Demonstration

Demonstration is the act of demonstrating; showing or explaining something. It also represents a public display of group opinion; a show of military force and a mathematical proof; an event at which something will be demonstrated.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

CONTENT : A - F , G - L , M - R , S - Z , See also , External links

Quotes

Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

A - F

...Each family of the United States military now attends to their loved ones funeral with a wrenching worry that it will be met possibly with a protest or a demonstration. With the approach of our Nation's annual day of remembrance, it is altogether fitting that we approve this bill to protect the sanctity of our military funerals at our national cemeteries and Arlington National Cemetery. - Steve Buyer.

• We have actually experienced in recent months a dramatic demonstration of an unprecedented intelligence failure, perhaps the most significant intelligence failure in the history of the United States.
  • Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski in: Congressional Record: Volume 149, Part 23, Government Printing Office, 1 September 2008, p. 31866.

• I move to suspend the rules and concur in the Senate amendment to the bill (H.R. 5037) to amend titles 38 and 18, United States Code, to prohibit certain demonstrations at cemeteries under the control of the National Cemetery Administration and at Arlington National Cemetery, and for other purposes….Prohibition.--No person may carry out--
  ``(1) a demonstration on the property of a cemetery under the control of the National Cemetery Administration or on the property of Arlington National Cemetery unless the demonstration has been approved by the cemetery superintendent or the director of the property on which the cemetery is located; or
  ``(2) with respect to such a cemetery, a demonstration during the period beginning 60 minutes before and ending 60 minutes after a funeral, memorial service, or ceremony is held, any part of which demonstration--
  Each family of the United States military now attends to their loved ones funeral with a wrenching worry that it will be met possibly with a protest or a demonstration. With the approach of our Nation's annual day of remembrance, it is altogether fitting that we approve this bill to protect the sanctity of our military funerals at our national cemeteries and Arlington National Cemetery.
  • Steve Buyer in: Congressional Record 109th Congress (2005-2006), The Library of Congress, 24 May 2006.

• One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think - even the activists - that instant gratification is required. You constantly hear: 'Look I went to a demonstration, and we didn't stop the war so what's the use of doing it again?'
  • Noam Chomsky in: Corporate Journalism Noam Chomsky interviewed by Bernie Dwyer, Radio Havana, 28 October 2003.

The idea that the order of demonstration was the order of nature came from Plato. Aristotle said that the order of discovery was the reverse of the order of demonstration. - Alistair Cameron Crombie.

• ...mathematicians say—the construction propounded will be possible too, and once more the demonstration will correspond, in the reverse order to the analysis; but if we come upon something that is admitted is impossible the problem will also be impossible. It is quite possible to accept that Plato 'discovered' the method of Analysis, in the same sense as Aristotle discovered the syllogism; that is to say, he was the first to reflect upon the process of thought involved and to describe it in contrast with the process of Synthesis.
  • F.M.Cornford in: R.E.Allen Studies in Plato's Metaphysics (RLE: Plato), Routledge, 10 September 2012, p. 72.

• The idea that the order of demonstration was the order of nature came from Plato. Aristotle said that the order of discovery was the reverse of the order of demonstration.
  • Alistair Cameron Crombie in: Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science, 1100-1700, Clarendon Press, 1953, p. 25.

• Knowledge is the sure and undoubted resolution by experiment of all opinions concerning the truth... Experiment is manifest demonstration of the truth, and resolution the putting away of doubt. We cannot be resolved of any doubt save by experiment, and therefore is no better to make it than on ourselves. Let us therefore verify what we have said about concerning the truth, beginning with ourselves.
  • Gerhard Dorn in: “Theatrum Chemicum Volume 1” quoted in: Bernard X. Bovasso Jung, Faust and the Devil: Return to Alexandria & the Voices of the Dead, AuthorHouse, 10 August 2012, p. 43.

• I was living in a small town in Indiana working as a telemarketer and a vacuum salesman. I was really bad: the vacuums seemed to always be falling apart. Every time I did a demonstration, I'd say, 'This is the material the astronauts used on Apollo 13.' And no sooner had that come out of my mouth, something would malfunction.
  • Adam Driver in: Charlie Burton The creation of Adam, G Q Magazine, 18 February 2013.

• Live Below the Line raises real money to help the world's poorest people, but it is also a symbolic demonstration aimed at highlighting - not replicating - the plight of the world's poor.
  • Hugh Evans in: Highlighting the Plight of the Poor, TheHuffingtonPost, May 20, 2011.

• I'm looking to evolve the concept of the new renaissance artist, taking the world by storm through the art of public display and demonstration, with technical savvy, using cell phones and computers.
  • Perry Farrell in: Jake Brown Jane's Addiction: In the Studio, SCB Distributors, Jun 1, 2011.

• It is impossible for the cube to be written as a sum of two cubes or a fourth power to be written as a sum of two fourth powers or, in general for any number which is any number which is a power greater than the second to be written as a sum of two like powers. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.
  • Pierre de Fermat in: Topics in Commutative Ring Theory, Princeton University Press, 9 February 2009, p. 94.

G - L

...Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace...Thich Nhat Hanh.

There may be personalities which have not merely transcended substance, but are rid of it altogether: in all ages the theologian and the mystic have told of such "disembodied spirits," postulated by the one, felt by the other,.. - Julian Huxley.

In other cases, when the medium becomes entranced, the demonstration of a communicator's separate intelligence may become stronger and the sophistication less. - Thomas Samuel Kepler.

