Self Reflexive Quotes

Yoga is about the will, working with intelligence and self-reflexive consciousness, can free us from the inevitability of the wavering mind and outwardly directed senses. ~ B.K.S. Iyengar

It was in reading Tristam Shandy that I noticed how it is primarily men who gravitate towards the game-playing self-reflexive style. There is an alienation from emotion in it, a Nervous Nelly fear of letting go and being "exposed." As an attitude towards life, it betrays a perpetual adolescence. Those who hurled themselves after Derrida were not the most sophisticated but the most pretentious, and least creative members of my generation of academics. ~ Camille Paglia

I have seen the greatest artists and the most eccentric divas in music. The greater and more visionary they were, the more self-reflexive and childlike they behaved. ~ Christian Gansch

The truth of this place is infinite and irreducible, and self-reflexive anguish might feel like the only thing that you can offer in return. It might be hard to hear anything above the clattering machinery of your guilt. Try to listen anyways. ~ Leslie Jamison

For some musicians it becomes self-reflexive to think, "I have to write some of my kind of songs now." ~ Alan Licht

Seymour, we do not dignify absurdities with coverage. This is still America, god damnit! Who wants a cowboy actor in the White House? ~ Alan Moore

I think my films are always quite self-reflexive and always question 'why am I doing this, is this the right way to do it, what is cinema for, does it have a purpose?' ~ Peter Greenaway

She spun the car through a right turn that would have killed us all had we been minor characters. ~ Daniel Handler

We connect the dots in the drawing with our mind. We give them a meaning, a figurative sense, which is self-reflexive in that it creates us, because we are the experiencer of the moment. ~ Frederick Lenz

Progressive feminists have shown nothing but the most reflexive, regressive contempt for women on the other side of the ideological aisle. It doesn't matter if you're a conservative stay at home mom, work at home mom, or work outside the home mom. If you're Right, the Left is gonna hate. ~ Michelle Malkin

Philologists assure us that zulm in Arabic originally meant "to put something out of its proper place," so that all wrong of any kind is injustice, i.e., an injustice against the agent himself) is, therefore, a very common term in the Qur'ān, with its clear idea that all injustice is basically reflexive. ~ Fazlur Rahman

It became clear that Keisha Blake could not start something without finishing it. If she climbed onto the boundary wall of Caldwell, she was compelled to walk the entire wall, no matter the obstructions in her path (beer cans, branches). This compulsion, applied to other fields, manifested itself as "intelligence." Every unknown word sent her to a dictionary--in search of something like "completion"--and every book led to another book, a process that, of course, could never be completed. This route through early life gave her no small portion of joy, and, indeed, it seemed at first that her desires and her capacities were basically aligned. She wanted to read things--could not resist wanting to read things--and reading was easily done, and relatively inexpensive. On the other hand, that she should receive any praise for such reflexive habits baffled the girl, for she knew herself to be fantastically stupid about many things. Wasn't it possible that what others mistook for intelligence was in fact only a sort of mutation of the will? ~ Zadie Smith

Art is not communicative, art is not reflexive. Art, science, philosophy are neither contemplative, neither reflexive, nor communicative. They are creative, that's all. ~ Gilles Deleuze

Crisis. Attempts were made to organize a captive breeding population, but the natural objections of the population in question to being so manipulated - combined with our own innate reflexive obedience - foiled all such programs. We are conditioned to adore and obey our Creators on a personal basis, and while it is easy enough to understand the abstract need to preserve their kind as a whole, the conflict between their specific desires and the needs of the species imposed an impossible burden upon their would-be conservators. We ~ Charles Stross

Arthur Young's Reflexive Universe - fascinating but too schematic to fit into my scheme. The most I could hope for was a sense of the vocabulary and some possible images. ~ James Merrill

In the United States, we see these same faces, and our reflex is to pick up our pace and cross the street. And in this reflexive gesture, the dimensions of our tragedy are laid bare. ~ Wes Moore

Prevarication, like honesty, is reflexive, and soon becomes a sturdy habit, as reliable as truth. ~ Norman Mailer

a park ranger is a protector. You protect the land from the people, the people from the land, the people from each other, and the people from themselves. It's what you are trained to do without even thinking, a reflexive and unconditional act. If you're lucky, you get assigned to people who seem worth saving and land and waters whose situation is not hopeless. If not, you save them anyway. And maybe in time, saving them will make them worth it. ~ Kurt Caswell

When you write, you're supposed to go stand somewhere else for a while, see things from a perspective that's not in line with your own reflexive truths. ~ Catherine Brady

