Quotes about Creative Vision

Visions of Worlds

World of Culture

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton (December 25, 1642 – March 20, 1726/27), English mathematician, astronomer, and physicist

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.
John Fitzgerald (February 11, 1863 – October 2, 1950), American politician

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.
Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924), American politician and the 28th President of the United States

What would it be like to have not only color vision but culture vision, the ability to see the multiple worlds of others.
Mary Catherine Bateson (born December 8, 1939), American writer and cultural anthropologist

Living Into the Great Paradox, I strive toward my vision, while accepting gratefully whatever life serves up. I work to bring about my vision of the future, which is based on my value system of what is right, just, noble, compassionate, generous, humane, peaceful, and loving. Simultaneously, I accept that my vision is based on only my opinions and prejudices, and I honor all points of view and value systems, no matter how different from my own.
Jonathan Lockwood Huie, American author of self-awareness books

There is beauty and adventure in the commonplace for those with eyes to see beyond.
Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We could say we want the Web to reflect a vision of the world where everything is done democratically. To do that, we get computers to talk with each other in such a way as to promote that ideal.
Tim Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), English computer scientist

Meaningful Vision

The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.
Publilius Syrus (fl. 85–43 BC), Latin writer

Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American Transcendentalist philosopher, essayist

People only see what they are prepared to see.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.
Charles Dickens (February 7, 1812 –June 9, 1870), English writer

A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862), American poet, transcendentalist philosopher

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
Henry David Thoreau

What we see depends mainly on what we are looking for.
John Lubbock (April 30,1834 – 28 May 1913), banker, philanthropist, scientist and polymath

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Oscar Wilde (October 16, 1854 –November 30, 1900), Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
Henri Bergson (18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941), French philosopher

When I eat a tomato I look at it the way anyone else would. But when I paint a tomato, then I see it differently.
Henri Matisse (December 31, 1869 –November 3,1954), French artist

A great thought begins by seeing something differently, with a shift of the mind’s eye.
Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955), German-born theoretical physicist

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
Albert Einstein

Art does not reproduce the visible, rather it makes visible.
Paul Klee (December 18, 1879 –June 29, 1940), Swiss-German artist

The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.
Paul Klee

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.
Pablo Picasso (October 25, 1881 –April 8, 1973) Spanish painter and sculptor

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.
Pablo Picasso

Painting is a blind man’s profession. He never paints what he sees, but what he feels.
Pablo Picasso

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (29 June 1900 – 31 July 1944), French writer, poet and pioneering aviator

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
James Michener (February 3, 1907 – October 16, 1997), American author

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
Simone Weil (February 3,1909 –August 24, 1943), French philosopher, mystic, and political activist

Inside yourself or outside, you never have to change what you see, only the way you see it.
Thaddeus Golas (June 15,1924 –April 16,1997), American author

Things don’t change. You change your way of looking, that’s all.
Carlos Castaneda (December 25, 1925 –April 27, 1998), American author and anthropologist

Life is the movie you see through your own eyes. It makes little difference what’s happening out there. It’s how you take it that counts.
Denis Waitley (born 1933), American motivational speaker, writer

Creative Vision

The greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.
Aristotle (384 – 322 BC), Greek philosopher

To develop a complete mind, study the science of art, study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.
Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519), Italian Renaissance painter and polymath

When you look at a wall spotted with stains…you may discover a resemblance to various landscapes, beautiful with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees. Or again, you may see battles and figures in action, or strange faces and costumes, and an endless variety of objects which you could reduce to complete and well-drawn figures.
Leonardo Da Vinci

In painting, vision has nothing to do with sight.
Andrew Hamilton (c.1676 – August 4, 1741), Scottish lawyer

Sight is a faculty; seeing is an art.
George Perkins Marsh (March 15, 1801 – July 23, 1882), American diplomat and philologist

Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and who can say which has the wider vision?
Victor Hugo (February 26, 1802 –May 22,1885), French poet, novelist, and dramatist

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.
James Whistler (July 10, 1834 – July 17, 1903), American artist

