Quotes about vision
page 3

“We ordinary people might lack your great speed or your X-Ray vision, Superman, but never underestimate the power of the human mind. We carry the most dangerous weapon on Earth inside these thick skulls of ours.”

Mark Millar book Superman: Red Son

Source: Superman: Red Son

People, Speed

“He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

God, Girl, Kiss, Wedding

“There is a fissure in my vision and madness will always rush through.”

Anaïs Nin book House of Incest

Source: House of Incest

Madness

“Glance is the enemy of vision.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

“And you'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

Reality

“Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

“The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), History
Context: The difference between men is in their principle of association. Some men classify objects by color and size and other accidents of appearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and effect. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance.

Men

“The infinite wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exact measure as we are capable of receiving them. The keenness of our vision depends not on how much we can see, but on how much we feel.”

Helen Keller book The World I Live In

Source: The World I Live In

Feeling, Universe, Dependency

“If you think I’m handsome, there’s obviously nothing wrong with your vision.”

Lisa Scottoline (1955) American writer

Source: Every Fifteen Minutes

Thinking

“Troy's deformities lay deep down from a woman's vision, whilst his embellishments were upon the very surface; thus contrasting with homely Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whose virtues were as metals in a mine.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

Home

“I will never forget the vision of Jamie walking towards me.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Forgetting

“Angelic Sookie, vision of love and beauty, I am prostrate that the wicked evil maenad violated your smooth and voluptuous body, in an attempt to deliver a message to me. -Eric”

Charlaine Harris book Living Dead in Dallas

Source: Living Dead in Dallas

Love, Beauty, Angels, Evil

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight and no vision.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

“I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning book Sonnets from the Portuguese

Source: Sonnets from the Portuguese

Life, Sadness, Tear

“What she hadn't realized was that sometimes when your vision was that sharp and true, it could cut you. That only if you'd felt such fullness could you really understand the ache of being empty.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Understanding

“Knowledge is love and light and vision.”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

Source: The Story of My Life

Love, Knowledge, Light

“The core of any family is what is changeless, what is going to be there──shared vision and values.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Family

“Of course to adhere to standards, to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate dangers takes great courage and takes self-confidence. But we also know that only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Day of Affirmation Address (1966)
Context: The second danger is that of expediency: of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. Of course, if we must act effectively we must deal with the world as it is. We must get things done. But if there was one thing that President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feeling of young people around the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspirations, and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs — that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities, no separation between the deepest desires of heart and of mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems. It is not realistic or hardheaded to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values, although we all know some who claim that it is so. In my judgment, it is thoughtless folly. For it ignores the realities of human faith and of passion and of belief — forces ultimately more powerful than all of the calculations of our economists or of our generals. Of course to adhere to standards, to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate dangers takes great courage and takes self-confidence. But we also know that only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.

Confidence, Courage, Self-confidence

“It is a commonplace of all religious thought, even the most primitive, that the man seeking visions and insight must go apart from his fellows and love for a time in the wilderness.”

Loren Eiseley (1907–1977) US philosopher (1907-1977)

Love, Time

“I love America and I hate it. I'm torn between the two. I have two conflicting visions of America. One is a kind of dream landscape and the other is a kind of black comedy.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Love, Hate, Dreams

“Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Thoughts on various subjects (Further thoughts on various subjects) (1745)

Art

“What I cannot forgive is dishonesty - and no matter what, or how hard, I would rather know the truth of which I today had such a clear & devastating vision from his mouth than hear foul evasions, blurrings and rattiness.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Truth, Forgiveness

“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Men

“where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and who can say which has the wider vision?”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“Love is not a state, a feeling, a disposition, but an exchange, uneven, fraught with history, with ghosts, with longings that are more or less legible to those who try to see one another with their own faulty vision.”

Judith Butler (1956) American philosopher and gender theorist

Love, Feeling, History

“So books are real to me, too; they link me not just with other minds but with the vision of other minds, what those minds understand and see. I see their worlds as well as I see my own.”