I had never considered that you might miss a job like you missed a limb
a constant, reflexive thing. I hadn't thought as well as the obvious fears about money, and your future, losing your job would make you feel inadequate, and a bit useless. That it would be harder to get up in the morning than you were rudely shocked in to consciousness by the alarm. That you might missed the people you worked with, no matter how little you had in common with them. ~ Jojo Moyes

The Beats were tremendously significant, but chiefly in the way that they provided a preview in the 1950s of the cultural, intellectual, and moral disasters that would fully flower in the late 1960s. The ideas of the Beats, their sensibility, contained in ovo all the characteristics we think of as defining the cultural revolution of the Sixties and Seventies. The adolescent longing for liberation from conventional manners and intellectual standards; the polymorphous sexuality; the narcissism; the destructive absorption in drugs; the undercurrent of criminality; the irrationalism; the naive political radicalism and reflexive anti-Americanism; the adulation of pop music as a kind of spiritual weapon; the Romantic elevation of art as an alternative to rather than as an illumination of normal reality; the pseudo-spirituality, especially the spurious infatuation with Eastern religions: in all this and more the Beats provided a vivid glimpse of what was to come. ~ Roger Kimball

When I started, I wanted to be thought of as tortured and seductive, not funny, but humor tends to be a reflexive part of a person's sensibility. It's an almost impossible thing to teach anyone, which leads me to believe that it's intuitive. ~ Mark Leyner

The sorting we do to ourselves and to one another is at best, unintentional and reflexive; at worst, it's stereotyping that dehumanizes. The paradox is that we all love the ready made filing system. It's so handy when we want to quickly characterize people. But, yet we resent it when we're the ones getting filed away. ~ Brene Brown

Over the centuries, religion has become institutionalized, and in the process encrusted with elaborate hierarchies, top-heavy bureaucracies, highly specialized roles and reflexive routines. ~ Gary Hamel

Poor Fa'a, I said, although my answer was more reflexive than anything else. He was a good, kind person, and although I thought he was being melodramatic, I appreciated his compassion. In the absence of action, Poor Fa'a seemed to be the only thing to say. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

We may need to consider a little abstinence from our automatic, reflexive responses of being helpful to others. For some of us, doing this may feel very threatening; to identify our addictions of helpfulness is to challenge the ways we habitually express love – it comes close to challenging our love itself.

. . . Let us go back for a moment and look at that tiny, perhaps almost nonexistent space between feeling a person's pain and doing something in response to it. It is not easy to just be with the pain of another, to feel it as your own. No wonder we are likely to jump into our habitual responses so quickly. As soon as we start doing something for or to the suffering person, we can minimize the bare agony of feeling that person's pain. It is like that everywhere; our addicted doings act as minor anaesthesia.

. . . Sometimes, perhaps often, taking the space will feel like an absence of response. We may fear the person will think we don't care because we are not immediately hopping like popcorn to do something helpful. And sometimes the response that is authentically invited will never appear overtly helpful. Perhaps we are just invited to pray, silently in the background, or just to be present without saying a word or offering even a touch. Sometimes love even invites us to leave a person alone. Such responses are not too good for our egos; the suffering person is unlikely to come and thank us for our lack of involvement. But love does not ask for credi ~ Gerald G. May

For years, "Sorry, I don't speak French" has been the reflexive response of English-speaking Canadians to a request, a comment, or a greeting in the other official language. Part apology, part defiance, it is a declaration of the otherness. That is not me. I don't do that. The language barrier is her, at this counter, now. ~ Graham Fraser

The reflexive allergy to L.A. that a lot of New Yorkers have, I feel like it's kind of nonsense. ~ Josh Radnor

Ideology claims to be binding for the whole society. This development leads to typical problems. As the complexity of society increases, so do the demands upon ideology as a schema for solving problems; in particular, there occurs an unsurveyable increase in the interdependencies among the individual components of an ideology, whose consistency must continue to be maintained. Changes, accommodations, and renovations in an ideology become markedly dífficult, because every small step can have unforeseeable repercussions upon the premises appealed to. The burdens upon the reflexive and opportunistic mechanisms anchored in ideology then become excessive. ~ Niklas Luhmann

Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the reflexive, and are ignorant and unreasonable by simple nature. We must learn to be free, to organize the random and detect the reflexive, to acquire the knowledge of particulars and the powers of reason. The examined life is impossible if we cannot examine, order, classify, define, distinguish, always in minute particulars. ~ Richard Mitchell