• All sorts of new and interesting and wonderful things were happening, and it was exciting. And then I got my head bashed in at a demonstration against the Vietnam War during a visit that Lyndon Johnson made to the Century Plaza Hotel. My girlfriend was a reporter for the London Evening Standard and we were on our way to a party, and she said, "We should check this out." So we arrived there, and soon it turned into a police riot. It was interesting to see police losing control, because they were up against a world they really didn't understand – which was very non-aggressive, but they didn't know that.
  • Terry Gilliam in: Kenneth Plume Interview with Terry Gilliam (Part 1 of 4), ign.com.

• Children understand very well that in each woman, in each man, in each child, there is capacity of waking up, of understanding, and of loving. Many children have told me that they cannot show me anyone who does not have this capacity. Some people allow it to develop, and some do not, but everyone has it. This capacity of waking up, of being aware of what is going on in your feelings, in your body, in your perceptions, in the world, is called Buddha nature, the capacity of understanding and loving. Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.
  • Thich Nhat Hanh in: Being Peace, Parallax Press, 4 August 2005, p. 13.

• There may be personalities which have not merely transcended substance, but are rid of it altogether: in all ages the theologian and the mystic have told of such "disembodied spirits," postulated by the one, felt by the other, and now the psychical investigator with his automatic writing and his cross-correspondences is seeking to give us rigorous demonstration of them.
  • Julian Huxley in: The Individual in the Animal Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 22-Mar-2012, p. 30.

• In other cases, when the medium becomes entranced, the demonstration of a communicator's separate intelligence may become stronger and the sophistication less.
  • Thomas Samuel Kepler in: Contemporary religious thought: an anthology, Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1941, p. 366.

• You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., responding to critics from fellow ministers, "Letter from Birmingham Jail".

• May 4th is a particularly memorable day in American history because 84 years to the day before May 4, 1970, there was another demonstration at the Haymarket Square in Chicago.
  • William Moses Kunstler et al., in: The emerging police state: resisting illegitimate authority, Ocean Press, 2004, p. 96.

• Changing a rod into a serpent and the serpent back into a rod may be clever magic, but how does such a demonstration prove that Moses spoke to God? If the only thing necessary to prove the truth of an extraordinary claim were to demonstrate an ability to bewilder, there would be no more mysteries to solve.
  If a person claims that he can bring the dead back to life, and in proof of that power pulls a rabbit out of a hat, that is hardly a demonstration of the truth of his claim; it is merely an example of his ability in the art of deception. If he claims that he can fly without wings and without the use of mechanical help of any kind, and in proof of his ability pulls another rabbit out of another hat, that is not proof of his ability to fly, but of his ability to lie, and he will without much hesitation be condemned as a faker. The demonstration of one thing has absolutely no bearing in proving the truth of the other, when there is no relationship between them.
  • Joseph Lewis in: The Ten Commandments A book by Joseph Lewis The First Commandment, Positive Atheism.

• I think the Church has changed. I think we are waking up. The fact that we have to use our hands as much as we use our mouths. For years I thought my assignment or the Church’s assignment was to articulate the Gospel and nothing more. Now I believe that if we don’t support the verbal expression of the Gospel with physical demonstration of compassion, we are not imitating Jesus.
  • Max Lucado in: Interview: Max Lucado on Storytelling, the Church, and Politics, The Christian Post.

M - R

• Post-operatively the transplanted kidney functioned immediately with a dramatic improvement in the patient's renal and cardiopulmonary status. This spectacular success was a clear demonstration that organ transplantation could be life-saving.
  • Joseph Murray in: Tore Frängsmyr et al., Nobel Lectures, Including Presentation Speeches and Laureates' Biographies: 1981/1990, Nobel Foundation, 1993, p. 562.

One demonstration of extremists, any more than a Ku Klux Klan demonstration in the United States, is not necessarily reflective of what the rest of the country feels. -

• One demonstration of extremists, any more than a Ku Klux Klan demonstration in the United States, is not necessarily reflective of what the rest of the country feels.
  • Leon Panetta in: U.S. defense secretary: 'Red lines are political arguments', HAARETZ.COM, September 16, 2012.

• What is it indeed that gives us the feeling of elegance in a solution, in a demonstration?
  • Henri Poincare (1913) in: Marvin Minsky The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind, Simon and Schuster, 13 November 2007, p. 239.

S - Z

• This is the largest anti-Chinese demonstration I have ever seen in Hanoi. Our patience has limits. We are here to express the will of the Vietnamese people to defend our territory at all costs. We are ready to die to protect our nation.
  • Dang Quang Thang to the AFP news agency, in: Vietnam protesters attack China over sea dispute, BBC News, 11 May 2014.

• The new spirituality is that it will produce an experience in human encounters in which we become a living demonstration of the basic spiritual teaching 'We are all one.'
  • Neale Donald Walsch in: Joolz Lewis Enlightened Business: Leadership for Sustainable Success, SRA Books, 4 September 2014, p. 91.

• Looking ahead, future generations may learn their social skills from robots in the first place. The cute yellow Keep on robot from Carnegie Mellon University has shown the ability to facilitate social interactions with autistic children. Morphy at the University of Washington happily teaches gestures to children by demonstration.
  • Daniel H. Wilson in: Sex, droids and the future of love, The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 May 2012.

• Companies that are willing to share, to withhold in order to further the growth of the company, willing to try to get a better atmosphere through a demonstration of democratic principles, fairness and cooperation, a better product, those will win in the end.
  • E. O. Wilson in: Zinta Lundborg Wilson Says Greedy People, Altruistic Groups Win, Bloomberg Careers, 17 April 2012.

See also

• Civil disobedience
• Dissent

• Nonviolent resistance
• Rebellion