Quotes About Introspection

I'm slow with a new idea, and want to think it over alone, where I'm sure it's the idea and not the man that's getting me.

I failed, he said, I got talking my ideas. It's my greatest failing.

He had lost the bright gods, and he had not been accepted by the dark. He was in a no soul's land, and in its isolation his own soul was withdrawn, small and heavy as a stone within him, and about his evil deed. No wonder it could not take wing and make the heralding music. That was the whole of reality now, the little stone inside, and outside the cold, dark ravine and the inescapable watcher.

As we begin to acknowledge our own inner shadow, we become more tolerant of the shadow in others.

She sat for a few minutes in the company of her bitter regrets...

Perhaps the reason she was so unhappy was because she thought unhappy thoughts.

nobody knows the solution to every problem; rather than blindly following the prescriptions of others, Africans need to think and act for themselves, and learn from their mistakes.

seeing how small our affairs look in the larger scheme of things, the Stoic means to induce a felt sense of humility and attraction to virtue. The method can be called intuitive because it isn't a matter of argument. It's more a question of showing and pointing, and expecting perceptions and adjustments to follow directly from a new point of view.

If we treat Socrates as an internalized feature of the mind, then this is its first and constant order of business: uprooting false conceits of knowledge.

We always feel as though we react to things in the world; in fact we react to things in ourselves. And sometimes changing ourselves will be more effective and sensible than trying to change the world.

If you would attain real freedom, you must be the slave of philosophy. Epicurus, quoted in Seneca, Epistles 8.7

If you want to take your own measure, put aside your money, your estates, your honors, and look inside yourself. At present you are taking the word of others for what you are. Seneca, Epistles 80.10

Aporia is a form of it.

Our criticisms of others therefore have a side benefit. They provide an unintentional glimpse at what is ugliest within us.

You think such an attitude is admirable. Manly, heroic even. 'Lived harmlessly.' 'Kept to himself.' Hide away somewhere and your past will cease to exist. You won't have to account for it. You'll feel no obligation to explain your actions or justify them because you've gone away and you expect your victims to go away too. It's like leaving the scene of an accident . . . Or a marriage. Even a field of battle.

You could never know what transpired beneath another's skin.

In one of his lectures on creativity, the comedian John Cleese talked about the need to find one's own "tortoise enclosure"—that19 sheltered, quiet place where you can go for extended periods to escape from the distractions of the outside world so that you can think without interruption.

at least temporarily, it's necessary to stop doing and stop knowing in order to start asking.

So perhaps the first rule of asking why is that there must be a pause, a space, an interruption in the meeting, a halt of "progress," a quiet moment looking out the window on the bus. Often, these are the only times when there is time to question.

In Hal Gregersen's study of business leaders who question, he found that they exhibited an unusual "blend of humility and confidence"15—they were humble enough to acknowledge a lack of knowledge, and confident enough to admit this in front of others.

Great questioners "keep looking"—at a situation or a problem, at the ways people around them behave, at their own behaviors. They study the small details; and they look for not only what's there but what's missing. They step back, view things sideways, squint if necessary.

in addition to asking what went wrong, you should also ask, In this failure, what went right? (Conversely, when you try out something and it seems to have succeeded, look for what went wrong or could have been better

This great quote from Close was featured recently on the site BrainPickings: "Ask yourself an interesting enough question3 and your attempt to find a tailor-made solution to that question will push you to a place where, pretty soon, you'll find yourself all by your lonesome—which I think is a more interesting place to be.")

if you never actually do anything about a problem yourself, then you're not really questioning—you're complaining.