Selected vision quotes

1. Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

2. I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it - keep going, keep going come what may. But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.

3. Dreams grow holy put in action; work grows fair through starry dreaming, But where each flows on unmingling, both are fruitless and in vain.

4. Without mathematics, we are blind.

5. We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

6. It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea destined to be translated into action.

7. Socialism, on the contrary, extends its function to the description of society as it should be, and the discovery of the means of making it what it should be.

8. I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more mundane times. Social: to see in imagination the society that is to be created, where individuals grow freely, and where hate and greed and envy die because there is nothing to nourish them. These things I believe, and the world, for all its horrors, has left me unshaken.

9. Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

10. Drawing is not what you see but what you must make others see.

11. They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

12. The best an American can look forward to is the lonely pleasure of one who stands at long last on a chilly and inhospitable mountaintop where few have been before, where few can follow and where few will consent to believe he has been.

13. I did think I did see all heaven before me, and the great God himself.

14. American foreign policy must be more than the management of crisis. It must have a great and guiding goal: to turn this time of American influence into generations of democratic peace.

15. Only the poet can look beyond the detail and see the whole picture.

16. The artist begins with a vision - a creative operation requiring effort. Creativity takes courage.

17. Many people miss opportunity because it came disguised in overalls.

18. The reward of renunciation is some good greater than the thing renounced. To renounce with no vision of such a good, from fear or in automatic obedience to a formula, is to weaken the springs of life, and to diminish the soul's resistance to this world.

19. I write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.

20. Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.

21. Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.

22. He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it.

23. You have to give people something to dream on.

24. Republicans are men of narrow vision, who are afraid of the future.

25. The prudent see only the difficulties, the bold only the advantages, of a great enterprise; the hero sees both; diminishes the former and makes the latter preponderate, and so conquers.

26. I want to see us build a country that is at ease with itself, a country that is confident and a country that is able and willing to build a better quality of life for all its citizens.

27. And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.

28. There is something silly about grown men and women striving to reduce their vision of themselves and of civilization to bean counting.

29. Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

30. Devotion, fervor, longing! Those are my pillars. We have to be the bridge to the future.

31. Imagination is the eye of the soul.

32. Every screenwriter worthy of the name has already directed his film when he has written his script.

33. The creator gives no heed to the critic unless he becomes a barren inventor.

34. As long as I breathe I hope. As long as I breathe I shall fight for the future, that radiant future, in which man, strong and beautiful, will become master of the drifting stream of his history and will direct it towards the boundless horizons of beauty, joy and happiness!

35. The best vision is insight.

36. A long-playing full shot is what always separates the men from the boys. Anybody can make movies with a pair of scissors and a two-inch lens.

37. Enhance and intensify one's vision of that synthesis of truth and beauty which is the highest and deepest reality.

38. My eyes close and uncomprehendingly see the dream in the infinite space that stretches away, elusive, before me.

39. Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

40. A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done.

41. I never thought before my death to see Youth's vision thus made perfect.

42. But the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.

43. The original concept [of Cool World], way back when I sold the film, was that a live action cartoonist would go to bed with a cartoon woman in the cartoon world. They had a child immediately that was a strange combination of live action and animation in one character. This son of the underground cartoonist hates himself for what he is and isn't and goes back to the real world to track his father down. The picture was originally an R rated horror film. Slash and the rest of the characters in Cool World were just friends of Holli and looked nothing like their child.

44. For the prevision is allied Unto the thing so signified; Or say, the foresight that awaits Is the same Genius that creates.

45. So I have these occasional visions that may or may not come true. [to Nikki Logan]

46. Herzog by his example gave me a model for the film artist: fearless, driven by his subjects, indifferent to commercial considerations, trusting his audience to follow him anywhere. In the 38 years since I saw my first Herzog film, after an outpouring of some 50 features and documentaries, he has never created a single film that is compromised, shameful, made for pragmatic reasons or uninteresting. Even his failures are spectacular.

