Insightful Reflection Quotes

The wise learn many things from their enemies.

I put everything I can into the mulberry of my mind and hope that it is going to ferment and make a decent wine. How that process happens, I'm sorry to tell you I can't describe.

The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.

People are powerfully moved by imagination, belief, and knowledge. They can consider the past and future. They can make changes in their behavior out of reason in a way that animals can't do.

I see my responsibility as to give people something they want to keep turning the pages of and giving people something to chew on, looking at some aspect of human nature that hadn't occurred to them recently.

Achingly funny as it was, Larry Gelbart's writing gave off sparks that turned a hard light on the way we are.

No man was ever wise by chance.

I like smart movies about smart people, and enjoy it when most of the facts are on the table and we can contemplate them together.

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.

I think what I'm trying to do is create moments of recognition. To try to detonate some kind of feeling or understanding of lived experience.

Thinking is not enough. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience - any... thing.

At the end, we're kind of observers - creative people, I mean. I feel like an observer, and I'm pretty much able to step out of things and see how things are playing out.

Ideas emerge when a part of the real or imagined world is studied for its own sake.

Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Reading changes your perspective and feeds your imagination.

Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers.

The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.

A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.

The best books are the ones that ask the most questions.

There are writers, and there are readers who want something more. They want to get at the grist of life.

Given how unflinching his productions have been, the 44-year-old McQueen is remarkably gentle and thoughtful - so much so that he will request a moment to consider a question, and turn it around in his head to get the shape and weight of it, before answering, occasionally with an excited rush of words in response.

The mind cannot foresee its own advance.

The careful study of the past enlarges our foresight in contemporary affairs and affords to citizens and to monarchs lessons of incitement or warning in the ordering of public policy

Looking back is a way to sharpen the focus on the things you want to change in your life. I think there's something about nostalgia that really puts a fine point on the here-and-now, and that can be incredibly fascinating and interesting and engaging for the mind.