Virgil van Dijk Quotes

Put your choices in perspective.

A great interpreter of life ought not himself to need interpretation.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

Wisdom may best arise from a humbling reality.

Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.

The proper route to an understanding of the world is an examination of our errors about it.

Writing is how I find out what I believe and what I care most deeply about. It's how I sort through the mess of daily experience and try to make sense of it - by stepping out of it for a while. Writing is how I train a searchlight into the darker corners of my self and the world, as I'm sure I'd never do otherwise.

Begin challenging your assumptions. Your assumptions are the windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile or the light won't come in.

To realize that you do not understand is a virtue; Not to realize that you do not understand is a defect.

I think it's important to have perspective and to look at what you don't necessarily want to see.

In addition to giving comfort and joy, art also has the miraculous ability to let us live in other men's skins, to test our perceptions and beliefs against theirs, and perhaps to be changed as a result. It does this by portraying the world creatively, heightening our perception and enriching our understanding of things as they are.

O, would some Power give us, To see ourselves as others see us!

I have labored carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand human actions

Learn to see a problem from a higher level of understanding. Then, it dissolves before your eyes.

Many times I have written something, and after it was published, I understood what I was saying.

I'd ask people to keep in mind the idea that if you really understand something, it's even more important for you to consider the possibility of your wrongness. Even if it takes someone dumber than you to point that out.

In a discussion, the difficulty lies, not in being able to defend your opinion, but to know it.

Before you attempt to set things right, make sure you see things right.

We are often prophets to others only because we are our own historians.

Self examination is the key to insight, which is the key to wisdom

Wise it is to comprehend the whole.

I think writing is really about a journey of understanding. So you take something that seems very far away, and the more you write about it, the more you travel into it, and you see it from within.

Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.

Then I obviously didn't understand what it all meant, but I do now.

You get clarity as you get sober, and you get clarity as you get older.