Colin Wilson Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• The visionary disciplines himself to see the world always as if he had only just seen it for the first time.

  Colin Wilson

  Discipline, Vision, World

  Colin Wilson (1985). “The essential Colin Wilson”

  9 Copy quote

• Religion, mysticism and magic all spring from the same basic 'feeling' about the universe: a sudden feeling of meaning, which human beings sometimes 'pick up' accidentally, as your radio might pick up some unknown station. Poets feel that we are cut off from meaning by a thick, lead wall, and that sometimes for no reason we can understand the wall seems to vanish and we are suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of the infinite interestingness of things.

  Colin Wilson

  Wall, Spring, Cutting

  Colin Wilson (1971). “The Occult: A History”, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• It was Rousseau who was largely responsible for the problem by giving currency to the idea that freedom can exist without responsibility and discipline.

  Colin Wilson

  Responsibility, Ideas, Discipline

  "The Encyclopedia of Modern Murder 1962-1983" by Colin Wilson, "Introductory Essay", (p. xx), 1983.

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• The exploration of oneself is usually also an exploration of the world at large, of other writers, a process of comparison with oneself with others, discoveries of kinships, gradual illumination of one's own potentialities.

  Colin Wilson

  Discovery, Illumination, World

  "The Outsider". Book by Colin Wilson, p. 231, 1956.

  8 Copy quote

• As a young man I was scornful about the supernatural but as I have got older, the sharp line that divided the credible from the incredible has tended to blur; I am aware that the whole world is slightly incredible

  Colin Wilson

  Men, World, Lines

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• Simple perception then is a fallacy. Besides the conscious prejudices that we are aware of imposing on the world, there are a thousand subconscious prejudices that we assume to be actuality.

  Colin Wilson

  Simple, Perception, World

  7 Copy quote

• One cannot ignore half of life for the purposes of science, and then claim that the results of science give a full and adequate picture of the meaning of life. All discussions of 'life' which begin with a description of man's place on a speck of matter in space, in an endless evolutionary scale, are bound to be half-measures, because they leave out most of the experiences which are important to use as human beings.

  Colin Wilson

  Men, Space, Giving

  "Religion and the Rebel". Book by Colin Wilson, p. 309, 1957.

  14 Copy quote

• No matter how honest scientists think they are, they are still influenced by various unconscious assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. Expressed in a sentence, Fort 's principle goes something like this: People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.

  Colin Wilson

  Believe, Thinking, Objectivity

  "Mysteries". Book by Colin Wilson, 1978.

  7 Copy quote

• The real issue is not whether two and two make four or whether two and two make five, but whether life advances by men who love words or by men who love living.

  Colin Wilson

  Real, Men, Two

  Colin Wilson (2014). “The Outsider”, p.353, Diversion Books

  5 Copy quote

• The complex develops out of the simple.

  Colin Wilson

  Simple, Complexes

  7 Copy quote

• I have a strong antipathy to everything connected with gardens, gardening and gardeners. . . . Gardening seems to me a kind of admission of defeat. . . . Man was made for better things than pruning his rose trees. The state of mind of the confirmed gardener seems to me as reprehensible as that of the confirmed alcoholic. Both have capitulated to the world. Both have become lotus eaters and drifters.

  Colin Wilson

  Strong, Men, Garden

  9 Copy quote

• But Zarathustra made it clear in which direction the answer lay; it is towards the artist-psychologist, the intuitional thinker. There are very few such men in the world's literature; the great artists are not thinkers, the great thinkers are seldom artists.

  Colin Wilson

  Artist, Men, Answers

  Colin Wilson (2014). “The Outsider”, p.191, Diversion Books

  9 Copy quote

• I was aggressively nonpolitical. I believed that people who make a fuss about politics do so because their heads are too empty to think about more important things. So I felt nothing but impatient contempt for Osborne's Jimmy Porter and the rest of the heroes of social protest.

  Colin Wilson

  Hero, Thinking, People

  Colin Wilson (2014). “The Outsider”, p.370, Diversion Books

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• Could it be that sexual perversion and romanticism sprang from the same longing for distant horizons?

  Colin Wilson

  Horizon, Longing, Perversion

  Colin Wilson (1988). “The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders”

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• Criminals interest me, because they're driven by the same desires as we are, but they take these disastrous shortcuts and end up in a real mess.

  Colin Wilson

  Real, Desire, Criminals

  6 Copy quote

• It is important to grasp that boredom is one of the most common - and undesirable - consequences of 'unicameralism'. Boredom is a feeling of being 'dead inside'; that is to say, loss of contact with our instincts and feelings.

  Colin Wilson

  Loss, Boredom, Feelings

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• The "passion for incredulity" can produce as much self-deception as the uncritical will to believe.

  Colin Wilson

  Believe, Passion, Self

  Colin Wilson (2011). “Afterlife: An Investigation”, p.307, Doubleday

  7 Copy quote

• I'm basically a writer of ideas, and the English aren't interested in ideas. The English, I'm afraid, are totally brainless.

  Colin Wilson

  Ideas, Brainless

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• Man is brilliant at solving problems; but solving them only makes him the victim of his own childishness and laziness. It is this recognition that has made almost every major philosopher in history a pessimist.

  Colin Wilson

  Men, Laziness, Recognition

  6 Copy quote

• If I'd stayed on in London and carried on going to literary parties, it would have wrecked me as a writer.

  Colin Wilson

  Party, London, Ifs

  "Where the outsider went next". Interview with Lisa Gee, www.theguardian.com. February 15, 2002.

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• The self-surmounter can never put up with the man who has ceased to be dissatisfied with himself.

  Colin Wilson

  Men, Self, He Man

  Colin Wilson (2014). “The Outsider”, p.169, Diversion Books

  4 Copy quote

• Faculty X is a sense of reality of other places and other times, and it is the possession of it—fragmentary and uncertain though it is—that distinguishes man from all other animals.

  Colin Wilson

  Animal, Reality, Men

  Colin Wilson (1985). “The essential Colin Wilson”

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• In the mid nineteenth century, the typical murderer was a drunken illiterate; a hundred years later the typical murderer regards himself as a thinking man.

  Colin Wilson

  Men, Thinking, Years

  "The Encyclopedia of Modern Murder 1962-1983". Book by Colin Wilson, Introductory Essay, p. xiv, 1983.

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• Now the basic impulse behind existentialism is optimistic, very much like the impulse behind all science. Existentialism is romanticism, and romanticism is the feeling that man is not the mere he has always taken himself for. Romanticism began as a tremendous surge of optimism about the stature of man. Its aim - like that of science - was to raise man above the muddled feelings and impulses of his everyday humanity, and to make him a god-like observer of human existence.

  Colin Wilson

  Taken, Optimistic, Men

  "Introduction to the New Existentialism". Book by Colin Wilson, p. 96, 1966.

  6 Copy quote

• Phenomenology is not a philosophy; it is a philosophical method, a tool. It is like an adjustable spanner that can be used for dismantling a refrigerator or a car, or used for hammering in nails, or even for knocking somebody out.

  Colin Wilson

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Car

  "Introduction to the New Existentialism" by Colin Wilson, (p. 92), 1966.

  12 Copy quote

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