Philip K. Dick The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

Source: The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

Books, World, Understanding

“I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Life, Past

“I dont believe in learning from other peoples pictures. I think you should learn from your own interior vision of things and discover, as I say, Innocently, as though there had never been anybody.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

People, Thinking, Learning

“Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river! Dreams! adorations! illumnations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

Religion, Dreams

“He wondered if normalcy was something, like vision or silence, you didn't realize was precious until you lost it.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Silence

“I'm a vampire, idiot. I don't have x-ray vision." "Some supernatural monster you are, remind me to trade you in for a werewolf, bro. Probably be more useful right now.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Kiss of Death

“My first vision of earth was water veiled.”

Anaïs Nin book House of Incest

Source: House of Incest (1936)
Context: My first vision of earth was water veiled. I am of the race of men and women who see all things through this curtain of sea and my eyes are the color of water. I looked with chameleon eyes upon the changing face of the world, looked with anonymous vision upon my uncompleted self. I remember my first birth in water.

Water

“At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.”

William Golding book The Spire

Source: The Spire

“Iggy’s spine tightened, his face like ice. When he’d been at the School, they’d tried to surgically enhance his night vision. Now he was blind forever. Oops.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

School, Night

“The dreamers are the saviors of the world. As the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

Source: As a Man Thinketh

Men, World, Beauty

“There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Friendship

“As a child, I was aware that, at night, infrared vision would reveal monsters hiding in the bedroom closet only if they were warm-blooded. But everybody knows that your average bedroom monster is reptilian and cold-blooded.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson book Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries

Source: Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries

Night

“Young lovers see a vision of the world redeemed by love. That is the truest thing they ever see, for without it life is death.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: Jayber Crow

Love, Life, Death, World

“What're you still doing up? You know all good little ninjas should be in bed, visions of homicidal sugarplums dancing in their heads.”

Rob Thurman (1950) American writer

Source: Nightlife

Dance

“I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Pleasure, Feeling, Change, Childhood

“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

Life, Feeling, Silence, Grass

“You're our honorary sixth member with mysterious abilities and visions of the future. The Snow White to our motley group of dwarfs. Plus, you're way better looking than the rest of these guys.”

Michelle Rowen (1971) Canadian writer

Source: Dark Kiss

Way, Guy, Future

“Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

“God gives us the vision, then he takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision, and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way. Every vision will be made real if we will have patience.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

Source: My Utmost for His Highest: Traditional Updated Edition

God, Way, Patience

“In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagines past”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

Imagination, Nature, Reality, Past

“Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Girl

“Now that the real and the imagined had collided, he wondered if she, like he, longed for the past, for the normal. He wondered if normalcy was something, like vision or silence, you didn't realize was precious until you lost it.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Imagination, Silence, Past

“Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labelled Utopian.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

"Socialism: Caught in the Political Trap", a lecture (c. 1912), published in Red Emma Speaks, Part 1 (1972) edited by Alix Kates Shulman

Change

“A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the hillside.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

World, Dreams, Heart

“Hi."

"Hi." I shrug, as though to say "Whatever."

In my peripheral vision I can see Magnus exhale. He looks a teeny bit nervous.

"So."

"So." I can play this game too.

"Poppy."

"Poppy. I mean, Magnus." I scowl. He caught me out.”

Sophie Kinsella book I've Got Your Number

Source: I've Got Your Number

Game

“Try to see yourself with power. Not power so that you can get even with anybody else. Power so that you can become even with your vision- Maya Angelo”

Willa Shalit (1955) American artist

Source: Becoming Myself: Reflections on Growing Up Female

“What the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves, they've got their own vision, they have their own way of fracturing reality, and if it's authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Way, Feeling, Reality

“The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

Time

“Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“Now is a time for change, a time to become the greatest version of yourself. And a time to to make your grandest vision of the world.”

Ilchi Lee (1950) South Korean businessman

World, Change, Time

“Not much touches us, but we long to be touched. We lie awake at night willing the darkness to part and show us a vision.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

Source: The Passion

Lie, Parting, Night

“You've changed me, she thought. Not just showing me that boys aren't all pond scum. You've made me different, made me look at the broader picture. Given me vision.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Dark Visions

Boy, Change

“There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already.”

