Quotes about process
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“When you indulge in arguments, you lost some fundamental processes of knowing things.”

Idegu Ojonugwa Shadrach (1995)

“Think this: My Soul knows exactly what it is doing.
Also, think this: My Soul already knows what really matters.
So it is not a question of “finding” that answer, it is a question of remembering. It is not a process of discovery, it is a process of recovery. This data does not have to be researched, it merely has to be retrieved.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Soul, Question, Thinking

“When the writer (or the artist in general) says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Source: Postscript to the Name of the Rose

“my brain had begun to endure its familiar siege: panic and dislocation, and a sense that my thought processes were being engulfed by a toxic and unnameable tide that obliterated any enjoyable response to the living world.”

William Styron book Darkness Visible

Source: Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

World, Sense

“All our days are marked with/
unexpected/
affronts--some/
disastrous, others/
less so/
but the process is/
wearing and/
continuous./
Attrition rules./
Most give/
way/
leaving/
empty spaces/
where people should/
be.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

People, Way

“No matter how hard Evil tries, it can never quite match up to the power of Good, because Evil is ultimately self-destructive. Evil may set out to corrupt others, but in the process corrupts itself.”

John Connolly (1968) author

Source: The Infernals

Evil

“The Muse visits during the process of creation, not before.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Variant: The Muse visits during the act of creation, not before. Don't wait for her. Start alone.

“Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding…”

Brian Greene (1963) American physicist

Understanding, Science

“The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed - it is a process of elimination.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Beauty, Parting

“Any situation in which some men prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence;… to alienate humans from their own decision making is to change them into objects.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Men, Decision, Change

“But the question that everyone wanted answered was whether I would have the nerve and the strength to start the whole process from scratch. I said yes; otherwise I would be someone who had no dream left, and without dreams I would not want to live.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Source: Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo

Dreams, Question

“If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the initially painful and ultimately comforting process of finding it.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Pain, Truth

“The process of writing is a little like madness, a kind of possession not altogether benign.”

Joanne Harris book Blackberry Wine

Source: Blackberry Wine

Madness

“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”

Erich Fromm book The Art of Loving

Source: The Art of Loving (1956), Ch. 2

“… don't spoil my learning process!”

Diana Wynne Jones House of Many Ways

Source: House of Many Ways

Learning

“Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.”

Arthur Koestler (1905–1983) Hungarian-British author and journalist

Source: Drinkers of Infinity: Essays 1955-1967 (1967).

Learning, Teachers

“A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Understanding

“The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.”

Josh Waitzkin (1976) Chess player

Source: The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence

Learning

“a person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits.”

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

Source: On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

Change, Personality

“Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Source: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Love, Art

“The irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Idea, Thinking

“Being a Christian is more than just an instantaneous conversion; it is like a daily process whereby you grow to be more and more like Christ.”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

Christ

“Sociopathy is the inability to process emotional experience, including love and caring, except when such experience can be calculated as a coldly intellectual task.”

Martha Stout (1953) American psychologist

Source: The Sociopath Next Door

Love

“Writing is like making love. Don't worry about the orgasm, just concentrate on the process.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

Love, Making love

“There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

People, Time

“All this hoping for something- or someone- that's maybe hopeless. I'm having a hard time processing what I am supposed to believe, or if I'm even supposed to. There is too much information, and I don't like a lot of it.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Hope, Time

“No one can create negativity or stress within you. Only you can do that by virtue of how you process your world.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

World

“Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered.
Where do you get your ideas?
I purposely mishear things.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Idea

“I am a woman in process. I'm just trying like everybody else. I try to take every conflict, every experience, and learn from it. Life is never dull.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Life, Learning

“What is there possibly left for us to be afraid of, after we have dealt face to face with death and not embraced it? Once I accept the existence of dying as a life process, who can ever have power over me again?”

Audre Lorde book The Cancer Journals

Source: The Cancer Journals

Life, Death

“Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

Source: There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem

Life, Peace, Thinking, Depressing

“There is no such thing as a fact. There is only how you saw the fact, in a given moment. How you reported the fact. How your brain processed that fact. There is no extrication of the storyteller from the story.”

Jodi Picoult book Small Great Things

Source: Small Great Things

“Evolution brings human beings. Human beings, through a long and painful process, bring humanity.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Endymion (1996), Chapter 44 (p. 449)
Source: Hyperion
Context: “Humanity has evolved—as far as it has evolved,” continued the old priest, “with no thanks to its predecessors or itself. Evolution brings human beings. Human beings, through a long and painful process, bring humanity.”
“Empathy,” Aenea said softly.

Pain

“Ambrose, your presence is the horseshit frosting on the horseshit cake that is the admissions interview process.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“Truth is truth, not the explanations of Truth. Truth is a living, moving process. Truth is constantly undulating and vibrating. You can become one with the Truth, but you cannot adequately explain it.”

Ilchi Lee (1950) South Korean businessman

Source: Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

Truth

“The process of giving is without limits.”

