Top 101 Vague Quotes

For parlor use, the vague generality is a life saver.

People who know very little about ancient Egypt are most likely, if they know anything at all, to have at least a vague idea about the Pharaoh Akhenaten and be able to recognize the face of his beautiful wife, Nefertiti.

I keep my options open about my next story, there will always be those vague discussions at home.

Usually in France we prefer to say bad things about the Nouvelle Vague, but I’m always impressed with its freedom and the fact of not making a film to give your opinion but just as a piece of art, which to me means the Nouvelle Vague.

Theatre is a game of hide-and-seek. For both the hiders and the seekers, the thrill is in the discovery. When the rules of the game are too vague or too complicated, however, the audience can lose its urge to play; the prize no longer seems quite worth the hunt.

The only guaranteed way to make something not very funny is to make it vague.

I tend to learn things physically – I guess it’s my dance training. I never want to make too many choices too soon – so, while I am thinking about the character and thinking about her history, which is very vague in terms of what is given in the text, I am starting to have ideas about what her home is.

I want my stories to be understood and enjoyed by anyone, so I need ‘beta-readers’ who will tell me when the plot is working or not working, and when my writing is concise or vague.

‘Nimona’ was originally a vague idea I had when I was in high school, when I was just getting into shapeshifting characters. It was a straightforward superhero story at the time. Nimona was named Nightshade, and she had an eyepatch for some reason. There was nothing really special about it, though.

Crises like the Mirai botnet can’t be prevented by vague calls to protect our cybernetworks or platitudes about working with private industry. We need to be able to force recalls on consumer devices with massive security vulnerabilities.

I’m congenitally vague.

I’m mostly into buying art from friends. I like to keep it vague – just whatever I find intriguing.

Hesitation is often like procrastination. One may have vague doubts and feel a need to mull things over; meanwhile, other issues intrude on thought, and no decision is taken. Ask people why they procrastinate, and you probably won’t get a crisp answer.

When I make a movie, I have both a specific and vague, amorphous dream idea of what the movie is going to be. Of course, I don’t actually know what it’s going to be, but I’m still striving to get to some place with it.

I love thinking of music of this way to access some kind of illogical realm filled with all kinds of aberrations and weird stuff. It’s not implicit in music to have a story, so it creates this incredible potential for vague stories.

You really need to have that discipline. It’s not even discipline. I just put down these rules. It’s not like a vague, ‘Motivate yourself!’ and do something. It’s specific hours set aside every day for certain things.

What is modern art but the attempt to pinpoint vague, incorporeal, inexpressible sensations? What is modern art, I would add, but the most solemn pile of nonsense that ever appeared on Earth?

We have vague memories of the Eighties. But we were still pre-Internet and pre-cell phone for most of our childhood.

Sadly, I have very vague memories of Burma. The family was forced to leave when the generals took over.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

For though we often need to be restored to the small, concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to be reminded of the large, vague, unlimited, unknown.

So that a famine price is vague, and the plan subject to all the inconvenience now experienced.

My intention to lecture is as vague as my intention is to go on the stage. I will never consider an offer to lecture, not because I despise the vocation, but because I have no desire to appear on the public rostrum.

I always loved Japanese movies. And they had an enormous impact in France – the Nouvelle Vague took so much from them. It taught us how the camera was placed in the centre of the action.

The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague.

With my somewhat vague aspiring mind, to be imprisoned in the rude details of a most material life was often irksome.

In Washington, there are jobs that have official titles: chief of staff, campaign manager, director of communications. Then there are all these vague and murky headings over people who are just special consultants or advisers. We really don’t know what their gig is.

I don’t have goals when writing books, apart from getting to the end. I have rather vague ideas about how I want things to feel, I’m big on ambience. I have a title, a beginning and a probable ending and go from there.

I always feel like a vague failure in L.A. – it always makes me feel like I should somehow be different than I am. And I don’t know why.

The characters are that vague TV high school age, but they’ll be in high school as long as we need them to be.

When I explain to people what was the situation in North Korea, they think, how can such a country exist? They know North Korea is bad in some vague way, not clearly. But when we explain it, they then wonder how can a whole country be modern-day slaves?

I guess I could say that I pursue questions that interest me in ways that interest me on the page, but that’s awfully vague.

All living languages are promiscuous. We promiscuous speakers shamelessly shoplift words, plucking bons mots and phrases from any tempting language. We wear these words when we wish to be more formal, more elegant, more mysterious, worldly, precise, vague.

