Denis Diderot Quotes

Out: Reading is fundamental. In: Feeling is fundamental.

We are astonished at thought, but sensation is equally wonderful.

We are the only beings on the planet who lead such rich internal lives that it's not the events that matter most to us, but rather, it's how we interpret those events that will determine how we think about ourselves and how we will act in the future.

People will feel the way they feel.

I like to use light as a material, but my medium is actually perception. I want you to sense yourself sensing - to see yourself seeing.

'Citylights' is for those people who know a lot but don't feel at all. It's time for them to feel, and this film will make those people, who know so much, feel because feeling is the life blood of human race, which is disappearing.

To think is an act. To feel is a fact.

There's no harm in talking to yourself, but try to avoid telling yourself jokes you've heard before.

[L]et my reader who is puzzled by my awkward explanations close his eyes for no more than two minutes, and see if he does not find himself suddenly not a compact human being at all, but only a consciousness on a sea of sound and touch . . .

Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there

Ideas are born from what is smelled, heard, seen, experienced, felt, emotionalized.

I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence.

...The body is affected by the image of the thing, in the same way as if the thing were actually present.

The senses don't just make sense of life in bold or subtle acts of clarity, they tear reality apart into vibrant morsels and reassemble them into a meaningful pattern.

There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness

Feel the world, instead of trying to understand the world.

In ordinary speech the words perception and sensation tend to be used interchangeably, but the psychologist distinguishes. Sensations are the items of consciousness--a color, a weight, a texture--that we tend to think of as simple and single. Perceptions are complex affairs that embrace sensation together with other, associated or revived contents of the mind, including emotions.

The truth is that art does not teach; it makes you feel, and any teaching that may arise from the feeling is an extra, and must not be stressed too much. In the modern world, and in Canada as much as anywhere, we are obsessed with the notion that to think is the highest achievement of mankind, but we neglect the fact that thought untouched by feeling is thin, delusive, treacherous stuff.

Your whole idea about yourself is borrowed-- borrowed from those who have no idea of who they are themselves.

To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything.

What happens behind your eyes is more important than what happens in front of them. This is a reversal from the way that we have been taught and the way that we had experienced the world as five sensory humans.

No mirror keeps its glances.

George Bernard Shaw said that thinking was the greatest of all human endeavors, but I would say that feeling was. Allowing yourself to feel things, to feel love or wrath, hatred, rage.

Ideas come from the Earth. They come from every human experience that you’ve either witnessed or have heard about, translated into your brain in your own sense of dialogue, in your own language form. Ideas are born from what is smelled, heard, seen, experienced, felt, emotionalized. Ideas are probably in the air, like little tiny items of ozone.

The heart lies and the head plays tricks on us, but the eyes see true. Look with your eyes. Hear with your ears. Taste with your mouth. Smell with your nose. Feel with your skin. Then comes the thinking, afterward, and in a way knowing the truth.