Joanne Harris book Chocolat

Source: Chocolat

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

D. H. Lawrence : An Unprofessional Study (1932); also quoted in The Mirror and the Garden : Realism and Reality in the Writings of Anais Nin (1971) by Evelyn J. Hinz, p. 40

Life, Death, People

“The key to seeing the world's soul, and in the process wakening our own, is to get over the confusion by which we think that fact is real and imagination is illusion.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Source: Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality

World, Soul, Imagination, Thinking

“There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.”

James Baldwin book Go Tell It on the Mountain

Source: Go Tell It on the Mountain

People, World

“Chrestomanci smiled and swept out of the room like a very long procession of one person.”

Diana Wynne Jones Charmed Life

Source: Charmed Life

Smile, Personality

“He was on me before my brain processed the fact that he was coming for me.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

“I took the life of the woman I was supposed to call mother in the process of being born… in order to become the world's strongest shinobi… an incarnation of sand was implanted inside of me…”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

Life, World

“Perfectionism is a shield that we carry with a thought process that says this, 'If I look perfect, live perfect, work perfect, and do it all perfectly, I can avoid or minimize feeling shame, blame, and judgement.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Feeling, Perfection

“so it's always a process of letting go, one way or another”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

Way

“The easiest way to get brainwashed is to be born. All of the above principles then immediately go into action, a process which social psychologists euphemistically call socialization.”

Robert Anton Wilson book Prometheus Rising

Source: Prometheus Rising

Way

“Then again, he supposed the healing process, in contrast to trauma, was gentle and slow… The soft closing of a door, rather than a slam.- John”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Reborn

“The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change: Yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Warrior of the Light

Change, Time

“Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.”

José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

“Whether we write lyrics or craft legislation, sell homes or teach classes, design spaces or open franchises, prayer is a critical part of the creative process. Don’t just brainstorm; praystorm.”

Mark Batterson (1969) American pastor and writer

Source: Draw the Circle: The 40 Day Prayer Challenge

Home, Parting

“The nature of the world is that when we create something, we often destroy something else in the process.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

World, Nature

“He often felt that too many people lived their lives acting and pretending, wearing masks and losing themselves in the process.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Travis Parker, Chapter 4, p. 51
Source: 2000s, The Choice (2007)

People

“Hunches [are] just messages from the subconscious, which [is] thinking furiously all the time and processing information we have not consciously noted.”

Dean Koontz book Intensity

Source: Intensity

Thinking, Time

“Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

God, Way

“Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of feathers.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“March: The Geese Return”, p. 18.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "January Thaw", "February: Good Oak" & "March: The Geese Return"
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

Education

“when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows

World, Heart, Sea

“I’m blushing at my own stupid, nonsensical, meaningless thought process, which, by the way, nobody knows about except me.”

Sophie Kinsella book I've Got Your Number

Source: I've Got Your Number

Stupidity, Way

“If time heals all wounds, and a book can hold a person's entire life, then you can speed up the process with a pulp time warp.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

Life, Books, Time, Personality

“Life is a constant process of dying.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Life

“Choosing to be honest is the first step in the process of love. There is no practitioner of love who deceives. Once the choice has been made to be honest, then the next step on love's path is communication.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

Love, Communication

“It’s precisely because of the pain, the we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive—or at least a partial sense of it.”

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Pain, Feeling, Sense

“Dip a slice of bread in batter. That's September: yellow, gold, soft and sticky. Fry the bread. Now you have October: chewier, drier, streaked with browns. The day in question fell somewhere in the middle of the french toast process.”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Source: Skinny Legs and All

Question

“Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Men

“With the beginning of life, comes the thirst for truth, whereas the ability to lie is gradually acquired in the process of trying to stay alive.”

Gao Xingjian (1940) Chinese novelist and playwright

Life, Truth, Lie

“You control your future, your destiny. What you think about comes about. By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you most want to be. Put your future in good hands - your own.”

Mark Victor Hansen (1948) American writer

Dreams, Thinking, Future, Personality

“Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Small Bachelor

Source: The Small Bachelor

Love, Life, Marriage

“I don't believe in failure. It's not failure if you enjoy the process.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Failure

“…the brain can process two million bits of information per second. It remembers everything you've ever seen, everything you've ever heard…”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

“To love ourselves and support each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single act of daring greatly.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Love, Support

“When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

33 min 20 sec
Source: Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Heaven and Hell [Episode 4]
Context: There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong. That's perfectly alright; it's the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.
Context: There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong. That's perfectly alright; it's the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny. The worst aspect of the Velikovsky affair is not that many of his ideas were wrong or silly or in gross contradiction to the facts; rather, the worst aspect is that some scientists attempted to suppress Velikovsky's ideas. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge and there is no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system, and the history of our study of the solar system shows clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources.

Science

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

The reference to Cassius is that of the character in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. Listen to an mp3 sound file http://www.otr.com/murrow_mccarthy.shtml of parts of this statement. <br class="br">See It Now (1954) <br class="br">Context: No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind as between the internal and the external threats of communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." Good night, and good luck.

Law, Dependency

“Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process — a way of solving problems”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Kennedy's "focus on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution of human institutions." was quoted by Barack Obama in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
1963, American University speech
Context: I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal. Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace — based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions — on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace — no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process — a way of solving problems.

Peace, Way, Problem, Change