Quotes About Insight

Spinoza , for example, thought that insight into the essence of reality, into the harmonious structure of the eternal universe, necessarily awakens love for this universe. For him, ethical conduct is entirely determined by such insight into nature, just as our devotion to a person may be determined by insight into his greatness or genius. Fears and petty passions, alien to the great love of the universe, which is logos itself, will vanish, according to Spinoza, once our understanding of reality is deep enough.

The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.

The secret to global investing is gaining an insight into the hopes and desires of the people who live and work in the countries you invest in.

The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom.

I think all those years that I spent as a nurse, from the age of seventeen, just allowed me an insight into human emotion at those times of life when it's so important. And to see and witness those times of grief and love and loss and all those things was such a huge privilege, both in my own personal life, but it also, I think, spills over into my writing. I think the one thing that most novelists have is some degree of emotional intelligence, and if you don't have that, then perhaps you might struggle to be a novelist, because that has to come out somewhere.

The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change.

Wonder — the enthusiastic ardor for the sublimity of being, for its worthiness to be an object of knowledge — promises to become the point of departure for genuine insight only where it has reached the stage in which the subject, overwhelmed by the object, has, as it were, fused into a single point or into nothing.

While it may not heighten our sympathy, wit widens our horizons by its flashes, revealing remote hidden affiliations and drawing laughter from far afield; humor, in contrast, strikes up fellow feeling, and though it does not leap so much across time and space, enriches our insight into the universal in familiar things, lending it a local habitation and a name.

Imagination is the means of deep insight and sympathy, the power to conceive and express images removed from normal objective reality.

It turns out that human beings are hard-wired to have conversations impact them in such profound and significant ways that it can actually turn genes on and off. That's a core, fascinating challenge for all of us and insight.

Ultimately, Leibniz argued, there are only two absolutely simple concepts, God and Nothingness. From these, all other concepts may be constructed, the world, and everything within it, arising from some primordial argument between the deity and nothing whatsoever. And then, by some inscrutable incandescent insight, Leibniz came to see that what is crucial in what he had written is the alternation between God and Nothingness. And for this, the numbers 0 and 1 suffice.

...Forgiving is not having to understand. Understanding may come later, in fragments, an insight here and a glimpse there, after forgiving.

There has to be insight born of hindsight. Otherwise, you're only confessing your sins and asking the reader to forgive you. And that is a complete misuse of the writer's power and unfair to the reader.

When we're on tour, probably we don't go 24 hours without someone asking us where we came up with the name They Might Be Giants. Which, on one level, seems like a completely legitimate question. If I think of other bands, like The Beatles, it would explain to me that John Lennon had a proclivity for slightly cheap puns. But I'm not sure how much insight that would give me into what's actually good about The Beatles' music.

I think the country's in trouble. And I think I have a pretty clear sense of the values and principles that have made this country great. I've had a chance to govern and lead with those in mind, with some significant success in Minnesota. And I think the country needs that kind of leadership and insight and perspective.

The task of evolutionary psychology is not to weigh in on human nature, a task better left to others. It is to add the satisfying kind of insight that only science can provide: to connect what we know about human nature with the rest of our knowledge of how the world works, and to explain the largest number of facts with the smallest number of assumptions.

I was still more concerned (a preference which you may be far from resenting) to strike a blow for Epicurus, that great man whose holiness and divinity of nature were not shams, who alone had and imparted true insight into the good, and who brought deliverance to all that consorted with him.

What always seems miraculous is when aesthetic necessities yield an insight which otherwise I would have missed.

Every original poet has a new insight, or rather introduces a new power.

The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flushes, or short-circuits of reasoning. In fact they may be likened to an immersed chain, of which only the beginning and the end are visible above the surface of consciousness. The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links.

Whether it's viewers of the show or readers of my columns and books, I'm consistently impressed with their wit, humor and insight. That goes for about 95 percent of the audience. The other five percent are why the 'Delete' option and restraining orders were invented.

Zen insight is not our awareness, but Being's awareness of itself in us.

Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden).

Questions of personal priority, however interesting they may be to the persons concerned, sink into insignificance in the prospect of any gain of deeper insight into the secrets of nature.

