Clear Mindedness Quotes

Sometimes it's easier to gain traction once you slow the spinning wheels. ~ Curtis Tyrone Jones

Newton Pulsifer had never...as far as he knew, ever believed in anything. It had been embarrassing, because he quite wanted to believe in something, since he recognized that belief was the lifebelt that got most people through the choppy waters of Life. He'd have liked to believe in a supreme God, although he'd have preferred a half-hour's chat with Him before committing himself, to clear up one or two points. He'd sat in all sorts of churches, waiting for that single flash of blue light, and it hadn't come. And then he'd tried to become an official Atheist and hadn't got the rock-hard, self-satisfied strength of belief even for that. And every single political party had seemed to him equally dishonest. ....

Then he'd tried believing in the Universe, which seemed sound enough until he'd innocently started reading new books with words like Chaos and Time and Quantum in the titles. He'd found that even the people whose job of work was, so to speak, the Universe, didn't really believe in it and were actually quite proud of not knowing what it really was or even if it could theoretically exist.

To Newt's straightforward mind this was intolerable. ~ Neil Gaiman

Beware of a man who can clear their conscience of any immoral act by simply confessing and asking forgiveness from their imaginary friend. ~ Sam Eriakha

No, life is meant to be a celebration; celebration is its central note. If someone asks you, better ask this question of yourself: "Do I live to work or work to live?" Then the answer will become very clear to you, and you will move much closer to Krishna. You do everything so you live, and not so you live to work and work meaninglessly. And to live you don't need to do much; too much doing has no meaning. ~ Osho

There is a culture among academics to be obscure. If you're too clear, you can't be saying anything interesting. The issue isn't word length. The issue is a commitment to speaking in a way an audience can understand. ~ Lawrence Lessig

To have understood the polymorphous character of pleasure and happiness is of course to have rendered those concepts useless for utilitarian purposes; if the prospect of his or her own future pleasure or happiness cannot for reasons which I have suggested provide criteria for solving the problems of action in the case of each individual, it follows that the notion of the greatest happiness of the greatest number is a notion without any clear content at all. It is indeed a pseudo-concept available for a variety of ideological uses, but no more than that. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

We didn't know it then,' Hooper said. 'We used to talk about how when we got back in the world we were going to do this and we were going to do that. Back in the world we were going to have it made. But ever since then it's been nothing but confusion.' Hooper took the cigarette case from his pocket but didn't open it. He leaned forward on the table.
'Everything was clear,' he said. 'You learned what you had to know and you forgot the rest. All this chickenshit. This clutter. You didn't spend every living minute of the day thinking about your own sorry-ass little self. Am I getting laid enough. What's wrong with my kid. Should I insulate the fucking house. That's what does it to you, Porchoff. Thinking about yourself. That's what kills you in the end. ~ Tobias Wolff

Meetings run best when there are clear rules or norms to follow. These are sometimes difficult to set at the start of the meeting. People may feel reluctant to speak up and suggest rules or there may be pressure to start discussing the agenda items. ~ Ingrid Bens

Our stories arise from our hearts and our souls. In this sense, telling our stories becomes a sacred gesture, opening a clear way to that deep, ecstatic center where we are most uniquely our selves, individual and unique, and yet are ourselves, joined together at the heart. ~ Susan Wittig Albert

Rules of Play is an exhaustive, clear, cogent, and complete resource for understanding games and game design. Salen and Zimmerman describe an encyclopedia of game design issues, techniques, and attributes. In particular, they analyze the elements that can make a game experience richer, more interesting, more emotional, more meaningful, and, ultimately, more successful. It should be the first stop you make when learning about game design. ~ Nathan Shedroff

A clear conscience is a sure card. ~ John Lyly

In Chinese, the word for heart and mind is the same
Hsin. For when the heart is open and the mind is clear they are of one substance, of one essence. ~ Stephen Levine

butter in a golden lump, drowning in the buttermilk. Then Ma took out the lump with a wooden paddle, into a wooden bowl, and she washed it many times in cold water, turning it over and over and working it with the paddle until the water ran clear. After that she salted it. Now ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

I felt naked. I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in the clear air knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop. I began to feel the need of fellowship. I wanted to question, wanted to speak, wanted to relate my experience. What is this spirit in man that urges him forever to depart from happiness, to toil and to place himself in danger? ~ H.G.Wells

It is clear from both documentary and archaeological sources that conspicuous display and consumption of wealth was fundamental for an elite male to maintain power and position in society. ~ Sally Crawford

In any insurgency there will be people who are irreconcilable and who pose a clear and present threat to the U.S. and our allies. ~ James G. Stavridis

Lovely eyes in colour, lovely eyes in form - large and tender and quietly thoughtful - but beautiful above all things in the clear truthfulness of look that dwells in their inmost depths, and shines through all their changes of expression with the light of a purer and a better world. ~ Wilkie Collins

For God's sake" she panted. Glaring up at him with fury in those clear, yellow-green eyes. "Would you stop screwing around and fuck me already? ~ Christine Warren

As a child I always steered clear of science fiction, but in the autumn of 1977, the bow-wave of publicity for the first 'Star Wars' movie had already reached me, so I was eager for anything science-fictional. ~ Philip Reeve

There was a vividly clear class distinction between tech guys and finance guys. The finance guys saw the tech guys as faceless help and were unable to think of them as anything else. ~ Michael Lewis

