Quotes about vision
page 6

“We are here today, not so much as to launch a political party but more so and more importantly we are here today to project a vision that will inspire hope.”

Epeli Ganilau (1951) Fijian politician

Excerpts from a speech at the launch of the NAP, 8 April 2005

Hope

“Anger narrowed the vision and made for foolish choices.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Source: (January 2004), Chapter 1: The Hook. p. 8

Anger

“Just because you are struggling on a farm or in a factory, doing something against which your whole nature rebels, because there is no one to help you support your aged parents or an invalid brother or sister, do not conclude that your vision must perish. Keep pushing on as best you can, and affirming your divine power to attain your desire. Hundreds and thousands of poor boys and girls with poorer opportunities than yours have done immortal deeds because they had faith in their ideal and in their power to attain it.”

Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American writer

How to Get What You Want (1917).

Age, Faith, Girl, Boy

“To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Source: 1840s, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845), Ch. 10

“I have not seen Thee, yet I tell Thy praise,
Nor known Thee, yet I image forth Thy ways.
For by Thy seers' and servants' mystic speech
Thou didst Thy sov'ran splendour darkly teach,
And from the grandeur of Thy work they drew
The measure of Thy inner greatness, too.
They told of Thee, but not as Thou must be,
Since from Thy work they tried to body Thee.
To countless visions did their pictures run,
Behold through all the visions Thou art one.”

Yehuda he-Hasid (1140–1217) German philosopher

Shir Hakovod, trans. from the Hebrew by Israel Zangwill

Art, Way

“I am now mainly painting faces and landscapes; I am obsessed day and night by the vision of faces and colours. And the spiritual vision is my mystical world.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

Quote of Jawlensky from a letter to his brother Dimitri, c. 1917/18; as cited in Alexej von Jawlensky, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam; exhibition catalog 25/9 – 27/11-1994, p. 150
1900 - 1935

World, Painting, Night

“For me, this is a moment of re-dedication to the values, vision and goals of my father, teacher and mentor, Dhirubhai Ambani. To lead by love, by trust, and by example, I learnt these principles from him with humility.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Quoted in page=18
Mukesh Dhirajlal Ambani, Anil Dhirajlal Ambani

Love, Teachers

“One question may possibly have dwelt in the reader's mind during the perusal of these observations, namely, Why should not the Deity have given to the animal the faculty of vision at once? … Why resort to contrivance, where power is omnipotent? Contrivance, by its very definition and nature, is the refuge of imperfection. To have recourse to expedients, implies difficulty, impediment, restraint, defect of power. … amongst other answers which may be given to it; beside reasons of which probably we are ignorant, one answer is this: It is only by the display of contrivance, that the existence, the agency, the wisdom of the Deity, could be testified to his rational creatures.”

William Paley (1743–1805) Christian apologist, natural theologian, utilitarian

Source: Natural Theology (1802), Ch. 3 : Application of the Argument.

Wisdom, Question, Nature, Animals

“If then, at this great distance, our human vision can discern that sight, why, pray, are we to think that the divine splendor of the stars can be cast into darkness?”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book IX, Chapter I, Sec. 12

Star, Thinking

“I have never, God or whatever knows, prostrated myself to be famous, but I would meander through all the sewers of the world, through all degradation and humiliations, in order to paint. I have to do this. Until the last drop every vision that exists in my being must be purged; then it will be a pleasure for me to be rid of this damned torture”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, 1915; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 5
1900s - 1920s

God, Pleasure, World, Painting

“As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea,
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 1
(1819)

Sea

“Visions of your chestnut mare shoot through my head and are makin' me see stars.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Idiot Wind

Star

“Speak, vision of the night,
Tell me why you haunt me so…
Speak, heaven morning light,
Whisper all my heart would know.
Dawn never finds you,
Gone back to where the Shadows dwell…
Speak, my beloved, speak,
tho' you only say farewell!”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Boxed (1976)

Light, Heart, Night

“Politics is stuck in America today. We need to break through the stale debates and self-serving non-solutions that are coming from both political parties, and we need to do it without ending up at the "mushy middle," where there's no direction or principle. That's where the radical middle comes in. The radical middle is an attempt to break out of that stuckness in a fresh and principled way. It consists of everyone who's bold and yet savvy enough to want idealism without illusions – a fresh and hopeful vision that doesn't fall into the trap, as many leftists do, of looking back to chestnuts from the counter-culture of the Sixties and Seventies….”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Source: Radical Middle (2004), Chapter 1, "A Creative and Practical Politics," p. 5.

Hope, Way

“More often than not, [people] expect a painting to speak to them in terms other than visual, preferably in words, whereas when a painting or a sculpture needs to be supplemented and explained by words it means either that it has not fulfilled its function or that the public is deprived of vision”

Naum Gabo (1890–1977) Russian sculptor

Quote of Naum Gabo (1962), as cited in: Joseph Goguen (1999) Art and the Brain. p. 76
1936 - 1977

People, Painting

“As the ancient myth makers knew we're children equally of the earth and the sky. In our tenure on this planet we've accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage, propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders, all of which puts our survival in some doubt. But we've also acquired compassion for others, love for our children, a desire to learn from history and experience and a great soaring passionate intelligence, the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth. But up there in the Cosmos an inescapable perspective awaits.”

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

6 min 10 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]
Context: Unlike the La Pérouse expedition the Conquistadors sought not knowledge but Gold. They used their superior weapons to loot and murder, in their madness they obliterated a civilisation. In the name of piety, in a mockery of their religion, the Spaniards utterly destroyed a society with an Art, Astronomy and Architecture the equal of anything in Europe. We revile the Conquistadors for their cruelty and shortsightedness, for choosing death. We admire La Pérouse and the Tlingit for their courage and wisdom, for choosing life. The choice is with us still, but the civilisation now in jeopardy is all humanity. As the ancient myth makers knew we're children equally of the earth and the sky. In our tenure on this planet we've accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage, propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders, all of which puts our survival in some doubt. But we've also acquired compassion for others, love for our children, a desire to learn from history and experience and a great soaring passionate intelligence, the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth. But up there in the Cosmos an inescapable perspective awaits. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national identifications are a little difficult to support when we see our Earth as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and the citadel of the stars. There are not yet obvious signs of extraterrestrial intelligence and this makes us wonder whether civilisations like ours rush inevitably headlong into self-destruction.

