Kenneth > Kenneth's Quotes

“The healing hero, therefore, is the one who finds some creative way out, a way not already known, and does not follow a pattern. Ordinary sick people follow ordinary patterns, but the shaman cannot be cured by the usual methods of healing. He has to find the unique way, the only way that applies to him. The creative personality who can do that then becomes a healer and is recognized as such by his colleagues.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus

“Man must suffer to be wise.
Head-winds heavy with past iol
Stray his course and cooud his heart;
Sorrow takes the blind soul's part--
Man grows wise against his will.
For powers who rule from thrones above
By ruthlessness commend their love.”
― Aeschylus, Agamemnon

“The auto-erotism of artists resembles that of illegitimate or neglected children who from their tenderest years must protect themselves from the destructive influence of people who have no love to give them—who develop bad qualities for that very purpose and later maintain an invincible egocentrism by remaining all their lives infantile and helpless or by actively offending against the moral code or the law.”
― C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

“Modern mass culture, aimed at the 'consumer', the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

“What is art? (...) Like a declaration of love: the consciousness of our dependence on each other. A confession. An unconscious act that none the less reflects the true meaning of life—love and sacrifice.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“I am only interested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“...art must must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out towards it; that art must give man hope and faith. And the more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal that stands in opposition - otherwise life becomes impossible! Art symbolises the meaning of our existence.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

“Man has, since the Enlightenment, dealt with things he should have ignored.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“The beautiful is hidden from the eyes of those who are not searching for the truth, for whom it is contra-indicated. But the profound lack of spirituality of those people who see art and condemn it, the fact that they are neither willing nor ready to consider the meaning and aim of their existence in any higher sense, is often masked by the vulgarly simplistic cry, 'I don't like it!', 'It's boring!' It is not a point that one can argue; but it like the utterance of a man born blind who is being told about a rainbow. He simply remains deaf to the pain undergone by the artist in order to share with others the truth he has reached.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

“Art is a meta-language, with the help of which people try to communicate with one another; to impart information about themselves and assimilate the experience of others. Again, this has not to do with practical advantage but with realising the idea of love, the meaning of which is in sacrifice: the very antithesis of pragmatism. I simply cannot believe that an artist can ever work only for the sake of 'self-expression.' Self-expression if meaningless unless it meets with a response. For the sake of creating a spiritual bond with others it can only be an agonising process, one that involves no practical gain: ultimately it is an act of sacrifice. But surely it cannot be worth the effort merely for the sake of hearing one's own echo?”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

“The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“Too often it is said that there is no absolute truth, but only opinion and private judgment; that each of us is conditioned, in his view of the world, by his own peculiarities, his own taste and bias; that there is no external kingdom of truth to which, by patience and discipline, we may at last obtain admittance, but only truth for me, for you, for every separate person. By this habit of mind one of the chief ends of human effort is denied, and the supreme virtue of candour, of fearless acknowledgment of what is, disappears from our moral vision. Of such scepticism mathematics is a perpetual reproof;”
― Bertrand Russell, The Bertrand Russell Collection

“Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back. Sometimes the problem has mutated or disappeared. Often it is still there as strong as it ever was.”
― Donald Kingsbury, Courtship Rite

“An individualist—a man who has no intention of ever exploring the goals of others because he has no intention of compromising with his own—may become: (a) a hermit of limited goals, (b) a tyrant surrounded by slaves with rebellion in his future and covert hostility in his present.”
― Donald Kingsbury, Courtship Rite

“The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”
― Albert Einstein

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
― Albert Einstein

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
― Albert Einstein

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”
― Albert Einstein

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
― Albert Einstein

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
― Albert Einstein

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”
― Albert Einstein, The World As I See It

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.”
― Albert Einstein

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
― Bob Samples

“Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamic of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions sown are directly valid for all mankind”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”
― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis