Top 140 Introspection Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

Introspection is a devouring monster. You have to feed it with much material, much experience, many people, many places, many loves, many creations, and then it ceases feeding on you.

I was interned in Auschwitz for one year. I didn't bring back anything, except for a few jokes, and that filled me with shame. Then again, I didn't know what to do with this fresh experience. For this experience was no literary awakening, no occasion for professional or artistic introspection.

The Chautauqua Institution is truly a national treasure. It is a place for contemplation and a place for reflection, a place where platitudes and slogans can be set aside and be replaced by thoughtfulness and introspection.

Psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science which needs introspection as little as do the sciences of chemistry and physics.... The position is taken here that the behavior of man and the behavior of animals must be considered in the same plane.

We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the world - introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very considerably - that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.

Introspection can easily become the tool of Satan, who is called the accuser. One of his chief weapons is discouragement. He knows that if he can make us discouraged and dispirited we will not fight the battle for holiness.

As a professional athlete and someone who has spent almost his entire life in boxing, not a day goes by when I don't think about coming back, but I am retired, and after speaking to my family and following a great deal of introspection, I have decided to stay retired.

Don't you notice that there are particular moments when you are naturally inspired to introspection? Work with them gently, for these are the moments when you can go through a powerful experience, and your whole worldview can change quickly.

Every organization needs to be introspective, transparent, and honest with itself. This only works if everyone is unified on the goals and purposes of the organization and there is trust within the team. High-performing, successful organizations build cultures of introspection and trust and never lose sight of their purpose.

I look for roles that resonate with me these days. While I love putting out just fabulous entertainment, I think now as artists, especially with so much uncertainty going on in the world, you want to be a part of things that offer or promote healing in some way and perhaps a little introspection once you leave.

Fulfilling your vision for the best year of your life requires thought and introspection. It is not much different than planning an awesome vacation. It takes time, discussion, planning, decision making, and an array of other skills.

I have my moments. Ever since I was a boy, I never was someone who was at ease with happiness. Too often I embrace introspection and self-doubt. I wish I could embrace the good things.

Give yourself the gift of time in coming to answers for your life...It takes time, and a lot of introspection and soul-searching, to get clear about what you really want to manifest in your life.

Moshe Sluhovsky's fascinating study links spirit possession, exorcism, and mystical practice in early modern Europe. Women and men, healers and priestly exorcisers are caught up in a new quest for truth and introspection as they try to figure out whether these dramas of body and soul come from the devil or God. A stunning feat of scholarship and interpretation.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holy of holies of Jewish time. It is that rarest of phenomena, a Jewish festival without food. Instead it is a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment when, collectively and repeatedly, we confess our sins and pray to be written into God's Book of Life.

Information is key to raising awareness of what our brain withholds from our conscious mind. Unfortunately we are hardwired emotion-driven thinkers. It takes effort and training to exercise introspection and mindfulness.

That moment in 'Broadcast News' where Holly Hunter is told how great it is to be the smartest person in the room, and she cries and says it's awful - I definitely have moments like that sometimes, moments when introspection and drive can be lonely-making. And it doesn't help that I have a partner who is very work-oriented.

When a person finds life hard, he needs motivation and inspiration; but if he finds life’s journey easy, then he needs meditation and introspection to know the true quality of his life.

Many psychologists ... thought by turning their attention to their own consciousness to be able to explain what happened when we were thnking. Or they sought to attain the same end by asking another person a question, by means of which certain processes of thought would be excited, and then by questioning the person about the introspection he had made. It is obvious ... that nothing can be discovered in such experiments.

In the West, people pride themselves on being the defenders of democratic rights and the champions of freedom. But if the Western world really cares for the benevolence of the whole world, it will have to turn to introspection.

Among the many international consequences of Barack Obama's stunning victory in the United States is worldwide introspection about whether such a breakthrough could happen elsewhere. Could a person of color win power in other white-majority countries?

Again, when we view a scene fleetingly, do we consciously see all the details even though we don't retain them, or do we not see them in the first place? Neurological information is crucial to deciding these questions. After all, they are so interesting precisely because unaided introspection cannot resolve them. Rather we need to know what is going on in the brain activities that constitute visual awareness.

Will is guided by wisdom. Wisdom comes from introspection, looking inside yourself, probing, studying the wisdom of the teachers, the masters and bringing that into your mind.

Julian Jaynes's theories for the nature of self-awareness, introspection, and consciousness have replaced the assumption of their almost ethereal uniqueness with explanations that could initiate the next change in paradigm for human thought.

When I found myself regarded as respectable, I began to wonder what sins I had committed. I must be very wicked, I thought. I began to engage in the most uncomfortable introspection.

It [his brothers assassination] made Robert Kennedy, a man unprepared for introspection, think for the first time in his life, what he wanted to do, and what he stood for.

Great men suffer hours of depression through introspection and self-doubt. That is why they are great. That is why you will find modesty and humility the characteristics of such men.

Creativity requires introspection, self-examination, and a willingness to take risks. Because of this, artists are perhaps more susceptible to self-doubt and despair than those who do not court the creative muses.

Passion is something that's hard to discover purely through introspection. You have to have experiences - you have to learn real-time and through experiences what makes you tick.

I am neither romantic nor a visionary, and that is my weakness and perhaps my power; at any rate it is one difference. In less romantic and visionary terms, I am a Jew, (with powers of introspection and eclecticism attendant, perhaps.) But I am alien to your natural grace, to the spirit which you would know as a participator in America.