47. But those who present directly and immediately the new forms and symbols are the artists-the dramatists, the musicians, the painters, the dancers, the poets, and those poets of the religious sphere we call saints. They portray the new symbols in the form of images-poetic, 'aural, plastic, or dramatic, as the case may be. They live out their imaginations.

48. Artists encounter the landscape they propose to paint-they look at it, observe it from this angle and that. They are, as we say, absorbed in it. Or, in the case of abstract painters, the encounter may be with an idea, an inner vision, that in turn may be led off by the brilliant colors on the palette or the inviting rough whiteness of the canvas.

49. The vision of the artist or the poet is the intermediate determinant between the subject (the person) and the objective pole (the world-waiting-to-be). It will be nonbeing until the poet's struggle brings forth an answer - meaning. The greatness of a poem or a painting is not that it portrays the thing observed or experienced, but that it portrays the artist's or the poet's vision cued off by his encounter with the reality. Hence the poem or the painting is unique, original, never to be duplicated. No matter how many times Monet returned to paint the cathedral at Rouen, each canvas was a new painting expressing a new vision.

50. Imagination is the outreaching of mind . . . . the bombardment of the conscious mind with ideas, impulses, images and every sort of psychic phenomena welling up from the preconscious. It is the capacity to 'dream dreams and see visions . . . .

51. I used to stay out in the forests and on the mountain and I would wake up before daylight to pray in the snow, in icy coldness, in rain, and I used to feel neither ill nor any slothfulness, because, as I now see, the Spirit was burning in me at that time. And it was there of course that one night in my sleep I heard a voice saying to me: 'You do well to fast: soon you will depart for your home country.' And again, a very short time later, there was a voice prophesying: 'Behold, your ship is ready.' And it was not close by, but, as it happened, two hundred miles away, where I had never been nor knew any person. And shortly thereafter I turned about and fled from the man with whom I had been for six years, and I came, by the power of God who directed my route to advantage (and I was afraid o nothing), until I reached that ship.

52. In a vision of the night, I saw a man whose name was Victoricus coming as it from Ireland with innumerable letters, and he gave me one of them, and I read the beginning of the letter: 'The Voice of the Irish', and as I was reading the beginning of the letter I seemed at that moment to hear the voice of those who were beside the forest of Foclut which is near the western sea, and the were crying as if with one voice: 'We beg you, holy youth, that you shall come and shall walk again among us.' And I was stung intensely in my heart so that I could read no more, and thus I awoke. Thanks be to God, because after so many ears the Lord bestowed on them according to their cry.

53. In order to obtain the optimum view of what takes place in front of me, I should have to lower my eyes a little. But I lower my eyes no more. In a word, I only see what appears close beside me, what I best see I see ill.

54. Within the shadow of the ship I watched their rich attire: Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and swam; and every track Was a flash of golden fire.

55. He had a sharp vision; no illusions lulled him to sleep except for an often exaggerated faith in his own ideas.

56. In the course of history, there have been three radicals: Jesus Christ, Don Quixote, and... me.

57. Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay.

58. I have fundamental reservations to this adaptation. First of all I would have liked to see the planet Solaris which the director unfortunately denied me as the film was to be a cinematically subdued work. And secondly - as I told Tarkovsky during one of our quarrels - he didn't make Solaris at all, he made Crime and Punishment. What we get in the film is only how this abominable Kelvin has driven poor Harey to suicide and then he has pangs of conscience which are amplified by her appearance; a strange and incomprehensible appearance. [...]

59. Tarkovsky reminds me of a sergeant from the time of Turgenev - he is very pleasant and extremely prepossessing and at the same time visionary and elusive. One cannot 'catch' him anywhere because he is always at a slightly different place already. This is simply the type of person he is. When I understood that I stopped bothering. This director cannot be reshaped anymore, and first of all one cannot convince him of anything as he is going to recast everything in his 'own way' no matter what.

