Quotes about vision (1494 quotes, page 4)

“During the last few years it has become apparent that the concept of "machine" must be very greatly extended if it is to include the most modern developments. Especially is this true if we are studying the brain and attempting to identify the type of mechanism that is responsible for the brain’s outstanding powers of thought and action. It has become apparent that when we used to doubt whether the brain could be a machine, our doubts were due chieﬂy to the fact that by ‘‘machine’’ we understood some mechanism of very simple type. Familiar with the bicycle and the typewriter, we were in great danger of taking them as the type of all machines. The last decade, however, has corrected this error. It has taught us how restricted our outlook used to be; for it developed mechanisms that far transcended the utmost that had been thought possible, and taught us that ‘‘mechanism’’ was still far from exhausted in its possibilities. Today we know only that the possibilities extend beyond our farthest vision.”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

W. Ross Ashby (1951), "Statistical Machinery". In: Thales Vol 7. p.1 as cited in: Peter M. Asaro (2008) " From Mechanisms of Adaptation to Intelligence Ampliﬁers: The Philosophy of W. Ross Ashby http://cybersophe.org/writing/Asaro%20Ashby.pdf"

Error , Study

“Demanding that wolf populations be allowed to continue to increase is not only a false conservation goal, but also a counterproductive tactic that is bound for short-term failure. It is strategically preferable to promote wolf range expansion and to accept reduction of unacceptable levels of conflict through scientifically planned and managed culling rather than through uncontrolled poaching. Full protection of wolf populations living near, or interspersed with, human settlements leads sooner or later to surplus wolves being killed, legally or illegally. Opposing wolf killing altogether implies accepting that all wolves will eventually be removed from these areas, whereas accepting some wolf control will allow wolves over much larger ranges. This vision requires a fundamental shift in the way wolves are perceived by folks who consider every wolf a symbol of the conservation battle or an animal with special rights among all other species. In the end, this approach probably will yield many more wolves than we could afford to keep in a few fully protected areas, no matter how large.”

L. David Mech (1937) American Biologist , Ecologist

Wolves: Behavior, Ecology and Conservation (2003)

Way , Failure , Wolf , Animals

“I must confess that my estimate of Lovecraft would not have pleased his most ardent admirers. The view I expressed in that book was that, while Lovecraft was distinctly a creative genius in his own way, his pessimism should not be taken too seriously; that it was the pessimism of a sick recluse, and had about it an element of rassentiment, a kind of desire to take revenge on the world that rejected him. In short, Lovecraft was a 19th century romantic, born in the wrong time. Most men of genius dislike their own age, but the really great ones impose their own vision on the age. The weak ones turn away into a world of gloomy fantasy.”

Colin Wilson book The Mind Parasites

Source: The Mind Parasites (1967), p. 2

Men , Books , Age , World

“The culture of a civilization is the art and literature through which it rises to consciousness of itself and defines its vision of the world.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"What is Culture?" (p. 2)
Culture Counts (2007)

World , Art , Literature

“I had innumerable visions at that time [c. 1903]; wherever I looked, Nature was alive, the sky, the clouds, on every stone and among the branches of the trees, everywhere my creatures stirred and lived their still or wild, lively lives, arousing my excitement and crying out to be painted.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

1900 - 1920

Nature , Tree , Time , Painting

“Lying down to sleep on the earthen riverbank, I thought, Vrindavan is attracting my heart like no other place. What is happening to me? Please reveal Your divine will. With this prayer, I drifted off to sleep.
Before dawn, I awoke to the ringing of temple bells, signaling that it was time to begin my journey to Hardwar. But my body lay there like a corpse. Gasping in pain, I couldn’t move. A blazing fever consumed me from within, and under the spell of unbearable nausea, my stomach churned. Like a hostage, I lay on that riverbank. As the sun rose, celebrating a new day, I felt my life force sinking. Death that morning would have been a welcome relief. Hours passed.
At noon, I still lay there. This fever will surely kill me, I thought.
Just when I felt it couldn’t get any worse, I saw in the overcast sky something that chilled my heart. Vultures circled above, their keen sights focused on me. It seemed the fever was cooking me for their lunch, and they were just waiting until I was well done. They hovered lower and lower. One swooped to the ground, a huge black and white bird with a long, curving neck and sloping beak. It stared, sizing up my condition, then jabbed its pointed beak into my ribcage. My body recoiled, my mind screamed, and my eyes stared back at my assailant, seeking pity. The vulture flapped its gigantic wings and rejoined its fellow predators circling above. On the damp soil, I gazed up at the birds as they soared in impatient circles. Suddenly, my vision blurred and I momentarily blacked out. When I came to, I felt I was burning alive from inside out. Perspiring, trembling, and gagging, I gave up all hope.
Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching. A local farmer herding his cows noticed me and took pity. Pressing the back of his hand to my forehead, he looked skyward toward the vultures and, understanding my predicament, lifted me onto a bullock cart. As we jostled along the muddy paths, the vultures followed overhead. The farmer entrusted me to a charitable hospital where the attendants placed me in the free ward. Eight beds lined each side of the room. The impoverished and sadhu patients alike occupied all sixteen beds. For hours, I lay unattended in a bed near the entrance. Finally that evening the doctor came and, after performing a series of tests, concluded that I was suffering from severe typhoid fever and dehydration. In a matter-of-fact tone, he said, “You will likely die, but we will try to save your life.””

Radhanath Swami (1950) Gaudiya Vaishnava guru

Republished on The Journey Home website.
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami (Tulsi Books, 2010)

Life , Death , Pain , Hope

“Once a man’s will is set, he need no longer rely on others or expect anything from the world. His vision encompasses Heaven and earth, past and present, and the tranquility of his heart is undisturbed.”

Yoshida Shoin (1830–1859) Japanese politician

Vol. III.
Yoshida Shoin Zenshu

World , Past , Heart

“I decided (after listening to a "talk radio" commentator who abused, vilified, and scorned every noble cause to which I had devoted my entire life) that I was both a humanist and a liberal, each of the most dangerous and vilified type. I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create a reasonably decent society. I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril. I do not believe that pure reason can solve the perpetual problems unless it is modified by poetry and art and social vision. So I am a humanist. And if you want to charge me with being the most virulent kind—a secular humanist—I accept the accusation.”