Love, Hostility, Children, History

“There would be dreamers of dreams and seers of visions and hearers of voices; readers of the entrails of beasts and interpreters of the flight of birds; there would be burning bushes and stone tablets on mountain-tops, and inspired words dictated to aged disciples on lonely islands. There would arise special castes of men and women, learned in these sacred matters; and these priestly castes would naturally emphasize the importance of their calling, would hold themselves aloof from the common herd, endowed with special powers and entitled to special privileges. They would interpret the oracles in ways favorable to themselves and their order; they would proclaim themselves friends and confidants of the god, walking with him in the night-time, receiving his messengers and angels, acting as his deputies in forgiving offenses, in dealing punishments and in receiving gifts. They would become makers of laws and moral codes. They would wear special costumes to distinguish them, they would go through elaborate ceremonies to impress their followers, employing all sensuous effects, architecture and sculpture and painting, music and poetry and dancing, candles and incense and bells and gongs.”

Upton Sinclair book The Profits of Religion

Book One : The Church of the Conquerors, "The Priestly Lie"
The Profits of Religion (1918)

Women, Men, God, Age

“At this point in history when all things which concern man and the structure and elements of history itself are suddenly revealed to us in a new light, it behooves us in our scientific thinking to become masters of the situation, for it is not inconceivable that sooner than we suspect, as has often been the case before in history, this vision may disappear, the opportunity may be lost, and the world will once again present a static, uniform, and inflexible countenance.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)

World, History, Thinking, Light

“There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past. As I learned later from the delightful little book of the Abbé de Bucquoy, there are also visions of books as yet unwritten.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

The Name of the Rose (1980)

People, Books, Learning, Past

“If you think the terrorists would become peaceful if only America would stop provoking them, then it might make sense to leave them alone. This is not the threat I see. I see a global terrorist movement that exploits Islam in the service of radical political aims — a vision in which books are burned, and women are oppressed, and all dissent is crushed.”

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

2000s, 2005, Address to the Nation on Iraqi Elections (December 2005)

Women, Books, Peace, Thinking

“A work of genius is a complex object and there is light to be shed about what went into the making of it. Even in the case of scientific and mathematical achievement we can say a great deal about the existing state of knowledge, the problems it failed to address, why those problems were or had become interesting, the particular capacities which the solver brought to their solution. At the other extreme is a work of art which seems to have much more immediate roots in the personal life of the artist or writer. In between is the area in which Keynes worked, which was partly scientific, partly artistic. This gives a wide justification for a biographical approach. As I put it in the introduction to my first volume: 'If underlying Keynesian theory was Keynes's vision of his age, knowledge of his state of mind and the circumstances which formed it is essential, not only in order to understand how he came to see the world as he did, but also in order to pass judgement on the theory itself.”

Robert Skidelsky (1939) Economist and author

John Maynard Keynes: 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman (2003), Introduction

Life, Age, World, Art

“A new view of the role of art and science in cartography is clearly needed. It is probably a mistake to view maps as objects that contain varied amounts of scientific or artistic content for which we must determine an appropriate balance (as both Keates, 1984, and Robinson, 1952, seem to, with Keates arguing for more art and Robinson for more science). Instead, it makes more sense to consider complementary artistic and scientific approaches to studying and improving maps, both of which can be applied to any given cartographic problem. The artistic approach is intuitive and holistic, achieving improvements through experience supplemented by critical examination (where critical examination implies expert appraisal of the results of our cartographic decision-making efforts). It draws on science in using perspective, understanding of human vision, color theory, and so on.”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 9

Art, Color, Understanding, Problem

“When we are reminded that modern men find it difficult to believe in the divinity of Jesus, we urge a search for realities that are far greater than words. If Jesus gives us our clearest vision of the nature of God; if he reveals the godlike qualities in man; if he secures penitence, restitution, joyous allegiance, and heroic sacrifice; if he leads to deliverance for individuals and groups—he becomes a symbol for all that is noblest in the universe, whatever may be the title by which he is characterized.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

The Personality of Jesus (1932)

Men, God, Search, Nature

“Houses and fields in which we lived and played in childhood and youth with those we loved, grow to be part of our being. The sight of them in later years touches us with mystic charm. It is like a vision from beyond the tomb or a memory of a lost Paradise. But little by little their power over us grows less and the light that falls on them becomes more like the common day. Their sacredness diminishes, their beauty fades. The young birds have flown, the old are dead, the leaves and blossoms have fallen and but the empty nest is left among the naked boughs; and looking on the desolation we feel that we have no abiding place on earth, since the home itself loses its consecration.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 137

Love, Youth, Beauty, Feeling

“Vision is a process that produces from images of the external world a description that is useful to the viewer and not cluttered with irrelevant information.”

David Marr (1945–1980) British neuroscientist and psychologist

as cited in Steven Yantis (2001) Visual Perception: Essential Readings, p. 117.
Vision, 1982

World

“All knowledge, not only that of the natural world, can be used for evil as well as good: and in all ages there continue to be people who think that its fruit should be forbidden. Does the future wlfare, therefore, of mankind depend of a refusal of science and a more intensive study of the Sermon on the Mount? There are others who hold the contray opinion, that more and more of science and its applications alone can bring prosperity and happiness to men. Both of these extremes views seem to me entirely wrong - though the second is the more perilous as more likely to be commonly accepted. The so-called conflict between science and religion is usually about words, too often the words of their unbalanced advocates: the reality lies somewhere in between. "Completeness and dignity", to use Tyndall's phrase, are brought to man by three main channels, first by the religiouos sentiment and its embodiment of ethical principles, secondly by the influence of what is beautiful in nature, human personality, or art, and thirdly, by the pursuit of scientific truth and its resolute use in improving human life. Some suppose that religion and beauty are incompatible: others, that the aesthetic has no relation to the scientific sense: both seem to me just as mistaken as those who hold that the scientific and the religious spirit are necessarily opposed. Co-operation is required, not conflict: for science can be used to express and apply the principles of ethics, and those principles themselves can guide the behaviour of scientific men: while the appreciation of what is good and beautiful can provide to both a vision of encouragement. Is there really then any special ethical dilemma which we scientific men, as distinct from other people, have to meet? I think not: unless it be to convince ourselves humbly that we are just like others in having moral issues to face. It is true that integrity of thought is the absolute condition of oour work, and that judgments of value must never be allowed to deflect our judgements of fact. But in this we are not unique. It is true that scientific research has opened up the possibility of unprecedented good, or unlimited harm, for manking: but the use is made of it depends in the end on the moral judgments of the whole community of men. It is totally impossible noew to reverse the process of discovery: it will certainly go on. To help to guide its use aright is not a scientific dilemma, but the honourable and compelling duty of a good citizen.”

