Mary Oliver Quotes

There may be men who act without understanding why. I do not. To listen much, pick out the good and follow it; to see much and ponder it: this comes next to understanding.

Never write on a subject until you have read yourself full of it.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

I like movies that leave you with something to think about, to discuss, to debate, you know?

I suggest that an education and reading and facts aren't bad things on which to ponder a few notions.

A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

Ideas never quite exist for him until they have been pitted against something else.

I grew up in this house of intellectuals, and for me, it wasn't, like, a negative thing. And what I've discovered is, for a lot of people, it is. But I think knowing history, liking to talk about ideas - like, I just genuinely like to geek out and go on these intellectual thought journeys.

We can all make better decisions when we're informed.

Read books and keep informed. The conversation can get old if you don't have some good new topics to bring to the table.

A person who does not read cannot think. He may have good mental processes, but he has nothing to think about. You can feel for people or natural phenomena and react to them, but they are not ideas. You cannot think about them.

A book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.

The paradoxical virtue of reading lies in distancing ourselves from the world so that we may make sense of it.

To learn without thinking is labour in vain, to think without learning is desolation.

Study without reflection is a waste of time; reflection without study is dangerous.

Care about understanding and before you know it, in just a few decades, you'll have a system of thinking that gives you answers whenever you ask.

We need both information and thinking. Information is no substitute for thinking and thinking is no substitute for information.

Philosophizing is a process of making sense out of experience.

Observe, Remember, Compare.

Unless you have read and absorbed the best that can be read and absorbed, you will not think clearly or well.

Content if hence th' unlearn'd their wants may view, The learn'd reflect on what before they knew.

To know is not too demanding: it merely requires memory and time. But to understand is quite a different matter: it requires intellectual ability and training, a self conscious awareness of what one is doing, experience in techniques of analysis and synthesis, and above all, perspective.

The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.

Literature is less involved in giving you answers and more dedicated to giving you insight.