Total

Famous quotes containing the word total:

“Unlike Descartes, we own and use our beliefs of the moment, even in the midst of philosophizing, until by what is vaguely called scientific method we change them here and there for the better. Within our own total evolving doctrine, we can judge truth as earnestly and absolutely as can be, subject to correction, but that goes without saying.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)

“Both the man of science and the man of art live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it. Both, as a measure of their creation, have always had to do with the harmonization of what is new with what is familiar, with the balance between novelty and synthesis, with the struggle to make partial order in total chaos.... This cannot be an easy life.”
—J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967)

“I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize me senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality.”
—Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)