Archibald Hill (1886–1977) English physiologist and biophysicist

The Ethical Dilemma Of Science, Hill, 1960. The Ethical Dilemma of Science and Other Writings https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=zaE1AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. Rockefeller Univ. Press, pp. 88-89

Life, Men, People, Truth

“Make no mistake, the real power resides not where present authority is exercised but where it is expected that authority will in future be exercised. The magnetic attraction of power is exercised by the prospect long before the reality is achieved; and the trek towards the rising sun, which is already in progress in 1972, would swell to an exodus before long. What do you imagine is the reason why Roy Jenkins is prepared to resign the front bench and divide his party in the endeavour to give a Conservative Prime Minister a majority in the House of Commons? The motive is not ignoble or discreditable—I am not asserting that—but it is a motive which it behoves people in Britain well to understand. It is the ambition to exercise his talents on the stage of Europe and to participate in taking decisions not for Britain here at home but for Europe in Brussels, Paris, Luxembourg or wherever else the imperial pavilions may be pitched. He does not, I assure you, forsee his future triumphs and achievements where his predecessors have seen them in the past – at the despatch box in the House of Commons or in the Cabinet room at Downing St. These are not good enough: the vision splendid beckons elsewhere.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech at Millom, Cumberland (29 April 1972), from A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics (Elliot Right Way Books, 1977), p. 42. Jenkins had resigned from the Shadow Cabinet and as deputy leader of the Labour Party due to Labour's opposition to British entry into the EEC. Jenkins wrote to Powell to claim what he said was "totally untrue". Four years later Jenkins would leave front line British politics to become President of the European Commission.
1970s

People, Exercises, Home, Imagination

“So much blood has already been shed for the ideals which we cherish, and for which Franklin Delano Roosevelt lived and died, that we dare not permit even a momentary pause in the hard fight for victory.
Today, the entire world is looking to America for enlightened leadership to peace and progress. Such a leadership requires vision, courage and tolerance. It can be provided only by a united nation deeply devoted to the highest ideals.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Address to Congress (1945)

World, Peace, Courage, Victory

“A Delaware Indian prophet appeared [1762] in Michigan and preached a doctrine that he said had been revealed to him in a vision. He called for the cessation of strife by Indian against Indian, and a holy war against the Whites… finally a practical man, an Algonkian named Pontiac, arose to lead them. He formed a confederation and attacked English forts all along the Great Lakes until he was ambushed and his forces utterly defeated. …Forty years later the Shawnee Prophet … twin brother of Chief Tecumseh, repeated the promises of the Delaware Prophet… Tecumseh established the greatest Indian alliance that ever existed north of Mexico. He and his emissaries visited almost every band, tribe, and chiefdom from the headwaters of the Missouri River in the Rocky Mountains to as far south and east as Florida. Indians everywhere were arming themselves for the right moment to attack the Whites when, in 1811, Tecumseh's brother, the Shawnee Prophet, launched a premature attack at Tippecanoe… the Indians were defeated by General William Henry Harrison… Tecumseh rallied his remaining forces and joined the British in the War of 1812. He fought bravely in battle after battle, but in 1813 his 2,500 warriors from the allied tribes were defeated decisively, once again by General Harrison.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

War, Mountain, Decision, Appearance

“My idea is to bring happiness, respect, vision. poetry, surrealism and magic [to design]. We have to replace beauty, which is a cultural concept, with goodness, which is a humanist concept.”

Philippe Starck (1949) French architect and industrial designer

Starck as cited in: David Barlex (2007) Design & technology. p. 33

Beauty, Idea, Happiness

“Things would have worked out a lot better if we had bought our first television set a year earlier, in 1950, so that I could have watched DiMaggio while he was still great. Then I could have shared with my father and other people the vision of the eternal baseball star. It might even have helped me to have more appreciation for some of my elders in the economics profession. But maybe I should be worrying instead about what the young hot shots in economics are thinking of me.”

Robert Barro (1944) American classical macroeconomist

Source: Nothing Is Sacred (2002), p. 65

People, Star, Thinking, Help

“No radiant angel came across the gloom with a clear message for her. In those times, as now, there were human beings who never saw angels or heard perfectly clear messages. Such truth as came to them was brought confusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at all like the seraphs of unfailing wing and piercing vision—men who believed falsities as well as truths, and did the wrong as well as the right. The helping hands stretched out to them were the hands of men who stumbled and often saw dimly, so that these beings unvisited by angels had no other choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the path of reliance and action which is the path of life, or else to pause in loneliness and disbelief, which is no path, but the arrest of inaction and death.”

George Eliot book Romola

Volume II, Chapter XVI
Romola (1863)

Life, Death, Men, Truth

“The most fundamental liberal failure of the current era: the failure to embrace a moral vision of America based on the transcendent faith that human beings are more than the sum of their material appetites, our country is more than an economic machine, and freedom is not license but responsibility.”

Bill Moyers (1934) American journalist

"For America's Sake" speech (12 December 2006), as quoted in Moyers on Democracy (2008), p. 21

Faith, Failure, Freedom, Country

“I don’t deny I’m lonely. Deeply so. A king, when he doesn’t have to account to anyone for what he says and does, is inevitably very much alone. But I’m not entirely alone because I’m accompanied by a force that others can’t see. My mystical force. And the I get messages. Religious messages. I’m very, very religious. I believe in God, and I’ve always said that if God didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Oh, I feel so sorry for those poor souls who don’t have God. You can’t live without God. I’ve lived with God ever since the age of five. That is, since God gave me those visions.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Oriana Fallaci (December 30, 1973), The Mystically Divine Shah of Iran (interview), Chicago Tribune
Interviews

God, Age, Feeling, Soul

“As influences faces growth, some will want my buzz cut. Growing bolder in my vision but I often feel stuck.”

