Famous quotes containing the words point, interpretive and/or system:
“The point is that nationalism, even in its latest madhouse frenzies under Mussolini and Hitler, is still, like advertising, an arm of big business. Nations as we know them today, were the invention of business and it is natural that business should still consider itself slightly above patriotism and that the strongest international should still be the international of profits.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The conclusion suggested by these arguments might be called the paradox of theorizing. It asserts that if the terms and the general principles of a scientific theory serve their purpose, i. e., if they establish the definite connections among observable phenomena, then they can be dispensed with since any chain of laws and interpretive statements establishing such a connection should then be replaceable by a law which directly links observational antecedents to observational consequents.”
—C.G. (Carl Gustav)
“While the system of holding people in hostage is as old as the oldest war, a fresher note is introduced when a tyrannic state is at war with its own subjects and may hold any citizen in hostage with no law to restrain it.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)