Obviousness Quotes

• Opinions about obviousness are to a certain extent a function of time.

  Albert Einstein

  Opinion, Function, Certain

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• Obviousness is always the enemy of correctness.

  Bertrand Russell

  Enemy, Economics, Correctness

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.48, 谷月社

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• There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Inspirational, Hype, Deception

  Sherlock Holmes in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" (1891).

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• Sometimes I'm confused by what I think is really obvious. But what I think is really obvious obviously isn't obvious.

  Michael Stipe

  Confused, Reality, Thinking

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• The ability of the theist to misunderstand a thing is directly proportional to the obviousness of the thing.

  Oscar Wilde

  Ability, Theist

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• It doesnt hurt to repeat here the statement, still rejected by many people in spite of its obviousness, that education is a political act.

  Paulo Freire

  Hurt, People, Political

  Paulo Freire (2005). “Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those who Dare Teach”

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• For if we merely take what obviously appears the line of least resistance, its obviousness will appeal to the opponent also; and this line may no longer be that of least resistance. In studying the physical aspect, we must never lose sight of the psychological, and only when both are combined is the strategy truly an indirect approach, calculated to dislocate the opponent's balance.

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  Military, Sight, Balance

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• Never assume the obvious is true.

  William Safire

  Truth, Peer Pressure, Assuming

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• The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

  Alan Watts

  Life, Inspiring, Simple

  Alan Watts (2011). “Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life: Collected Talks: 1960-1969”, p.37, New World Library

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• The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.

  Arthur Koestler

  Inspirational, Education, Business

  Arthur Koestler (1964). “The Act of Creation”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• There's a depth of meaning all on its own in awareness being gentled. From within the subtlety of being gentled, the level of perception changes. Instead of perceiving the obviousness of experience, you're able as awareness to perceive most subtle meaning.

  John de Ruiter

  Perception, Depth, Levels

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• the squeeky wheel gets the grease.

  Josh Billings

  Grease, Wheels

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• "The people" is that massive portion of a society that lives by its pathetic subjection to sheer immediacy or self-obviousness, and that therefore uncritically seizes upon the most simplistic and abstract ways of filling its vacuous self-consciousness. Not philosophy but dogma and rhetoric, not rationality but indoctrination and conditioning, provide the cultural junkfood by which the Many perfunctorily slake their thirst and hunger.

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Self, People

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• In the Middle Ages, cathendrals and convents burned like tinder; imagining a medieval story without a fire is like imagining a World War II movie in the Pacific without a fighter plane shot down in flames.

  Umberto Eco

  War, Fire, Flames

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• Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Writing, Done, Facts

  "The Red-Headed League" (1891)

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• My hatred of crowds, the obviousness of crowds, of anything en masse. Is this why I like little-known books? A general desire to escape the main world.

  John Fowles

  Book, Hatred, Desire

  John Fowles (2005). “The Journals: 1949-1965”, Knopf

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• There are certain truths which stand out so openly on the roadsides of life, as it were, that every passer-by may see them. Yet, because of their obviousness, the general run of people disregard such truths or at least they do not make them the object of any concious knowledge. People are so bliend to some of the simplest facts in everyday life that they are highly surprised when somebody calls attention to what everybody ought to know.

  Adolf Hitler

  Running, People, Everyday

  Adolf Hitler (1939). “Mein Kampf”

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• Photography intervenes in a very strange way. It makes the streets, gates, squares of the city into illustrations of a trashy novel, draws off the banal obviousness of this ancient architecture to inject it with the most pristine intensity.

  Louis Aragon

  Photography, Squares, Illustration

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