Insight Quotes - Page 11

• Combining valuable insights from his experience in China, his time as the World Bank's chief economist, and the 2008 financial crisis, Justin Yifu Lin's recommendations for development policy reflect an impressive and unique personal journey.

  Kemal Dervis

  Journey, Unique, Development

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• If we could travel into the past, it's mind-boggling what would be possible. For one thing, history would become an experimental science, which it certainly isn't today. The possible insights into our own past and nature and origins would be dazzling. For another, we would be facing the deep paradoxes of interfering with the scheme of causality that has led to our own time and ourselves. I have no idea whether it's possible, but it's certainly worth exploring.

  Carl Sagan

  Past, Ideas, Mind

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• Each of us has the power and responsibility to heal ourselves, to be our own medicine man or woman. Awakening our innate powers of being, loving, knowing, seeing, and healing involves ongoing work at all levels and in all dimensions of our self. Exploring the range of rhythms and emotions, achieving insights into our conditioning and ego, moving through the energy levels of spirit – these are all activities to be integrated into our daily lives.

  Gabrielle Roth

  Moving, Responsibility, Healing

  Gabrielle Roth (2011). “Maps to Ecstasy: The Healing Power of Movement”, p.210, New World Library

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• To view an object in the proper light we must stand away from it. The study of the classical literatures gives the aloofness which cultivates insight. In learning to live with peoples and civilizations that have long ceased to be alive, we gain a vantage point, acquire an enlargement and elevation of thought, which enable us to study with a more impartial and liberal mind the condition of the society around us.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Light, Views, Civilization

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• Insight makes argument ridiculous.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Ridiculous, Argument

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• My curiosity was in no way cruel. Deviations from the commonplace attracted me strongly, as they still do; and to me the hermaphrodite and the living skeleton were interesting for the same reason as was Creatore, or the resplendent Guardsmen of the bands - because such people did not often come my way, and I hoped that they might impart some great revelation to me, some insight which would help me to a clearer understanding of the world about me.

  Robertson Davies

  Skeletons, Interesting, People

  "I Remember Creatore". Essay by Robertson Davies, 1948.

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• New insight begins when satisfaction comes to an end, when all that has been seen, said, or done looks like a distortion. ... Man's true fulfillment depends on communion with that which transcends him.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Men, Looks, Done

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.31, Macmillan

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• This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. Our most persistent and spectacular efforts are concerned not with the preservation of what we are but with the building up of an imaginary conception of ourselves in the opinion of others. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter.

  Eric Hoffer

  Men, Building Up, Effort

  "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell in Harper's Magazine, July 2005.

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• Margaret Mead was both a student of civilization and an exemplar of it. To a public of millions, she brought the central insight of cultural anthropology: that varying cultural patterns express an underlying human unity. She mastered her discipline, but she also transcended it. Intrepid, independent, plain spoken, fearless, she remains a model for the young and a teacher from whom all may learn.

  Margaret Mead

  Teacher, Independent, Civilization

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• You do not attain to knowledge by remaining on the shore and watching the foaming waves, you must make the venture and cast yourself in, you must swim, alert and with all your force, even if a moment comes when you think you are losing consciousness; in this way, and in no other, do you reach anthropological insight.

  Martin Buber

  Thinking, Swim, Venture

  Martin Buber (2003). “Between Man and Man”, p.148, Routledge

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• When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader.

  Anne Lamott

  Real, Writing, Caring

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.225, Anchor

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• The most fertile source of insight is hindsight.

  Morris Kline

  Hindsight, Source, Fertile

  Morris Kline (1982). “Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty”, p.101, Oxford University Press, USA

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• One of the key insights of the systems approach has been the realization that the network is a pattern that is common to all life. Wherever we see life, we see networks.

  Fritjof Capra

  Keys, Realization, Patterns

  "The Hidden Connections". Book by Fritjof Capra, 2002.

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• After the destructionofthe Second Temple Jewslived by an ancient and fundamental insight, that God does not live in buildings but in the human heart.