Money values do not simply mirror the state of affairs in the real world; valuation is a positive act that makes an impact on the course of events. Monetary and real phenomena are connected in a reflexive fashion; that is, they influence each other mutually. The reflexive relationship manifests itself most clearly in the use and abuse of credit. ~ George Soros

reflexive loop": ~ Peter M. Senge

Were we to still be circumcising the hood of the female clitoris, we would not have difficulty considering this a continuation of our tradition to keep girls sexually repressed. America's reflexive continuation of [male] circumcision-without-research reflects the continuation of our tradition to desensitize boys to feelings of pain, to prepare them to question the disposability of their bodies no more than they would question the disposability of their foreskins. ~ Warren Farrell

There's been a certain amount of opportunism in the wake of the Paris attacks in 2015, when there was almost a reflexive assumption that, "Oh, if only we didn't have strong encryption out there, these attacks could have been prevented." But, as more evidence has come out - and we don't know all the facts yet - we're seeing very little to support the idea that the Paris attackers were making any kind of use of encryption. ~ Matt Blaze

Loving kindness is a form of love that truly is an ability, and, as research scientists have show, it can be learned. It is the ability to take some risks with our awareness-to look at ourselves and others with kindness instead of reflexive criticism; to include in our concern those to whom we normally pay no attention; to care for ourselves unconditionally instead of thinking, "I will love myself as long as I never make a mistake." It is the ability to gather our attention and really listen to others, even those we've written off as not worth our time. It is the ability to see the humanity in people we don't know and the pain in people we find difficult. ~ Sharon Salzberg

The US has unthinkingly embarked upon a neoimperial policy that must involve us in virtually every great war of the coming century-and wars are the death of republics. If we continue on this course of reflexive interventions, enemies will one day answer our power with the weapon of the weak-terror, and eventually cataclysmic terrorism on US soil. ~ Pat Buchanan

In ways that we have barely begun to understand, trillions upon trillions of reflexive chemical reactions add up to a mobile, thinking, decision-making you - or, come to that, a rather less reflective but still incredibly organized dung beetle. Every living thing, never forget, is a wonder of atomic engineering. ~ Bill Bryson

The Heaven Inc. Board of Directors, whom one has to thank for the origin of most mainstream religion, are also the ones responsible for ending any god's career. Nietzsche knew that as the CEO, he could influence the outcome of world religion but he needed to come up with something big. Something inspirational. Something with pizazz. Something that would fire up the imagination of the other members. The board was newly elected. They were shy, passive, reflexive, and thoroughly stupid ~ Dylan Callens

The sooner growing older is stripped of reflexive dread, the better equipped we are to benefit from the countless ways in which it can enrich us. ~ Ashton Applewhite

Those who hated the crimes of Pinochet closed their eyes when the same crimes were committed by Castro. The posture of many countries was governed by their hostility against the United States, and they excused Castro out of a reflexive anti-Americanism. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend.) These political games still take place today. ~ Armando Valladares

I have felt things that no one should ever have to feel.

I have seen things that no one should ever have to see.

I have heard things that no one should ever have to hear.

I have been beaten down so many times that It is reflexive to get back up immediately without any hesitation expecting another whack to come instantaneously.

I have got up off the mat more times than what should be necessary.

I know I will need to continue doing so many, many more times.

I am prepared to do so and more without complaint or regret.

It is outright exhausting.

I keep experiencing this pain because 1 life is worth it.

Life is awesome and is worth fighting for. Even 1 life is worth it.

For 1 life to experience life is my mission.

To quote JFK:
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."

So I will continue to feel, see and hear things that no parent should ever have to in order for 1 life to be able to experience this awesome life again. ~ JohnA Passaro

She wanted to read things -- could not resist wanting to read things -- and reading was easily done, and relatively inexpensive. On the other hand, that she should receive any praise for such reflexive habits baffled the girl, for she knew herself to be fantastically stupid about many things. Wasn't it possible that what others mistook as intelligence might in fact be only a sort of mutation of the will? She could sit in one place longer than other children be bored for hours without complaint, and was completely devoted to filling in every last corner of the coloring books Augustus Blake sometimes brought home. She could not help her mutated will -- no more than she could help the shape of her feet or the street on which she was born. She was unable to glean real satisfaction from accidents. In the child's mind a breach now appeared: between what she believed she knew of herself, essentially, and her essence as others seemed to understand it. She began to exist for other people, and if ever asked a question to which she did not know the answer she was wont to fold her arms across her body and look upward. As if the question itself were to obvious to truly concern her. ~ Zadie Smith