60. Great artists are always far-seeing. They easily avoid the big stumbling blocks of fact. They rely on their own simplicity and vision. It is fact-fetichism that has given us those scores and scores of American books on America, the works of sociologists, anthropologists, topical 'problem' hunters, working-parties and statisticians, which in the end leave us empty. Henry James succeeds because he rejects information. He was himself the only information he required.

61. You can't stop us on the road to freedom You can't stop us 'cause our eyes can see Men with insight, men in granite Knights in armor intent on chivalry.

62. Lolita is one of our finest American novels, a triumph of style and vision, an unforgettable work, Nabokov's best (though not most characteristic) work, a wedding of Swiftian satirical vigor with the kind of minute, loving patience that belongs to a man infatuated with the visual mysteries of the world.

63. The romantic intoning, the declaimed clairvoyance Are parts of apotheosis, appropriate And of its nature, the idiom thereof.

64. I was doing Sorcerer's Apprentice with Mickey Mouse and I happened to have dinner on night with Leopold Stokowski. And Stokowski said, 'Oh, I'd love to conduct that for you.' ... Well, that led to not only doing this one little short subject but it got us involved to where I did all of Fantasia and before I knew it I ended up spending four hundred and some thousand dollars getting music with Stokowski. But we were in then and it was the point of no return. We went ahead and made it.

65. Our contribution to television is entertainment, created without deviation from our conception of what entertainment should be.

66. I saw all my colours in spirit.Wild,almost mad lines drew themselves in front of me.(On seeing Wagner's Lohengrin)

67. I made the decision that I couldn't not run. I had to run. This country is in great danger. It's in great difficulty. It's being taken the wrong way by a leadership team that has no real vision for the country other than trying to posture and pose and aim for winning the next election. I think Americans deserve a more visionary, a more selfless and a more dedicated leadership than that.

68. Hear the voice of the Bard, Who present, past, and future, sees; Whose ears have heard The Holy Word That walked among the ancient trees.

69. But shapes that come not at an earthly call, Will not depart when mortal voices bid.

70. This is a James Taylor moment and we are stuck with a piano player who wants to sound like Enya and a southern funk band that, somewhere along the line, fell into thinking Alabama is a sweet place to call home.

71. Hayley: I know what kind of music that I like, I love to sing. Bands like George and Missy Higgins are the guys that I like and that's the kind of music that I'd like to make.

72. A CEO need not understand deeply administrative, technical or political issues. But when it comes to implementing his vision, be it in improving services, contributing to society or improving the company's and employee's lives, he must be an uncontested leader.

73. People have said I'm a man of vision. What they don't know is that I'm surrounded by people who see farther than I do.

74. A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without vision is but drudgery. A vision with a task is the hope of the world.

75. Inclusiveness is disguised by the ability to offer a sometimes disturbed community a vision of themselves and the means to achieve it together.

76. 'I reached the point in the end where I didn't want to see another fader, and the only knob I wanted to play with was my own.' -on remastering Rust in Peace

77. What about the utopian thinkers of all ages, from the Prophets who had a vision of eternal peace, on through the Utopians of the Renaissance, etc.? Were they just dreamers? Or were they so deeply aware of new possibilities, of the changeability of social conditions, that they could visualize an entirely new form of social existence even though these new forms, as such, were not even potentially given in their own society? It is true that Marx wrote a great deal against utopian socialism, and so the term has a bad odor for many Marxists. But he is polemical against certain socialist schools which were, indeed, inferior to his system because of their lack of realism. In fact, I would say the less realistic basis for a vision of the uncrippled man and of a free society there is, the more is Utopia the only legitimate form of expressing hope. But they are not trans-historical as, for instance, is the Christian idea of the Last Judgment, etc. They are historical, but the product of rational imagination, rooted in an experience of what man is capable of and in a clear insight into the transitory character of previous and existing society.

78. We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a programme which seems neither a mere defence of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible:Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this has rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost.

79. The other gods! The other gods! The gods of the outer hells that guard the feeble gods of earth!... Look away... Go back... Do not see! Do not see! The vengeance of the infinite abysses... That cursed, that damnable pit... Merciful gods of earth, I am falling into the sky!