Marcus Orelias (1993) American actor, rapper, songwriter, author and entrepreneur

Portraits
20s A Difficult Age (2017)

Feeling

“I remember that night. It was late at night—in the daytime one was bothered with the gaping, silly students—and I worked then sometimes till dawn. It came suddenly, splendid and complete in my mind. I was alone; the laboratory was still, with the tall lights burning brightly and silently. In all my great moments I have been alone. 'One could make an animal—a tissue—transparent! One could make it invisible! All except the pigments—I could be invisible!' I said, suddenly realising what it meant to be an albino with such knowledge. It was overwhelming. I left the filtering I was doing, and went and stared out of the great window at the stars. 'I could be invisible!' I repeated.

To do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man—the mystery, the power, the freedom. Drawbacks I saw none.”

H. G. Wells book The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 19: Certain First Principles

Star, Knowledge, Freedom, Light

“They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising;
They had no divine foreshowing
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man's soul it hath broken,
A light that doth not depart;
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man's heart.”

Arthur O'Shaughnessy Ode

Music and Moonlight (1874), Ode

Soul, Light, Heart, Housing

“I cannot imagine why my vision will have some value in the world.. and yet I know it will.. I think I will count because I am patient and recueilli (contemplative) in some degree.”

Gwen John (1876–1939) Welsh painter

Letter to Ursula Tyrwhitt (4 Feb 1930)

World, Imagination, Thinking

“The Mysteries are the Mysteries, and ultimately personal—maybe the most personal thing in the universe. Evangelism, in my opinion, is a failure of the imagination. Beware of prophets: the best visions are the ones they leave in the desert.”

Robert Charles Wilson (1953) author

Afterword (p. 220)
The Perseids and Other Stories (2000)

Imagination, Failure, Universe, Personality

“Invariably the prophet emerges from his hallucinatory vision bearing a message from the supernatural that makes certain promises: the return of the bison herds, a happy hunting ground, or peace on earth and good will to men. Whatever the specific promises, the prophet offers a new power, a revitalization of the whole society.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

Men, Peace, Happiness

“Despite the roar of voices wanting to equate strategy with ambition, leadership, “vision,” planning, or the economic logic of competition, strategy is none of these. The core of strategy work is always the same: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors.”

Richard Rumelt (1942) American economist

Source: Good Strategy Bad Strategy, 2011, p. 3

Way

“Marriage is the last sacrament available to modern man, and with the terrible destruction of interpersonal relations by capitalism and its war-making State, it is not very available, nor is it surely enduring. But then, vision does not come with guarantees.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

"World War II" http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/autobio/6.htm An Autobiographical Novel (1991)

Marriage, War

“.. In spite of everything, there is still no more wonderful vocation than to continue to tolerate events and to work on in the name of our mission, in the name of that spirit which lives on in our teaching and in our vision of humanity and art, the spirit which can lead us Jews down the true and just path. But along the way, peoples will spill our blood, and that of others.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

In the last lines of his lecture at the Congress of the Jewish Scientific Institute Vilnius, in 1935, as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 58
after 1930

People, Art, Way

“Then the slow lip of fire moves across the prairie with precision
While, somewhere, with your pliers and glue, you make your first incision
And, in a moment of almost-unbearable vision, doubled over with the hunger of lions
'Hold me close', cooed the dove, who was stuffed now with sawdust and diamonds.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Ys (2006)

Hunger

“The only quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring.”

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

1941 - 1967
Source: 'statement by the Chairman of the Jury', Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. 1951, p. 7

World, Art, Personality

“Time's arrow of “just history” marks each moment of time with a distinctive brand. But we cannot, in our quest to understand history, be satisfied only with a mark to recognize each moment and a guide to order events in temporal sequence. Uniqueness is the essence of history, but we also crave some underlying generality, some principles of order transcending the distinction of moments—lest we be driven mad by Borges's vision of a new picture every two thousand pages in a book without end. We also need, in short, the immanence of time's cycle.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle

Source: Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle (1987), p. 196

Books, History, Understanding, Time

“The word, although prevalent in our day, has lost its reasoning value, and has value only as an accessory to images. In turn, the word actually evokes images. But it does not evoke the direct images related to my personal experience. Rather, it calls up images from the newspaper or television. The key words in our modern vocabulary, thanks to propaganda and advertising, are words that relate to visual reproduction. They are stripped of all rational content, so they evoke only visions that whisk us away to some enchanted universe. Saying "fascism," "progress," "science," or "justice" does not suggest any idea or produce any reflection. It only causes a fanfare of images to explode within us: a sort of fireworks of visual commonplaces, which link up very precisely with each other. These related images provide me with practical content: a common truth that is especially easy to swallow because the ready-made images that showed it to me had been digested in advance. Make no mistake here: this is how modern people usually think. We are arriving at a purely emotional stage of thinking.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

J. Hanks, trans. (1985), p. 210
The Humiliation of the Word (1981)

People, Truth, Justice, Idea

“Without conviction that you can make change happen, you will not act, even if you see the vision. Your feelings will hold you back.”

John P. Kotter (1947) author of The heart of Change

Step 5, p. 115
The Heart of Change, (2002)

Feeling, Change

“When you were a child, I loved you. I loved your grave face and the confidence with which you came to me, asking me to mend your broken toys. And then, after eight years' absence, you came again and sat here, and brought me the thoughts that were in your mind. And your mind, Renisenb, is not like the minds of the rest of your family. It does not turn in upon itself, seeking to encase itself in narrow walls. Your mind is like my mind, it looks over the River, seeing a world of changes, of new ideas - seeing a world where all things are possible to those with courage and vision…”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Hori
(1945)

Love, World, Family, Confidence

“Your eyes, accustomed to semi-darkness, will soon open to more radiant visions of light. The shadows which we shall paint shall be more luminous than the high-lights of our predecessors, and our pictures, next to those of the museums, will shine like blinding daylight, compared with deepest night. We conclude that painting cannot exist today without divisionism... w:Divisionism - [ Paul Signac initiated divisionism slightly earlier, together with Seurat ] - for the modern painter, must be an innate complementariness which we declare to be essential and necessary.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 92.
1910, Manifesto of Futurist Painters,' April 1910

Light, Painting, Night

“The growing complexity of software is the motivation behind work on industrializing software development. In particular, current research in the area of model driven engineering (MDE) is primarily concerned with reducing the gap between problem and software implementation domains through the use of technologies that support systematic transformation of problem-level abstractions to software implementations. The complexity of bridging the gap is tackled through the use of models that describe complex systems at multiple levels of abstraction and from a variety of perspectives, and through automated support for transforming and analyzing models. In the MDE vision of software development, models are the primary artifacts of development and developers rely on computer-based technologies to transform models to running systems.”

