Quotes About Insight

Gen. Scott saw more through the eyes of his staff officers than through his own.

I am not at all impressed... at how far man's wisdom has managed to lead him; besides, it is not very great. What does surprise me, on the other hand, is how high their folly, their downright stupidity even, not to say their complete and utter blindness, has managed to raise them. Other things being equal, I prefer to follow the folly of man, for that has brought him farther than his wisdom.

On the other hand I won't conceal the fact from anyone that once upon a time a little something happened to me. I saw a little something. But never except just that once.

One Eye slid down from the tree, and Three Eyes climbed up. But Three Eyes

Right View cannot be described. We can only point in the correct direction. Right View cannot even be transmitted by a teacher. A teacher can help us identify the seed of Right View that is already in our garden, and help us have the confidence to practice, to entrust that seed to the soil of our daily life.

My son, there may be a time when I explain these things to you, because there may be a time when I understand them.

The truth is a tattoo on your forehead. You can't see it yourself. I am your mirror.

He would enjoy women more, she had informed him, if he understood their clothes.

You see people truly when they enjoy the most.

To be sure, we are still aware that thinking calls not only for intelligence and profundity but above all for courage.

For the need to think can never be stilled by allegedly definite insights of "wise men"; it can be satisfied only through thinking, and the thoughts I had yesterday will satisfy this need today only to the extent that I want and am able to think them anew.

As Tony Judt wrote a few years ago in The New York Review of Books,8 Arendt made many small errors for which her critics will never forgive her. But she got many of the big things right and for this she deserves to be remembered.

They knew by instinct rather than by insight that this new expansion movement, in which "patriotism . . . is best expressed in money-making" (Huebbe-Schleiden) and the national flag is a "commercial asset" (Rhodes), could only destroy the political body of the nation-state.

A]ll historical and political evidence clearly points to the more-than-intimate connection between the lesser and the greater evil.… The natural conclusion from the true insight into a century so fraught with danger of the greatest evil should be a radical negation of the whole concept of the lesser evil in politics, because far from protecting us against the greater ones, the lesser evils have invariably led us into them.

Writing is an integral part of the process of understanding.

I have a good eye, said Benjamin. Most of the time I can look at a person and see their whole life. Small things give them away. That farmer, for instance. I could tell by the way he tied his shoes that he'd never traveled more than twenty miles from his home, and it was unlikely that he'd follow us for long. And that Father John of yours. I knew he had something hidden in that sleeve. And I knew he'd use it on you. The only thing I didn't know was if you deserved it.

Travelling expands the mind rarely.

When we get to the end of the story, you will know more than you do now...

It is only with the heart that one can see clearly, for the most essential things are invisible to the eye.

Leadership is seeing the consequences of our actions further in the future than those around us can.

I live in the same world as you do. I just see things that are outside the realm of understanding.

Acceptance of the inevitable, a sign of a wise man.

The humpback never sees the hump on his own back.

looked me straight in the eye and spoke an indisputable truth: You don't know my life.