Quotes about vision
page 3

“There is a fissure in my vision and madness will always rush through.”
Source: House of Incest

“And you'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities.”
Source: The Age of Innocence


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.

“If you think I’m handsome, there’s obviously nothing wrong with your vision.”
Source: Every Fifteen Minutes

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

“The core of any family is what is changeless, what is going to be there──shared vision and values.”
Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

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.

“Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.”
Thoughts on various subjects (Further thoughts on various subjects) (1745)

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“My first vision of earth was water veiled.”
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.
Source: Nightlife

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

Source: My Utmost for His Highest: Traditional Updated Edition

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

“A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see”
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

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

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.

“Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: — Do I wake or sleep?”
Stanza 8
Poems (1820), Ode to a Nightingale

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

“Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.”
Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

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."

“Great vision without great people is irrelevant.”
Source: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

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

“Unity is vision; it must have been part of the process of learning to see.”
Source: The Education of Henry Adams

“Men of passion and vision are often seen as mad.”
Source: Royal Assassin

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

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

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

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

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

John F. Kennedy, address at the dedication of the Robert Frost Library, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts (1963-10-26).
Misattributed
On Hinduism (2000)
"Don't Mourn for Us" (1993)
Page 62
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
"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
Postscript (July 1973)
Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962)
Source: Gestalt Psychology. 1930, p. 150