Bernhard Rumpe (1967) German computer scientist

Source: Model-driven development of complex software: A research roadmap (2007), p. 37

Motivation, Support, Problem

“At the root of our troubles is a cultural complex whose six main elements make up a "Six-Sided Prison" that traps us all. In Part I[, ] I try to name and describe the six sides of the Prison: patriarchal attitudes, egocentricity, scientific single vision, the bureaucratic mentality, nationalism, and the big-city outlook. Capitalism and socialism are, I argue, both rooted in the Prison (which predates capitalism by hundreds of years) – though neither needs to be.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Racism, militarism, exploitation, ecocide, etc., are also rooted in the Prison.
Page 7.
New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society (1978)

Parting

“Putting a shovel in a gallery or museum signified “this shovel has become art.” And it actually was. The action itself is art, because the artist projects himself in choosing the shovel, and especially in placing it out of context. It is art in the sense that the imprint of a hand in a cave is art, the Mona Lisa is art, a happening is art, etc. It is a problem that touches on the ethics and function of the artist: he assumes the right to have this supra-human calling that allows him to say to others, “everything that I touch with my hand is transformed into art.” The artist imposes his anguish, his vision of the world, and himself on others. The artist emasculates the observer. Maybe he thinks that the latter deserves no better… The artist assumes the right to show you what you can see for yourself, what you could obviously see much more clearly without his intervention. I contest this right.”

Daniel Buren (1938) sculptor from France

Source: Art is no longer justifiable or setting the record straight, 2000, p. 66-67

World, Art, Problem, Thinking

“In his great vision Isaiah perceives the voice of the seraphim even before he hears the voice of the Lord. What is it that the seraphim reveal? "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory."
Holy, holy, holy — indicate the transcendence and distance of God. The whole earth is full of His glory — the immanence or presence of God. The outwardness of the world communicates something of the indwelling greatness of God.
The glory is neither an aesthetic nor physical quality. It is sensed in grandeur, but it is more than grandeur. It is a presence or the effulgence of a presence.
The whole earth is full of His glory, but we do not perceive it; it is within our reach but beyond our grasp. And still it is not entirely unknown to us.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5

God, World, Communication, Sense

“I have received a question I have expected, 'Don't you deal with accidents?' Yes, I deal with accidents, just as Arp admits it all the time. And I admit it, too. But I like to have them under my command and not sign them because they are accidents. If it remains only accident then sign it 'accident' or 'fate' or 'the Lord', whatever you prefer. It's not you because you have not visioned it. You see visual formulation deals with vision, visual information and visual reaction. So I speak differently from all those who deliver themselves to uncontrolled accidents.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Fate, Question, Time

“[From Cecil Forrester]: Nothing like love-letters for filling up a rainy morning. A mistress gives a man such an interest in himself! You cannot run your fingers through your hair, without a vision of the locket wherein one of your curls reposes on the fairest neck in the world. An east-wind only conjures up a host of "sweet anxieties;" and if the worst comes to the worst, you can sit down and write sonnets to your inamorata's eyebrow.”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Love, World

“I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?" Somebody's asking, "How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?" Somebody's asking, "When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?" Somebody's asking, "When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?" I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because "truth crushed to earth will rise again." How long? Not long, because "no lie can live forever."”

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

How long? Not long, because "you shall reap what you sow."
1960s, How Long, Not Long (1965)

Death, Wisdom, Men, Children

“When they talk of the world outside themselves, their different visions of the world become obvious. He sees the world as a chaotic place, because he views it from the vantage point of self-protective needs for control, separateness, and power. She sees the "dawn of a new age," a world heading toward universal love, spirituality, and peace—free of barriers and boundaries and filled with people who care for each other.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

Shared Struggles/Polarized Realities, pp. 177–178
What Men Really Want (1991)

Love, People, Age, World

“Dotty had
Great Big
Visions of
Quietude.
Dotty saw an
Ad, and it
Left her
Flat.
Dotty had a
Great Big
Snifter of
Cyanide.
And that (said Dotty)
Is that.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

"When We Were Very Sore (Lines on Discovering That You Have Been Advertised as America's A. A. Milne)", first printed in New York World (10 March 1927) p. 15; based on A. A. Milne's "Happiness"
Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker (1996)

“A productive mistake is: (1) made in the service of mission and vision; (2) acknowledged as a mistake; (3) learned from; (4) considered valuable; (5) shared for the benefit of all.”

Pete Seeger (1919–2014) American folk singer

Source: How Can I Keep from Singing: Pete Seeger (1981), p. 90

Learning

“Here are a few questions to stir your vision: Why does your organization exist? What can your organization be the best in the world at? If you could do only one thing, what would it be? If you left your organization tomorrow, what would you hope would continue forever? What breaks your heart, keeps you awake at night, wrecks you?”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

World, Hope, Question, Heart

“I saw thee in a vision of the night
Transfigured; for it seemed that on thy brows
The heavens did rest with all their stars, like boughs
Laden with blossoms; round thy feet the bright
Green waves, like grass, ran rippling, strewn with white
Star-fragments of rent petals: wasted vows,
And ruined prayers I thought them, such as house
In hearts that love and are not loved aright.”

John Barlas (1860–1914) British writer

XLVI. "I saw thee in a vision of the night" Love Sonnets http://www.sonnets.org/love-sonnets.htm (1889)

Love, Star, Grass, Heart

“Freud is completely unscientific. It's a cross between vision, poetry and deceit.”

Jerzy Vetulani (1936–2017) Polish scientist

Vetulani, Jerzy (11 May 2012): Neurobiologia i religia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn559bvUzRE, lecture. Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies (in Polish).

