Ralph Vaughan Williams Quotes

No position is so false as having understood and still remaining alive.

My name is James Guckert. Well, when you read it, it's always pronounced some other way.

The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.

People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.

They would hear 3000 and think it was the year 3000, I was hoping it would sort of disorient them and prepare them for the strange message they were about to receive.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.

Bubbles are weird things. They're not fragile. They're infinitely flexible. They're not what we think they are.

I don't want any gimmicks. The fact that people think that Whack is a gimmick is so crazy.

It was a long time before I understood what the word 'specific' was. I remember being a kid and thinking it was 'pacific,' and being like, 'Can you be more pacific?' And I believed that for maybe five, six years until someone was like, 'It's 'specific.''

The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.

The world progresses only through misunderstanding.

...a truth you don't understand is more dangerous than a lie.

Finding beauty in the dissonance.

Your enemy is one who misunderstands you; why should you not rise above the fog and see his error and respect him for the good qualities you find in him?

Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.

Dissonance is the truth about harmony.

fame is merely the fact of being misunderstood by millions of people.

I love to read theories without ever using them when working... The paradoxical fact in the aesthetic is that theories are also true in reverse.

Sometimes I'm confused by what I think is really obvious. But what I think is really obvious obviously isn't obvious.

I lift my arm out of the water. It's a log. Put it back under and it blows up even bigger. People see the log and call it a twig. They yell at me because I can't see what they see. Nobody can explain to me why my eyes work different than theirs. Nobody can make it stop.

You ever have that feeling? Like you’ve known someone your whole life but you don’t know them at all.

How paradoxical it is to search reality for the pictures that are stored in one's memory.

Men tighten the knot of confusion Into perfect misunderstanding.

A mutual misunderstanding.