Quotes About Reflection

I THINK IT IS MONTAIGNE who has said that ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head

At seventy-five, Churchill said: "I am prepared to meet my Maker. But whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

The people have often made mistakes, but given time and the facts, they will make the corrections. —HARRY S. TRUMAN

Lincoln replied, "Yes, I have; and I don't think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

Historians of the twenty-first century," Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., wrote, "will no doubt struggle to explain how nine-tenths of the American people, priding themselves every day on their kindliness, their generosity, their historic consecration to the rights of man, could so long have connived in the systematic dehumanization of the remaining tenth—and could have done so without not just a second but hardly a first thought.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

When the word moderation becomes a dirty word we have some soul searching to do.

When he was thirteen, he used an anti-Semitic epithet to describe a Jewish friend. Thinking of the moment more than seven decades later, Bush volunteered the story and cried, shaken by guilt over a remark made in the 1930s. He shook his head in wonder at his own insensitivity. "Never forgotten it. Never forgotten it." (The classmate remained a Bush friend and supporter for many years.)

When we condemn posterity for slavery, or for Native American removal, or for denying women their full role in the life of the nation, we ought to pause and think: What injustices are we perpetuating even now that will one day face the harshest of verdicts by those who come after us?

the very fact that I felt a moment's qualm on inviting him because of his color made me ashamed of myself and made me hasten to send the invitation.

For the thoughtful believer, then, there is nothing more certain than the reality of uncertainty, nothing more natural than doubt, which is perhaps thirty seconds younger than faith itself (And even that approximation may be giving faith too much of a headstart).

The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder, [and] it pains me to an unspeakable degree." J

The capacity of music to reassure and to remind is one of its cardinal virtues.

Plenty of philosophical men live in abstract regions, debating types and shadows. The rarer sort is the reader and thinker who can see the world whole.

If anyone should change their behaviour, I thought, it ought to be those doing the shaming.

Shame internalized can lead to agony.

I didn't want to write a book that advocated for a less curious world. Prurient curiosity may not be great. But curiosity is. People's flaws need to be written about. The flaws of some people lead to horrors inflicted on others. And then there are the more human flaws that, when you shine a light onto them, de-demonize people who might otherwise be seen as ogres.

That's what I Am a Strange Loop is about," said Deborah. "It's about how we spend our lives self-referencing, over and over, in a kind of strange loop.

He said his worst days were when he allowed himself to hope for a second chance. The best were when he knew it was over forever and his destruction was necessary as a deterrent to others. I

Typing it was like cleaning a wound... I was picking all the grit and the smoke out of my mind.

If a conscience is living in a world defined by regrets, then yeah, I've got a conscience. My very first thought every morning is what I've done wrong. That

be patient and curious instead of instantly judgemental.

I hadn't realized what a collage of mental disorders my whole life has been

the suspect, Colin Stagg, must be the person who introduces every single element. What you may then do is reflect that back. You must never introduce it first. If you do, you're fulfilling your hopes, you see?" I