James A. Michener (1907–1997) American author

Interview, Parade magazine (24 November 1991)

Life , Men , Art , History

“But what I'd like to know,
Is could a place like this
Exist so beautiful?
Or do we have to find our wings and fly away
To the visions in our mind?”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

Visions
Song lyrics, Innervisions (1973)

Beauty , Flying

“If Catholic Christianity does not offer a vision of existence that transcends the election cycle, if our redemption is social and our resurrection economic, then it’s time render everything up to Caesar.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), The Catholic Writer Today (2013)

Time

“This debate is coming down essentially to two visions — Mr. Harper's vision for Canada and my vision for Canada, and to a decision to be made by people disappointed by Mr. (Stephane) Dion”

Jack Layton (1950–2011) Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada

On polls showing his New Democrats were gaining on the Liberals, Sept. 2, 2008[citation needed]

People , Disappointment , Decision

“There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger's early efforts. She, like we, saw the horrifying conditions of ghetto life. Like we, she knew that all of society is poisoned by cancerous slums. Like we, she was a direct actionist — a nonviolent resister. She was willing to accept scorn and abuse until the truth she saw was revealed to the millions. At the turn of the century she went into the slums and set up a birth control clinic, and for this deed she went to jail because she was violating an unjust law. Yet the years have justified her actions. She launched a movement which is obeying a higher law to preserve human life under humane conditions. Margaret Sanger had to commit what was then called a crime in order to enrich humanity, and today we honor her courage and vision; for without them there would have been no beginning. Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by nonviolent direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her. Negroes have no mere academic nor ordinary interest in family planning. They have a special and urgent concern.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Family Planning - A Special and Urgent Concern (1966)

Life , People , Truth , Family

“The journalistic vision sharpens to the point of maximum impact every event, every individual and social configuration; but the honing is uniform.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), I: A Secondary City, Ch. 6 (p. 27).

“I feel, Sir, at this instant, how much I had been animated in my childhood by a recital of England's victories:—I was taught, Sir, by one whose memory I shall ever revere, that at the close of a war, far different indeed from this, she had dictated the terms of peace to submissive nations. This, in which I place something more than a common interest, was the memorable aera of England's glory. But that aera is past…the visions of her power and pre-eminence are passed away…Let us examine what is left, with a manly and determined courage…Let us feel our calamities—let us bear them too, like men.”

William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (21 February 1783), reprinted in W. S. Hathaway (ed.), The Speeches of William Pitt in the House of Commons. Volume I (London: 1817), pp. 31-32.

Men , War , Peace , Feeling

“Love is a universal migraine.
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Symptoms of Love," lines 1-3, from More Poems (1961).
Poems

Love , Universe

“I am not a Muslim in the usual sense, though I hope I am a “Muslim” as “one surrendered to God”; but I believe that embedded in the Qur’an and other expressions of the Islamic vision are vast stores of divine truth from which I and other occidentals have still much to learn.”

William Montgomery Watt (1909–2006) Scottish historian

Islam and Christianity Today: A Contribution to Dialogue https://books.google.com/books?id=4YlTAQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false, Routledge Library Editions, 1983, p. IX.

God , Truth , Hope , Sense

“Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

Dreams , Time , Drawing

“What most men do not know - and if they could know it, why could they be called on to believe it? - Is that this blue sky, though illusory as an optical error and belied by the vision of interplanetary space, is nonetheless an adequate reflection of the Heaven of the Angels and the Blessed and that therefore, despite everything, it is this blue mirage, flecked with silver clouds, that is right and will have the final say; to be astonished at this amounts to admitting that it is by chance that we are here on earth and see the sky as we do.”

Frithjof Schuon book Understanding Islam

Understanding Islam (1963)

Men , Angels , Error , Chance

“John Desmond Bernal (1901-1971) was undoubtedly the most important of the "Western" scientists who, during the twentieth century, accepted the Marxist view of social development. He did more than "accept" it: he tried to sketch the whole history of science from a Marxist viewpoint; he wrote a number of articles explicitly expounding his view of the relation of Marxism to science; and from his student days he played an active role in Communist politics. He has been criticised: during his lifetime, for too readily accepting official Soviet policy, whether relating to society or to science; since his death, for having been too ready to hope that his vision of the use of science for human ends could be implemented by capitalist societies; and at all times, for an allegedly simplistic faith in science as the salvation of mankind.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Brian Vickery (2006) " J.D.Bernal: science and social development http://web.archive.org/web/20100202233156/http://www.lucis.me.uk/bernal.htm" on lucis.me.uk, 2006.

Death , Faith , Hope , History

“Your gatherings are a living testimony of a determination to support these principles. It would be impossible to come into this presence, which is a symbol of more than 300 years of our advancing civilization, which represents to such a degree the hope of our consecrated living and the prayers of our hallowed dead, without a firmer conviction of the deep and abiding purpose of our country to live in accordance with this vision. There have been and will be lapses and discouragements, surface storms and disturbances. The shallows will murmur, but the deep is still. If We shall be made aware of the boisterous and turbulent forces of evil about us seeking the things which are temporal. But we shall also be made aware of the still small voice arising from the fireside of every devoted home in the land seeking the things which are eternal. To such a country, to such a cause, the American Legion has dedicated itself. Upon this rock you stand for the service of humanity. Against it no power can prevail.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Hope , Home , Support , Evil

“My [artworks] have neither object nor space nor line nor anything – no forms. They are light, lightness, about merging, about formlessness, breaking down form. You wouldn’t think of form by the ocean. You can go in if you don’t encounter anything. A world without objects, without interruption, making a work without interruption or obstacle. It is to accept the necessity of this simple, direct going into a field of vision as you could cross and empty beach to look at the ocean.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

her remark in 1966 as quoted by Ann Wilson in 'Linear Webs', Art and Artists 1, no. 7, Oct. 1966, p. 49; as quoted on the Tate exhibition, London June - October 2015 http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/agnes-martin/room-guide/room-nine & by Julie Warchol, on Smith College Museum of Art https://www.smith.edu/artmuseum/Collections/Cunningham-Center/Blog-paper-people/Agnes-Martin-On-a-Clear-Daywebsite
1960's

