Quotes About Insight

Change will lead to insight far more often than insight will lead to change.

Prajna is insight into the world. And a lot of that insight has to do with karma and the way karma affects our lives.

People want to know those details. They think it gives them greater insight into a piece of art, but when they approach a painting in such a manner, they are belittling both the artist’s work and their own ability to experience it. Each painting I do says everything I want to say on its subject and in terms of that painting, and not all the trivia in the world concerning my private life will give the viewer more insight into it than what hangs there before their eyes. Frankly, as far as I’m concerned, even titling a work is an unnecessary concession.

Black boxes are really important to our investigators. The cockpit voice recorder can give us insight into what's going on with the crew in the cockpit. The flight data recorders can give us insight into what's happening with the performance of the aircraft.

No one wants to know how clever you are. They don't want an insight into your mind, thrilling as it might be. They want an insight into their own.

With an open mind, we gain insight into ideas and expressions that we may have overlooked or not noticed at all.

I describe management as arts, crafts and science. It is a practice that draws on arts, craft and science and there is a lot of craft - meaning experience - there is a certain amount of craft meaning insight, creativity and vision, and there is the use of science, technique or analysis.

I think that poets can say, "What we want is for everybody on earth to wake up free from fear and with access to medicine and clean water and education." But I don't think poets have any special insight on how to get there. And the 20th century is a pretty good record of that because so many of the great poets were Stalinists: Vallejo, Neruda, Eluard, Aragon, etc. They wrote their odes to Lenin and Stalin. They glorified some of the most violent and grotesque dictatorships of the 20th century. And a lot of the ones who were not Stalinists were fascists or fascist sympathizers.

Unfortunately, religion often works to shrink and tame the very wild and mysterious forces that first drew our wonder. In the process of making the inexplicable safe for the masses, the possibilities for real illusion-piercing insight becomes reduced. One might say that they are only available to those who dare to ride the breaking crest of direct life-altering experience.

By far the most important consequence of the conceptual revolution brought about in physics by relativity and quantum theory lies not in such details as that meter sticks shorten when they move or that simultaneous position and momentum have no meaning, but in the insight that we had not been using our minds properly and that it is important to find out how to do so.

At the moment of insight, a potential pattern of organized behavior comes into being.

Then comes the insight that All is God. One still realizes that the world is as it was, but it does not matter, it does not affect one's faith.

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.

Man relates to material things through direct insight rather than reason.

I enjoy art, architecture, museums, churches and temples; anything that gives me insight into the history and soul of the place I'm in. I can also be a beach bum - I like to laze in the shade of a palm tree with a good book or float in a warm sea at sundown.

We do not merely give a religious education because that would seem to imply the possibility of some other education, a secular education, for example. But we hold that all education is divine, that every good gift of knowledge and insight comes from above, that the Lord the Holy Spirit is the supreme educator of mankind, and that the culmination of all education (which may at the same time be reached by a little child) is that personal knowledge of and intimacy with God in which our being finds its fullest perfection.

The beauty of the ragamuffin gospel lies in the insight it offers into Jesus: the essential tenderness of His heart, His way of looking at the world, His mode of relating to you and me. 'If you really want to understand a man, don't just listen to what he says, but watch what he does.

The highest exercise of imagination is not to devise what has no existence, but rather to perceive what really exists, though unseen by the outward eye-not creation, but insight.

Because IQ tests favor memory skills and logic, overlooking artistic creativity, insight, resiliency, emotional reserves, sensory gifts, and life experience, they can't really predict success, let alone satisfaction.

Knowing that one is always capable of change, the second step lies in making the decision to change. Change does not occur by merely willing it anymore than behavior changes simply through insight.

I collect names for characters. Names are valuable; they can be your first source of insight into a character.

I have come to rely on Ed Welch and others at CCEF for guidance and insight in better understanding the issues of the soul that plague many people today. For those who want to address more than just the symptoms of depression, Ed's counsel is invaluable.

My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature.

Insight comes at a moment of transition between work and relaxation.

Before knowing the truth, if you depend on your intelligence, you can be misled completely. Intelligence that is without the spiritual insight is your own ego. After Realization, the truth that comes to you is the real, pure truth and is not your ego.

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.