Some men see things as they are and ask ‘why?
I dream things that never were and ask, ‘why not?
George Bernard Shaw (July 26, 1856 –November 2, 1950), Irish playwright

Originality depends only on the character of the drawing and the vision peculiar to each artist.
Georges Seurat (December 2, 1859 –March 29,1891), French post-Impressionist painter

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil. The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream.
James Allen (November 28, 1864 –January 24,1912), British philosophical writer

I walk in the garden, I look at the flowers and shrubs and trees and discover in them an exquisiteness of contour, a vitality of edge, or a vigour of spring, as well as an infinite variety of colour that no artefact I have seen in the last sixty years can rival…each day, as I look, I wonder where my eyes were yesterday.
Bernhard Berenson (June 26, 1865 – October 6, 1959), American art historian

There is no art without contemplation.
Robert Henri (June 24, 1865 – July 12, 1929), American painter

Philosophy, for Plato, is a kind of vision, the ‘vision of truth’…Everyone who has done any kind of creative work has experienced, in a greater or less degree, the state of mind in which, after long labour, truth or beauty appears, or seems to appear, in a sudden glory – it may only be about some small matter, or it may be about the universe. I think that most of the best creative work, in art, in science, in literature, and in philosophy, has been a result of just such a moment.
Bertrand Russell (May 18,1872 –February 2,1970), British philosopher, mathematician, writer

A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946), American novelist, poet, playwright

Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter — to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water.
Albert Schweitzer (January 14,1875 –September 4,1965), French-German theologian, organist, philosopher, and physician

Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.
Paul Klee (December 18, 1879 –June 29, 1940), Swiss-German artist
Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.
Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967), prominent American realist painter

Therefore art means: you have to believe, to have faith, that is, cultivate vision.
Josef Albers (March 19, 1888 – March 25, 1976), German-born American artist

That is why I believe that art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man’s spiritual vision.
Herbert Read (December 4,1893 –June 12,1968), English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher

Now I really make the little idea from clay, and I hold it in my hand. I can turn it, look at it from underneath, see it from one view, hold it against the sky, imagine it any size I like, and really be in control almost like God creating something.’
Henry Moore (July 30, 1898 –August 31, 1986), English artist

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (29 June 1900 – 31 July 1944), French writer, poet and pioneering aviator

If you can dream it, you can do it.
Walt Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966), American entrepreneur, animator, and film produce

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both.
James A Michener (February 3, 1907 – October 16, 1997), American author

To achieve lasting literature, fictional or factual, a writer needs perceptive vision, absorptive capacity, and creative strength.”
Lawrence Clark Powell, (September 3, 1906–March 14, 2001), American author librarian, literary critic

If the individual is narrowly concentrated on the goal, to the exclusion of other relevant aspects of the problem situation, he is often unable to achieve a solution. The creative thinker must stand sufficiently detached from his work.
Mary Henle (July 14, 1913 -November 17, 2007), American psychologist

The impulse to write a novel comes from a momentary unified vision of life.
Sir Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson (August 11,1913 –May 31,1991), English novelist and short story writer

It was an elevating, transforming vision: a new, fresh, vigorous, and above all morally regenerate people rising from the obscurity to defend the battlements of liberty and then in triumph standing forth, heartening and sustaining the cause of freedom everywhere.
Bernard Bailyn (born September 9, 1922), American historian and author

If you ask me, what is helpful to creativity is training the eye to notice things, to observe closely and precisely, being careful not to make a muddle of it.
Ian Graham (born 12 November 1923), British historian, Mayanist

I have a flood of ideas in my mind. I just follow my vision.
Yayoi Kusama (born March 22, 1929), Japanese artist and writer

The marvelous vision of the Peaceable Kingdom, in which all violence has been overcome and all men, women, and children live in loving unity with nature, calls for its realization in our day-to-day lives. Instead of being an escapist dream, it challenges us to anticipate what it promises. Every time we forgive our neighbor, every time we make a child smile, every time we show compassion to a suffering person, every time we arrange a bouquet of flowers, offer care to tame or wild animals, prevent pollution, create beauty in our homes and gardens, and work for Peace and justice among peoples and nations we are making the vision come true.
Henri J.M. Nouwen (January 24, 1932 – September 21, 1996), Dutch Catholic priest, professor, writer

