Nelson Goodman Quotes

I don't feel it incumbent on me to make sense of everything.

Explanations are clear but since no one to whom a thing is explained can connect the explanations with what is really clear, therefore clear explanations are not clear.

Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you, life where things aren't.

If I wanted you to understand it, I would have explained it better.

'These things will become clear to you,' said the old man gently, 'at least,' he added with slight doubt in his voice, 'clearer than they are at the moment.'

I tried to explain as much as I could," Poppet says. "I think I made an analogy about cake." "Well, that must have worked," Widget says. "Who doesn't like a good cake analogy?

I'm here to make sense.

Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

Lady Gaga said to me, 'You showed me how it's done.' I have no idea what she meant by 'it.'

There is a profound difference between information and meaning.

I'm always telling my students that if they can't explain what they are doing, to their grandmothers, then they probably don't understand it themselves.

In fairness, I don't think that everyone understands what I say, but I think they understand part of it and part of what the issues are... Just the same way that people like a good painting, I think people really like understanding, knowing about the world.

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.

I think it's important for people to always understand what is the context is in what is being said, because that obviously determines what folks are talking about.

If you are sure you understand everything that is going on, you are hopelessly confused.

Speak not of what you have read, but about what you have understood.

If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it.

Transparency doesn't mean much if the consumer doesn't understand what they're looking at.

I want people to make sense of what I'm talking about.

What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself... The teacher usually learns more than the pupils. Isn't that true?

I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway.

If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation.