Personal Insights Quotes

It's his life. One tends to privilege personal insights in such matters. ~ Charlie Jane Anders

To the extent that I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go on as usual in spite of it, I had become hardened. Was this what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities? I didn't like it, but it made it easier to go on. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

Generally, what adults want to know is my background, why I write what I write, and very personal insights that some say are inspiring. ~ Patricia Polacco

The development of physics in the twentieth century already has transformed the consciousness of those involved with it. The study (of modern physics) produces insights into the nature of reality very similar to those produced by the study of eastern philosophy. ~ Gary Zukav

The moral of Gandhi's life and death is that pacifism as a political program is much more difficult to sustain than pacifism as a personal ethic. Being himself a leader of extraordinary charisma and skill, Gandhi was able to organize a whole people around a program of pacifism. He proved that a pacifist resistance movement can be sustained for thirty years and can be strong enough to defeat an empire. The subsequent history of India proved that political pacifism was not strong enough to survive the death of its leader and to withstand the temptations of power. ~ Freeman Dyson

It is hard to write it in words that I can read, that re-establishes the fact that has been haunting me for the past one year. ~ Kudrat Dutta Chaudhary

What makes the difference between "ideal" and an ordinary object of desire is that the former is impersonal; it is something having(at least ostensibly)no special reference to the ego of the man who feels the desire, and therefore capable, theoretically, of being desired by everybody.
Thus we might define an "ideal" as something desired, not egocentric, and such that the person
Desiring it wishes that everyone else also desired it. I may wish that everybody had enough to eat,
that everybody felt kindly towards everybody, and so on, and if I wish anything of this kind I shall
also wish others to wish it. In this way, I can build up what looks like an impersonal ethic,
although in fact it rests upon the personal basis of my own desires--for the desire remains mine
even when what is desired has no reference to myself. For example, one man may wish that
everybody understood science, and another that everybody appreciated art; it is a personal
difference between the two men that produces this difference in their desires.
The personal element becomes apparent as soon as controversy is involved. Suppose some man
says: "You are wrong to wish everybody to be happy; you ought to desire the happiness of
Germans and the unhappiness of everyone else. "Here "ought" maybe taken to mean that that is
what the speaker wishes me to desire. I might retort that, not being German, it is psychologically
impossible for me to desire th ~ Bertrand Russell

Abraham is such a fascinating figure. Three world religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - all claim him as a patriarch. He was raised in a religious home. And yet he rejected religion in order to pursue a personal relationship with God. ~ Anne Graham Lotz

When the year starts the objective is to win it all with the team, personal records are secondary. ~ Lionel Messi

When I put my faith in Jesus Christ as my savior, and I asked him to forgive and to come into my life, and He does - from that moment forward I have established a personal relationship with God that I have to develop, you know, through Bible reading and prayer, and living my life for him. ~ Anne Graham Lotz

Level 5 leaders embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitious, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves. ~ James C. Collins

I find it incredibly amazing how at every sunset, the sky is a different shade. No cloud is ever in the same place. Each day is a new masterpiece. A new wonder. A new memory. ~ Sanober Khan

A post-petroleum world will necessitate walking long distances and exerting much more physical energy to accomplish even routine tasks than we are now accustomed to. Most of our bodies in current time are not up to the task. Yet preparing the body for living in a collapsing world is one of the most fundamental of preparations. Although we may not be able to store vast quantities of food or water, may not have our homes or property equipped as much as we would prefer in preparation for collapse, and may not have learned all the skills we would like to master, becoming present in our bodies and keeping them healthy and fit are factors over which we have control. ~ Carolyn Baker

We must move beyond an anemic view of our faith as something only personal and private, with no public dimension, and instead see it as the source of power that can change the world. ~ Richard Stearns

But therein lies the paradox: Speaking out and being "real" are not necessarily virtues. Sometimes voicing our thoughts and feelings shuts down the lines of communication, diminishes or shames another person, or makes it less likely that two people can hear each other or even stay in the same room. Nor is talking always a solution. We know from personal experience that our best intentions to process a difficult issue can move a situation from bad to worse. We can also talk a particular subject to death, or focus on the negative in a way that draws us deeper into it, when we'd be better off distracting ourselves and going bowling. ~ Harriet Lerner

The door flew open, almost smacking me in my face. I opened my mouth to yell at the asshole busting the door, but stopped the moment i came face-to-face with my own personal siren, my nymph-Echo. This time, she wouldn't walk away.
Wrapping my arms around her, I walked her backward into the brick. "Tell me you chose me, Echo."
She licked her lips. Those green eyes smoldered, calling me to her. "I chose you."
For the first time in three years, the coil forever tightened in my gut relaxed. "You will never regret it. I promise."
I wanted her. All of her, but Echo deserved more than a quick thrill and better than a guy like me. Everything needed to be slow and deliberate. I wanted to blow her mind with every touch and every kiss so her every thought always came back to me. I would never touch anyone else again without thinking about her.
I'd promised she would be more and i needed to keep that promise. Tearing my self away, i took her delicate hand in mine and headed toward my car. "Come on."
"Where are we going?"
I opened the passenger door and turned to face her. Echo's innocent eyes were wide with comfusion. She wouldn't be with me. We'd both been through hell, but Echo deserved better. Still, i wasn't all bad. I used to be good, like her, She needed to know that. "Someplace special. ~ Katie McGarry

I am constantly approached by people who are willing to go to any extreme for personal safety...except practicing basic emotional control. ~ Marc MacYoung

Commonly, love isn't defined in the sense that it supposed to be. I find it often to be misunderstood. Love is like a principle, flowing out and in like the seasons. It's an attraction not just built by personal attachment, but by one's very presence. ~ Lionel Suggs

It isn't enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of what the story means. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Some people are naturally solitary. They want to live lone lives, and are content. Most, however, have a need for enduring, close relationships. These provide both a psychic and social framework for personal growth, under­standing, and development. It is an easy enough matter to shout to the skies: "I love my fellow men," when on the other hand you ronn no strong, enduring relationship with others. It is easy to claim an equal love for all members of the species, but love itself requires an understanding that at your level of activity is based upon intimate experience. You cannot love someone you do not know-not unless you water down the definition of love so much that it becomes meaningless.

