John Jay Chapman Quotes

The world values the seer above all men, and has always done so. Nay, it values all men in proportion as they partake of the character of seers. The Elgin Marbles and a decision of John Marshall are valued for the same reason. What we feel in them is a painstaking submission to facts beyond the author's control, and to ideas imposed on him by his vision. So with Beethoven's Symphonies, with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations - with any conceivable output of the human mind of which you approve. You love them because you say, These things were not made, they were seen.

That's why they call you Seer. You see more than most.

It is the function of creative man to perceive and to connect the seemingly unconnected.

Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.

To see things in the seed, that is genius.

I'm not such a fan of imagination. If you're alive to details, they oftentimes suggest a richer or deeper imaginative line than you would have imagined.

The world values the seer above all men

A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see

Everything inspires me; sometimes I think I see things others don’t.

What is required is sight and insight- then you might add one more: excite.

There is no need to create. Genius comes only to those who know how to use their eyes and their intelligence.

Intelligence is composed mostly of imagination, insight, things that have nothing to do with reason.

Genius is rarely able to give any account of its own processes.

All great discoveries are made by men whose feelings run ahead of their thinking.

When I think of vision, I have in mind the ability to see above and beyond the majority.

Steve Jobs was Galileo in a past life. Discovery was instinctual for him.

My insights come in periods of working. There are wonderful moments of surprise, but I'm superstitious enough not to want to talk about them.

Vision is the true creative rhythm.

I enjoy looking beyond the obvious and look at the stories happening all around me - you kind of formulate things in your mind and get excited about them.

Imagination is the eye of the soul.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.

The best of seers is he who guesses well.

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience.

Vision is perhaps our greatest strength... it has kept us alive to the power and continuity of thought through the centuries, it makes us peer into the future and lends shape to the unknown.

Like the seasons of the year, like history, truth also repeats itself. But we seldom recognize it when great poets or true artists - the prophets and the priests of our day - present it to us in garments spick and span, following the fashion of the age, the slant of its fancy, the turn and temper of its mind.