World , Thinking , Light

“Now if plurality and difference belong only to the appearance-form; if there is but one and the same Entity manifested in all living things: it follows that, when we obliterate the distinction between the ego and the non-ego, we are not the sport of an illusion. Rather are we so, when we maintain the reality of individuation, — a thing the Hindus call Maya, that is, a deceptive vision, a phantasma. The former theory we have found to be the actual source of the phaenomenon of Compassion; indeed Compassion is nothing but its translation into definite expression. This, therefore, is what I should regard as the metaphysical foundation of Ethics, and should describe it as the sense which identifies the ego with the non-ego, so that the individual directly recognises in another his own self, his true and very being. From this standpoint the profoundest teaching of theory pushed to its furthest limits may be shown in the end to harmonise perfectly with the rules of justice and loving-kindness, as exercised; and conversely, it will be clear that practical philosophers, that is, the upright, the beneficent, the magnanimous, do but declare through their acts the same truth as the man of speculation wins by laborious research … He who is morally noble, however deficient in mental penetration, reveals by his conduct the deepest insight, the truest wisdom; and puts to shame the most accomplished and learned genius, if the latter's acts betray that his heart is yet a stranger to this great principle, — the metaphysical unity of life.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book On the Basis of Morality

Part IV, Ch. 2, pp. 273 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/273/mode/2up-274
On the Basis of Morality (1840)

Love , Life , Wisdom , Truth

“Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own utopian vision upon others.”

Robert Nozick book Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Source: Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework, p. 311
Context: There will not be one kind of community existing and one kind of life led in utopia. Utopia will consist of utopias, of many different and divergent communities in which people lead different kinds of lives under different institutions. Some kinds of communities will be more attractive to most than others; communities will wax and wane. People will leave some for others or spend their whole lives in one. Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own utopian vision upon others.

Life , People , Communication

“To say he hath spoken to him in a Dream, is no more then to say he dreamed that God spake to him; which is not of force to win beleef from any man, that knows dreams are for the most part naturall, and may proceed from former thoughts; and such dreams as that, from selfe conceit, and foolish arrogance, and false opinion of a mans own goodlinesse, or other vertue, by which he thinks he hath merited the favour of extraordinary Revelation. To say he hath seen a Vision, or heard a Voice, is to say, that he dreamed between sleeping and waking: for in such manner a man doth many times naturally take his dream for a vision, as not having well observed his own slumbering. To say he speaks by supernaturall Inspiration, is to say he finds an ardent desire to speak, or some strong opinion of himself, for which hee can alledge no naturall and sufficient reason. So that though God Almighty can speak to a man, by Dreams, Visions, Voice, and Inspiration; yet he obliges no man to beleeve he hath so done to him that pretends it; who (being a man) may erre, and (which is more) may lie.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The Third Part, Chapter 32
Leviathan (1651)

God , Lie , Dreams , Nature

“It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands.”

Leigh Hunt (1784–1859) English critic, essayist, poet and writer

A Thought of the Nile

Dreams , Time

“Solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the basic elements, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental pleas for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of results.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

"A Plea for Solidarity," The International Socialist Review VOL XIV No. 9 (March 1914) https://books.google.com/books?id=olFIAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA534&ots=GTTSOWeGxG&dq=eugene%20v.%20debs%20%22a%20plea%20for%20solidarity&pg=PA534#v=onepage&q&f=false

Effort

“The Beatific Vision, Sat Chit Ananda, Being-Awareness-Bliss-for the first time I understood, not on the verbal level, not by inchoate hints or at a distance, but precisely and completely what those prodigious syllables referred to. And then I remembered a passage I had read in one of Suzuki's essays. “What is the Dharma-Body of the Buddha?” ('“the Dharma-Body of the Buddha” is another way of saying Mind, Suchness, the Void, the Godhead.) The question is asked in a Zen monastery by an earnest and bewildered novice. And with the prompt irrelevance of one of the Marx Brothers, the Master answers, “The hedge at the bottom of the garden.” “And the man who realizes this truth,” the novice dubiously inquires, “what, may I ask, is he?””

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

Groucho gives him a whack over the shoulders with his staff and answers, “A golden-haired lion.”
The Doors of Perception (1954)

Truth , Way , Question , Time

“I want a president who will teach our children that everyone in this country matters, a president who truly believes in the vision that our Founders put forth all those years ago that we are all created equal, each a beloved part of the great American story.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2010s, 2016 Democratic National Convention (2016)

Children , Parting , Country

“Lie down baby now don't say a word
There there baby your vision is blurred
Your head is so sore from all of that thinking
I don't want to hurt you now
But I think you're shrinking.”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, All This Useless Beauty (1996)
Source: The Other End (of the Telescope)

Lie , Thinking , Hurt , Baby

“Rather than pursuing our calling to present a vision of a world filled with God's power and love, the contemporary church merely presents the world as a two-dimensional facsimile of the consumer culture, albeit with a Jesus fish imprint.”

Skye Jethani

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

Love , God , World , Fish

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”

Warren Bennis (1925–2014) American leadership expert

Warren Bennis, cited in: Dianna Daniels Booher (1991) Executive's portfolio of model speeches for all occasions. p. 34
1990s

Leadership , Reality

“In Somalia, we know exactly what they had to gain because they told us. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell, described this as the best public relations operation of the Pentagon that he could imagine. His picture, which I think is plausible, is that there was a problem about raising the Pentagon budget, and they needed something that would be, look like a kind of a cakewalk, which would give a lot of prestige to the Pentagon. Somalia looked easy. Let's look back at the background. For years, the United States had supported a really brutal dictator, who had just devastated the country, and was finally kicked out. After he's kicked out, it was 1990, the country sank into total chaos and disaster, with starvation and warfare and all kind of horrible misery. The United States refused to, certainly to pay reparations, but even to look. By the middle of 1992, it was beginning to ease. The fighting was dying down, food supplies were beginning to get in, the Red Cross was getting in, roughly 80% of their supplies they said. There was a harvest on the way. It looked like it was finally sort of settling down. At that point, all of a sudden, George Bush announced that he had been watching these heartbreaking pictures on television, on Thanksgiving, and we had to do something, we had to send in humanitarian aid. The Marines landed, in a landing which was so comical, that even the media couldn't keep a straight face. Take a look at the reports of the landing of the Marines, it must've been the first week of December 1992. They had planned a night, there was nothing that was going on, but they planned a night landing, so you could show off all the fancy new night vision equipment and so on. Of course they had called the television stations, because what's the point of a PR operation for the Pentagon if there's no one to look for it. So the television stations were all there, with their bright lights and that sort of thing, and as the Marines were coming ashore they were blinded by the television light. So they had to send people out to get the cameramen to turn off the lights, so they could land with their fancy new equipment. As I say, even the media could not keep a straight face on this one, and they reported it pretty accurately. Also reported the PR aspect. Well the idea was, you could get some nice shots of Marine colonels handing out peanut butter sandwiches to starving refugees, and that'd all look great. And so it looked for a couple of weeks, until things started to get unpleasant. As things started to get unpleasant, the United States responded with what's called the Powell Doctrine. The United States has an unusual military doctrine, it's one of the reasons why the U. S. is generally disqualified from peace keeping operations that involve civilians, again, this has to do with sovereignty. U. S. military doctrine is that U. S. soldiers are not permitted to come under any threat. That's not true for other countries. So countries like, say, Canada, the Fiji Islands, Pakistan, Norway, their soldiers are coming under threat all the time. The peace keepers in southern Lebanon for example, are being attacked by Israeli soldiers all the time, and have suffered plenty of casualties, and they don't like it. But U. S. soldiers are not permitted to come under any threat, so when Somali teenagers started shaking fists at them, and more, they came back with massive fire power, and that led to a massacre. According to the U. S., I don't know the actual numbers, but according to U. S. government, about 7 to 10 thousand Somali civilians were killed before this was over. There's a close analysis of all of this by Alex de Waal, who's one of the world's leading specialists on African famine and relief, altogether academic specialist. His estimate is that the number of people saved by the intervention and the number killed by the intervention was approximately in the same ballpark. That's Somalia. That's what's given as a stellar example of the humanitarian intervention.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Responding to the question, "what did the United States have to gain by intervening in Somalia?", regarding Operation Provide Relief/Operation Restore Hope/Battle of Mogadishu.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Sovereignty and World Order, 1999

