler, or in John Dilinger. I can't explain why they did the things they did, but I can't believe they would have done them without a good reason." Yet people try to justify the deaths and tragedies God inflicts on innocent victims with almost these same words.
Furthermore, my religious commitment to the supreme value of an individual life makes it hard for me to accept an answer that is not scandalized by an innocent person's pain, that condones human pain because it supposedly contributes to an overall work of esthetic value. If a human artist or employer made children suffer so that something immensely impressive or valuable could come to pass, we would put him in prison. Why then should we excuse God for causing such undeserved pain, no matter how wonderful the ultimate result may be? — Harold S. Kushner

Even a scientist is a human being. So it is natural for him, like others, to hate the things he cannot explain. It is a common illusion to believe that what we know today is all we ever can know. Nothing is more vulnerable than scientific theory, which is an ephemeral attempt to explain facts and not an everlasting truth in itself. — C. G. Jung

As Christians we need to be patient, understanding, and kind. Instead of going on the attack, we can ask genuine questions. Instead of bristling when our narrative is summarily dismissed, we can carefully explain our way of seeing things. And when we are wrong, we won't be afraid to say so. — Kevin DeYoung

I believe in rendering to science the things that belong to science. I have no problem with evolution or discussions of the age of the Earth, for I don't believe that we come anywhere near comprehending the mind of God or the workings of the universe. Science can explain a lot, but it cannot give us faith, and I think we need both. — Brandon Sanderson

We've surpassed ourselves now, we're exploring terrain beyond the limits of merely human understanding. Sometimes its contours, even in conventional space, are just too intricate for our brains to track; other times its very axes extend into dimensions inconceivable to minds built to fuck and fight on some prehistoric grassland. So many things constrain us, from so many directions. The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain-stem imperative of self-interest. Subtle and elegant equations predict the behavior of the quantum world, but none can explain it. After four thousand years we can't even prove that reality exists beyond the mind of the first-person dreamer. We have such need of intellects greater than our own. But we're not very good at building them. — Peter Watts

There is something scary about letting ourselves go. It means that we will screw up, that we will relinquish the possibility of perfection. It means that we will say things we didn't mean to say and express feelings we can't explain. It means that we will be onstage and not have complete control, that we won't know what we're going to play until we begin, until the bow is drawn across the strings. While this spontaneous method might be frightening, it's also an extremely valuable source of creativity ... the lesson about letting go is that we contain our own creativity. We are so worried about playing the wrong note or saying the wrong thing that we end up with nothing at all. — Jonah Lehrer

People need to believe in more than what they see in everyday life. Somewhere inside, we all know that there is more out there than we experience normally. A belief in the other world can help explain why things happen to us. It can give us hope. I feel that we all hope we never get to be too old to fly to Never-Never Land or go through a wardrobe into Narnia. We want to think that there is something looking back at us when we look at the stars. We want to think that just around the bend in the forest, we'll find fairies dancing in a ring. I hope that my work affirms those beliefs," she continues. "I want people to think of my work as a key to that other world. — Wendy Froud

He shook his head. "No, they never went. He checked and it turns out the Kavach plans are still considered active material and are still on file at Public Works." "Fantastic," said Xela. "So we can go see them." Nate shook his head. "Nope. That's where it ends. They're sealed records." Tim's eyebrows went up. "Sealed?" "Yep. The same way they seal plans for things like the Federal Building or parts of the state capitol or embassies. The guy emailed me to explain why he couldn't tell me anything. He even said he has to make a note in the file that I asked about them because of some Patriot Act thing. — Peter Clines

She touched his hand for the last time. "Oh, Karim, that we have already done. But always there was a problem between us. How can I explain? I wasn't me, and you weren't you. From the very beginning to the very end, we didn't see things. What we did
we made each other up." p. 382 — Monica Ali

Holding Naoko in my arms, I wanted to explain to her, I am having intercourse with you now. I am inside you. But this is really nothing. It doesn't matter. It is nothing but the joining of two bodies. All we are doing is telling each other things that can only be told by the rubbing together of two imperfect lumps of flesh. By doing this, we are sharing our imperfection. — Haruki Murakami