Robert Anton Wilson book The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Part I : The Eye in the Pyramid, p. 32
The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975)

History, Reality, Sense

“Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Source: Complete Essays 3, 1930-35

Children, Intelligence

“i was momentarily sidetracked by the vision of Eric herding a cow into a trailer and driving it to the shoulder of the the interstate and shooing it into the trees.”

Charlaine Harris book Living Dead in Dallas

Source: Living Dead in Dallas

Tree

“Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.”

T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Context: There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands,
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Time, Tea, Indecision

“You need a new hobby, Rachel. Something other than nasty little men with visions of world domination.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Pale Demon

Men, World

“I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Romantic, Flowers, Heart

“Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: — Do I wake or sleep?”

John Keats Ode to a Nightingale

Stanza 8
Poems (1820), Ode to a Nightingale

Dreams, Music, Sleep

“Part of being a writer is defending your vision and not caving in to outside pressures.”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

Parting

“The leaf fall of his words, the stained glass hues of his moods, the rust in his voice, the smoke in his mouth, his breath on my vision like human breath blinding a mirror.”

Anaïs Nin book House of Incest

Source: House of Incest

Mood

“As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so sex with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Source: My Religion

Sex, Joy, Selfishness

“Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision.”

Norman Mailer book The Presidential Papers

Preface
The Presidential Papers (1963)
Context: Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation.

God

“Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Courage, Understanding, Help, Loneliness

“When I work, I'm just translating the world around me in what seems to be straightforward terms. For my readers, this is sometimes a vision that's not familiar. But I'm not trying to manipulate reality. This is just what I see and hear.”

Don DeLillo (1936) American novelist, playwright and essayist

World, Reality

“Your vision of where or who you want to be is the greatest asset you have. Without having a goal it’s difficult to score.”

Paul Arden (1940–2008) writer

Source: It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be

“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world... The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

1941 - 1967
Source: 'Statements by Four artists', Edward Hopper, in 'Reality' 1., Spring 1953, p. 8

Life, World, Art, Personality

“A vision we give to others of who and what they could become has power when it echoes what the spirit has already spoken into their souls.”

Larry Crabb (1944) American writer

Soul

“Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Music, Winter

“Biological family is too small of a vision. Patriotism is far too myopic. A love for our own relatives and a love for the people of our own country are not bad things, but our love does not stop at the border.”

Shane Claiborne The Irresistible Revolution

Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

Love, People, Family, Country

“The visions are fragmented and a dark cloud spreads like spilt ink across the pages of possible futures.”

Garth Nix book Abhorsen

Source: Lirael

Future

“Exile is a dream of a glorious return. Exile is a vision of revolution: Elba, not St Helena. It is an endless paradox: looking forward by always looking back. The exile is a ball hurled high into the air.”

Salman Rushdie book The Satanic Verses

Source: The Satanic Verses

Dreams

“If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.”

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

1963, Speech at Amherst College
Context: If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.
Context: If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style. In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society — in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having "nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope."

Art

“Great vision without great people is irrelevant.”

James C. Collins (1958) American business consultant and writer

Source: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

People

“What is morality, she asked.
Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Truth, Courage

“creative entitlement simply means believing that you are allowed to be here, and that—merely by being here—you are allowed to have a voice and a vision of your own.”

Elizabeth Gilbert Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Source: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“The visions we offer our children shape the future.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Children, Future

“Unity is vision; it must have been part of the process of learning to see.”

Henry Adams book The Education of Henry Adams

Source: The Education of Henry Adams

Learning, Parting

“Men of passion and vision are often seen as mad.”

Robin Hobb book Royal Assassin

Source: Royal Assassin

Men, Passion, Madness

“A scene should be selected by the writer for haunted-ness-of-mind interest.
If you're not haunted by something, as by a dream, a vision, or a memory, which are involuntary, you're not interested or even involved.”

