Quotes about experience
page 42

Emil M. Cioran photo
Clive Barker photo

“Perhaps there was a natural process at work here; a means by which the mind dealt with experiences that contradicted a lifetime’s prejudices about the nature of reality. People simple forgot.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Part Seven “The Demagogue”, Chapter vi “Hello, Stranger”, Section 2 (p. 307)
(1987), BOOK TWO: THE FUGUE

Daniel T. Gilbert photo
Ilham Aliyev photo
Stendhal photo

“Since I am a man, my heart is three or four times less sensitive, because I have three or four times as much power of reason and experience of the world — a thing which you women call hard-heartedness.
As a man, I can take refuge in having mistresses. The more of them I have, and the greater the scandal, the more I acquire reputation and brilliance in society.”

Stendhal (1783–1842) French writer

<p>Comme homme, j'ai le cœur 3 ou 4 fois moins sensible, parce que j'ai 3 ou 4 fois plus de raison et d'expérience du monde, ce que vous autres femmes appelez dureté de cœur.</p><p>Comme homme, j'ai la ressource d'avoir des maîtresses. Plus j'en ai et plus le scandale est grand, plus j'acquiers de réputation et de brillant dans le monde.</p>
Letter to his sister Pauline http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Stendhal_-_Correspondance_-_Tome_I (29 August 1804)

Nicholas Lore photo
Jane Roberts photo
Ilham Aliyev photo
Roger Bacon photo
Joseph Priestley photo
Giovanni della Casa photo
John Buchan photo

“Religious structure often dilutes the spiritual experience.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 53

Nigel Lawson photo

“All resistance bears within it the seeds of growth, experience, and wisdom.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 101

Michael Badnarik photo
Dana Gioia photo

“Being so deeply rooted in one place and culture allows a genuine writer to experiment wildly with the material without ever losing touch with its essence.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"The Most Unfashionable Poet Now Alive: Charles Causley," http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ecausley.htm published in The Dark Horse (Summer 1997 and Spring 1998)
Essays

Felix Adler photo
John J. Pershing photo
Charles A. Beard photo
Mao Zedong photo
Mircea Eliade photo

“For those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into supernatural reality. In other words, for those who have a religious experience all nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality.”

Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher

The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion: The Significance of Religious Myth, Symbolism, and Ritual within Life and Culture (1961).

David Blaine photo
Frederick William Robertson photo
Swami Vivekananda photo

“Knowledge can only be got in one way, the way of experience; there is no other way to know.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Rollo May photo
Arthur Green photo
Tina Fey photo

“[The Taoist priest] said to Chia Jui, "This mirror was made by the Goddess of Disillusionment and is designed to cure diseases resulting from impure thoughts and self-destructive habits. It is intended for youths such as you. But do not look into the right side. Use only the reverse side of the mirror. I shall be back for it in three days and congratulate you on your recovery." He went away, refusing to accept any money.
Chia Jui took the mirror and looked into the reverse side as the Taoist had directed. He threw it down in horror, for he saw a gruesome skeleton staring at him through its hollow eyes. He cursed the Taoist for playing such a crude joke upon him. Then he thought he would see what was on the right side. When he did so, he saw Phoenix standing there and beckoning to him. Chia Jui felt himself wafted into a mirror world, wherein he fulfilled his desire. He woke up from his trance and found the mirror lying wrong side up, revealing the horrible skeleton. He felt exhausted from the experience that the more deceptive side of the mirror gave him, but it was so delicious that he could not resist the temptation of looking into the right side again. Again he saw Phoenix beckoning to him and again he yielded to the temptation. This happened three or four times. When he was about to leave the mirror on his last visit, he was seized by two men and put in chains.
"Just a moment, officers," Chia Jui pleaded. "Let me take my mirror with me."”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

These were his last words.
Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), pp. 89–90

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
Jacob Bronowski photo

“We know from many experiences that this is what the work of art does: its life — in which we have shared the alien existences both of this world and of that different world to which the work of art alone gives us access — unwillingly accuses our lives.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"The Profession of Poetry," Partisan Review (September/October 1950) [p. 166]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Anne Brontë photo

“A hardness such as this is taught by rough experience and despair alone.”