People , World , Peace , Food

“It was so frightening at the time to be seventeen and have heart monitors hooked up to you. That was the moment the songwriter in me was born. I discovered a whole other side of me. I came home that night and started writing lyrics. I discovered it all at once: It was like opening up a lockbox, and inside was a depth that I didn't even know I had as a person, or a writer — incredible creativity and vision and neurosis, complete neurosis. They all go together in a package.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

On the effects of having a critical cardiac arrhythmia at age 17
Hiatt, Brian (2006-09-21), "My Big Mouth Strikes Again" http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/11515443/john_mayer_speaks_listen_to_his_hilarious_takes_on_paris_hilton_brad__angelina_living_in_ny. Rolling Stone. (1009): 66-70

Home , Time , Heart , Personality

“We need a bold, new, positive vision for the future of our country – a vision of a country that works not for a privileged few but for every one of us.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech declaring bid for the Conservative Party leadership http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-mays-tory-leadership-launch-statement-full-text-a7111026.html (30 June 2016)
Variant: We have a mission to make Britain a country that works not for the privileged and not for the few but for every one of our citizens.

Future , Country

“I never did know exactly what was meant by the term "The Beats," but let's say that the original meeting, association, comradeship of Allen Ginsberg, myself, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Philip Whalen, who's not here, Lew Welch, who's dead, Gregory Corso, for me, to a somewhat lesser extent (I never knew Gregory as well as the others) did embody a criticism and a vision which we shared in various ways, and then went our own ways for many years.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

The Beat Vision (1974)

Way , Dead

“Robespierre listened to me with terror. He grew pale and silent for some time. This interview confirmed me in the opinion that I always had of him, that he unites the knowledge of a wise senator with the integrity of a thoroughly good man and the zeal of a true patriot but that he is lacking as a statesman in clearness of vision and determination.”

Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793) politician and journalist during the French Revolution

L'Ami du peuple, vol. 7, p. 3965

Knowledge , Time

“The vision we have of conversational programming takes in much more than rapid turn around time and convenient debugging aids: our most interesting programs are never wrong and never final. […] What is new is the requirement to make variable in our languages what we had previously taken as fixed. I do not refer to new data classes now, but to variables whose values are programs or parts of programs, syntax or parts of syntax, and regimes of control.”

Alan Perlis (1922–1990) American computer scientist

The Synthesis of Algorithmic Systems, 1966

Time , Parting

“I realized that the image I had been given by my teachers, the scientists.... by their way of looking at Nature, was just another stage setting with all the magnificence and ingenuity that the genius of any artist produces in a work of art. I realized that in my scientific journey I had been under the power of a magic spell of a work of art whose reality was just as true as the verity of the image in an artist's vision.”

Naum Gabo (1890–1977) Russian sculptor

Quote from Of divers arts, (1962), p. 21; as cited in International Handbook on Giftedness, Larisa V. Shavinina (2009), p. 862
undated

Art , Way , Nature , Reality

“In some way the material universe appears to be passing away like a tale that is told, dissolving into nothingness like a vision.”

Edmund Cooper (1926–1982) British writer

The Overman Culture (1971)

Way , Universe , Appearance

“What delight will it afford to renew the sweet counsel we have taken together, to recount the toils, the combats, and the labor of the way, and to approach, not the house, but the throne of God, in company, in order to join in the symphonies of heavenly voices, and lose ourselves amidst the splendors and fruitions of the beatific vision.”

Robert Hall (1764–1831) British Baptist pastor

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 306.

God , Way , Housing

“A deliberate rejection of duty prescribed by already recognized truth cannot but destroy, or at least impair most seriously the clearness of our mental vision.”

Henry Liddon (1829–1890) British theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 201.

Truth

“I'm surprised she's friends with the Tories, Helen Bonham-Carter, because she's an artist and I'm not saying it's right or wrong, artists do tend, historically, to be on the left. People on the right tend to be practical, level-headed, capable, unsentimental realists; people on the left tend to be people with dreams, hope, vision, imagination. You have to have imagination on the left, don't you? You have to be able to look at Ed Miliband and imagine that he represents anything other than the death of the post-war socialist dream. Ed Miliband, how did he manage that; how did he make the Labour party less popular than under Blair? That's like catching a baby that's been thrown out of an aeroplane and then tripping up and dropping it in a gutter.”

Stewart Lee (1968) English stand-up comedian, writer, director and musician

Series 3 Episode 3: "Satire"

Death , War , People , Dreams

“Steiner goes further than this -- and this is his own central contribution to modern thought. He states that once we have made a habit of remembering Mozart and the stars, we shall find ourselves developing powers of 'spiritual vision.' We shall never again feel ourselves to be helpless victims of the external world.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Rudolf Steiner: The Man and His Vision (1985), p. 169

World , Feeling , Star

“Many mystics have said, and it is true, that anything you see is not God. Anything you think is not God, neither are visions, lights, moving objects or anything else. Any sensation or feeling is not God. They are all the products of the creation or your imagination.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

God , Feeling , Imagination , Thinking

“Black and white are the colors of photography. To me, they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected. Most of my photographs are of people; they are seen simply, as through the eyes of the man in the street. There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. This kind of photography is realism. But realism is not enough—there has to be vision and the two together can make a good photograph. It is difficult to describe this thin line where matter ends and mind begins.”