The woman looked at her heart in all of its fragments. Its voice was clear and true as it reminded her of the injustices done to it. Nothing so forlorn and broken could lie to her - could it? However, the woman was not a rational woman, and did not heed the beings' warning. "Strip my humanity away, that I may never again walk in the race of men," was her one wish. ~ Esther Dalseno

Thank God for grace, Ye who weep only! If, as some have done, Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place And touch but tombs,
look up! Those tears will run Soon in long rivers down the lifted face, And leave the vision clear for stars and sun. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Is this scaring you, Tris?"
"No," I croak. I clear my throat. "Not really. I'm only ... afraid of what I want."
"What do you want?" Then his face tightens. "Me?" Slowly I nod. He nods too, and takes my hands in his gently. ~ Veronica Roth

Of course no one argues that we Christians are tasked with building the new heavens and the new earth from bottom to top. That would be as impossible as it is ridiculous. But there are a number of people who have argued that we as Christians at least have a hand in the creation of the new heavens and new earth - that we partner with God in his mission to restore the cosmos. As energizing as that may sound, though, it simply doesn't ring true with the way the Bible talks about the new heavens and new earth. There's the clear testimony of the passages we've just considered, but there's also the fact that the land in which God's people dwell - whether the Promised Land or the new earth - is always said to be a gift from God to his people. ~ Kevin DeYoung

The LSP makes clear that in OOD the ISA relationship pertains to behavior. Not intrinsic private behavior, but extrinsic public behavior; behavior that clients depend upon. ~ Robert C. Martin

Oh, good, it worked," Archer said, his ghostly face relieved. Unlike Elodie, his voice came in loud and clear, and so familiar that my heart broke all over again.
I stood frozen, my back against the door. Even though he was faint, I could see him smirk.
"Um…Mercer? Haven't seen you in nearly a month. I was expecting something like, 'Oh, Cross, love of my heart, fire of my loins, how I've longed-"
"You're dead," I blurted out, pressing a hand against my stomach. "You're a ghost, and you think-"
All the humor disappeared from his face, and he held up both hands. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not dead. Promise."
My heart was still hammering. "Then what the heck are you?"
Archer almost looked sheepish as he reached inside his shirt and pulled out some kind of amulet on a thin silver chain. "It's a speaking stone. Lets you appear to people kind of like a hologram. You know. 'Help me, Sophie-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope.'"
"Did you steal it from the cellar at Hecate, too?" Archer had collected all sorts of magical knickknacks back when we had cellar duty at Hex Hall.
"No," he said, offended. "I found it at a…store. For magical stuff. Okay, yes, I stole it from the cellar."
I rushed across the room and thrust my fist at his solar plexus. It went right through him, but it was still kind of satisfying. "You jerk!" I cried, striking at his head. "You scared me to death! Cal said The Eye probably had you, and I thought they'd found out about you and ~ Rachel Hawkins

If we don't look within nature, we cannot look within ourselves. If we cannot admire the clear and sweet world, we cannot appreciate our clear and sweet selves… as the soul cannot flow in without a source. ~ Kayla Severson

I know you can't wash in the same river even once
I know the river will bring new lights that you will not see
I know we live slightly longer than a horse and not nearly as long as a crow
I know this has troubled people before and will trouble those after me
I know all this has been said a thousand times before and will be said after me
I didn't know I like the sky
cloudy or clear
the blue vault that Andrei watched on his back on the battlefield at Borodino
... ~ Nazim Hikmet

The mere punishment of the defendants, or even thousands of others equally guilty, can never redress the terrible injuries which the Nazis visited on these unfortunate peoples. For them it is far more important that these incredible events be established by clear and public proof, so that no one can ever doubt that they were fact and not fable. ~ Telford Taylor

Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe.
In South Africa, no one doubts that Wednesday's elections will be free and fair. While there is an unacceptable degree of government corruption, there is no evidence of the wholesale kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe's elite. While there has been the abuse of the organs of state by the ruling ANC, there is not the state terror of Mugabe's Zanu-PF. And while there is a clear left bias to Zuma's ANC, there is no suggestion of the kind of voluntarist experimentation that has brought Zimbabwe to its knees. ~ Mark Gevisser

Elle Remembered Yorkshire road and the flat he shared with Caitlin and their daughter, and she almost stopped and turned back, and then she hardened herself against it.
It's his problem if he wants to sleep with someone and he shouldn't, she told herself. It's a one night thing. I'm in the clear. It's sex, nothing else. ~ Harriet Evans

There is a frightening, sickening ease - and a clear attraction - to the way in which things can be blown apart. The hard job is bringing things together again. ~ Stephen King

When I was young I would ask everybody what life was about. Now it's clear to me that the image of each existence shows its own answer to that question. ~ Stefanie Schneider

Then everything is clear," Reynold said, looking around triumphantly at the crowd. "Jacques Cherbourg did not drown, he survived. He went to England, lived there a while, made a girl pregnant, and died. The girl gave birth to a boy and named him after the father. Jack here is now twenty, and looks exactly like his father did twenty-four years ago." Reynold looked at the priest. "No need for exorcism here, father. It's just a family reunion. ~ Ken Follett

I remember the difficulty we had in the beginning replacing magnetic cores in memories and eventually we had both cost and performance advantages. But it wasn't at all clear in the beginning. ~ Gordon Moore

Through persistence to a clear vision, the dreamer comes to understand that no matter how unlikely, taboo, or youthful these dreams may appear to be, the belly of the earth can and will still stretch with the conception of the new dream as sure as the belly of a woman can and will stretch with the conception of new life. ~ Curtis Tyrone Jones