Quotations About Insight

‘Insight’ is a great word. An insight is going to help us succeed, to beat the competition. But just what is an insight? How can you be sure you’ve got one?

An insight is a fresh and unexpected perspective. It gets the following reaction from those involved: “Wow, yes, you’re right. I’d never really thought of it like that before, but you’re absolutely right. You really understand what’s going on here”. 
Achieving that kind of reaction is not easy. It means you have to think of something that no one else has thought of before. Or, more accurately, that no one else in your market has thought of before. It requires that you look at things differently. For that reason, most of the great sources of ‘insight inspiration’ are from outside of your category, and often outside of your (geographic) marketplace.

Quotes About Insight

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight. ~ Thomas Carlyle

A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

All of the top achievers I know are life-long learners… Looking for new skills, insights,and ideas. If they’re not learning, they’re not growing… not moving toward excellence.~ Denis Waitley

Humour brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendlyunderstanding. ~Agnes Repplier

To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this matterfor experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soulgrasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists. ~Arnold Bennett

The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it wereallowed freedom of action. ~Denis Diderot

Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners. ~ Eric Hoffer

If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it’s becausethey lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice),and that’s the most revolutionary insight of all. ~Erica Jong

Hamming’s Motto: The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers. ~Hamming

The purpose of education is to keep a culture from being drowned in senselessrepetitions, each of which claims to offer a new insight. ~Harold Rosenberg

The worst part a man can suffer is to have insight into much and power over nothing.~Herodotus

Some problems are just too complicated for rational, logical solutions. They admit ofinsights, not answers. ~Jerome Wiesner

Their is nothing so terrible as activity without insight. ~Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The secret of man’s success resides in his insight into the mood’s of people, and his tactin dealing with them. ~ Josiah Gilbert Holland

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight. ~Leo Rosten

The best vision is insight. ~Malcolm S. Forbes

As the unity of the modern world becomes increasingly a technological rather than asocial affair, the techniques of the arts provide the most valuable means of insight intothe real direction of our own collective purposes. ~Marshall Mcluhan

A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight andunderstanding. ~Marshall Mcluhan

I do not hesitate to read all good books in translations. What is really best in any book istranslatable – any real insight or broad human sentiment. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whetherhe comes by them consistently or not. ~Stephen Vizinczey

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time,insight into and understanding of many things. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannotteach what is revealed; he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight ratherthan to preach. ~Walter Lippmann