Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination. -Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. -J. B. S. Haldane, Possible Worlds and Other Papers We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds through our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. -Benjamin Lee Whorf The belief that words have a meaning of their own account is a relic of primitive word magic, and it is still a part of the air we breathe in nearly every discussion. -Charles K. Ogden, The Meaning of Meaning Even the most scientific investigator in science, the most thoroughgoing Positivist, cannot dispense with fiction; he must at least make use of categories, and they are already fictions, analogical fictions, or labels, which give us the same pleasure as children receive when they are told the "name" of a thing. -Havelock Ellis It is by discourse that men associate; and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obsesses the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations, wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into innumerable and inane controversies and fancies. -Francis Bacon But the idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all: idols which have crept into the understanding through their alliances with words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words. But words turn and twist the understanding. This it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences inactive. Words are mostly cut to the common fashion and draw the distinctions which are most obvious to the common understanding. Whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or more diligent observation would alter those lines to suit the true distinctions of nature, words complain. -Francis Bacon Intelligence is that faculty of mind, by which order is preceived in a situation previously considered disordered. -Haneef A. Fatmi To understand is to perceive patterns. -Isaiah Berlin, Historical Inevitability He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god. -Plato The simplicities of natural laws arise through the complexities of the language we use for their expression. -Eugene Wigner It is the theory that decides what can be observed. -Albert Einstein The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. -Robertson Davies People only see what they are prepared to see. -Ralph Waldo Emerson Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. -Henry David Thoreau, Walden Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -Albert Einstein It is vain to do with more what can be done with less. -William of Occam Seek simplicity, and distrust it. -Alfred North Whitehead The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution. -Bertrand Russell In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. -Henry David Thoreau, Walden To get anywhere, or even to live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer. -Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark. -Agnes de Mille He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things. -George Savile One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe One does not discover new continents without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. -Andre Gide A man must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere. -Charles Kettering Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. -Albert Einstein Belief gets in the way of learning. -Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong. -Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so. -Josh Billings Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. -Albert Szent-Gyorgyi Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come of nothing. -Joshua Reynolds The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness. -Stephen Spender We can invent only with memory. -Alphonse Karr It seems safe to say that significant discovery, really creative thinking, does not occur with regard to problems about which the thinker is lukewarm. -Mary Henle The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction. -Samuel Johnson Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached. -Simone Weil The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists. -Charles Dickens If the individual is narrowly concentrated on the goal, to the exclusion of other relevant aspects of the problem situation, he is often unable to achieve a solution. The creative thinker must stand sufficiently detached from his work. -Mary Henle The creator is both detached and committed, free and yet ensnared, concerned but not too much so. ... If motivation is too strong the person is blinded; if the objective situation is too tightly structured, the person sees none of its alternative possiblities. -Robert Macleod The freedom to create is somehow linked with facility of access to those obscure regions below the conscious mind. -Loren Eiseley, The Mind as Nature When you come right down to it, all you have is your self. Your self is a sun with a thousand rays in your belly. The rest is nothing. -Pablo Picasso Some degree of withdrawal serves to nurture man's creative powers. The artist and the scientist bring out of the dark void, like the mysterious universe itself, the unique, the strange, the unexpected. Numerous observers have testified upon the lonliness of the process. -Loren Eiseley, The Mind as Nature The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. -Albert Einstein The first step is always to succeed in becoming surprised - to notice that there is something funny going on. -David Gelernter, The Muse in the Machine A prudent question is one half of wisdom. -Francis Bacon The "silly question" is the first intimation of some totally new development. -Alfred North Whitehead No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious. -George Bernard Shaw The hidden harmony is better than the obvious. -Heraclitus The obvious is always least understood. -Clemens Wenzel Lothar Metternich-Winneburg If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out, and difficult. -Heraclitus The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. -Albert Einstein You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?" -George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination. -Christopher Isherwood I have learned the novice can often see things that the expert overlooks. All that is necessary is not to be afraid of making mistakes, or of appearing naive. -Abraham Maslow, Eupsychian Management There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions. -Charles P. Steinmetz An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. -Edwin Land Give me the fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself. -Vilfredo Pareto Mistakes are at the very base of human thought, embedded there, feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack for being wrong, we could never get anything useful done. We think our way along by choosing between right and wrong alternatives, and the wrong choices have to be made as often as the right ones. We get along in life this way. -Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail Humans hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn - when they do, which isn't often - on