Jack Kerouac book Book of Sketches

Source: Book of Sketches

Dreams, Memory

“The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Children, Dreams, Future

“I have come here to thank personally each Member of the Congress who labored so long and so valiantly to make this occasion come true today, and to make this bill a reality. I cannot mention all their names, for it would take much too long, but my gratitude; and that of this Nation; belongs to the 89th Congress. We are indebted, too, to the vision of the late beloved President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and to the support given to this measure by the then Attorney General and now Senator, Robert F. Kennedy. In the final days of consideration, this bill had no more able champion than the present Attorney General, Nicholas Katzenbach, who, with New York's own "Manny" Celler, and Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Congressman Feighan of Ohio, and Senator Mansfield and Senator Dirksen constituting the leadership of the Senate, and Senator Javits, helped to guide this bill to passage, along with the help of the Members sitting in front of me today.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Remarks at the signing of the Immigration Bill (1965)

Support, Reality, Help, Personality

“This situation [alienation] can therefore [according to Durkheim] be remedied by providing the individual with a moral awareness of the social importance of his particular role in the division of labour. He is then no longer an alienated automaton. but is a useful part of an organic whole: ‘from that time, as special and uniform as his activity may be, it is that of an intelligent being, for it has direction, and he is aware of it.’ This is entirely consistent with Durkheim’s general account of the growth of the division of labour, and its relationship to human freedom. It is only through moral acceptance in his particular role in the division of labour that the individual is able to achieve a high degree of autonomy as a self-conscious being, and can escape both the tyranny of rigid moral conformity demanded in undifferentiated societies on the one hand and the tyranny of unrealisable desires on the other.
Not the moral integration of the individual within a differentiated division of labour but the effective dissolution of the division of labour as an organising principle of human social intercourse, is the premise of Marx’s conception. Marx nowhere specifies in detail how this future society would be organised socially, but, at any rate,. this perspective differs decisively from that of Durkheim. The vision of a highly differentiated division of labour integrated upon the basis of moral norms of individual obligation and corporate solidarity. is quite at variance with Marx’s anticipation of the future form of society.
According to Durkheim’s standpoint. the criteria underlying Marx’s hopes for the elimination of technological alienation represent a reversion to moral principles which are no longer appropriate to the modern form of society. This is exactly the problem which Durkheim poses at the opening of The Division of Labour: ‘Is it our duty to seek to become a thorough and complete human being. one quite sufficient unto himself; or, on the contrary, to be only a part of a whole, the organ of an organism?’ The analysis contained in the work, in Durkheim’s view, demonstrates conclusively that organic solidarity is the ‘normal’ type in modern societies, and consequently that the era of the ‘universal man’ is finished. The latter ideal, which predominated up to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in western Europe is incompatible with the diversity of the contemporary order. In preserving this ideal. by contrast. Marx argues the obverse: that the tendencies which are leading to the destruction of capitalism are themselves capable of effecting a recovery of the ‘universal’ properties of man. which are shared by every individual.”

Anthony Giddens (1938) British sociologist

Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), pp. 230-231.

Hope, Intelligence, Problem, Decision

“Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.”

Florence Scovel Shinn (1871–1940) American writer

The Game of Life and How to Play It https://archive.org/details/gameoflifehowtop00shin (1925)

Failure

“It was in 1947 that the idea of a conscious monochrome vision came to me... Pure, existential space was regularly winking at me, each time in a more impressive manner, and this sensation of total freedom attracted me so powerfully that I painted some monochrome surfaces just to 'see', to 'see' with my own eyes what existential sensibility granted me; absolute freedom! But each time I could neither imagine or think of the possibility of considering this as a painting, a picture, until the day when I said: Why not?”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

Source: before 1960, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings", p. 15

Imagination, Idea, Thinking, Freedom

“The Leader of the Future 2 is divided into five parts. In Part One, our book begins where it should, with Peter Drucker’s vision of leadership… Part Two, "Leading in a Diverse World," begins with the recognized world authority on building a learning organization. "Systems Citizenship" presents MIT’s Peter Senge at his best, as he challenges us to understand systems, implement systems intelligence, and build partnerships that are a mandate for the new millennium… Part Three, "Leading in a Time of Crisis and Complexity," begins with Ron Heifetz of Harvard’s Kennedy School. Ron describes new approaches to solving leadership dilemmas as he challenges leaders in "Anchoring Leadership in the Work of Adaptive Progress"… Part Four, "Leading Organizations of the Future," shows how changing context has an impact leadership needs, demanding changes in leadership styles. Charles Handy is one of the great social philosophers of our time… Part Five, "The Quality and Character of the Leader of the Future," begins with one of the most influential thought leaders in history, Stephen Covey. In "Leading in the Knowledge Worker Age."”