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXXVIV : A Scheme of Escape; Helen Graham

William Hogarth photo

“When we expect transformation to occur through external experiences, we are opting for an inferior model of spiritual formation.”

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

David Chalmers photo
Abby Stein photo
Lee Smolin photo
James Madison photo
Bernie Sanders photo
Billy Collins photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester photo
N. R. Narayana Murthy photo
Max Horkheimer photo
Ramakrishna photo
Jane Roberts photo

“I'm especially interested in the music of John Cage... I would like to do some experimenting with the relationship between his freeform sound and free-form art.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Quote of Johns, from: John Adds Plaster Casts To Focus Target Paintings, Donald Key, Milwaukee Journal, 19 June 1960, pt. 5, p. 6
1960s

Johannes Tauler photo
Julien Offray de La Mettrie photo
Ha-Joon Chang photo
Ward Cunningham photo

“Nature is like parting a curtain, you go into it. I want to draw a certain response like this.... that quality of response from people when they leave themselves behind, often experienced in nature, an experience of simple joy... My paintings are about merging, about formlessness... A world without objects, without interruption.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

Ann Wilson, from her talks in the Summer of 1972 at Agnes Martin's home in Mexico - an unpublished document; as quoted in Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art, Chapter 7 - 'Departures', Nancy Princenthal; Thames and Hudson, New York, p. 195-196
Wilson's visit to Cuba in Mexico was to work towards the publication accompanying Martin's exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia in 1973, curated by Suzanne Delehanty
1970's

Loujain al-Hathloul photo
Robert M. Pirsig photo

“To an experienced Zen Buddhist, asking if one believes in Zen or one believes in the Buddha, sounds a little ludicrous, like asking if one believes in air or water. Similarly Quality is not something you believe in, Quality is something you experience.”

Robert M. Pirsig (1928–2017) American writer and philosopher

This appears in what could be either a paraphrase, a quote, or a re-translation of Pirsig in My Mercedes Is Not for Sale : From Amsterdam to Ouagadougou : An Auto-misadventure Across the Sahara (2006) by Jeroen van Bergeijk, in a 2008 translation books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=pIOcbS2Pl8kC&pg=PA26; Dutch original: books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=4zIzAgAAQBAJ&q=geoefende.
Disputed

Stig Dagerman photo
Daniel J. Boorstin photo
Bernhard Riemann photo

“Natural science is the attempt to comprehend nature by precise concepts.
According to the concepts by which we comprehend nature not only are observations completed at every instant but also future observations are pre-determined as necessary, or, in so far as the concept-system is not quite adequate therefor, they are predetermined as probable; these concepts determine what is "possible" (accordingly also what is "necessary," or the opposite of which is impossible), and the degree of the possibility (the "probability") of every separate event that is possible according to them, can be mathematically determined, if the event is sufficiently precise.
If what is necessary or probable according to these concepts occurs, then the latter are thereby confirmed and upon this confirmation by experience rests our confidence in them. If, however, something happens which according to them is not expected and which is therefore according to them impossible or improbable, then arises the problem so to complete them, or if necessary, to transform them, that according to the completed or ameliorated concept-system, what is observed ceases to be impossible or improbable. The completion or amelioration of the concept-system forms the "explanation" of the unexpected observation. By this process our comprehension of nature becomes gradually always more complete and assured, but at the same time recedes even farther behind the surface of phenomena.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Theory of Knowledge
Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

William James photo

“I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lecture III, Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered
1900s, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)

L. P. Jacks photo
Ba Jin photo
Heber C. Kimball photo
Bernhard Riemann photo

“My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

As quoted in The Artist's Voice : Talks With Seventeen Modern Artists (1962) by Katharine Kuh, p. 128
1960s

William Ellery Channing photo
Oliver Goldsmith photo

“For just experience tells; in every soil,
That those that think must govern those that toil.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Source: The Traveller (1764), Line 371.