As children, Siddhartha and Jesus both realized that life is filled with suffering. The Buddha became aware at an early age that suffering is pervasive. Jesus must have had the same kind of insight, because they both made every effort to offer a way out. We, too, must learn to live in ways that reduce the world's suffering.

Insight is 'mental vision,' one of the ways in which the mind escapes the limits of the obvious or the familiar.

Many doctors are drawn to this profession (psychology) because they have an innate deficiency of insight into the motives, feelings and thoughts of others, a deficiency they hope to remedy by ingesting masses of data.

I think as I have gotten older, my feelings about my role in the culture as a writer, and me specifically, has changed, and has become more degraded and marginalized. This may be a more personal and psychological than a sociological insight, but I feel more vulnerable.

I hear Democrats say, 'The Affordable Care Act is the law,' as though we're supposed to genuflect at that sunburst of insight and move on. Well, the Fugitive Slave Act was the law, separate but equal was the law, lots of things are the law and then we change them.

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.

Being snarky and smug doesn't equate to providing insight, and there's more than one occasion when the filmmakers lose sight of this in their zeal to spread the Gospel According to Maher.

The reliance on social media as the avenue to get peer insight continues to increase.

When mundane, lowly activities are at stake, too much insight is detrimental — far-sightedness errs in immediate concerns.

Only simple ideas can be held by large groups of people. Commonly held ideas are almost always dumbed down until they are practically lies... and often dangerous ones. Once vast numbers of people have come to believe the lie, they adjust their own behavior to bring themselves into sync with it, and thereby change the world itself. The world, then, no longer resembles the one that gave rise to the original insight. Soon, a person's situation is so at odds with the world as it really is that a crisis develops, and he or she must seek a new metaphor for explanation and guidance.

This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be.

I don't feel there's anything about my experience of being gay that gives me more insight into "don't ask, don't tell," for example, than anybody else.

One of the best introductions to the history and ideas of Calvinism, packed with insight and wisdom.

I am fooling only myself when I say that my mother exists now only in the photographs on my bulletin board or in the outline of my hand or in the armful of memories I still hold tight. She lives on beneath everything I do. Her presence influenced who I was and her absence influences who I am. Our lives are shaped as much by those who leave us as they are by those who stay. Loss is our legacy. Insight is our gift. Memory is our guide.

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.

A belief in God may not be fully within me anymore, but there's still a belief in belief. The high drama and power of the Church has stayed with me. As a child in church, I saw grown men at the altar crying out for God's mercy. And the idea of someone doing that has become a joke in the popular culture, but when you are there and you see it, you experience - for a moment - an incredibly raw, honest, strange insight into what it means to be a human being. Those experiences don't leave you. Whatever you think of them, they are powerful experiences.

Johnny Ramone's autobiography is a no holds barred, straight-forward book written in a no-nonsense style that is Johnny personified. His story is written in his own actual words, so the reader gets an insight into what made him the unique, charismatic and exciting individual that he was. It also gives a great view of The Ramones from Johnny's perspective.

After a certain period of time, when I had acquired more insight into the Fuehrer's personality, I gave him my hand and said: "I unite my fate with yours for better or for worse: I dedicate myself to you in good times and in bad, even unto death." I really meant it-and still do.

I recently read in the book My Stroke of Insight by brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor that the natural life span of an emotion—the average time it takes for it to move through the nervous system and body—is only a minute and a half. After that we need thoughts to keep the emotion rolling. So if we wonder why we lock into painful emotional states like anxiety, depression, or rage, we need look no further than our own endless stream of inner dialogue.

Here is an example of Confucius sayings: "It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop." In a few words, Confucius teaches us about patience, perseverance, discipline, and hard work. But if you probe further, you will see more layers. Confucius' philosophies have significantly influenced spiritual and social thought. His views bear insight and depth of wisdom. You can apply his teachings in every sphere of life. Confucius' profound teachings are based on humanism.

A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and about the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little.

I love telling stories, I love for someone to see something, and go, "Oh, wow, I've never thought of it that way." Because I've had those moments in my life, where I go, "Oh, my God, I've never looked or approached this topic and had that insight or had that idea come to mind," to where it changes your life, it changes the way you see certain things. I love that. I think that's such a cool thing that we get to do by sharing stories, whether they're fiction or nonfiction.