I want to share some insight into why someone would want to be a SEAL. A lot of us faced obstacles growing up. I didn't have any type of real nurturing as a kid. I hope people will relate to my story and go, 'Hey, if this guy can do it, so can I.

Music therapy, to me, is music performance without the ego. It's not about entertainment as much as its about empathizing. If you can use music to slip past the pain and gather insight into the workings of someone else's mind, you can begin to fix a problem.

Quantum physics tells us that nothing that is observed is unaffected by the observer. That statement, from science, holds an enormous and powerful insight. It means that everyone sees a different truth because everyone is creating what they see.

Hence there are so many kinds of love and so many kinds of compassion. But the basic, the most fundamental, is to understand this three-rung ladder of love. That will help you, that will give you an insight into where you are, what kind of love you are living in and what kind of compassion is happening to you. Watch. Beware not to remain caught in it. There are higher realms, heights to be climbed, peaks to be attained.

The professions of novelist and journalist are very separate. As a novelist, you are ultimately working for yourself. Yes, you need the approval of a publisher and an audience, but what is valued in fiction writing - style, individual voice, insight - is scorned by the editor who is combing through your newspaper article.

For honest insight into who you are, don't ask yourself what your priorities are for next week. Ask what your priorities were last week.

Our searches for numerical order lead as often to terminal nuttiness as to profound insight.

A man of correct insight among those who are duped and deluded resembles one whose watch is right while all the clocks in the town give the wrong time.

I was really glad to meet Jane Clark because it did give me an insight. I couldn't imagine what kind of woman she was. I was hugely impressed by her energy, straightforward nature and enthusiasm for life.

Since art is a virtue of the intellect, it demands to communicate with the entire universe of the intellect. Hence it is that the normal climate of art is intelligence and knowledge: its normal soil, the civilized heritage of a consistent and integrated system of beliefs and values; its normal horizon , the infinity of human experience enlighted by the passionate insight of anguish or the intellectual virtues of a contemplative mind.

People talking about politics usually start from the ass end backwards in that they think you have a political agenda, and then you make your work fit that cookie cutter. It's the other way around. One works by simple observation, looking into things. It's usually called insight and out of that comes your view - not that you have the view first and then squash everything to make it fit. I'm not interested in cutting the feet off my characters or stretching them to make them fit my certain political view.

Speed is often confused with insight. When I start running earlier than the others, I appear faster.

When I work a game as an analyst, all I do is look at the game like a coach. Why was something successful? What makes it work? I just try to use my expertise and whatever insight I have to the game.

My stroke of insight would be: peace is only a thought away, and all we have to do to access it is silence the voice of our dominating left mind.

Your anger will cool into hardened passionate insight if you wait a day. Most of the things that make me angry I let them sit. The heat that remains will be sufficient. The stuff that evaporates is the stuff that would have simply offended or made it histrionic.

The saying "He who teaches others, teaches himself" is very true, not only because constant repetition impresses a fact indelibly on the mind, but because the process of teaching itself gives deeper insight into the subject taught.

I've gained no wisdom, no insight, no mellowing. I would make all the same mistakes again, today.

It is by losing ourselves in inquiry, creation & craft that we become something. Civilization is a continual gift of spirit: inventions, discoveries, insight, art. We are citizens, as Socrates would have said, & we have it available as our own.

Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre.

Hexapodia as the key insight...I haven't had a chance to see the famous video from Straumli Realm, except as an evocation. (My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive.) Is it true that humans have six legs?

Working in film, I'm sure you have insight into this, there's something great that only comes by way of interactions with others that a monastic life does not afford.

The first act of insight is throw away the labels. In fiction, while we do not necessarily write about ourselves, we write out of ourselves, using ourselves; what we learn from, what we are sensitive to, what we feel strongly about--these become our characters and go to make our plots. Characters in fiction are conceived from within, and they have, accordingly, their own interior life; they are individuals every time.

A friend will give you immediate feedback and that will be that friend's opinion. An analyst often remains quiet and you hear what you've said and you gain your own insight.

Intellectual knowledge exists in and of the brain. Because the brain is part of the body, which must one day expire, this collection of facts, however large and impressive, will expire as well. {But spiritual insight transcends death.}