Colin Wilson quotes - page 7

One cannot ignore half of life for the purposes of science, and then claim that the results of science give a full and adequate picture of the meaning of life. All discussions of 'life' which begin with a description of man's place on a speck of matter in space, in an endless evolutionary scale, are bound to be half-measures, because they leave out most of the experiences which are important to use as human beings. (Colin Wilson)
The complex develops out of the simple. View quote
Colin Wilson
I was aggressively nonpolitical. I believed that people who make a fuss about politics do so because their heads are too empty to think about more important things. So I felt nothing but impatient contempt for Osborne's Jimmy Porter and the rest of the heroes of social protest. View quote
Colin Wilson
If I'd stayed on in London and carried on going to literary parties, it would have wrecked me as a writer. View quote
Colin Wilson
A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors. View quote
Colin Wilson
The mind has exactly the same power as the hands; not merely to grasp the world, but to change it. View quote
Colin Wilson
Whereas in the past optimism had been regarded as rather shallow - because 'oh well, it's just your temperament, you happen to be just a cheerful sort of person' - what I wanted to do was to establish that in fact it is the pessimists who are allowing all kinds of errors to creep into their work. View quote
Colin Wilson
Man should possess an infinite appetite for life. It should be self-evident to him, all the time, that life is superb, glorious, endlessly rich, infinitely desirable. View quote
Colin Wilson
It is the fallacy of all intellectuals to believe that intellect can grasp life. It cannot, because it works in terms of symbols and language. View quote
Colin Wilson
Its founder may have not been a great occultist, but he was a great man. View quote
Colin Wilson
Existentialism is romanticism, and romanticism is the feeling that man is not the mere he has always taken himself for. (Colin Wilson)
Art is naturally concerned with man in his existential aspect, not in his scientific aspect. View quote
Colin Wilson
Religion, mysticism and magic all spring from the same basic 'feeling' about the universe: a sudden feeling of meaning, which human beings sometimes 'pick up' accidentally, as your radio might pick up some unknown station. View quote
Colin Wilson
It is true that reality exists apart from us; but what we mistake for the world is actually a world constituted by us, selected from an infinitely complex reality. View quote
Colin Wilson
Yet there was an air of good humor about their idealism that made me feel they would not be too offended if I admitted that I regard socialists as well-meaning but muddle-headed brigands. View quote
Colin Wilson
We see here a phenomena that we shall encounter again in relation to Geller: that when a scientist or a "rationalist" sets himself up as the defender of reason, he often treats logic with a disrespect that makes one wonder what side he is on. View quote
Colin Wilson
No matter how honest scientists think they are, they are still influenced by various unconscious assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. View quote
Colin Wilson
When we are lulled into somnolence by lack of challenge every molehill tends to become a mountain, every minor inconvenience an intolerable imposition. View quote
Colin Wilson
Nothing is further from sadism, for example, than the cheerful, optimistic mentality of a Shaw or Wells. View quote
Colin Wilson
I was aggressively nonpolitical. I believed that people who make a fuss about politics do so because their heads are too empty to think about more important things. View quote
Colin Wilson
His everyday conscious self is only a small part of the mind, like the final crescent of the moon. In moments of crisis, the full moon suddenly appears. (Colin Wilson)
The real importance of Swedenborg lies in the doctrines he taught, which are the reverse of the gloom and hell-fire of other breakaway sects. View quote
Colin Wilson
In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. But his kingship is kingship over nothing. It brings no powers and privileges, only loss of faith and exhaustion of the power to act. Its world is a world without values. View quote
Colin Wilson
All men are stuck in a kind of fog. They're surrounded by a wall of fog. They think this is perfectly normal, but it's not. View quote
Colin Wilson
God is Divine Goodness, and Jesus is Divine Wisdom, and Goodness has to be approached through Wisdom. View quote
Colin Wilson