Robert Frank (1924–2019) American photographer and filmmaker

Robert Frank, in: Nathan Lyons, Photographers on photography: a critical anthology, (1966), p. 66

People , Hope , Color , Despair

“Pure and undimmed, thy angel smile
Is mirrored on my dreams,
Like evening's sunset-girded isle
Upon her shadowed streams:
And o'er my thoughts thy vision floats,
Like melody of spring-bird, notes;
When the blue halcyon gently laves
His plumage in the flashing waves.”

Park Benjamin, Sr. (1809–1864) American journalist

To a young girl.

Smile , Dreams , Angels , Spring

“Even as with the American rejection of the League of Nations, our failure to live up to our obligations to the United Nations is led by a handful of willful senators who choose to pursue their narrow, selfish political objectives at the cost of our nation's conscience.
They pander to and are supported by the Christian Coalition and the rest of the religious right wing. Their leader, Pat Robertson, has written that we should have a world government but only when the messiah arrives. Any attempt to achieve world order before that time must be the work of the Devil!
This small but well-organized group, has intimidated both the Republican Party and the Clinton administration. It has attacked each of our Presidents since FDR for supporting the United Nations. Robertson explains that these Presidents were and are the unwitting agents of Lucifer.
The only way we who believe in the vision of a democratic world federal government can effectively overcome this reactionary movement is to organize a strong educational counteroffensive stretching from the most publicly visible people in all fields to the humblest individuals in every community. That is the vision and the program of the World Federalist Association.”

Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) American broadcast journalist

UN Address (1999)

People , World , Education , Way

“The fancied clearness of Utopian vision is illusory, because its objects are artificial ideas and not living facts.”

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864–1929) British sociologist

Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter VIII, Economic Liberalism, p. 89.

Idea

“If you are eating well and your condition is pure and clean, life itself becomes like the dreams or visions that you have when sleeping.”

Michio Kushi (1926–2014) Japanese educator

Source: Spiritual Journey: Michio Kushi's Guide to Endless Self-Realization and Freedom (1994, with Edward Esko), p. 64

Life , Dreams , Sleep

“Ours is not only a fortunate people, but a very commonsensical people, with vision high, but their feet on the earth, with belief in themselves and faith in God. Whether enemies threaten from without or menaces arise from within, there is some indefinable voice saying, '. Here is the sample of liberty no storms may shake. Here are the altars of freedom no factions shall destroy. It was American in conception, American in its building. It shall be American in the fulfillment. Factional once, we are all American now. And we mean to be all Americans to all the world.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

1920s, The American Soldier (1920)

God , People , World , Faith

“Only a radical cleaning of social and artistic life as, in the domain of art, is already done by Dada, which is anti-sentimental and healthy to the core, since it is anti-art. Only unscrupulously striking down any systematically bred amateurism in any field, can prepare civilization for the 'New Vision's happiness which is greatly and purely alive in a dew people.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote from Van Doesburg's article: 'Is a Universal Plastic Notion Possible Today?', as cited in 'Bouwkundig weekblad' [a Dutch architectural magazine], XLI 39, 1920, pp. 230–231
this quote of Theo van Doesburg is one of his earliest Dada expressions
1920 – 1926

Life , People , Art , Happiness

“I would like to make sculpture that would rise from water and tower in the air
- that carried conviction and vision that had not existed before..”

David Smith (1906–1965) American visual artist (1906-1965)

1940s, The Question – What is your Hope' (c. 1940s)

Water

“Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand still without. Here is a youth hard pressed by poverty and labor; confined long hours in an unhealthy workshop; unschooled, and lacking all the arts of refinement. But he dreams of better things; he thinks of intelligence, of refinement, of grace and beauty. He conceives of, mentally builds up, an ideal condition of life; the vision of a wider liberty and a larger scope takes possession of him; unrest urges him to action, and he utilizes all his spare time and means, small though they are, to the development of his latent powers and resources.
Very soon so altered has his mind become that the workshop can no longer hold him. It has become so out of harmony with his mentality that it falls out of his life as a garment is cast aside, and, with the growth of opportunities which fit the scope of his expanding powers, he passes out of it forever.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

As A Man Thinketh (1902), Visions and Ideals

Life , Youth , Beauty , Dreams

“Naturally, in order to find in this break [in the visual perception] with time-honored habits a basis for a new pictorial harmony and a plastic means of dealing with life and movement, there must be an artistic sensibility far in advance of the normal vision of the crowd.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote, 1914, in 'Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger'; p. 12
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1910's, Contemporary Achievements in Painting, 1914

Life , Nature , Time

“The visionary is a mystic when his vision mediates to him an actuality beyond the reach of the senses. The philosopher is a mystic when he passes beyond thought to the pure apprehension of truth. The active man is a mystic when he knows his actions to be part of a greater activity.”

Evelyn Underhill book Practical Mysticism

Source: Practical Mysticism (1914), Chapter I, What Is Mysticism?, p. 28

Truth , Sense , Parting

“Singapore run only by PhDs would be my vision of a purgatory. Equally, a government run by roadsweepers can be no less a terrifying place to live in.”

Sinnathamby Rajaratnam (1915–2006) Early life

Rajaratnam (undated)

“… [enabled] to touch the core, the essence of things. Even in as simple a subject, a great painter can achieve a majesty of vision and an intensity of feeling to which we immediately respond. [1937, referring to a still life by Cézanne and a river-sight with sandbank by Monet ]”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

in Giorgio Morandi, E. Roditi; p. 63
1925 - 1945

Life , Feeling

“We meet to celebrate the birthday of America. The coming of a new life always excites our interest. Although we know in the case of the individual that it has been an infinite repetition reaching back beyond our vision, that only makes it the more wonderful. But how our interest and wonder increase when we behold the miracle of the birth of a new nation. It is to pay our tribute of reverence and respect to those who participated in such a mighty event that we annually observe the fourth day of July. Whatever may have been the impression created by the news which went out from this city on that summer day in 1776, there can be no doubt as to the estimate which is now placed upon it. At the end of 150 years the four corners of the earth unite in coming to Philadelphia as to a holy shrine in grateful acknowledgement of a service so great, which a few inspired men here rendered to humanity, that it is still the preeminent support of free government throughout the world.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

Life , Men , World , Birthday

“When all is said and done, science is about things and theology is about words. Things behave in the same way everywhere, but words do not. … Theology works in one culture alone. If you have not grown up in Polkinghorne's culture, where words such as "incarnation" and "trinity" have a profound meaning, you cannot share his vision.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Way , Science

“The Democratic Party, whatever that is, lacks a vision or an ideology. But many people have said this. Why? That is because it is a conglomeration of mutually exclusive parts. It contains a large part of the American working class, which has suffered greatly since the Great Recession began. But it also contains a lot of Wall Street people and well-to-do people, and new technologists. What policies is going to unite these people? It's hard to find a unifying theme among them, other than they don’t want the Republicans in power. Now, that often gets you fairly far, but it doesn't allow you to govern very effectively.”