“The vision pursued by the founders of the EU was one of economic self interest, (subsidies, protection and investment) and lofty aspiration, (peace, prosperity and justice). It was predicated on a Europe without borders where mutual economic interests would lead to perpetual peace. A soft Kantian Marxism underpinned the European Union from the start, in which economic interests and a legal order would displace local institutions and national politics.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

The case against remaining in the EU on LabourList.org, 2 June 2016 http://labourlist.org/2016/06/why-should-labour-support-the-european-union-the-case-for-out/

Peace, Justice

“I am also grateful that I live in a country whose people have learned how to go on living in a sea of hatred without hating those who want to destroy them and without abandoning their own vision of peace. To have learned this is a great art, the prescription for which is not written down anywhere. It is part of our way of life in Israel. Finally, I wish to say that from the time I came to Palestine as a young woman, we have been forced to choose between what is more dangerous and what is less dangerous for us. At times we have all been tempted to give in to various pressures and to accept proposals that might guarantee us a little quiet for a few months, or maybe even for a few years, but that could only lead us eventually into even greater peril.”

Golda Meir book My Life

My Life (1975), p. 459

Life, Hate, People, Peace

“Professor S. A. A. Rizvi gives some graphic details of this dream described by Shah Waliullah himself in his Fuyûd al-Harmayn which he wrote soon after his return to Indian in 1732: “In the same vision he saw that the king of the kafirs had seized Muslim towns, plundered their wealth and enslaved their children. Earlier the king had introduced infidelity amongst the faithful and banished Islamic practices. Such a situation infuriated Allah and made Him angry with His creatures. The Shah then witnessed the expression of His fury in the mala’ala (a realm where objects and events are shaped before appearing on earth) which in turn gave rise to Shah’s own wrath. Then the Shah found himself amongst a gathering of racial groups such as Turks, Uzbeks and Arabs, some riding camels, others horses. They seemed to him very like pilgrims in the Arafat. The Shah’s temper exasperated the pilgrims who began to question him about the nature of the divine command. This was the point, he answered, from which all worldly organizations would begin to disintegrate and revert to anarchy. When asked how long such a situation would last, Shah Wali-Allah’s reply was until Allah’s anger had subsided… Shah Wali-Allah and the pilgrims then travelled from town to town slaughtering the infidels. Ultimately they reached Ajmer, slaughtered the nonbelievers there, liberated the town and imprisoned the infidel king. Then the Shah saw the infidel king with the Muslim army, led by its king, who then ordered that the infidel monarch be killed. The bloody slaughter prompted the Shah to say that divine mercy was on the side of the Muslims.””

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

S.A.A. Rizvi, Shah Wali-Allah and His Times, Canberra. 1980, p.218. Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262

Children, Faith, Dreams, Travel

“If I could give advice to the planet, it would be; don't marry for looks alone, going either way, and I'll tell you why. In a few years, if Barbara's boobs start to sag too much, there's a place you can go where they can just lift 'em right back up to where they were. And they can point the nipple wherever they want 'em. You can actually go to a titty bar, pick out a set of titties and say, "I want those titties on that woman right there." If her belly gets too big and she don't wanna work it off, you can go get a tummy tuck- they'll give you a belly that looks like a cheerleader. You know, if your eyes start to go bad, you can have Lasik surgery and they can give you 20/20 vision at any age. If your hearing starts to fail, they can put a device in your ear that'll make you able to hear as good as you could the day you were born. But let me tell you something, folks… you can't fix stupid. There's not a pill you can take, there's not a class you can go to. Stupid is fo-evah.”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

You Can't Fix Stupid

Age, Stupidity, Way

“Golden hours of vision come to us in this present life, when we are at our best, and our faculties work together in harmony.”

Charles Fletcher Dole (1845–1927) Unitarian minister, speaker, and writer

The Hope of Immortality (Ingersoll Lecture, 1906).

Life

“I was taking LSD periodically, every couple of months. I was in a strange state of mind, influenced by these visions. … I was trying to draw it in my sketchbook, and that began to coalesce into these comic strips that were stylistically based on grotesque, vulgar humor comics of the thirties and forties. … All of those characters came out of that crazy visionary period that I couldn’t shut off. It was spontaneous, but I was so crazy, I was really out of my mind, it was like schizophrenia. It was like what produces art by crazy people in a madhouse. Anything could be an influence, anything I heard. I was in Chicago in early ’66 and the radio was on, there was some tune playing, it was a black station, and this announcer said, That was Mr. Natural. I just started drawing Mr. Natural, this bearded guru-type character in my sketchbook, it just came out.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

"R. Crumb, The Art of Comics No. 1" http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6017/the-art-of-comics-no-1-r-crumb, The Paris Review, Summer 2010, No. 193.

People, Art, Nature, Drawing

“The indvidual whose vision encompasses the whole world feels nowhere so hedged in as and out of touch with his surroundings as in his native land.”

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

As quoted in [Robert Andrews, The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations, https://books.google.com/books?id=VK0vR4fsaigC&pg=PT657, 30 October 2003, Penguin Books Limited, 978-0-14-196531-4, 657]
The Individual, Society and the State (1940)

World, Feeling

“this vision cannot be of a single mind – a single concept, it is a small tooth in the gear of man..
.. which to each man, one at a time, offers a marvel of close communion”

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

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

Time

“The painter who loves his art is ruler in his own kingdom, even if he be in Lilliput and a Lilliputian himself. He transforms a kitchen maid in to a fairy, and a great lady into a brothel matron, if he wants to and sees them so, for he is a seer. His vision includes everything that is alive in the past.”

Georges Rouault (1871–1958) French painter

Quotes, 1940-1950, Stella Vespertina. (1947)

Love, Art, Past

“He was learning that power—the great power that shattered lives and twisted the course of nations—was like a fog over a meadow at evening. From any distance, it seemed to have a shape, a substance, a color, an edge, yet as you approached it, it seemed to recede before you. Finally, when common sense said you were at its very center, it still seemed just as far away, only by this time it was on all sides, obscuring any vision of the world beyond it.”