There's a thing that happens in Hollywood, when you hand in a script with magic in it, and the people at the studio who read it say "We don't quite understand ... can you explain the rules? What are the rules here? The magic must have rules" and sometimes when they say that to me I explain that I am sure it does, just as life has rules, but they didn't give me a rule book to life when I was born, and I've been trying to figure it out as I go along, and I am sure it is the same thing for magic; and sometimes I explain that, yes, the magic has rules, and if they read again carefully they can figure out what they are; and sometimes I sigh and put in a line here and a line there that spells things out, says, YES THESE ARE THE RULES YOU DON'T ACTUALLY HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION and then everyone is very happy. — Neil Gaiman

We've always used stories as a way to pass on our history, as a way to explain things in life that we don't understand. We use them to make us feel connected to everything around us, and to help us escape to another time or place.
Bookshops across the world are full of these stories.
From travelling booksellers and undercover bookshops, to pop-up stalls and community hubs, walking into a good bookshop is like walking into another zone.These places are time machines, spaceships, story-makers, secret-keepers. They are dragon-tamers, dream-catchers, fact-finders and safe places. They are full of infinite possibilities, and tales worth taking home.
Because whether we're in the middle of the desert or in the heart of a city, on the top of a mountain or on an underground train: having good stories to keep us company can mean the whole world. — Jen Campbell

We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes "the world" is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics. Even if we know every rule, however . . . what we really can explain in terms of those rules is very limited, because almost all situations are so enormously complicated that we cannot follow the plays of the game using the rules, much less tell what is going to happen next. We must, therefore, limit ourselves to the more basic question of the rules of the game. If we know the rules, we consider that we "understand" the world. — Richard Rhodes

It's all words and only words, and beyond the words there's nothing ... a word, which, like all the others, can only be explained by more words, but since the words we use to explain things, successfully or not, will, in turn, have to be explained, our conversation will lead nowhere, the mistaken and the true will alternate, like some kind of curse, and we'll never know what's right and what's wrong. - subhro, the mahout, Pg. 49 — Jose Saramago

I know-that things exist beyond our reasoning. They DO exist. We may not understand them but that doesn't mean they can't BE. You find people so ready to-to scoff at anything they can't figure out, can't reason, and those same people will turn straight round and tell you that they believe in God. Is HE understandable? Is that belief backed up by reasoning, scientific logic? We live with mysteries all day long, all our lives, but because they're familiar mysteries, we accept them. Well, you'd have to-or go mad. Who understands LIFE? Yet we live it. We hang on to it. We accept it just as we accept the inevitability of death. Life and death: the only two absolute certainties we're aware of, but we can't even BEGIN to explain them. — Bernard Taylor

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree. — Pablo Picasso

Things that we are right in thinking bad, must be bad to God as well as to us; but may there not be things so far above us, that we cannot take them in, and they seem bad because they are so far above us in goodness that we see them partially and untruly? There must be room in his wisdom for us to mistake! He would try to trust! He would say, "If thou art my father, be my father, and comfort thy child. Perhaps thou hast some way! Perhaps things are not as thou wouldst have them, and thou art doing what can be done to set them right! If thou art indeed true to thy own, it were hard not to be believed - hard that one of thine own should not trust thee, should not give thee time to make things clear, should behave to thee as if thou wouldst not explain, when it is that we are unable to understand! — George MacDonald

I believe in metaphysics. I don't believe in God because I think that is a human simplification of the things we can't explain. But I believe in a greater universe. — Jochen Zeitz

My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference. What can I say to a man who asks that? All I can do is try to explain to him why he asks the question. You have looked at us for years as different from you that you may never see us really. You don't understand because you think of us as second-class humans. We have been passive and accommodating through so many years of your insults and delays that you think the way things used to be is normal. When the good-natured, spiritual-singing boys and girls rise up against the white man and demand to be treated like he is, you are bewildered. All we want is what you want, no less and no more. (Chapter 13). — Shirley Chisholm

There's a school of thought today that rejects patriotism. People are made nervous by that intense allegiance to a country. They think it can only lead to war and bloodshed and that fights can be avoided if we all just compromise and get along. And, of course, compromise and getting along are great things as long as you're not sacrificing essential values. But I believe there's a line in the sand, some things that you have to be willing to stand up for, even if it means trouble. Charlie's patriotism is not blind, flag-waving jingoism: it's an intense allegiance to the American concept of liberty. He's through and through. He can talk about it and explain it. And he's shown he's willing to give everything for it. I admire him for that. — Andrew Klavan