John Rhys-Davies photo

“Western Christianised Europe has values and experience that is worth defending.”

John Rhys-Davies (1944) Welsh actor

As quoted in "Welsh star in race row", by WalesOnline (18 January 2004) http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/welsh-star-in-race-row-2453957

“Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.”

Jim Horning (1942–2013) computer scientist

Jim Horning notes: I've often repeated this, but the original source appears to be the great Sufi sage, Mulla Nasrudin.
Misattributed

H. G. Wells photo
David Crystal photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo

“The United States is engaged today in a great mission to spread democracy to the Middle East, beginning with Afghanistan, and continuing with Iraq. The inhabitants of Iraq are divided into many groups and factions that hate and distrust each other. The attitude of Sunni and Shia Muslims toward each other resembles that of Catholic and Protestant Christians in the sixteenth century, which persist today in northern Ireland, each regarding the other as heretics. Under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, the minority of Sunnis persecuted the majority Shias. It is understandable that the minority Sunnis are today resisting majority rule, while the majority Shia favor it. The Sunnis clearly believe that majority rule by Shia will be used as a means of retribution and revenge. The Sunnis look upon majority rule by the Shia the way the South looked upon the election of Lincoln in 1860. It is inconceivable to the Sunnis that the rule of the Shia majority will be anything other than tyranny. Indeed, it is inconceivable to them that any political power, whether of a minority or a majority, would be non-tyrannical. The idea of non-tyrannical government is alien to their history and their experience. They regard our assertions of Jeffersonian or Lincolnian principles as mere hypocrisy, as they see no other form of rule other than that of force. Our government assumes that the people of the Middle East, like people elsewhere, seek freedom for others no less than for themselves. But that is an assumption that has not yet been confirmed by experience.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Central Idea (2006)

Nyanaponika Thera photo
A.E. Housman photo
Robert Anton Wilson photo
Werner Erhard photo
John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge photo
Theo van Doesburg photo
Francis Escudero photo
Milo Yiannopoulos photo

“I would say, that situation I am describing on Joe Rogan show I was very definitely a predator on both occasions. As offensive as some people would find that I don’t much care. That was certainly my experience. The law is probably about right, that’s probably roughly the right age. I think it’s probably about okay, but there are certainly people who are capable of giving consent at a younger age, I certainly consider myself to be one of them. You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means. Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13-years-old who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty. Pedophilia is attraction to people who don’t have functioning sex organs yet. Who have not gone through puberty. Some of those relationships between younger boys and older men, the sort of coming of age relationships, the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are, and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable and sort of a rock where they can’t speak to their parents. You don’t understand what pedophilia is if you are saying I’m defending it because I’m certainly not.”

Milo Yiannopoulos (1984) British journalist

Episode 193 http://drunken-peasants-podcast.wikia.com/wiki/Episode_193 of Drunken Peasants Podcast debuted 4 January 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azC1nm85btY&t=3552s, transcript circulated 20 February 2017 by Heavy http://heavy.com/news/2017/02/milo-yiannopolous-pedophilia-transcript-pederasty-video-full-sex-boys-men-catholic-priest-cpac-quotes/ with supplements from discover-the-truth https://discover-the-truth.com/2017/02/20/full-unedited-video-of-milo-yiannopoulos-defending-pedophilia/
2017

Felix Frankfurter photo

“One is entitled to say without qualification that the correlation between prior judicial experience and fitness for the Supreme Court is zero.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

"The Supreme Court in the Mirror of Justice," University of Pennsylvania Law Review (April, 1957), p. 786.
Other writings

Bel Kaufmanová photo
David Wood photo

“Language steps in where the angels of experience fear to tread.”

David Wood (1946) British philosopher, born 1946

Source: Philosophy At The Limit (1990), Chapter 1, The Faces of Silence, p. 5

Francis Heylighen photo
Mao Zedong photo

“In Robert's experience there were two kinds of classicists, the mad and the disconcertingly sane.”

Alan Judd (1946) British writer

Page 48.
The Noonday Devil (1987)