Insight Quotes - Page 12

• Hoyle's enduring insights into stars, nucleosynthesis, and the large-scale universe rank among the greatest achievements of 20th-century astrophysics. Moreover, his theories were unfailingly stimulating, even when they proved transient.

  Fred Hoyle

  Stars, Achievement, Century

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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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• We shall not read it for its sociological insights, which are non-existent, nor as science fiction, because it has a general air of implausibility; but there is one high poetic fancy in the New Atlantis that stays in the mind after all its fancies and inventions have been forgotten. In the New Atlantis, an island kingdom lying in very distant seas, the only commodity of external trade is light: Bacon's own special light, the light of understanding.

  Peter Medawar

  Lying, Sea, Islands

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• The taboos that constitute a man's intellectual stature, often sedimented experiences and unarticulated insights, always operate against inner impulses that he has learned to condemn, but which are so strong that only an unquestioning and unquestioned authority can hold them in check.

  Theodor Adorno

  Strong, Men, Intellectual

  "Minima Moralia". Book by Theodor W. Adorno, 1951.

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• The authentic rebel knows that the silencing of all his adversaries is the last thing on earth he wishes: their extermination would deprive him and whoever else remains alive from the uniqueness, the originality, and the capacity for insight that these enemies being human also have and could share with him. If we wish the death of our enemies, we cannot talk about the community of man. In the losing of the chance for dialogue with our enemies, we are the poorer.

  Rollo May

  Men, Community, Enemy

  Rollo May (1998). “Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence”, p.237, W. W. Norton & Company

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• When one read's Kierkegaard's profound analyses of anxiety and despair or Nietzsche's amazingly acute insights into the dynamics of resentment and the guilt and hostility which accompany repressed emotional powers, one might pinch oneself to realize that one is reading works written in the last century and not some new contemporary psychological analysis.

  Rollo May

  Reading, Emotional, Profound

  Rollo May (2015). “The Discovery of Being”, p.53, W. W. Norton & Company

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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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• It turns out that information leaks between universes at the quantum level. We think it accounts for all kinds of phenomena, from what drives evolution to strange insights and mystical experiences through the ages. The machine was built as an attempt to investigate and amplify them.

  James P. Hogan

  Thinking, Mystical Experiences, Age

  James P. Hogan (1997). “Paths to Otherwhere”, Pocket Books

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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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• 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?

  Vernor Vinge

  Keys, Video, Legs

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• Originality is another criterion of aesthetic value. We may formulate an originality principle, according to which highly valuable works of art provide hitherto unavailable insights.... Notice that, although originality is a necessary condition of high aesthetic value, it is far from a sufficient condition. Many original works have little or no aesthetic value. An artwork may present a novel but uninteresting perspective, or one that is original but wrong.

  James Young

  Art, Perspective, Principles

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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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• And then God gave me insight: this was winter. It would end, in time, but not by my own doing. My responsibility was simply to know the season, and match my actions and inactions to it. It was to learn the slow hard discipline of waiting. It was my season to believe in spite of-to believe in the absence of evidence or emotion, when there's nothing, no bud, no color, no light, no birdsong, to validate belief. It was my time to walk without sight.

  Mark Buchanan

  Believe, Responsibility, Winter

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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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• No refining of one's taste in matters of art or literature, no sharpening of one's powers of insight in matters of science or psychology, can ever take the place of one's sensitiveness to the life of the earth. This is the beginning and the end of a person's true education.

  John Cowper Powys

  Art, Psychology, Literature

  "The Meaning of Culture". Book by John Cowper Powys, p. 175, 1936.

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• Voltaire remarked that it is possible to kill a flock of sheep by witchcraft if you give them plenty of arsenic at the same time. The sheep, in this figure, may well stand for the complacent apologists of capitalism; Marx's penetrating insight and bitter hatred of oppression supply the arsenic, while the labour theory of value provides the incantations.

  Joan Robinson

  Sheep, Giving, Hatred

  Joan Robinson (1967). “Essay on Marxian Economics”, p.22, Springer

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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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• Shannon's most radical insight was that meaning was irrelevant.

  William Poundstone

  Shannon, Radical, Irrelevant

  "Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street". Book by William Poundstone, 2005.

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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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