In Zen you practice zazen, mindfulness and other forms of introspection to find out who you are and what you want, to balance your spirit, develop willpower, increase your sense of humor and gain wisdom.

From childhood I was compelled to concentrate attention upon myself. This caused me much suffering, but to my present view, it was a blessing in disguise for it has taught me to appreciate the inestimable value of introspection in the preservation of life, as well as a means of achievement.

To thrive, all businesses must focus on the art of self-disruption. Rather than wait for the competition to steal your business, every founder and employee needs to be willing to cannibalize their existing revenue streams in order to create new ones. All disruption starts with introspection.

Actually, Bruce [Springsteen] taught me about introspection. I think that's an incredible gift. I can really look inside myself. And you know what? I like what's inside. And it's taken me a long time to say that.

There are always differences when you adapt a novel to a film. A novel is longer so you're automatically cutting out elements and introspection but this is actually a film that stays very close to the novel.

Heartbreak allows us to also experience joy and love but you have to walk through heartbreak to even know what joy is. Heartbreak is a constant and it is even necessary. It allows us the opportunity of introspection and exploration. Those processes are what is necessary to write and engage in the arts.

You want to read a book? That requires introspection. It requires time away from people and time away from the constant need to communicate and to connect.

Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.

Introspection, or 'sitting in the silence,' is an unscientific way of trying to force apart the mind and senses, tied together by the life force. The contemplative mind, attempting its return to divinity, is constantly dragged back toward the senses by the life currents.

I went through a phase of deep introspection. I realised that while doing films back to back, I was getting burnt out and not concentrating on quality. I wasn't preparing for my role and was working like a machine. When I saw the result on the big screen, I felt that the work I'd done was horrible.

The worry that unreflective belief acquisition may be unreliable, after all, applies equally to reflective belief acquisition: it too may be unreliable. To my mind, the plausibility of internalist views about justification is dramatically decreased when one becomes vividly aware of what introspection and reflection actually achieve.

No man learns to know his inmost nature by introspection, for he rates himself sometimes too low, and often too high, by his own measurement. Man knows himself only by comparing himself with other men; it is life that touches his genuine worth.

Set aside all involvements and let the myriad things rest. Zazen is not thinking of good, not thinking of bad. It is not conscious endeavour. It is not introspection. Do not desire to become a buddha; let sitting or lying down drop away. Be moderate in eating and drinking. Be mindful of the passing of time, and engage yourself in zazen as though you are saving your head from fire.

For those of us with an inward turn of mind, which is another name for melancholy introspection, the beginning of a new year inevitably leads to thoughts about both the future and the past.

Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance.

If I have learned anything in long years of introspection, it is that life requires a price if you want to be as fully alive as you can be. You need courage to pursue the truth of your life and yourself.

A tough but nervous, tenacious but restless race [the Yankees]; materially ambitious, yet prone to introspection, and subject to waves of religious emotion. . . . A race whose typical member is eternally torn between a passion for righteousness and a desire to get on in the world.

On Laurence Olivier as Hamlet in a 1948 film: Olivier's idea of introspection was to hood his eyes, dentalize his consonants and let the camera circle his blondined head like a sparrow looking for a place to deposit its droppings.

What will really release the kundalini is creating a stillness in your life. This stillness will come about through deep caring and introspection. It will come about slowly and then quickly - it builds momentum.

He who thinks all mankind is vile is a pessimist who mistakes his introspection for observation; he looks into his own heart and thinks he sees the world.

Usually, people that I like to work with are people that I believe in more than they believe in themselves, and they just need that extra boost and the person to give them a little more time and understanding and introspection into their own character to find that box office that lives inside of them.

There were silences in my head. I could abandon myself completely to the pleasure of multiple relationships, to the beauty of the day, to the joys of the day. It was as if a cancer in me had ceased gnawing me. The cancer of introspection.

The past several months have brought on much introspection, and I have decided that while my desire to compete on Sundays is still and always will be there, my willingness to commit to the preparation necessary to play another season has waned to a level that I feel is no longer adequate to meet the demands of the position.

By definition, memoir demands a certain degree of introspection and self-disclosure: In order to fully engage a reader, the narrator has to make herself known, has to allow her own self-awareness to inform the events she describes.

Buddhism doesn't really have much time for political mass-movements. We are so trained to think of politics in terms of acting collectively, acting as part of mass-movements, that it's become hard for us to imagine a form of politics that is based on a high degree of introspection and self-examination.

Jewish introspection and Jewish humor is a way of surviving . . . if you're not handsome and you're not athletic and you're not rich, there's still one last hope with girls, which is being funny.

There is not often much policy discussion with the Bushes. There isn't much introspection. Several generations of Bush men could pass by in which the great questions of humankind will go undiscussed.

The thought of the novelist lies not in the remarks of his characters or even in their introspection but in the plight he has invented for his characters - in the juxtaposition of those characters and in the lifelike ramifications of the ensemble they make: their density, their substantiality, their lived existence actualized in all its nuanced particulars, is in fact his thought metabolized.

Our self discoveries make us each a microcosm of the larger pattern of history. The inertia of introspection leads toward recollection, for only through memory is the past recaptured and understood. In the fact of experiencing and making the present, we are all actors.

When I look in the mirror, I am slightly reminded of self-portraits by Durer and by Rembrandt, because they both show a degree of introspection. I see some element of disappointment; I see a sense of humour, but also something that is faintly ridiculous; and I see somebody who is frightened of being found out and thought lightweight.