their own, the hard way. -Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge. -Igor Stravinsky Some things cannot be spoken or discovered until we have been stuck, incapacitated, or blown off course for awhile. Plain sailing is pleasant, buy you are not going to explore many unknown realms that way. -David Whyte Truth comes out of error more readily than out of confusion. -Francis Bacon There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness. -Henry David Thoreau, Walden He who knows others is learned. He who knows himself is wise. -Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching Know then thyself, presume not God to scan: The proper study of mankind is man. -Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. -G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception -Friedrich Nietzsche We know what we are, but know not what we may be. -William Shakespeare, Hamlet The coward regards himself as cautious, the miser as thrifty. -Publilius Syrus Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true. -Demosthenes Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves. -Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached. -Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself. -Montaigne, "To The Reader" If you don't like yourself, you can't like other people. -Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others. -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. -H. P. Lovecraft Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavour after a worthy manner of life. -Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" We invent what we love, and what we fear. -John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire He that feareth is a slave, were he never so rich, were he never so powerful. But he that is without fear is king of all the world. -E. R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? -Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time" Reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays. -Aldous Huxley, Brave New World How small of all that human hearts endure That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place ensigned Our own felicity we make or find. -Samuel Johnson The Ideal is in thyself, the impediments too is in thyself. -Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven. -William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torrent. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts. -William Shakespeare, As You Like It No matter where or what, there are makers, takers, and fakers. -Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all. -William Hazlitt, "On Cant and Hypocrisy" In civilized life, where the happiness, and indeed almost the existence, of man depends so much upon the opinion of his fellow men, he is constantly acting a studied part. -Washington Irving Resolve to be thyself: and know that he Who finds himself loses his misery. -Matthew Arnold, "Self Dependence" People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates. -Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin Choices, more choices than we like afterward to believe, are made far backward in the innocence of childhood. -Loren Eiseley, The Places Below It is not in life but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found. -George Woodcock In a dark time, the eye begins to see. -Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time" One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. -Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra Still, there is a calm, pure harmony, and music inside of me. -Vincent van Gogh Every production must resemble its author. -Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote No great genius is without an admixture of madness. -Aristotle The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person. -Frank Barron A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free. -Nikos Kazantzakis They said, "You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are." The man replied, "Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar." -Wallace Stevens, "The Man with the Blue Guitar" ... denn da ist keine Stelle, die dich nicht sieht. Du musst dein Leben andern. (... for there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.) -Rainer Maria Rilke, "Archaic Torso of Apollo" So dawn goes down to day Nothing gold can stay. -Robert Frost The notes I handle no better than many pianists, But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides! -Arthur Schnabel It's not what you see that is art. Art is the gap. -Marcel Duchamp Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. -William Butler Yeats, "The Stolen Child" The great mountains of the world are a great remedy if men but did know it against our modern discontent and ambitions. In the hills is wisdom's fount. They are deep in time. -E. R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. -John Muir Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life. -John Muir In wildness is the preservation of the World. -Henry David Thoreau, Walking Man is dragged hither and thither, at one moment by the blind instincts of the forest, at the next by the strange intuitions of a higher self whose rationale he doubts and does not understand. -Loren Eiseley, Strangeness in the Proportion The birds I heard today, which, fortunately, did not come within the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creation. -Henry David Thoreau Dear friend, all theory is gray, And green the golden tree of life. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venemous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. -William Shakespeare, As You Like It The ground we walk on, the plants and creatures, the clouds above constantly dissolving into new formations - each gift of nature possessing its own radiant energy, bound together by cosmic harmony. -Ruth Bernhard I totally disagree with the belief that nature was only made for the use of people. Human beings are not the center of the universe, and, if they are to sustain themselves, it is vitally important for them to be awakened to how closely they are linked with the rest of nature. -Wynn Bullock Nature is not human-hearted. -Lao Tzu A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of wonders. -Lord Dunsany, The Laughter of the Gods The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. -Pascal, Pensees The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent. -John Hughes Holmes Because a star explodes and a thousand worlds like ours die, we know this world is. That is the smile: that what might not be, is. -John Fowles, The Magus I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core. -William Butler Yeats, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity - these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing. They are not ashamed. -Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins. -George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. -George Bernard Shaw To be free one needs constant and unrelenting vigilance over one's weaknesses. A vigilance which requires a moral energy most of us are incapable of manufacturing. We relax back into the moulds of habit. They are secure, they bind us and keep us