80. I do believe that everyone growing up faces differential opportunities. With me, it was books and travel and some good teachers. With somebody else, it may be a boy scout master. With somebody else, it will be a clergyman. Somebody else, an uncle who was wiser than the father. I think young people ought to seek that differential experience that is going to knock them off dead center. I was a typical American school boy. I happened to get straight A's and be pretty good in sports. But I had no great vision of what I could be. And I never had any yearning. My job was to live through Friday afternoon, get through the week, and eat something. And then along came these differential experiences that you don't look for, that you don't plan for, but, boy, you better not miss them. The things that make you bigger than you are. The things that give you a vision. The things that give you a challenge.

81. Is not the training of an artist a training in the due relation of one thing with another, and in the faculty of expressing that relation clearly; and, even more, a training in the faculty of disengaging from self the very essence of self - and passing that essence into other selves by so delicate means that none shall see how it is done, yet be insensibly unified? Is not the artist, of all men, foe and nullifier of partisanship and parochialism, of distortions and extravagance, the discoverer of that jack-o'-lantern - Truth; for, if Truth be not Spiritual Proportion I know not what it is. Truth it seems to me - is no absolute thing, but always relative, the essential symmetry in the varying relationships of life; and the most perfect truth is but the concrete expression of the most penetrating vision. Life seen throughout as a countless show of the finest works of Art; Life shaped, and purged of the irrelevant, the gross, and the extravagant; Life, as it were, spiritually selected - that is Truth; a thing as multiple, and changing, as subtle, and strange, as Life itself, and as little to be bound by dogma. Truth admits but the one rule: No deficiency, and no excess! Disobedient to that rule - nothing attains full vitality. And secretly fettered by that rule is Art, whose business is the creation of vital things.

82. O crystal well! Oh that on Thy silvered surface Thou wouldest mirror forth at once Those eyes desired Which are outlined in my heart! ~ 12

83. When Thou didst regard me, Thine eyes imprinted in me Thy grace: For this didst Thou love me again, And thereby mine eyes did merit To adore what in Thee they saw. ~ 32

84. But we have seen it in the air, A fairy like a William Pear

85. His eyes stayed open. Seeing nothing. Seeing everything

86. If you were here, you wouldn't have any eyes left.

87. (about Chinese eyes) I'm talking about the fact they have slits for eyes, man, all they see is net... their vertical vision is about an inch, but their horizontal vision-- it goes on and on and on, and on and on, and there's science to prove on it, too. For instance, you and me, we look at the world basically television shape, okay, the Chinese look at it: letterbox!

88. Laisenia Qarase, Prime Minister of Fiji (2000-): 'For as long as many of us could remember, he dominated our national life. His leadership was marked by discipline, vision and a keen and penetrating intellect. His dedication to this country was total. He worked tirelessly to make a unified nation from different communities; a nation to stand tall as a model of progress and harmony.'

89. I saw my Lord with the Eye of my heart, And I said: Truly there is no doubt that it is You. It is You that I see in everything; And I do not see You through anything (but You).

90. Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.

91. The Democratic Party...presents its case on a strong platform and strong candidates, on a proven record of past accomplishment, on the evidence that it alone has the vision and boldness to meet the challenge of leadership of the free world. (Boston 8-2-1960)

92. I have learned that In quiet places, reason abounds, that in quiet people there is vision and purpose, that many things are revealed to the humble that are hidden from the great.

93. Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.

94. With the supermarket as our temple and the singing commercial as our litany, are we likely to fire the world with an irresistible vision of America's exalted purpose and inspiring way of life?

95. Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind and within the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.

96. Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.

97. 'My only true regret, however, is that now that I see the world more clearly than ever, as I believe I do, I don't seem to have the time left to translate my visions into action as I would like.'

98. All my life I have had a certain idea of France.

99. Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.

100. For I am the size of what I see / not my height's size.