Samuel R. Delany book Tales of Nevèrÿon

Section 2 (p. 37)
Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)

World, Color, Sense, Learning

“I think the enemy is here before us, too. But I think we know the forms and faces of the enemy, and in the knowledge that we know him, and shall meet him, and eventually must conquer him is also our living hope. I think the enemy is here before us with a thousand faces, but I think we know that all his faces wear one mask. I think the enemy is single selfishness and compulsive greed. I think the enemy is blind, but has the brutal power of his blind grab. I do not think the enemy was born yesterday, or that he grew to manhood forty years ago, or that he suffered sickness and collapse in 1929, or that we began without the enemy, and that our vision faltered, that we lost the way, and suddenly were in his camp. I think the enemy is old as Time, and evil as Hell, and that he has been here with us from the beginning. I think he stole our earth from us, destroyed our wealth, and ravaged and despoiled our land. I think he took our people and enslaved them, that he polluted the fountains of our life, took unto himself the rarest treasures of our own possession, took our bread and left us with a crust, and, not content, for the nature of the enemy is insatiate--tried finally to take from us the crust.”

Thomas Wolfe book You Can't Go Home Again

Book VII, Ch. 48: Credo
You Can't Go Home Again (1940)

Life, People, Hope, Way

“It is unrealistic to imagine a US geostrategic vision which sees its pivotal interests linked exclusively to the Pacific region. More appropriately, we need to consider the wider Middle East, Central Asia and North-East Africa to be bound together in a geopolitical unit of pivotal importance.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

The Pivot Expanded http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/the-pivot-expanded - Small Wars Journal, October 2013

Imagination

“In many schools today, the phrase "computer-aided instruction" means making the computer teach the child. One might say the computer is being used to program the child. In my vision, the child programs the computer and, in doing so, both acquires a sense of master over a piece of the most modern and powerful technology and establishes an intimate contact with some of the deepest ideas from science, from mathematics, and from the art of intellectual model building.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Introduction
Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980)

School, Art, Mathematics, Idea

“Dr. King was a powerful figure of destiny, of courage, of sacrifice, and of vision. Few people in the long history of this nation can rival his accomplishment, his reason, or his selfless dedication to the cause of peace and social justice.
Today we honor a wise teacher, an inspiring leader, and a true visionary, but to truly honor Dr. King we must do more than say words of praise.
We must learn his lessons and put his views into practice, so that we may truly be free at last.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

Lessons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1990)

People, Peace, Justice, History

“Mr. Magoo Rule: Text and graphics must be easily distinguished and recognized. Don ́t make your audience members feel like the vision challenged Mr. Magoo—viewers of an electronic slideshow should not risk eyestrain!”

Stephen Kosslyn (1948) American psychologist

Source: Better PowerPoint (R), 2010, p. 11

Feeling

“The neurotic has perfect vision in one eye, but he cannot remember which.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Neurotics and neurosis

Perfection

“A fact is discovered, a theory is invented; is any theory ever deep enough for it to be truly called a creation? Most scientists would answer: no! Science, they would say, engages only part of the mind - the rational intellect - but creation must engage the whole mind. Science demands none of that ground swell of emotion, none of the rich bottom of personality, which fills out the work of art…
Creation consists in finding unity, finding likenesses, finding pattern…
Nature herself is chaos; she is full of infinite variety without order. But if you see her with inner vision, a creative mind (whether a poetic mind like Charles Baudelaire's or a scientific mind like Isaac Newton's), there comes a moment when many different aspects suddenly crystallize in a single unity. You have found a key; you have found a clue; you have found the path which organizes the material. You have found what Coleridge called "unity in variety."”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

That is the moment of creation. Source: The Creative Process, 1958, p. 97-98: As quoted in: S.P. Sector (‎1997). A Study of Issues Relating to the Patentability of Biotechnological Subject Matter. Footnote 51. https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/eng/ip00201.html

Art, Nature, Science, Parting

“Every night, at exactly a quarter past three, something dreadful happens on the street outside our bedroom window. We peek through the curtains, yawning and shivering in the life-draining chill, and then we clamber back beneath the blankets without exchanging a word, to hug each other tightly and hope for sound sleep before it's time to rise.

Usually what we witness verges on the mundane. Drunken young men fighting, swaying about with outstretched knives, cursing incoherently. Robbery, bashings, rape. We wince to see such violence, but we can hardly be shocked or surprised any more, and we're never tempted to intervene: it's always far too cold, for a start! A single warm exhalation can coat the window pane with mist, transforming the most stomach-wrenching assault into a safely cryptic ballet for abstract blobs of light.

On some nights, though, when the shadows in the room are subtly wrong, when the familiar street looks like an abandoned film set, or a painting of itself perversely come to life, we are confronted by truly disturbing sights, oppressive apparitions which almost make us doubt we're awake, or, if awake, sane. I can't catalogue these visions, for most, mercifully, are blurred by morning, leaving only a vague uneasiness and a reluctance to be alone even in the brightest sunshine.”

Greg Egan (1961) Australian science fiction writer and former computer programmer

Scatter My Ashes http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/HORROR/SCATTER/Scatter.html, published in Interzone (Spring 1988) Fiction

Life, Men, Hope, Sleep

“As philosophy becomes academic and tends to repudiate its responsibility to the culture in which it flourishes, the layman in need of wisdom and vision turns to evangelic practicalists, who confirm him in his myopic prejudice that the exclusive end of moral philosophy is actually to direct social activity toward the concrete and immediate improvement of social conditions. But, since there is no way of knowing except by arduous philosophical criticism whether the ends to which a reformer would lead us represent genuine improvement, the practicalist’s impatience with theory is at best hasty.”

Eliseo Vivas (1901–1993) American philosopher

The Moral Life and the Ethical Life (Chicago: 1950), pp. 3-4

Wisdom, Way

“Did you follow what [General Yehoshafat] Harkabi wrote? Formerly of the Israeli military intelligence service. Remember him? Did you follow what he wrote? He said that it was for the sake of the existence of Israel that we have to accept the rights of the Palestinians to have their independent state. I’m a man of history. My vision is guiding me, my clear vision. It is not by chance that the currents of peace are increasing daily inside Israel. Many of the Israelis begin to understand and discover the realities and the facts. They can’t demolish five million Palestinians. They can’t annihilate them. We are not the Red Indians.”