People need things like that to go on living - mental landscapes that have meaning for them, even if they can't explain them in words. Part of why we live is to come up with explanations with these things. That's what I think. — Haruki Murakami

Some things take so long
But how do I explain
When not too many people
Can see we're all the same
And because of all their tears
Your eyes can't hope to see
The beauty that surrounds them
Now, isn't it a pity — George Harrison

Some things You have to let be lost Some battles, some battles You have to leave unfought. Then the truth just wastes away In all we dare not say. And in all we can't explain But I faithfully remain. — Ben Harper

mentioned this to you?" the detective asked. "Never," Theo said. He had learned that with April's weird family there were many secrets, many things she kept to herself. The detective put away the photo, and Theo was relieved. He never wanted to see the face again, but he doubted if he could ever forget it. Sergeant Bolick said, "We suspect that April knew the person who took her. How else can you explain the lack of a forcible entry?" "Do you think he would hurt her?" Theo asked. "We have no way of knowing that, Theo. This man's been in prison most of his life. His behavior is unpredictable. — John Grisham

We had literary references, so we knew what we were talking about. We could quote things, talk about books we'd read; you can say something, you don't have to explain it. — Kevin Ayers

Words can be honed to crafted perfection by the finest wordsmiths. Yet, if we trust solely in the expanse of them to explain this God of ours or articulate our experience of Him, we will have brutally destroyed the very things we are attempting to explain. And if I should do that, no words can describe how badly I wish I had no words. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I felt guilty that I hadn't thought of Kizuki right away, as if I had somehow abandoned him. Back in my room, though, I came to think of it this way: two and a half years have gone by since it happened, and Kizuki is still seventeen years old. Not that this means my memory of him has faded. The things that his death gave rise to are still there, bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they were new. What I want to say is this: I'm going to turn twenty soon. Part of what Kizuki and I shared when we were sixteen and seventeen has already vanished, and no amount of crying is going to bring that back. I can't explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably understand what I felt and what I am trying to say. — Haruki Murakami

The reasons why we do the things we do will not always be the ones others will remember. Sometimes I think we have children because we want to leave behind someone who can explain who we were to the world. — Ayobami Adebayo

We ding to music, to poems, to quotes, to writing, to art because we desperately do not want to be alone. We want to know we aren't going crazy and someone else out there knows exactly how you're feeling. We want someone to explain the things we can't. — Unknown

I've always said as a political scientist that "culture" is what we use when we can't explain things. I think it's more about accessibility. Part of the problem is that this is an expensive game [golf]. I know in a couple of places where there are black members, and they come from pretty much the same socioeconomic level that the white members come from. — Condoleezza Rice

He'd tried to explain it to her, how accidents happen but we really are safe. But there was, already, the sense that nothing he said touched what was really bothering her, which was the realization that you can't stop bad things from happening to other people, other things. And that would be hard forever. He'd never quite gotten used to it himself. — Megan Abbott

... And that has remained an important mental landscape for me, a reference point. It teaches me something - or tries to. People need things like that to go on living - mental landscapes that have meaning for then, even if they can't explain them in words. Part of why we live is to come up with explanations for these things. That what I think. — Haruki Murakami

There are things which are without answers, and there is nobody who can explain them. Either we feel them and sense them, or not. Sometimes we just give up and carry on. — Andrey Zvyagintsev

If you can see a thing you don't have anymore it's very heartbreaking. To hold onto things longer than we actually can hold onto them is a desire. Writers and artists are trying to record these things they can no longer have. We're a heartbroken lot. Taking pictures is a brave act in which you try to explain and remember a thing you can't have anymore. — Laurel Nakadate

Cal: "I'm really sorry, Professor, but how do you explain these ? Swiss Cake Rolls. That doesn't rhyme; it's not cute; it's not childlike. And this is one of our most-respected snack foods, is it not? How is that, Professor? Hmmm?"
Eliot: "Well, isn't it obvious? We trust the Swiss for their ability to engineer things, to build with precision."
Cal: "We do?"
Eliot: "Do I even have to mention Swiss watches? Swiss Army knives? Swiss cheese? If anyone can build a non-threatening, non-lethal snack cake, it's the Swiss. They're neutral, we can trust them not to attack us with trans-fatty acids and sugar. I think you would feel differently if they were German Cake Rolls. North Korean Cake Rolls. I bet you wouldn't eat them."
Cal: "I bet I would. — Brad Barkley