To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness, But life without meaning is the torture Of restlessness and vague desire-It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

If we ask a vague question, such as, ‘What is poetry?’ we expect a vague answer, such as, ‘Poetry is the music of words,’ or ‘Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.’

Traditional broadcast media seems old-fashioned and vague to me. When I watch television news, I’m aware of what skilled journalists they are, but I find it hard because of the corny way they present it.

When we put the pen to paper, we articulate things in our life that we may have felt vague about. Before you write about something, somebody says, ‘How do you feel?’ and you say, ‘Oh, I feel okay.’ Then you write about it, and you discover you don’t feel okay.

My love of South Africa is not gray; it’s not vague. It’s very specific. It’s in keeping with our Constitution – ‘Unity in diversity.’

Legally speaking, the term ‘public rights’ is as vague and indefinite as are the terms ‘public health,’ ‘public good,’ ‘public welfare,’ and the like. It has no legal meaning, except when used to describe the separate, private, individual rights of a greater or less number of individuals.

So I was in America and I thought I’ll stick around while I’m here and just see what happens. The next film I did was High Art, so I guess it started with a sort of vague idea but really just a fantasy.

I think some people have a vague idea, but the general public has no clue what the actual behind-the-scenes of filmmaking is and what this profession is.

Although it may be true that the notion of teaching virtues such as honesty or integrity arouses little controversy, it is also true that vague consensus on the goodness of these virtues conceals a great deal of actual disagreement over their definitions.

Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled ‘wrong’.

That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were truths and they were all beautiful.

In a vague way, I always knew neurosurgery was different – more delicate, more difficult, more demanding. After all, we say things like, ‘I’m no brain surgeon,’ for a reason.

I knew who Jackie Kennedy was in terms of being the wife of JFK and being a clothes horse, and I knew that she later married Onassis, but I had a very, very vague idea of who he was.

Mother believed that I should have an enormous amount of sleep, and so I was never really tired when I went to bed. This was the best time of day, when I could lie in the vague twilight, drifting off to sleep, making up dreams inside my head the way they should go.

Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.

I don’t know about you, but I find it exhilarating to see how vague psychological notions evaporate and give rise to a physical, mechanistic understanding of the mind, even if it’s the mind of the fly.

For the novels I wrote before selling anything, I didn’t outline much. I had a vague idea of the story.

But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!

Acting is such a strange, vague profession, but my kids know it’s hard labour.

The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies.

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.

My parents and I – I’m an only child – are not particularly religious, but I was christened and raised in that vague and characteristically Canadian form of Protestantism known as the United Church.

I never outline my novels before I write. I do have a vague sense of beginning, middle, and end at the outset of each book, but for me, writing has always been a very character-driven process.

I hope to submit to the little pamphlet magazines here ‘freelance’ and perhaps shall join the Labour Club, as I really want to become informed on politics, and it seems to have an excellent program. I am definitely not a Conservative, and the Liberals are too vague and close to the latter.

I like to keep my private stuff pretty vague.

If self-absorption, vague yearnings, and a nagging sense of incompleteness are sins, then surely I will burn for all eternity, and I will save you a seat.

The desire to share is not a vague, windy sentiment, not when you see the massive rise in live concerts in response to the phenomenon of downloading music… People want to get rid of the headphones and be part of a shared experience.

People often misuse the term ‘Regency’ to describe art or antiques dating from a vague period between the 1790s and the 1830s, but technically the period only lasted between 1811 and 1820.

Many have a vague idea that they must make some wonderful effort in order to gain the favor of God. But all self-dependence is vain. It is only by connecting with Jesus through faith that the sinner becomes a hopeful, believing child of God.

If I could be more vague I’d write more about people in my life, but I hate hurting feelings or making people feel uncomfortable. I’ve done that before. Unless they’re sad songs. Those get finished fast, but the mean ones often end up at the back of the bottom drawer and it’s probably for the best.

I am concerned that the vague guidelines and policies used by the NSA for intelligence collection and sharing, in conjunction with elusive direction from the Administration, have led to intelligence being collected on sitting members of Congress for political purposes.

These seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words.

I do accept that, with – with respect to those vague terms in the Constitution such as equal protection of the laws, due process of law, cruel and unusual punishments. I fully accept that those things have to apply to new phenomena that didn’t exist at the time.

When I start writing, I’ll have a vague concept or I’ll just have a title, and the song just goes on its own direction. Usually it goes in many directions within each song. They get really convoluted sometimes.

Better to say something simply instead of giving people a bunch of vague metaphors to mull over.