  Jonathan Sacks

  Heart, Temples, Doe

  1995 Community of Faith.

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• Nor do piecemeal steps however well intended, even partially resolve problems that have reached a universal, global and catastrophic character. If anything, partial 'solutions' serve merely as cosmetics to conceal the deep seated nature of the ecological crisis. They thereby deflect public attention and theoretical insight from an adequate understanding of the depth and scope of the necessary changes.

  Murray Bookchin

  Character, Understanding, Depth

  "The Ecology of Freedom". Book by Murray Bookchin, 1982.

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• For every woman who's ever wondered about the path not taken, Fenton and Steinke mine—with tremendous humor and insight—the mixed blessing of unexpected second chances.

  Emma McLaughlin

  Taken, Blessing, Second Chance

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• The great writers like Chekhov know that tragedy and laughter are just a few steps from each other ... but it took me a long time as an actress to learn that. Actually Arthur Miller taught me in the Seventies. We were making a CBS TV drama of his play Playing for Time about Auschwitz but the characters were laughing. It was a big insight for me to realise that that was what's called gallows humour, in this case worse than the gallows, that humans need to laugh and make jokes in order to survive.

  Vanessa Redgrave

  Laughter, Drama, Character

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• For the classics philosophical insight was the product of a life of leisure; for me a life of leisure is the product of philosophical insight.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Philosophical, Leisure, Products

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms”, p.84, Random House

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• Individuals of the earlier species had suffered from an almost insurmountable spiritual isolation from one another. Not even lovers, and scarcely even the geniuses with special insight into personality, ever had anything like accurate vision of one another... The most precious gift that a lover could bring to the beloved was not virginity but sexual experience. The union, it was felt, was the more pregnant the more each party could contribute from previous sexual and spiritual intimacy with others.

  Olaf Stapledon

  Spiritual, Party, Personality

  "Last and First Men" by Olaf Stapledon, Dover Books, (pp. 102, 112), 1930.

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• How many voices have escaped you until now, the venting furnace, the floorboards underfoot, the steady accusations of the clock numbering the minutes no one will mark. The terrible clarity this moment brings, the useless insight, the unbroken dark.

  Dana Gioia

  Dark, Voice, Unbroken

  Dana Gioia (2016). “99 Poems: New & Selected”, p.14, Macmillan

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• As a mathematician, von Neumann was quick, brilliant, efficient, and enormously broad in scientific interests beyond mathematics itself. He knew his technical abilities; his virtuosity in following complicated reasoning and his insights were supreme; yet he lacked absolute self confidence.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Self Confidence, Brilliant, Complicated

  "Adventures of a Mathematician". Book by Stanislaw Ulam, 3rd edition. Chapter 4: "Princeton Days", p. 76, 1991.

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• When you approach spirituality as an adventure of being alive, you start as you would any adventure--with a sense of mystery and not-knowing. Instead of searching for answers that make you feel safe, you set out into the vastness of life and death, with a willingness to continually grow. You open up to the possibility that your ordinary life is an extraordinary adventure, and that your joys and sorrows have meaning. Spiritual practice becomes your rudder, offering direction and insight and discretion as you venture into the unknown.

  Elizabeth Lesser

  Spiritual, Adventure, Offering

  Elizabeth Lesser (2008). “The Seeker's Guide: Making Your Life a Spiritual Adventure”, p.16, Ballantine Books

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• There were many at Bell Labs and MIT who compared Shannon's insight to Einstein's. Others found that comparison unfair - unfair to Shannon.

  William Poundstone

  Mit, Bells, Labs

  William Poundstone (2010). “Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street”, p.15, Macmillan

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• The kind of "blind obedience" once theologized as the ultimate step to holiness, is itself blind. It blinds a person to the insights and foresight and moral perspective of anyone other than an authority figure.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Perspective, Holiness, Steps

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• Through love and sincerity continuously beautify your inner life in every way, by daily looking into the mirror of introspection.

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  Mirrors, Way, Sincerity

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