The English language has been thrust upon Americans. And it is wrong. As static and immobile as are the English, just so ever-moving are Americans. Here is a huge country. Not a mere island. Naturally people move. And they need a moving language. A language that can interpret American life. Nouns and adjectives won't express American life. They are too weak, too immobile. But verbs, adverbs, prepositions and the like, ah, they are moving, just as Americans. Obviously we cannot suddenly junk the English language and adopt some other tongue. English is too connotative, too close to us. Our problem is to adapt the English language to American needs. To make it move with us Americans. That is the problem
to write things as they are, not as they seem. our aim must be not to explain things, but to write the thing itself, and thereby in itself be self explanatory. — Gertrude Stein

Accept that there are things in this world we can never explain and life will be understandable. That is the irony of life. It is also the beauty of it. — Tan Twan Eng

Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries.
A lover may be drawn to this love or that love,
but finally he is drawn to the Sovereign of Love.
However much we describe and explain love,
when we fall in love we are ashamed of our words.
Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear,
but love unexplained is clearer.
When the pen came to the subject of love, it broke.
When the discourse reached the topic of love,
the pen split and the paper tore.
If intellect tries to explain it,
it falls helpless as a donkey on a muddy trail;
only Love itself can explain love and lovers!
The proof of the sun is the sun itself.
If you wish to see it, don't turn away from it. — Rumi

The inexplicable happens all the time. It makes more sense to simply accept things we observe but cannot understand. It is really more scientific to keep an open mind. Until we can understand and explain the things we now label miracles, let us accept them and try to create more of them. — Bernie Siegel

Behold, now, how foolish it is, in so great an abundance of the truest opinions which can be extracted from these words, rashly to affirm which of them Moses particularly meant; and with pernicious contentions to offend charity itself, on account of which he hath spoken all the things whose words we endeavour to explain! — Augustine Of Hippo

If you had to explain America's economic success with one word, that word would be "education" ... Until now, the results of educational neglect have been gradual - a slow-motion erosion of America's relative position. But things are about to get much worse, as the economic crisis ... deals a severe blow to education across the board ... We need to wake up and realize that one of the keys to our nation's historic success is now a wasting asset. Education made America great; neglect of education can reverse the process. — Paul Krugman

There are things that science as presently conceived does not help us to understand, and which we can see, from the internal features of physical science, that it is not going to explain. They seem to call for a more uncompromisingly mentalistic or even normative form of understanding. — Thomas Nagel

So, look at the world around you, and if you notice things that don't seem right - injustices, inefficiencies, or just oddities - investigate them further. Think about why and how those things might happen and what you could do to change them for the better. Test your ideas by trying new things, making more observations, refining your models, and repeating the process. And when you find something that works to explain or improve your situation, tell everyone about it, so we can all benefit. — Chad Orzel

Like, okay. Everyone in history thought they were the ones who finally knew everything. In their naissance, right, they were positive they knew exactly how the universe worked. Til the next set of guys came along and proved they were missing like a hundred important things. and then that set of guys were sure they had it all down, til another set came along and showed them parts they were missing." He glances at Julia, checking if she's laughing at him, which she isn't, and if she's listening, which she is, completely. "So." he says, "it's pretty unlikely, mathematically, that we are living in the one single era that has everything figured out. Which means there's a decent possibility that the reason we can't explain how ghosts and stuff could exist is because we haven't figured it out yet, not because they don't. And it is pretty arrogant of us to think it definitely has to be the other way around. — Tana French

Let there be two possible things, A and B, one of which is such that it is necessary that it exists, and let us assume that there is more perfection in A than in B. Then, at least, we can explain why A should exist rather than B and can foresee which of them will exist; indeed, this can be demonstrated, that is, rendered certain from the nature of the thing. — Gottfried Leibniz

I think about that lost dignity you must be feeling and I want to tell you it doesn't matter. Not in the great scheme of things. This is just the end. It isn't the everything of you. And it's the everything we'll remember when the memory of this fades. xxx
I can't explain this though. The words are tangled on my tongue and I'm not sure they would make a difference. Becuase I guess for you the everything is done and there is only the now. And in the now your loss of dignity is everything. — Sarah Pinborough