To love someone, you must appreciate how that per­son differs from yourself and from others. You must hold that person in mind so that to some extent love is a kind of meditation-a loving focus upon another individual. Once you experience that kind of love you can translate it into other tenns. The love itself spreads out, expands, so that you can then see others in love's light.

Love is naturally creative and explorative-that is, you want to creatively explore the aspects of the beloved one. Even characteristics that would otherwise appear as mults attain a certain loving significance. They are accepted­seen, and yet they make no difference. Because these are still attributes of the beloved one, even the seeming faults are redeemed. The beloved attains prominence ~ Seth

Well, as Hannah Arendt famously said, there can be a banal aspect to evil. In other words, it doesn't present always. I mean, often what you're meeting is a very mediocre person. But nonetheless, you can get a sort of frisson of wickedness from them. And the best combination of those, I think, I describe him in the book, is/was General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina, who I met in the late 1970s when the death squad war was at its height, and his fellow citizens were disappearing off the street all the time. And he was, in some ways, extremely banal. I describe him as looking like a human toothbrush. He was a sort of starch, lean officer with a silly mustache, and a very stupid look to him, but a very fanatical glint as well. And, if I'd tell you why he's now under house arrest in Argentina, you might get a sense of the horror I felt as I was asking him questions about all this. He's in prison in Argentina for selling the children of the rape victims among the private prisoners, who he kept in a personal jail. And I don't know if I've ever met anyone who's done anything as sort of condensedly horrible as that. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Not only is there often a right and wrong, but what goes around does come around, Karma exists, chickens do come home to roost, and as my mother, Phyllis, liked to say, "There is always a day of reckoning." The good among the great understand that every choice we make adds to the strength or weakness of our spirits - ourselves, or to use an old fashioned word for the same idea, our souls. That is every human's life work: to construct an identity bit by bit, to walk a path step by step, to live a life that is worthy of something higher, lighter, more fulfilling, and maybe even everlasting. ~ Donald Van De Mark

Your woodlot is, in fact, an historical document which faithfully records your personal philosophy. ~ Aldo Leopold

Each stage of your life
is like petals of a flower...
unfolding and opening until it comes to full bloom...You will blossom and then you die...But know that this is not your ending. ~ Summerlyn Guthrie

To find out who you are is like putting yourself on a psychiatric couch, but you have nobody to help you. Really it isn't easy. I was talking with my nephew this morning and he gave me one of the best quotes I've heard in years 'Personal style is curiosity about oneself.' ~ Iris Apfel

If you import a commercial quantity of illegal drugs ... it is because you have made the personal decision that you are prepared to get rich by destroying our children. I have made the decision that I love our children enough that we will kill you if you do this. ~ Newt Gingrich

I felt my personal life was not what it should be. It had nothing to do with Mr. Show - I'm monstrously appreciative and understand what it did for me and to me - but after four years, I just felt like I needed to do something else. I guess I wanted to be in a different place, physically. ~ Bob Odenkirk

Does our culture have a need for violence? I don't know. I guess it's a personal thing. ~ Lena Headey

God allows us to have a personal relationship with himself and he forgives and loves us as children. If God forgives our such great sins against his Son should we not forgive such little sins against ourselves? ~ Greg Gordon

My job is to focus on bringing characters to life in an honest and personal way. ~ Danny Pudi

Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what we make out of what they do to us. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

Growth responds to Structure whether organizational or personal. Build a structure for your life if you must grow ~ Awolumate Samuel

Keep yourself motivated. You've got to be motivated, you've got to wake up every day and understand what that day is about; you've got to have personal goals - short term goals, intermediate goals, and long term goals. Be flexible in getting to those goals, but if you do not have goals, you will not achieve them. ~ Gary Cohn

I am prepared to talk with anyone. I have no personal grudge toward anybody. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

You don't need personal fabrication in the home to buy what you can buy because you can buy it. You need it for what makes you unique, just like personalization. ~ Neil Gershenfeld

In the conduct of my newspaper, I carefully excluded all libeling and personal abuse, which is of late years become so disgraceful to our country ~ Benjamin Franklin

Only in a free society do individuals have the best chance to seek virtue, strive for excellence, improve their economic well-being, and achieve personal happiness ... The worthy goals of civilization can only be achieved by freedom loving individuals. When government uses force, liberty is sacrificed and the goals are lost. It is freedom that is the source of all creative energy. ~ Ron Paul

The Id and the Superego are more scientific ways of considering the Devil and God, or your personal angels and demons. Science has turned the relationship between God, the Devil and you into a viewpoint for all to understand without the framework of religious belief to sidetrack the layperson into another realm of thinking. ~ Stephen Biro

But more important than personal awards is winning the World Series. That's the max that anyone could ask for. Let alone to have the ball in your in your glove for the final out of the World Series. That was the ultimate. ~ Dennis Eckersley

Don't ally your personal interests with the development of the company. ~ Wang Jianlin

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. ~ Vladimir Putin

Now I fix time machines for a living. To be more specific, I am a certified network technician for T-Class personal-use chronogrammatical vehicles, and an approved independent affiliate contractor for Time Warner Time, which owns and operates this universe as a spatio-temporal structure and entertainment complex zoned for retail, commercial, and residential use. ~ Charles Yu