Eric Foner (1943) American historian

"How Radical Change Occurs: An Interview With Historian Eric Foner" http://www.thenation.com/article/how-radical-change-occurs-interview-historian-eric-foner/ (3 February 2015), by Mike Konczal, The Nation
2010s

People , Suffering , Parting

“That which is in a man, not that which lies beyond his vision is the main factor in what is about to befall him: the operation upon him is the event.”

George MacDonald book Lilith

Source: Lilith (1895), Chapter 16

“Is not the training of an artist a training in the due relation of one thing with another, and in the faculty of expressing that relation clearly; and, even more, a training in the faculty of disengaging from self the very essence of self — and passing that essence into other selves by so delicate means that none shall see how it is done, yet be insensibly unified? Is not the artist, of all men, foe and nullifier of partisanship and parochialism, of distortions and extravagance, the discoverer of that jack-o'-lantern — Truth; for, if Truth be not Spiritual Proportion I know not what it is. Truth it seems to me — is no absolute thing, but always relative, the essential symmetry in the varying relationships of life; and the most perfect truth is but the concrete expression of the most penetrating vision. Life seen throughout as a countless show of the finest works of Art; Life shaped, and purged of the irrelevant, the gross, and the extravagant; Life, as it were, spiritually selected — that is Truth; a thing as multiple, and changing, as subtle, and strange, as Life itself, and as little to be bound by dogma. Truth admits but the one rule: No deficiency, and no excess! Disobedient to that rule — nothing attains full vitality. And secretly fettered by that rule is Art, whose business is the creation of vital things.”

John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English novelist and playwright

Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)

Life , Men , Truth , Art

“For the vision to be taken seriously, the destination- or the goal- has to be attainable. It's your vision, so you need to determine the timing. With your destination in focus, you need to describe who you are, what you do, and how you are going to get there.”

Ann E. Dunwoody (1953) U.S. Army, first four-star general in U.S. military history

Source: A Higher Standard (2015), p. 191

Time

“The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God's vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World's multiplicity of effort.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Pt. V, ch. II, sec. V.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

God , World , Religion , Effort

“Whereas Marx’s vision of homo faber becomes inoperative within social chains, Stirner’s man makes his own freedom.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 79

Freedom

“You sound like a man with a vision. Care to pass that bong over this way?”

Paul Vixie (1963) American internet pioneer

NANOG mailing list http://www.mail-archive.com/nanog@merit.edu/msg21718.html (2004)

Way

“And in this, that philosophy begins in wonder [Plato, Theaetetus 155d], lies the, so to speak, non-bourgeois character of philosophy; for to feel astonishment and wonder is something non-bourgeois (if we can be allowed, for a moment, to use this all-too-easy terminology). For what does it mean to become bourgeois in the intellectual sense? More than anything else, it means that someone takes one's immediate surroundings (the world determined by the immediate purposes of life) so "tightly" and "densely," as if bearing an ultimate value, that the things of experience no longer become transparent. The greater, deeper, more real, and (at first) invisible world of essences is no longer even suspected to exist; the "wonder" is no longer there, it has no place to come from; the human being can no longer feel wonder. The commonplace mind, rendered deaf-mute, finds everything self-explanatory. But what really is self-explanatory? Is it self-explanatory, then, that we exist? Is it self-explanatory that there is such a thing as "seeing"? These are questions that someone who is locked into the daily world cannot ask; and that is so because such a person has not succeeded, as anyone whose senses (like a deaf person) are simply not functioning — has not managed even for once to forget the immediate needs of life, whereas the one who experiences wonder is one who, astounded by the deeper aspect of the world, cannot hear the immediate demands of life — if even for a moment, that moment when he gazes on the astounding vision of the world.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 101–102

Life , World , Feeling , Question

“The development of plastic art is determined by the will to visualize. Art of the past represented the subjective vision of 'naturalistic relationships'. Neoplasticism embodies a subjective vision of 'plastic' relationships… Pure thought, which does not signify a concept derived from natural phenomena but which is contained in numbers, measures, relationships and abstract lines, is revealed conceptually (as Reason) by Chinese, Greek and German philosophy, and aesthetically by contemporary Neoplasticism [= De Stijl.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote in Van Doesburg's art-review, published in: 'Thought – Vision – Creation', in De Stijl Vol ll, 2 December 1918; as quoted in 'Theo van Doesburg', Joost Baljeu, Studio Vista, London 1974, pp. 108–109
1912 – 1919

Art , Nature , Past

“What does really happen when the factor of love withdraws from a human relationship? Is it a loss or a gain? Is the real landscape revealed at last, hitherto transfigured, but delusive, too, by the driving mist of fantasy? Is it a perverted vision which finds a glowing cloud more beautiful than the solid truth of a plot of earth? And vice versa, what really happens when the radiance, the glamour, begins to take shape, concentrating on a landscape or on a face?”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Diaries 1957-59.

Love , Truth , Beauty , Loss

“Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on December 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them.”

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

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/pearl-harbor-2001 of Pearl Harbor (25 May 2001)
Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Love , Quotes

“The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

Life , Pain , History , Optimism

“O Light Invisible, we praise Thee!
Too bright for mortal vision.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Light

“He (Haughey) was a very promising minister in the '60s, but once he became leader all he was concerned with was staying leader. It was always about the cult of leadership. His sense of himself was much more important than any vision he had for the country. People say he discovered fiscal rectitude in '87, and people talk about his contribution to Anglo-Irish affairs, but really if you try and look for any consistency in his affairs after the late '70s you can't find it because it's just about him.”

