A Quote by Kent Nerburn

The Buddhists have a story about blind men trying to describe an elephant by feeling it's various parts, and each describes the elephant according to the part he touched. That is the way we can hope to know God.

Kent Nerburn

Quote Topics

About According Blind Describe Each Elephant Feeling God Hope Know Men Part Parts Story Touched Trying Various Way

Quote Author

Kent Nerburn
American - Author

But as the work proceeded I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was not more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.

Bertrand Russell

It's very difficult to move yourself up bit by bit. It's like trying to eat an elephant for God's sake. I can do it. It's just I have to have it bite by bite, you know. It's possible. You can eat an elephant, but you have to do it bite by bite. You can't do it all in one go.

Colin Montgomerie

For example, after developing a sound similar to an elephant trumpeting, I wrote the song Elephant Talk which gave my elephant sound an appropriate place to live.

Adrian Belew

It was six men of Hindustan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind) That each by observation Might satisfy the mind.

John Godfrey Saxe

We are like a rider on top of a gigantic elephant. We can steer the elephant, and if he's not busy, he'll go where we want, but if he has other desires, he'll often go where he wants. How can one control the elephant? In part, this comes with maturity. In part, this comes with the development of your frontal cortex, so the frontal areas of the brain are especially involved in self-control, in suppressing your initial instinct to act. This is why teenagers are so impulsive. So it's terrible to allow the death penalty for teenagers, because they really don't have working brains yet.

Jonathan Haidt

I know my Republican friends were glad to see my wife feeding an elephant in India. She gave him sugar and nuts. But of course the elephant wasn't satisfied.

John F. Kennedy

We all know the big elephant in the room. The big elephant in the room is African governments. Africa has been totally mismanaged and misruled, but nobody wants to talk about that because of political correctness.

George W. Bush

This is what metaphor is. It is not saying that an ant is an elephant. Perhaps; both are alive. No. Metaphor is saying the ant is an elephant. Now, logically speaking, I know there is a difference. If you put elephants and ants before me, I believe that every time I will correctly identify the elephant and the ant. So metaphor must come from a very different place than that of the logical, intelligent mind. It comes from a place that is very courageous, willing to step out of our preconceived ways of seeing things and open so large that it can see the oneness in an ant and in an elephant.

Natalie Goldberg

To keep a man a slave you do much the same as the cruel circus masters did to the elephant around the turn of last century. Clamp heavy chains around their legs and stake them to the ground. Then beat and terrorize them. After a while you no longer even have to stake the chain; the elephant gives up and just the mere rattle of the chain convinces the elephant there is no hope, so they give up and do whatever it is the circus requires.

Glenn Beck

Elephants are my favourite creatures and have been since I was a boy and my mother read Kipling's The Elephant's Child to me. It was loving elephants so much that made we want to write my own story with an elephant at the centre and its bond with a child.

Michael Morpurgo

The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning-the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99 percent of mental processes-the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually govern most of our behavior.

Jonathan Haidt

You know...they say an elephant never forgets. What they don't tell you is, you never forget an elephant.

Bill Murray

I’m not certain you’d know the right sort of man for you if he arrived on our doorstep riding an elephant.” “I would think the elephant would be a fairly good indication that I ought to look elsewhere.