contained at the expense of freedom. To break the moulds, to be heedless of the seductions of security is an impossible struggle, but one of the few that count. To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble. -Robyn Davidson, Tracks Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free. -Ralph Waldo Emerson The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. -Rudyard Kipling To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. -E. E. Cummings Most people want security in this world, not liberty. -H. L. Mencken At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded. -Ludwig Wittgenstein The highest virtue is always against the law. -Ralph Waldo Emerson One man's theology is another man's belly laugh. -Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one - the one we use - which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy, until habit makes us comfortable in it, and the custom of defending it presently makes us love it, adore it, and forget how pitifully we came by it. Look at it in politics. -Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Eruption The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. -H. L. Mencken Man no longer dreams over a book in which a soft voice, a constant companion, observes, exhorts, or sighs with him through the pangs of youth and age. Today he is more likely to sit before a screen and dream the mass dream which comes from outside. -Loren Eiseley, Strangeness in the Proportion Madness is rare in individuals--but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule. -Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town? -Mark Twain, Huckelberry Finn One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives. -Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson All that I care to know is that a man is a human being - that is enough for me; he can't be any worse. -Mark Twain Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved. -Mark Twain, Puddn'head Wilson Although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation. -Bertrand Russell Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. -Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do. -James Harvey Robinson, The Mind in the Making What men really want is not knowledge but certainty. -Bertrand Russell Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy. -Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves. -Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. -Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so. -Bertrand Russell A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -William James Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thoughts in clear form. -Albert Einstein Like the herd animals we are, we sniff warily at the strange one among us. -Loren Eiseley, The Mind as Nature The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. -William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming" Nothing is as terrible to see as ignorance in action. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe I am going to explain to you why we went to war. Why mankind always goes to war. It is not social or political. It is not countries that go to war, but men. It is like salt. Once one has been to war, one has salt for the rest of one's life. -John Fowles, The Magus It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go. -Bertrand Russell No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstands others. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other. -Eric Hoffer Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination. -Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. -J. B. S. Haldane, Possible Worlds and Other Papers We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds through our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. -Benjamin Lee Whorf The belief that words have a meaning of their own account is a relic of primitive word magic, and it is still a part of the air we breathe in nearly every discussion. -Charles K. Ogden, The Meaning of Meaning Even the most scientific investigator in science, the most thoroughgoing Positivist, cannot dispense with fiction; he must at least make use of categories, and they are already fictions, analogical fictions, or labels, which give us the same pleasure as children receive when they are told the "name" of a thing. -Havelock Ellis It is by discourse that men associate; and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obsesses the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations, wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into innumerable and inane controversies and fancies. -Francis Bacon But the idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all: idols which have crept into the understanding through their alliances with words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words. But words turn and twist the understanding. This it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences inactive. Words are mostly cut to the common fashion and draw the distinctions which are most obvious to the common understanding. Whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or more diligent observation would alter those lines to suit the true distinctions of nature, words complain. -Francis Bacon Intelligence is that faculty of mind, by which order is preceived in a situation previously considered disordered. -Haneef A. Fatmi To understand is to perceive patterns. -Isaiah Berlin, Historical Inevitability He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god. -Plato The simplicities of natural laws arise through the complexities of the language we use for their expression. -Eugene Wigner It is the theory that decides what can be observed. -Albert Einstein The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. -Robertson Davies People only see what they are prepared to see. -Ralph Waldo Emerson Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. -Henry David Thoreau, Walden Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -Albert Einstein It is vain to do with more what can be done with less. -William of Occam Seek simplicity, and distrust it. -Alfred North Whitehead The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution. -Bertrand Russell In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. -Henry David Thoreau, Walden To get anywhere, or even to live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer. -Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark. -Agnes de Mille He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things. -George Savile One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe One does not discover new continents without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. -Andre Gide A man must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere. -Charles Kettering Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. -Albert Einstein Belief gets in the way of learning. -Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong. -Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so. -Josh Billings Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. -Albert Szent-Gyorgyi Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come of nothing. -Joshua