Laurence Olivier Quotes

One thing I have seen over and over again in life is that there is virtually no correlation between intelligence and common sense. IQ doesn't seem to translate that way.

It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.

I think you need to have lived more to truly know a man's heart. You need to have made more transactions in life to know the worth of the coin you spend so freely

We spend our lives guessing at what's going on inside everybody else, and when we happen to get lucky and guess right, we think we 'understand.' Such nonsense. Even a monkey at a computer will type a word now and then.

To really get to know people and discover humanity, which is what I truly think writers and actors do, you've got to be interested in other human beings, you have to be interested in humanity in general, and you have to do some discovering of humanity and different people.

What makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love.

I never think of things rationally or intellectually. I swear, every single decision I make is just instinct and my instincts tend to be accurate.

Thus the feeling I sometimes have - which all of us who work closely with aphasiacs have - that one cannot lie to an aphasiac. He cannot grasp your words, and cannot be deceived by them; but what he grasps he grasps with infallible precision, namely the expression that goes with the words, the total, spontaneous, involuntary expressiveness which can never be simulated or faked, as words alone can, too easily.

Women have an incredible ability to pick up on emotional signals. For example, there are some wolves that are so clever they have learned to dress up like sheep. Man says, "Looks like a sheep. Talks like a sheep." Woman says, "Ain't no sheep!"

I was thinking one of the great things about fiction is we, as a race, only get to look out of our own eyes at the world. And fiction is a fantastic way of looking out through somebody else's eyes.

I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.

You are a child if you thought I didn’t know, for all your smothering yourself under that hot lap robe. Of course, I knew. Why else do you think I’ve been—” He stopped suddenly and a silence fell between them. He picked up the reins and clucked to the horse.

He's lost something, some illusion I used to think was necessary to him. He's come to realize he too is human. Or is this a performance, for my benefit, to show me he's up-to-date? Maybe men shouldn't have been told about their own humanity. It's only made them uncomfortable. It's only made them trickier, slier, more evasive, harder to read.

The rational intellect doesn't have a great deal to do with love, and it doesn't have a great deal to do with art. I am often, in my writing, great leaps ahead of where I am in my thinking, and my thinking has to work its way slowly up to what the "superconscious" has already shown me in a story or poem.

Deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling, and all truth is a species of revelation

One of the many sad results of the Industrial Revolution was that we came to depend more than ever on the intellect, and to ignore the intuition with its symbolic thinking.

The older you get, the easier it is to spot the phonies. And I just think, how unpleasant for them.

We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking.

In a recent issue of Parade Magazine when asked for "Advice for a Younger You," Glenn Close responded: "I'd tell myself to listen to my heart. Listen to that little voice that says, 'Mmm, I don't think so.' Because when you override that, you basically override who you are.

Empathy occurs when we suspend our single-minded focus of attention and instead adopt a double-minded foucus of attention. When our attention lapses into single focus, empathy has been turned off. When we shift our attention to dual focus empathy has been turned on. Empathy is our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling and to respond to there thought or feelings with an approriate emotion. Empathy makes the other person feel valued, enabling them to feel that their thoughts and feelings have been heard.

Thinking is the problem. Thinking is hazardous to your progress in life. Don't think - feel.

What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul's emphasis is always right.

I think that business practices would improve immeasurably if they were guided by "feminine" pinciples, qualities like love, care, and intuition.

I just think that things get easier as you get older and wiser and more experienced. You get more confident about who you are as you get older. I find that really comforting.

Emotional intelligence is what humans are good at and that's not a sideshow. That's the cutting edge of human intelligence.