Conception Quotes

• Vision gives you the impulse to make the picture your own.

  Robert Collier

  Life, Giving, Vision

  Robert Collier (2009). “Riches Within Your Reach!”, p.234, Penguin

  59 Copy quote

  Show source

• A goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.

  James D. Watson

  Stupid, Science, Numbers

  James D. Watson (2011). “The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.

  Konrad Lorenz

  Stupid, Successful, Science

  25 Copy quote

• The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.

  Anton Chekhov

  World, Existentialism, Metaphysics

  25 Copy quote

• The mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within...could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the result; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline; and the most glorious poetry that has been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Inspiration, Greatness, Wind

  7 Copy quote

• Generally, I am opposed to painting which is concerned with conceptions of simplicity. Everything looks busy to me.

  Jasper Johns

  Simplicity, Looks, Painting

  Kirk Varnedoe, Jasper Johns (1996). “Jasper Johns: A Retrospective”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't believe in the concept of hell, but if I did I would think of it as filled with people who were cruel to animals.

  Gary Larson

  Believe, Animal, Thinking

  71 Copy quote

• Philosophy itself cannot but benefit from our disputes, for if our conceptions prove true, new achievements will be made; if false, their refutation will further confirm the original doctrines.

  Galileo Galilei

  Philosophy, Thinking, Achievement

  31 Copy quote

• Everyone is a theologian, either conscious or unconscious, in the sense that everyone has some conception of the nature of reality, of the demands of reality, and of those elements in reality that support or threaten meaningful existence.

  James Luther Adams

  Meaningful, Reality, Support

  17 Copy quote

• one of the greatest hindrances to happiness in the present day is our tendency to standardize our conception of it.

  J. E. Buckrose

  Happiness, Tendencies, Present Day

  Annie Edith Foster Jameson, J. E. Buckrose (1923). “What I Have Gathered”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Bring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander. You have the power to increase his perceptions and conceptions.

  Dorothea Lange

  Bystanders, Your Side, Perception

  16 Copy quote

• The underlying assumption that human nature is basically the same at all times, everywhere, and obeys eternal laws beyond human control, is a conception that only a handful of bold thinkers have dared to question.

  Isaiah Berlin

  Law, Assumption, Human Nature

  Isaiah Berlin (2013). “The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas”, p.71, Princeton University Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity. Primitive man, unable to understand the phenomena of nature, and harassed by them, saw in every terrifying manifestation some sinister force expressly directed against him; and as ignorance and fear are the parents of all superstition, the troubled fancy of primitive man wove the God idea.

  Emma Goldman

  Ignorance, Men, Primitive Man

  Emma Goldman (1915). “Mother Earth, a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Social Science and Literature”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is my strong conviction that a realist conception of human nature should be made a servant of an ethic of progressive justice and should not be made into a bastion of conservatism, particularly a conservatism which defends unjust privileges.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Strong, Justice, Unjust

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2012). “Man's Nature and His Communities: Essays on the Dynamics and Enigmas of Man's Personal and Social Existence”, p.24, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Imagine a multidimensiona l spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image.

  Alan Watts

  Buddhist, Morning, Reflection

  30 Copy quote

• Wit in conversation is only a readiness of thought and a facility of expression, or a quick conception and an easy delivery.

  Alexander Pope

  Expression, Easy, Conversation

  Alexander Pope (1812). “The works of Alexander Pope. With a selection of explanatory notes, and the account of his life by dr. Johnson”, p.233

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any
  conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into
  weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the
  ideal at all you must not strip it of vitality. You must find it in life and re-create it in art.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Vitality, Weak

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.798, GENERAL PRESS

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Be sanctuaries of respect for life, proclaiming the sacredness of every human life from conception to natural death

  Pope Francis

  Sanctuary, Natural, Human Life

  Pope Francis “The Blessing of Family: Inspiring Words from Pope Francis”, Franciscan Media

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• The whole conception of a God is a conception derived from the ancient oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Wish, Age

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.34, Routledge

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Is it indeed from the experience of beauty and happiness, from the occasional harmony between our nature and our environment, that we draw our conception of the divine life.

  George Santayana

  Beauty, Environment, Harmony

  George Santayana (2004). “The Sense of Beauty”, p.10, Cosimo, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we reverence anything in the mature, it is their virtues or their wisdom, and this is an easy matter. But we reverence the faults and follies of children. We should probably come considerably nearer to the true conception of things if we treated all grown-up persons, of all titles and types, with precisely that dark affection and dazed respect with which we treat the infantile limitations.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Children, Dark, Matter

  "The Defendant". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1901.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Order and reason, beauty and benevolence, are characteristics and conceptions which we find solely associated with the mind of man.

  Karl Pearson

  Men, Emotional, Order

  Karl Pearson (2007). “The Grammar of Science”, p.108, Cosimo, Inc.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Cricket - a game which the English, not being a spiritual people, have invented in order to give themselves some conception of eternity.

  Benjamin Mancroft, 3rd Baron Mancroft

  Sports, Spiritual, Order

  Bees in Some Bonnets (1979) p. 185

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Artist, Imagination, Track

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.153

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Intuition, Instinct, Hunches

  10 Copy quote