A Quote by Jack Gilbert

We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.

Jack Gilbert

Quote Topics

Constellations Must See Stars Unlearn

Quote Author

Jack Gilbert
American - Poet
February 18, 1925 - November 13, 2012

The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.

Rebecca Solnit

Education is necessary to unlearn privilege, unlearn exclusion, unlearn discrimination, unlearn prejudice, unlearn war.

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers. Tracing an imaginary line between a cluster of stars gave them an image and an identity. The stars threaded on that line were like events threaded on a narrative. Imagining the constellations did not of course change the stars, nor did it change the black emptiness that surrounds them. What it changed was the way people read the night sky.

John Berger

When negotiations are at an impasse, when States dig their heels in, it is time to 'undig' them in a spirit of compromise. We all need to unlearn the predator in us, unlearn discrimination, unlearn privilege.

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

I had the usual friends who pointed out constellations of stars. But it really was watching the stars. It was getting some sense of the motion of the earth. I found it a remarkable thing.

Vera Rubin

In the movie, the stars above the ship bear no correspondence to any constellations in a real sky. Worse yet, while the heroine bobs... we are treated to her view of this Hollywood sky-one where the stars on the right half of the scene trace the mirror image of the stars in the left half. How lazy can you get?

Neil deGrasse Tyson

My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.

John Green

His head is made of stars, but not yet arranged into constellations.

Elias Canetti

Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].

Walter Benjamin

You are down there alone, the stars seemed to say to him. And we are up here, in our constellations, together.

Kate DiCamillo

Okay, maybe I'm not such a shitty writer. But I can't pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations.

John Green

Every day you must unlearn the ways that hold you back. You must rid yourself of negativity, so you can learn to fly.

Leon Brown

He insisted that stars were people so well loved, they were traced in constellations, to live forever

Jodi Picoult

The word must be heard in silence; there must be darkness to see the stars.

Ursula K. Le Guin

As a writer I feel more like a filter than a performer. I absorb and observe and then I name scatterings of stars into constellations. I don't usually spend time asking whether the stars are random or planned. I make a narrative in the darkness, the area subscribed by an outline of bright points. Sometimes they look like Ursa Minor, and sometimes they just looks like one day the world exploded.