Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

I'm interested in the things that might seem slight or amusing but which I feel have a kind of profundity.

simple things are the most valuable and only wise people appreciate them".

Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things. Noam Chomsky

To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind are prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error.

In fact, we will have to give up taking things for granted, even the apparently simple things. We have to learn to understand nature and not merely to observe it and endure what it imposes on us. Stupidity, from being an amiable individual defect, has become a social crime.

It just seems silly to me that something so right and simple has to be fought for at all.

I think a lot of things can be misconstrued in a lot of ways. And I think if people open their minds more, and they try to look deeper into something than just something that is a very big, hot, fiery button to hide behind...I think if people looked into something bigger that I was trying to speak upon, they wouldn't be so easy to fire back silly, miscellaneous things.

True wisdom consists in respecting the simple things we do

Intellectual sodomy, which comes from the refusal to be simple about plain matters, is as gross and abundant today as sexual perversion and they are nowise different from one another.

I believe in what science fiction can do, which is it can set up simple rules that it has to follow to try to illuminate something about the present that is somewhat invisible to us.

That he liked to think of himself as a philosopher. That he questioned all things, even the most simple, to the extent that when someone passing him on the street raised his hat and said, 'Good day,' Litvinoff often paused so long to weigh evidence that by the time he'd settled on an answer the person had gone on his way, leaving him standing alone.

That's what History teaches us, I think, that life goes on, even though individuals die and whole civilizations crumble away: The simple things last; they are repeated over and over by each generation.

I am an atheist, myself. A simple faith, but a great comfort to me, in these last days.

The sun is simple. A sword is simple. A storm is simple. Behind everything simple is a huge tail of complicated.

Which path do you intend to take, Nell?' said the Constable, sounding very interested. 'Conformity or rebellion?' Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded - they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.

Public discourse requires making an argument for a point of view, not having an argument - as in having a fight.

Everything that truly makes us happy is quite simple: love, sex, and food! Everything else - power, influence, strength - all those things can overpower what's important in life. But as long as you have food and shelter over your head, if the necessities are taken care of, what makes us happy on top of that is very simple.

When you're making a critical decision, you have to understand how it's going to be interpreted from all points of view. Not just your point of view, not just the person you're talking to, but the people that aren't in the room. Everybody else.

A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.

The reality is that there is an enormous value to gut-check instinctive decision-making in the world that is not hampered by reams and reams of research and complexity.

True happiness is found in simple, seemingly unremarkable things.

Controversial issues are always more interesting but I don't create material about a subject I have opinion on just because it's controversial. The most fun is having a point of view that the audience is generally against and presenting an argument that challenges their thinking.

Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries.

Discussion and argument are essential parts of science; the greatest talent is the ability to strip a theory until the simple basic idea emerges with clarity.