Clifton Fadiman Quotes

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book.

Meditation here may think down hours to moments. Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head and learning wiser grow without his books.

The object of studying philosophy is to know one's own mind, not other people's.

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.

The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.

Through writing, through that process, they realize that they become more intelligent, and more honest and more imaginative than they can be in any other part of their life.

I write in order to find out what I truly know and how I really feel about certain things. Writing requires me to go much deeper into my thoughts and memories than conversation does. Writing provides the solitude necessary to reflect on being in this world.

There's so much of our psychological makeup which is impermissible for us to explore because it's inappropriate or perverse or scary. I'm interested in exploring that in myself. I try to be honest with myself about everything that I feel. I'm not saying I'm able to do that all the time, but it's something I'm interested in.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn't know was in you, or in the world.

You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. It's one of the great things poetry does.

We are wiser than we know.

One is constantly trying to figure out what came together in one's childhood. Lots of people spend significant portions of their lives in therapy - especially in the States - trying to work out who they are. I'm certain there is a little of that in the business of writing. That would explain why certain images and themes recur.

Spend time in your head and figure yourself out. Start taking note of all the things you do that you don't like, and then you're more conscious of it, and you learn.

That's what my music is good for - clearing out the house and being alone.

If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.

During the act of writing I have told myself something that I didn't know I knew.

Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.

The positive thing about writing is that you connect with yourself in the deepest way. You get a chance to know who you are, to know what you think. You begin to have a relationship with your mind.

Our growing thought Makes growing revelation.

Knowing who you are begins in the mind.

I was 45 when I wrote most of this book [Hungry Heart ], at what felt like a halfway point in my life, and I thought, If I can't be honest now, when will it happen? It was so hard to step away from the [protection of] fiction, but I'm ready to talk start telling their truth.