Charles Haughey (1925–2006) Irish politician

Diarmaid Ferriter, "'Controversial' Taoiseach". Sunday Tribune. 28 November 2010.
About

People , Sense , Country

“A piece of knowledge about boat-building, about whose correctness Crusoe has no doubts at all, will not be seen as a hunch and will be valued according to Menger's Law. It may be said that Crusoe is well aware that he possesses this kind of information; he will deploy and value it in the same way as he may be imagined to deploy and value other resources he believes are definitely at his disposal. But concerning Crusoe's hunches and his visions in the face of a changing, uncertain environment, it cannot be said at all that Crusoe knows he has a hunch or a vision of the future. He does not act by deliberately utilizing his hunch about the future; instead, he finds that his actions reflect his hunches…In other words, it turns out, the essence of entrepreneurial vision, and what sets it apart from knowledge as a resource, is reflected in Crusoe's lack of self-consciousness concerning it…Crusoe may…gradually come to be aware of his vision. When he does, that vision ceases to be entrepreneurial and comes to be a resource. Moreover, Crusoe's realization that he possesses this definite information resource may itself be entrepreneurial. As soon as he 'knows' that he possesses an item of knowledge, that item ceases to correspond to entrepreneurial vision; instead, as with all resources, it is Crusoe's belief that he has the resources at his disposal that may now constitute his entrepreneurial hunch.”

Israel Kirzner (1930) American economist

Israel Kirzner, (1979: 168-169); as cited in: " Israel Kirzner's Entrepreneurship http://www.constitution.org/pd/gunning/subjecti/workpape/kirz_ent.pdf" by the Constitution Society, May 31, 2004

Law , Way , Imagination , Knowledge

“These same interior, enlightened persons Have the love of God before them in their inward vision Whenever they want, as drawing or calling in towards unity. For they see and feel that the Father with the Son by means of the Holy Spirit stand embraced with all the elect and are brought back with eternal love into the unity of their nature. This unity is constantly drawing or calling in all that has been born out of it naturally or by grace. And therefore these enlightened people are lifted up with free mind above reason to a bare vision devoid of images (The imageless place of spirit vision). There lives the eternal invitation of God’s unity, and with imageless naked understanding they go beyond all works and all practices and all things to the summit of their spirit. There their naked understanding is penetrated with eternal clarity as the air is penetrated by the light of the sun. The bare elevated will is transformed and penetrated with fathomless love just as iron is penetrated by the fire. And the bare elevated memory finds itself caught and established In a fathomless absence of images. Thus the created image is united threefold wise above reason to its eternal image, Which is the source of its being and of its life.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

Love , Life , God , People

“Astronomers… have a common ground for discussion with musicians in the harmony of the stars and musical concords in tetrads and triads of the fourth and the fifth, and with geometricians in the subject of vision; and in all other sciences many points, perhaps all, are common so far as the discussion of them is concerned. But the actual undertaking of works which are brought to perfection by the hand and its manipulation is the function of those who have been specially trained to deal with a single art.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter I, Sec. 16

Art , Music , Star , Science

“As to the remnants of his army—those Seerkind who’d embraced the Prophet’s visions—they’d been the authors of their own punishment, waking from their evangelical nightmare to find it had destroyed all they held dear.”

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

Part Eleven “The Dream Season”, Chapter ii “Representations”, Section 2 (p. 479)
(1987), BOOK THREE: OUT OF THE EMPTY QUARTER

“Although age has its normal limits, it may be extended by two things-the study of history and by travel. Reading history broadens one's perception of the creation of the world, while travel extends one's field of vision.”

Mahmud Tarzi (1865–1933) Afghan writer

Preface
A Book of Travel to Three Continents (Translated from Dahri) (1914)

Age , World , Travel , History

“Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, (1963)

Understanding , Strong , Passion

“Bare Attention consists in a bare and exact registering of the object. This is not as easy a task as it may appear, since it is not what we normally do, except when engaged in disinterested investigation. Normally man is not concerned with a disinterested knowledge of “things as they truly are,” but with “handling” and judging them from the viewpoint of his self-interest, which may be wide or narrow, noble or low. He tacks labels to the things which form his physical and mental universe, and these labels mostly show clearly the impress of his self-interest and his limited vision. It is such an assemblage of labels in which he generally lives and which determines his actions and reactions.”

Nyanaponika Thera (1901–1994) German Buddhist monk

Source: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1965), p. 32

Knowledge , Universe , Appearance

“Hope, frail but lovely shadow! thou dost come,
Like a bright vision on our pathway here,
Making the gloomy future beautiful,
And gilding our horizon with a light,
The fairest human eye can ever know.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Canto I, XIII
The Fate of Adelaide (1821)

Love , Beauty , Hope , Light

“The German Youth Movement started quite inconspicuously: a band of secondary schoolboys in Berlin, bored to death by their homes and schools and grown-ups in general, sought to elude this adult world by spending their Sundays and holidays roaming the countryside - what we call hiking, an unheard of pursuit in those days…Hiking became symbolic, standing for Back to Nature against modern civilization; the free-lance spirit as against gregariousness, yet, paradoxically, the urge for comradeship against atomizing individualism…In 1933 the Nazis swallowed up the groups on the nationalistic fringe and shattered the bulk of the Bünde as bulwarks of the individualistic and independent spirit…Today, I suppose, for many of its former members the Youth Movement represents no more than a store of youthful memories. But a small but by no means negligible minority did receive a basic shaping and moulding which held good for the rest of their lives, the essence of that fleeting spirit of the Movement: a shared vision of the true nature of man and his place in the universe,…; a special kind of awareness to Nature; an extremely keen sense of intellectual and spiritual responsibility and a peculiar sanity and sobriety of judgment. This is quite a lot to be thankful for.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Appendix, Broken Lights Diaries and Letters 1951-1959.

Death , Youth , World , School

“His own power and magic — overwhelmed him for a moment with a feeling of the purest, highest, and most glorious happiness that life can yield — the happiness that is at once the most selfish and the most selfless — the happiness of the artist when he sees that his work has been found good, has for itself a place of honour, glory, and proud esteem in the hearts of men, and has wrought upon their lives the spell of its enchantment. At that instant he saw, in one blaze of light, an image of unutterable conviction, the reason why the artist works and lives and has his being — the reward he seeks — the only reward he really cares about, without which there is nothing. It is to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic, to make his life prevail through his creation, to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful substance of his own experience, into the congruence of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves the core of life, the essential pattern whence all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity.”