Reynolds The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness. -Stephen Spender We can invent only with memory. -Alphonse Karr It seems safe to say that significant discovery, really creative thinking, does not occur with regard to problems about which the thinker is lukewarm. -Mary Henle The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction. -Samuel Johnson Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached. -Simone Weil The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists. -Charles Dickens If the individual is narrowly concentrated on the goal, to the exclusion of other relevant aspects of the problem situation, he is often unable to achieve a solution. The creative thinker must stand sufficiently detached from his work. -Mary Henle The creator is both detached and committed, free and yet ensnared, concerned but not too much so. ... If motivation is too strong the person is blinded; if the objective situation is too tightly structured, the person sees none of its alternative possiblities. -Robert Macleod The freedom to create is somehow linked with facility of access to those obscure regions below the conscious mind. -Loren Eiseley, The Mind as Nature When you come right down to it, all you have is your self. Your self is a sun with a thousand rays in your belly. The rest is nothing. -Pablo Picasso Some degree of withdrawal serves to nurture man's creative powers. The artist and the scientist bring out of the dark void, like the mysterious universe itself, the unique, the strange, the unexpected. Numerous observers have testified upon the lonliness of the process. -Loren Eiseley, The Mind as Nature The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. -Albert Einstein The first step is always to succeed in becoming surprised - to notice that there is something funny going on. -David Gelernter, The Muse in the Machine A prudent question is one half of wisdom. -Francis Bacon The "silly question" is the first intimation of some totally new development. -Alfred North Whitehead No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious. -George Bernard Shaw The hidden harmony is better than the obvious. -Heraclitus The obvious is always least understood. -Clemens Wenzel Lothar Metternich-Winneburg If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out, and difficult. -Heraclitus The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. -Albert Einstein You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?" -George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination. -Christopher Isherwood I have learned the novice can often see things that the expert overlooks. All that is necessary is not to be afraid of making mistakes, or of appearing naive. -Abraham Maslow, Eupsychian Management There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions. -Charles P. Steinmetz An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. -Edwin Land Give me the fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself. -Vilfredo Pareto Mistakes are at the very base of human thought, embedded there, feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack for being wrong, we could never get anything useful done. We think our way along by choosing between right and wrong alternatives, and the wrong choices have to be made as often as the right ones. We get along in life this way. -Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail Humans hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn - when they do, which isn't often - on their own, the hard way. -Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge. -Igor Stravinsky Some things cannot be spoken or discovered until we have been stuck, incapacitated, or blown off course for awhile. Plain sailing is pleasant, buy you are not going to explore many unknown realms that way. -David Whyte Truth comes out of error more readily than out of confusion. -Francis Bacon There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness. -Henry David Thoreau, Walden He who knows others is learned. He who knows himself is wise. -Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching Know then thyself, presume not God to scan: The proper study of mankind is man. -Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. -G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception -Friedrich Nietzsche We know what we are, but know not what we may be. -William Shakespeare, Hamlet The coward regards himself as cautious, the miser as thrifty. -Publilius Syrus Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true. -Demosthenes Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves. -Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached. -Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself. -Montaigne, "To The Reader" If you don't like yourself, you can't like other people. -Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others. -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. -H. P. Lovecraft Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavour after a worthy manner of life. -Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" We invent what we love, and what we fear. -John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire He that feareth is a slave, were he never so rich, were he never so powerful. But he that is without fear is king of all the world. -E. R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? -Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time" Reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays. -Aldous Huxley, Brave New World How small of all that human hearts endure That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place ensigned Our own felicity we make or find. -Samuel Johnson The Ideal is in thyself, the impediments too is in thyself. -Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven. -William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torrent. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts. -William Shakespeare, As You Like It No matter where or what, there are makers, takers, and fakers. -Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all. -William Hazlitt, "On Cant and Hypocrisy" In civilized life, where the happiness, and indeed almost the existence, of man depends so much upon the opinion of his fellow men, he is constantly acting a studied part. -Washington Irving Resolve to be thyself: and know that he Who finds himself loses his misery. -Matthew Arnold, "Self Dependence" People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates. -Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin Choices, more choices than we like afterward to believe, are made far backward in the innocence of childhood. -Loren Eiseley, The Places Below It is not in life but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found. -George Woodcock In a dark time, the eye begins to see. -Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time" One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. -Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra Still, there is a calm, pure harmony, and music inside of me. -Vincent van Gogh Every production must resemble its author. -Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote No great