Marshall Goldsmith (1949) American author of leadership and management literature

Source: The leader of the future 2, 2006, p. xiv-xvii; preview

Books, Age, World, School

“I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

John F. Kennedy, address at the dedication of the Robert Frost Library, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts (1963-10-26).
Misattributed

Art, Future, Country

“Hinduism is like a great reservoir of water from which many streams take their rise and to which they again repair after passing through many strange and fair lands. It is a great, creative matrix giving birth to many beautiful and living forms. Itself a historical, it has given birth to many sects and branches with interesting, chequered histories. Paying sole allegiance to the Guide within seated in the cave of the heart, it has put forward from time to time many teachers and sages of incomparable power and vision, incarnating the very Gods above and within.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

God, Beauty, History, Birth

“You didn't lose a child to autism. You lost a child because the child you waited for never came into existence. That isn't the fault of the autistic child who does exist, and it shouldn't be our burden. We need and deserve families who can see us and value us for ourselves, not families whose vision of us is obscured by the ghosts of children who never lived. Grieve if you must, for your own lost dreams. But don't mourn for us. We are alive. We are real. And we're here waiting for you.”

Jim Sinclair (activist) (1940) Autism rights activist

"Don't Mourn for Us" (1993)

Children, Family, Dreams, Waiting

“A vision without a task is but a dream.
A task without vision is but drudgery.
A vision and a task are the hope of the world.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

Misattributed

World, Dreams, Hope

“The most successful people in the workplace are those who normally really like and ‘buy-into’ their employer’s mission and vision. In other words such people like what the company wishes to achieve and where it is heading. It is akin to being on a ship and liking what the ship is doing and liking where the ship is heading. Can you imagine being on a ship and not wishing to go where it is heading?”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Page 62 <br class="br">Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Managing Teams in a Week (2013) https://books.google.ae/books?idqZjO9_ov74EC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIIDAB#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Secrets of Success at Work – 50 techniques to excel (2014) https://books.google.ae/books?id4S7vAgAAQBAJ&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIJjAC#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse

People, Imagination, Success

“The history of the Republican Party is marked by vacillation between its founding principle of opportunity and its domination by the wealthy elite. The party came together in the 1850s in opposition to the wealthy slaveholders who controlled the federal government. Democrats acting on their behalf insisted that America’s primary principle was the Constitution's protection of property, and they pushed legislation to let planters monopolize the country’s resources at the expense of the working. … Abraham Lincoln and others recoiled from the idea of government as a prop for the rich. In organizing the Republican Party, they highlighted the equality of opportunity promised in the Declaration of Independence and warned that a healthy economy depended on widespread prosperity. Northerners and hardscrabble Westerners flocked to that vision, and elected Lincoln to the White House in 1860.”

Heather Cox Richardson American historian

"Bring Back the Party of Lincoln" http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/opinion/bring-back-the-party-of-lincoln.html?_r=0 (3 September 2014), The New York Times, New York

History, Idea, Housing, Dependency

“While we can doubtless look to some wide changes in the shapes of social relationships as a result of contemporary libertarian movements, and especially to an increase in workers' involvement in decision-making at the place of work and in the development of forms of democracy more direct and more sensitive to modern conditions, it is unlikely that the general outcome will be the wholly non-governmental society of which libertarians now and in the past have dreamed. The value of anarchism is likely to remain primarily in its force as an inspiring idea, an activating vision…”

George Woodcock (1912–1995) Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic

Postscript (July 1973)
Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962)

Dreams, Democracy, Idea, Decision

“At a given time some concrete forms are simply there in vision, not less than colors and brightnesses.”

Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) German-American psychologist and phenomenologist

Source: Gestalt Psychology. 1930, p. 150

Color, Time

Quotes about vision page 3

Quotes about vision
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