Conception Quotes

• Vision gives you the impulse to make the picture your own.

  Robert Collier

  Life, Giving, Vision

  Robert Collier (2009). “Riches Within Your Reach!”, p.234, Penguin

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• A goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.

  James D. Watson

  Stupid, Science, Numbers

  James D. Watson (2011). “The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

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• One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.

  Konrad Lorenz

  Stupid, Successful, Science

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• Generally, I am opposed to painting which is concerned with conceptions of simplicity. Everything looks busy to me.

  Jasper Johns

  Simplicity, Looks, Painting

  Kirk Varnedoe, Jasper Johns (1996). “Jasper Johns: A Retrospective”

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• I don't believe in the concept of hell, but if I did I would think of it as filled with people who were cruel to animals.

  Gary Larson

  Believe, Animal, Thinking

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• Everyone is a theologian, either conscious or unconscious, in the sense that everyone has some conception of the nature of reality, of the demands of reality, and of those elements in reality that support or threaten meaningful existence.

  James Luther Adams

  Meaningful, Reality, Support

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• Philosophy itself cannot but benefit from our disputes, for if our conceptions prove true, new achievements will be made; if false, their refutation will further confirm the original doctrines.

  Galileo Galilei

  Philosophy, Thinking, Achievement

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• The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.

  Anton Chekhov

  World, Existentialism, Metaphysics

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• The conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity. Primitive man, unable to understand the phenomena of nature, and harassed by them, saw in every terrifying manifestation some sinister force expressly directed against him; and as ignorance and fear are the parents of all superstition, the troubled fancy of primitive man wove the God idea.

  Emma Goldman

  Ignorance, Men, Primitive Man

  Emma Goldman (1915). “Mother Earth, a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Social Science and Literature”

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• one of the greatest hindrances to happiness in the present day is our tendency to standardize our conception of it.

  J. E. Buckrose

  Happiness, Tendencies, Present Day

  Annie Edith Foster Jameson, J. E. Buckrose (1923). “What I Have Gathered”

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• The underlying assumption that human nature is basically the same at all times, everywhere, and obeys eternal laws beyond human control, is a conception that only a handful of bold thinkers have dared to question.

  Isaiah Berlin

  Law, Assumption, Human Nature

  Isaiah Berlin (2013). “The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas”, p.71, Princeton University Press

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• Bring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander. You have the power to increase his perceptions and conceptions.

  Dorothea Lange

  Bystanders, Your Side, Perception

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• It is my strong conviction that a realist conception of human nature should be made a servant of an ethic of progressive justice and should not be made into a bastion of conservatism, particularly a conservatism which defends unjust privileges.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Strong, Justice, Unjust

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2012). “Man's Nature and His Communities: Essays on the Dynamics and Enigmas of Man's Personal and Social Existence”, p.24, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• Imagine a multidimensiona l spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image.

  Alan Watts

  Buddhist, Morning, Reflection

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• My main professional interest during the 1970s has been in the dramatic change of concepts and ideas that has occurred in physics during the first three decades of the century, and that is still being elaborated in our current theories of matter. The new concepts in physics have brought about a profound change in our world view; from the mechanistic conception of Descartes and Newton to a holistic and ecological view, a view which I have found to be similar to the views of mystics of all ages and traditions.

  Fritjof Capra

  Views, Ideas, Our World

  "The Turning Point". Book by Fritjof Capra, www.juwing.sp.ru. 1982.

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• For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.

  Rachel Carson

  History, Historical, Environmental

  Rachel Carson (2002). “Silent Spring”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In our English popular religion the common conception of a future state of bliss is that of ... a kind of perfected middle-class home, with labour ended, the table spread, goodness all around, the lost ones restored, hymnody incessant.

  Matthew Arnold

  Home, Lost Ones, Class

  Matthew Arnold (1874). “Literature & Dogma: An Essay Towards a Better Apprehension of the Bible”, p.378

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• A man must first of all understand certain things. He has thousands of false ideas and false conceptions, chiefly about himself, and he must get rid of some of them before beginning to acquire anything new. Otherwise the new will be built on a wrong foundation and the result will be worse than before. To speak the truth is the most difficult thing in the world; one must study a great deal and for a long time in order to speak the truth. The wish alone is not enough. To speak the truth one must know what the truth is and what a lie is, and first of all in oneself. And this nobody wants to know.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Lying, Men, Order

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• At any one time there is a natural tendency among physicists to believe that we already know the essential ingredients of a comprehensive theory . But each time a new frontier of observation is broached we inevitably discover new phenomena which force us to modify substantially our previous conceptions. I believe this process to be unending, that the delights and challenges of unexpected discovery will continue always.

  Val Logsdon Fitch

  Believe, Discovery, Challenges

  "Les Prix Nobel" ("The Nobel Prizes 1980") edited by Wilhelm Odelberg, Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, www.nobelprize.org. 1981.

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• I had no more conception of what it meant to be a forester than the man in the moon....But at least a forester worked in the woods and with the woods - and I loved the woods and everything about them....My Father's suggestion settled the question in favor of forestry.

  Gifford Pinchot

  Father, Moon, Men

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• When people say, "God is love," I think they mean that love is extremely important, or that God really wants us to love. But in Christian conception, God really has love as his essence.

  Timothy Keller

  Love, Christian, Mean

  Timothy Keller (2008). “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism”, p.211, Penguin

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• Learning is most often considered. a process of getting rather than giving. This is most evident in conceptions of student/teacher roles: Teachers give and students get. Yet, in adult learning both giving and getting are critical.

  David A. Kolb

  Teacher, Learning, Giving

  David A. Kolb, Irwin M. Rubin, Joyce Osland (1991). “Organizational behavior: an experiential approach”

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• Medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the classroom. Let not your conceptions of disease come from words heard in the lecture room or read from the book. See, and then reason and compare and control. But see first.

  William Osler

  Book, Practice Of Medicine, Disease

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• ...the physicist cannot simply surrender to the philosopher the critical contemplation of the theoretical foundations; for, he himself knows best, and feels more surely where the shoe pinches...Physical conceptions are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Shoes, Mind

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• When the conception of internal form is governed by edge, color appears to remain on or above the surface. I think, on the contrary, of color as being seen in and throughout, not solely on, the surface.

  Jules Olitski

  Thinking, Color, Form

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