Yasser Arafat (1929–2004) former Palestinian President, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

In an interview published in "The New York Review of Books" (11 June 1987).
1980s and 1990s

Peace, History, Intelligence, Understanding

“And its seeing is Unconditioned,
Being without manner,
And it is neither thus nor thus,
Neither here nor there;
For that which is Unconditioned hath enveloped all,
And the vision is made high and wide.
It knows not itself where That is which it sees;
and it cannot come thereto, for its seeing is in no wise,
and passes on, beyond, for ever, and without return.
That which it apprehends it cannot realise in full,
Nor wholly attain, for its apprehension is wayless,
and without manner,
And therefore it is apprehended of God in a higher way than it can apprehend Him.
Behold! such a following of the Way that is Wayless,
Is intermediary between contemplation
In images and similitudes of the intellect,
And unveiled contemplation
Beyond all images in the Light of God.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Twelve Beguines

God, Way, Light

“Publicy says that each self exists in a particular social context, and all such contracts are independent. (…) It’s as if we are gaining the ability to see into the ultraviolet and infrared ends of the social spectrum when we are online, and in some contexts we are dropping out yellows or reds. To those tied to the visible color spectrum we are habituated to, this new sort of vision will be 'irreal.' But ultraviolet has always existed: we just couldn't see it before. (…) This will be a fracturing of the premises of privacy, and a slow rejection of the metaphors of shared space. The principles of publicy are derived from the intersection of infinite publics and our shared experience of time online, through media like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. The innate capability we have to shift in a heartbeat from a given public, and our corresponding persona, to another, is now being accelerated by streaming social tools. This will be the decade when publicy displaces privacy, online and off.”

Stowe Boyd (1953) information technologist

The Decade Of Publicy http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2010/1/2/the-decade-of-publicy.html, January 2, 2010.

Color, Time

“For the student of visionary art the interesting fact is that an image comes first and takes up residence in the mind long before the artist has any notion why it is there or what it means. Whether visions come from some great reservoir of symbolic images which are eternally there (and if one examines the recurrence of images in history this proposition is not quite as crazy as it sounds) or whether they are due to buried memories, their obsessive power over an artist's mind, and their clear, compulsive emergence in his work depends on a mental condition that can come and go. When, for some reason, they no longer present themselves to the mind's eye, alive or clamoring to be born, the visionary artist has a hard time — dark days. This is particularly true if he has lost the habit of feeding his mind on the observation of nature.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Romantic Rebellion (1973), Ch. 6: Blake

Art, History, Nature, Memory

“Labour is in the doldrums and we have to ask ourselves why. Why, day after day during the campaign, we failed to get a hearing. Why the voters aren’t getting the alternative vision of a fairer, stronger, more just Britain that we should be offering.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

We nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership. Now we regret it (6 May 2016)

“Forget the visions of sanctioned leisure: the view from the deck in St. Moritz, the wafer-thin TV. Consider the price.”

Mark Slouka (1958) author

Quitting the paint factory: On the virtues of idleness

Forgetting

“Not to go on for ever repeating what man has already done is our work, but to arrive at new realisations and undreamed-of masteries. Time and soul and world are given us for our field, vision and hope and creative imagination stand for our prompters, will and thought and labour are our all-effective instruments.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

World, Hope, Soul, Imagination

“As Christianity spread, and the Church became more secularized, this realization of the costliness of grace gradually faded. The world was Christianized, and grace became its common property. It was to be had at low cost. Yet the Church of Rome did not altogether lose the earlier vision. It is highly significant that the Church was astute enough to find room for the monastic movement … Thus monasticism became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity and the cheapening of grace. … Monasticism was represented as an individual achievement which the mass of the laity could not be expected to emulate. By thus limiting the application of the commandments of Jesus to a restricted group of specialists, the Church evolved the fatal conception of the double standard.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

translated as The Cost of Discipleship (1959), pp. 46-47.
Discipleship (1937), Costly Grace

World

“Yet today our military is still organized more for Cold War threats than for the challenges of a new century -- for industrial age operations, rather than for information age battles. There is almost no relationship between our budget priorities and a strategic vision. The last seven years have been wasted in inertia and idle talk. Now we must shape the future with new concepts, new strategies, new resolve.”

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

1990s, A Period of Consequences (September 1999)

War, Age, Future

“The argument that new vision becomes the reference point for the future, is a line that I have been driven to use on many occasions.”

Nicholas Serota (1946) British curator

The Dimbleby Lecture 2000

Future

“An unreflected light did never yet
Dazzle the vision feminine.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Act I, sc. 5.
Philip van Artevelde (1834)

Light

“Injustice happens at many levels, from the grass roots to the top. And one of the keys of SEWA’s vision and action is linking them.”

Ela Bhatt (1933) founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA)

Discussion with Ela Bhatt, Founder, Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA)

Grass

“The experience or the vision is the artist’s counterpart to the scientific discovery of a principle or law. What the scientist does when he discovers a new law is to give a new ordering to observed facts. The artist is engaged in a similar task. He gives new meaning to our experience and organizes it in a different way due to his perception of subtler qualities in reality.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Law, Way, Reality

“The vision of the Divine presence ever takes the form which our circumstances most require.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 277.

“Whoever has visions should go to the doctor.”

Helmut Schmidt (1918–2015) Chancellor of West Germany 1974-1982

from Schmidt confirmed in a letter from the 26. February 2009 to the Student Council Social Sciences St.-Ursula-Gymnasium Attendorn http://sowi.st-ursula-attendorn.de/tp/tpsmid01.htm.

“I mixed [early 1950's] funny shades of colors and used them but I used them because they made the drawing in my picture move. It wasn't because I was in love with the idea of putting color down. But these colors were the expedient things to use for the way I drew and I say 'draw' not meaning line, though it might have included line. But the way I drew or envisioned or made my work. And it happened that it came out stressing color. But I did not have a vision or a notion about color per se being the thing that would make me or my pictures work or operate.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about shades and drawing
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Love, Color, Way, Idea

“Rabelais offers a vision of the future of print culture as a consumer's paradise of applied knowledge.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 167

Knowledge, Future

“When I first made a grid I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees and then this grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence, and I still do, and so I painted it and then I was satisfied. I thought, this is my vision.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

interview by Suzan Campbell, May 15, 1989; transcript in 'Archives of American Art', The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. One of her first grid paintings she made in New York in 1964, it was [ https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78361 titled 'The Tree']. Martin often described this painting as her first grid. In fact, she had been making them since at least the beginning of 1960's 1980 - 2000

Thinking, Tree, Painting

Quotes about vision page 6

Quotes about vision
page 6