Quotes About Insight

No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life.

All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.

Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense.

All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.

All the problems of the world could be settled if people were only willing to think. The trouble is that people very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.

History, by appraising. ..[the students] of the past, will enable them to judge of the future.

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.

We're not big fans of focus groups. We don't much care for traditional market research either. We go to the source. Not the "experts" inside a company, but the actual people who use the product or something similar to what we're hoping to create.

I view art as an inspirational tool.

Women, Thumps decided years ago, had a need to know what people around them were doing every minute of the day. It wasn't curiosity exactly, and it wasn't control. It was more as though they were keeping track of the world so that if anyone hit them with a pop quiz, they'd have the right answer.

Why do we ask the important questions after they've been answered?

The thinkers and works of the past are studied here not as dated museum pieces or objects of antiquarian curiosity; they are confronted as powerful voices that challenge us to join in searching debates. The point is not to learn about these thinkers and texts, but from them.

Clarity affords focus.

The sinister, the terrible never deceive: the state in which they leave us is always one of enlightenment. And only this condition of vicious insight allows us a full grasp of the world, all things considered, just as a frigid melancholy grants us full possession of ourselves. We may hide from horror only in the heart of horror. ("The Medusa")

the knowledge that life is worthless is the flower of all human wisdom.

From them I had nothing to learn—one cannot cease to know what one does know.

And I succumbed to an ecstatic horror at this insight.

Question: How could we know we were keeping certain truths from ourselves regarding how things truly are in this world at its deepest level? Answer: Because we have done it before.

I have only recorded what everyone is saying (though they may not know they are saying it), and sometimes what they have seen (though they may not know they have seen it).

Well-honed attention—as evidenced in trackers, mindfulness practitioners, athletes, hunters, artists, writers, ornithologists, and more—is something quite different. It can be focused narrowly or distributed across the entire visual field at will. Its focus can be internal (on the contents of mind) or external, and it can be sustained for long periods. It is penetrating, quick, and efficient, picking up signals that are altogether unseen by the untrained eye.

Science fiction is not about predicting the future but examining the present.

Knowledge is devalued when it becomes too generally known

Creativeness is the ability to see relationships where none exist.