Thomas Wolfe book Of Time and the River

Of Time and the River (1935)

Life , Men , Pain , Feeling

“When the ephemeral vision's lure is past
All, all, must face their Passion at the last.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine (1932)

Passion , Past

“I held it imperative to evolve an instrument of thought which would aid in cutting through all cultural opiates, past and present, so that a direct, immediate, and truly free vision could be achieved, and an idea be revealed with clarity. To acquire such an instrument, however… demanded full resolution of the past, and present through it. No shouting about individualism, no capering before an expanse of canvas, no manipulation of academic conceits or technical fetishes can truly liberate..”

Clyfford Still (1904–1980) American artist

Letter to Gordon Smith, January 1, 1959, as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 194
1950s

Idea , Past

“The first impulse towards painting, or toward art in general, stems from the need to communicate, the effort to fix one's own vision, to deal with appearances (which are alien and must be given names and meanings.) Without this, all work would be pointless and unjustified, like Art for Art's Sake.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

undated quotes, The Daily Practice of Painting, Writings (1962-1993)

Art , Communication , Effort , Appearance

“There is a great and crying evil in modern society. It is want of purpose. It is that narrowness of vision which shuts out the wider vistas of the soul. It is the absence of those sublime emotions which, wherever they arise, do not fall to exalt and consecrate existence.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Founding Address (1876)

Soul , Evil , Cry

“Advancing the vision of freedom serves our highest ideals, as expressed in the U. N.'s Charter's commitment to the dignity and worth of the human person. Advancing this vision also serves our security interests. History shows that when citizens have a voice in choosing their own leaders, they are less likely to search for meaning in radical ideologies. And when governments respect the rights of their people, they're more likely to respect the rights of their neighbors.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

People , History , Search , Freedom

“There is something silly about grown men and women striving to reduce their vision of themselves and of civilization to bean counting.”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

The Doubter's Companion (1994)

Women , Men

“You may lose something, but you gain a double perspective, a double vision. Especially in terms of writing, or in terms of art, I think it's tremendously useful.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

On the intermingling of cultures
Jeet Thayil on why 'Where are you from?' is a complicated question for all of us

Art , Thinking

“All art originates in an act of intuition or vision.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Form in Modern Poetry(1932)

Art

“O'er the fields of space together following her flying traces,
In a radiant tumult thronging, suns and stars and myriad races
Mount the spirit spires of beauty, reaching onward to the day
When the Shepherd of the Ages draws his misty hordes away
Through the glimmering deeps to silence, and within the awful fold
Life and joy and love forever vanish as a tale is told,
Lost within the mother's being. So the vision flamed and fled,
And before the glory fallen every other dream lay dead.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Love , Life , Age , Beauty

“Darwin himself told us in his last book (The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms) that we should never underestimate the power of worms on the move…. The inversion of a humble worm, especially when disturbed, may bring down empires. Shakespeare told us that "the smallest worm will turn being trodden on." And Cervantes wrote in his author's preface to Don Quixote that "even a worm when trod upon, will turn again." …Geoffrey, it seems, was correct after all - not in every detail, of course, but at least in basic vision and theoretical meaning. And the triumph of surprise, the inversion of nuttiness to apparent truth, stands as a premier example of the most exciting general development in evolutionary theory during our times.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Brotherhood by Inversion", p. 329-330
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Truth , Books , Time

“Passionate love produces distorted visions of actual people. Men who are too much in love expect such extraordinary happiness from marriage that they are frequently disappointed.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

Love , Men , Marriage , People

“It's government's job to respect and protect the rights of the individual. That vision is centrally important to the principle put forth by the Founding Fathers. If you don't believe that, you shouldn't be in Congress.”

Bill Sali (1954) American politician

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20061108/pl_cq_politics/repelectbillsaliridaho

“The latest chapter of the venerable slasher film saga represents the tenth movie to use the title (although only the ninth with Myers); it's a sequel to the remake but not necessarily a remake of the sequel. It is also a complete and utter abomination. The film is so bad that it may make me rethink my stance on installment #6 (The Curse of Michael Myers) as the worst entry. That one, at least by all accounts, was severely compromised as a result of distributor interference. This one represents Rob Zombie's "vision."”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

That being the case, he's blind.
Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1780 of Halloween II (2009).
Half-star reviews

“For the glory of God is the living man, and the life of man is the vision of God.”
Gloria enim Dei vivens homo, vita autem hominis visio Dei.

Irenaeus (130–202) Bishop and saint

Book 4, Chapter 34, Section 7 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101074938968;view=1up;seq=231.
Often mistranslated as "The glory of God is man fully alive" (see http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=25-05-003-e).
The context of the passage https://web.archive.org/web/20170126222027/http://earlychurchtexts.com/public/irenaeus_glory_of_god_humanity_alive.htm is: "And for this reason did the Word become the dispenser of the paternal grace for the benefit of men, for whom He made such great dispensations, revealing God indeed to men, but presenting man to God, and preserving at the same time the invisibility of the Father, lest man should at any time become a despiser of God, and that he should always possess something towards which he might advance; but, on the other hand, revealing God to men through many dispensations, lest man, falling away from God altogether, should cease to exist. For the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God. For if the manifestation of God which is made by means of the creation, affords life to all living in the earth, much more does that revelation of the Father which comes through the Word, give life to those who see God."
Against Heresies

Life , God

“The Lord chose Joseph Smith, called upon him at fourteen years of age, gave him vision, and led him along, guided and directed him in his obscurity.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 8:354. (March 3, 1861)
Young comments on Joseph Smith, Jr.’s First Vision
1860s

Age

“The pages of Euclid are like the opening bars of the music of the Grand Opera of Nature's great drama. So to say, they lift the veil and show to our vision a glimpse of a vast world of natural knowledge awaiting study.”

C. V. Raman (1888–1970) Indian physicist

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman:A Legend of Modern Indian Science, 22 November 2013, Official Government of India's website Vigyan Prasar http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/scientists/cvraman/raman1.htm,

World , Music , Nature , Knowledge

“I have no vision of gods, not of Eros with love-arrows laden,
Jupiter thundering death or of Juno his white-breasted queen,
Yet have I seen
All of the joy of the world in the innocent heart of a maiden.”

Joyce Kilmer Trees and Other Poems

"Vision"
Trees and Other Poems (1914)

Love , Death , God , World

Quotes about vision page 4

Quotes about vision
page 4