genius is without an admixture of madness. -Aristotle The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person. -Frank Barron A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free. -Nikos Kazantzakis They said, "You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are." The man replied, "Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar." -Wallace Stevens, "The Man with the Blue Guitar" ... denn da ist keine Stelle, die dich nicht sieht. Du musst dein Leben andern. (... for there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.) -Rainer Maria Rilke, "Archaic Torso of Apollo" So dawn goes down to day Nothing gold can stay. -Robert Frost The notes I handle no better than many pianists, But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides! -Arthur Schnabel It's not what you see that is art. Art is the gap. -Marcel Duchamp Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. -William Butler Yeats, "The Stolen Child" The great mountains of the world are a great remedy if men but did know it against our modern discontent and ambitions. In the hills is wisdom's fount. They are deep in time. -E. R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. -John Muir Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life. -John Muir In wildness is the preservation of the World. -Henry David Thoreau, Walking Man is dragged hither and thither, at one moment by the blind instincts of the forest, at the next by the strange intuitions of a higher self whose rationale he doubts and does not understand. -Loren Eiseley, Strangeness in the Proportion The birds I heard today, which, fortunately, did not come within the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creation. -Henry David Thoreau Dear friend, all theory is gray, And green the golden tree of life. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venemous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. -William Shakespeare, As You Like It The ground we walk on, the plants and creatures, the clouds above constantly dissolving into new formations - each gift of nature possessing its own radiant energy, bound together by cosmic harmony. -Ruth Bernhard I totally disagree with the belief that nature was only made for the use of people. Human beings are not the center of the universe, and, if they are to sustain themselves, it is vitally important for them to be awakened to how closely they are linked with the rest of nature. -Wynn Bullock Nature is not human-hearted. -Lao Tzu A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of wonders. -Lord Dunsany, The Laughter of the Gods The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. -Pascal, Pensees The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent. -John Hughes Holmes Because a star explodes and a thousand worlds like ours die, we know this world is. That is the smile: that what might not be, is. -John Fowles, The Magus I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core. -William Butler Yeats, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity - these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing. They are not ashamed. -Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins. -George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. -George Bernard Shaw To be free one needs constant and unrelenting vigilance over one's weaknesses. A vigilance which requires a moral energy most of us are incapable of manufacturing. We relax back into the moulds of habit. They are secure, they bind us and keep us contained at the expense of freedom. To break the moulds, to be heedless of the seductions of security is an impossible struggle, but one of the few that count. To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble. -Robyn Davidson, Tracks Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free. -Ralph Waldo Emerson The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. -Rudyard Kipling To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. -E. E. Cummings Most people want security in this world, not liberty. -H. L. Mencken At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded. -Ludwig Wittgenstein The highest virtue is always against the law. -Ralph Waldo Emerson One man's theology is another man's belly laugh. -Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one - the one we use - which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy, until habit makes us comfortable in it, and the custom of defending it presently makes us love it, adore it, and forget how pitifully we came by it. Look at it in politics. -Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Eruption The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. -H. L. Mencken Man no longer dreams over a book in which a soft voice, a constant companion, observes, exhorts, or sighs with him through the pangs of youth and age. Today he is more likely to sit before a screen and dream the mass dream which comes from outside. -Loren Eiseley, Strangeness in the Proportion Madness is rare in individuals--but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule. -Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town? -Mark Twain, Huckelberry Finn One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives. -Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson All that I care to know is that a man is a human being - that is enough for me; he can't be any worse. -Mark Twain Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved. -Mark Twain, Puddn'head Wilson Although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation. -Bertrand Russell Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. -Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do. -James Harvey Robinson, The Mind in the Making What men really want is not knowledge but certainty. -Bertrand Russell Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy. -Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves. -Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. -Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so. -Bertrand Russell A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -William James Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thoughts in clear form. -Albert Einstein Like the herd animals we are, we sniff warily at the strange one among us. -Loren Eiseley, The Mind as Nature The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. -William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming" Nothing is as terrible to see as ignorance in action. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe I am going to explain to you why we went to war. Why mankind always goes to war. It is not social or political. It is not countries that go to war, but men. It is like salt. Once one has been to war, one has salt for the rest of one's life. -John Fowles, The Magus It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go. -Bertrand Russell No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstands others. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other. -Eric Hoffer

This is my massive quote page. It has a touch of just about everything. Perhaps I'll organize it some day...until then - Enjoy. (4/22/01)

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