Quotes About Insight

Christopher said to himself that only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent.

That is the problem with you whites. You always want to know everything. We just experience it.

Is a platitude so deeply felt still just a platitude? No, I decided. A platitude is precisely what is left of a truth after it has been drained of all emotion.

It's always better to know more rather than less, even when that knowledge complicates your life.

Can a recognition of one's shallowness qualify as a profound insight?

quotation from William Blake that, it occurred to me later, neatly aligned the way of the scientist with that of the mystic: "The true method of knowledge is experiment.

We simply don't have the words to convey the force of these perceptions to our straight selves, perhaps because they are the kinds of perceptions that precede words.

I would never have found it if not for psychedelics. This strikes me as one of the great gifts of the experience they afford: the expansion of one's repertoire of conscious states.

We have a tendency to assume that what we can see is the important thing to look at.

One of the things that commends travel, art, nature, work, and certain drugs to us is the way these experiences, at their best, block every mental path forward and back, immersing us in the flow of a present that is literally wonderful—wonder being the by-product of precisely the kind of unencumbered first sight, or virginal noticing, to which the adult brain has closed itself.

The clue arrived a year later, in the form of an article in a scientific journal describing the behavior of rats given a newly discovered compound called LSD. Hubbard tracked down the researcher, obtained some LSD, and had a literally life-changing experience. He witnessed the beginning of life on earth as well as his own conception.

An artist's job is simply to take the mirror in front of your face and hold it there. It's not to give you any answers. It is simply to take that mirror and point it at you.

My problem is not that I see all 17 sides of any issue, but I'm equally passionate about all 17 sides simultaneously.

I have done one thing that I think is a contribution: I helped Buddhist science and modern science combine. No other Buddhist has done that. Other lamas, I don't think they ever pay attention to modern science. Since my childhood, I have a keen interest.

We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.

I'm not like a university-educated scholar. I just sing what I see.

You know, I've always said, I've never felt I was a particularly good singer, but I've always thought I had a great knack for picking hit songs.

I find male singers and what they sing about fascinating. It makes me realize how little we know about ourselves and how little I know about myself. It's interesting to see the male perspective.

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.

There is no single right answer or path forward, but there is one right way to frame the problem.

When you don't have diversity in the creative process, you inevitably end up with a single, narrow perspective in the output.

I read cover to cover every jazz publication that I could and in the New York Times, every single day reading their jazz reviews even though I didn't put them in the films. I wanted to know what is going on.

No single person can possess the wisdom to chart our course.

If a reader comes across a story that makes them cry, you can be sure that the writer felt every single thing that makes the reader cry.