I make lists to keep my anxiety level down. If I write down 15 things to be done, I lose that vague, nagging sense that there are an overwhelming number of things to be done, all of which are on the brink of being forgotten.

I’ve found that in fiction – and this is just the kind of writer I am – I can’t really work from an outline. I have a vague idea of the characters at the beginning of the book, and then I have a vague idea of whatever the end of the book will be, but I can’t approach creative nonfiction like that.

When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat.

We cannot sacrifice innocent human life now for vague and exaggerated promises of medical treatments thirty of forty years from now. There are ways to pursue this technology and respect life at the same time.

The definition of gumbo is almost as slippery as that of Creole. Just as gumbo can contain pretty much any kind of meat or seafood, Creole is a vague and inclusive term for native New Orleanians, who may be black or white, depending on whom you’re asking.

I have a hard time getting motivated to do something that seems like a career move. I’ve gotten into vague trouble with my agents for turning down work that I thought was exploitative.

At Harvard, where students tend to respond to real-world celebrities with the vague sense that they could do a better job themselves, the recipe for celebrity is complex.

The meaning of words has become so blurred by past usage that ‘abstract’ is identified with ‘vague’ and ‘unreal,’ and ‘inwardness’ with a sort of traditional beatitude… The conception of the word ‘plastic’ has also been limited by individual interpretations.

I met my birth mother as an adult, but she was always quite vague about my birth father. I knew he had been married to someone else, that he’d had children, but that was about it.

My muse is my wife. It’s not some vague thing that flutters around the astrosphere or wherever it is. Sometimes as a songwriter you need something to hang a song on, to give it some kind of presence and form. For me, Susie is that.

As a child, I had a serious illness that lasted for two years or more. I have vague recollections of this illness and of my being carried about a great deal. I was known as the ‘sick one.’ Whether this illness gave me a twist away from ordinary paths, I don’t know; but it is possible.

The term ‘innovative’ or ‘innovation’ is often vague or ambiguous. But in our definition, innovation means to make something which people think impossible possible.

No problem can be solved until it is reduced to some simple form. The changing of a vague difficulty into a specific, concrete form is a very essential element in thinking.

Puberty was very vague. I literally locked myself in a room and played guitar.

You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.

We’re teaching our kids that attributes as vague and relatively meaningless as a toothy smile or a fine head of hair make a fine statement about a person.

All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.

The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.

Was I in a nativity play? I think I was an angel; I was a very blonde child, so I tended to get typecast. I have a vague memory of wearing wings.

All I had when I began writing the first book was rather vague images conjured up by the notion of a man in a kilt, so essentially I began with Jamie, although I had no idea what his name was at the time.

I was born in Africa but brought up in the north-east of England. Most of my childhood was spent living on a council estate that overlooked the Tyne and I went to the same junior school as Paul Gascoigne, of whom I have a vague memory.

The planet Mars – crimson and bright, filling our telescopes with vague intimations of almost-familiar landforms – has long formed a celestial tabula rasa on which we have inscribed our planetological theories, utopian fantasies, and fears of alien invasion or ecological ruin.

I remember having this vague idea that what mathematicians did was that some authority, someone, gave them problems to solve, and they just sort of solved them.

I’m very nervous about taking jobs. I always make sure that, if I’m going to work with somebody, that they really understand what it is that I want to do. I’d rather not take the job than be vague about how I’m going to do something and run into trouble later on. It’s a hard thing to negotiate.

Of course the word chaos is used in rather a vague sense by a lot of writers, but in physics it means a particular phenomenon, namely that in a nonlinear system the outcome is often indefinitely, arbitrarily sensitive to tiny changes in the initial condition.

I always seem to have a vague feeling that he is a Satan among musicians, a fallen angel in the darkness who is perpetually seeking to fight his way back to happiness.

Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than the exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.

As a consequence of these hesitations and of the vague character of such innovations, the Commission on Human Rights itself had doubts from the beginning about its role and its functions in general.

When I write a tune – and it’s been like this for many years – I always hear in the back of my head some sort of vague, orchestrated, fully fleshed-out big-band version of the song with other parts going on.

We tried war, we tried aggression, we tried intervention. None of it works. Why don’t we try peace, as a science of human relations, not as some vague notion – as everyday work.

The terrorist threat is so cloudy, faceless, and vague, so manipulable by political purposes, so definitely present but indefinitely manifested, that it sometimes feels interchangeable with everyday dread itself.

There was a misconception about me when I started off because I had my hair greased up and I have some vague resemblance to the hillbilly gene pool that Elvis came from. People would say, ‘You want to be Elvis’ and I would say, ‘No’.