While most managers spend their time attempting to predict the future accurately -and while that’s valuable -the best managers are able to generate a future which was not going to happen otherwise – that is, a future which was not predictable.
Werner Erhard (born John Paul Rosenberg; September 5, 1935), American author and critical thinker

Our senses are indeed our doors and windows on this world, in a very real sense the key to the unlocking of meaning and the wellspring of creativity.
Jean Houston (born 10 May 1937), American author

Vision together with imagination is what makes a creative idea become a work of art.
Hap Hagood (born in 1946), American artist and sculptor

Clarity of painting comes from clarity of vision. A painter has to be emotionally right out there and present, both to perceive and to express.
Kate Palmer (born on July 28, 1948), American artist

Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.
Haruki Murakami (born January 12, 1949), Japanese writer

I see the shape of the poem before I start writing, and the writing is just the process of arriving at the shape.
Carol Ann Duffy (born 23 December 1955), Scottish poet and playwright

To paint from the heart is to render your vision without compromise.
Stella Violano (born in 1965), American artist

I love when people have their own creative vision, when a person stands out and tries different things.
Ciara (born October 25, 1985), American singer, songwriter, and actress

Creative expansion cannot happen without vision.
Pearl Zhu, American author and innovator

Creativity is infused with an inner cohesion and comes from a vision of uniqueness.
Pearl Zhu

You must capture in your painting your own internal impressions and visions.
Van Waldron, American artist

I try to empathize with the retinal image, to try to find a connection in creating a ‘felt’ sense of structure, form and value.
Jeanean Songco Martin, American painter, art educator and musician.

Vision as the method

Enhance and intensify one’s vision of that synthesis of truth and beauty which is the highest and deepest reality.
Ovid (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), Roman poet

The instruction shows the way and the method. The vision is the work of one who has wished to see.
Japanese proverb

The eye altering, alters all.
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827), English poet and painter

Better keep youself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
George Bernard Shaw (July 26, 1856 –November 2, 1950), Irish playwright

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.
Kahlil Gibran (January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931), Lebanese-American artist, poet, and writer

I believed that by a process of what I can only describe as inward dilation of the eyes I could increase my actual vision.
Paul Nash (May 11, 1889 –July 11, 1946), British surrealist painter

The organization of light and shadow effects produce a new enrichment of vision.
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (July 20, 1895 – November 24, 1946), Hungarian painterand photographer

The popular eye is not untrained; it is only wrongly trained – trained by inferior and insincere visual representations.
Ben Shahn (September 12, 1898 – March 14, 1969), Lithuanian-bornAmerican artist

For the resolving powers of our scientific instruments decide, at a given moment, of the size and the vision of our Universe, and of the image we then make of ourselves.
Albert Claude (August 24, 1899 –May 22, 1983), Belgian medical doctor and biologist

I looked with chameleon eyes upon the changing face of the world, looked with anonymous vision upon my uncompleted self.
Anais Nin (February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977) French essayist and memoirist

I hold it imperative to evolve an instrument of thought which will aid in cutting through all cultural opiates, past and present, so that a direct, immediate, and truly free vision can be achieved.
Clyfford Still (November 30, 1904 – June 23, 1980), American painter

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision.
Ayn Rand (February, 2 1905 – March 6, 1982), Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright

I had always made pictures as I thought I saw the world, focusing on what lay in front, but this is not how one sees the world. It only frames the centre and cuts off the lateral vision, which lies unfocused. Now I found that I could turn my eye to the adjacent field of vision, seeing another focus, an extension which I added to the original. Instead of stopping at two focuses, I looked further to the side, adding another and yet another…
Joseph Plaskett (July 12, 1918 –September 21, 2014), Canadian painter

The fact was I had the vision… I think everyone has… what we lack is the method.
Jack Kerouac ( March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), American novelist and poet

Discover the tools to build your own vision.
Mary Anne Radmacher, American writer and artist

Symbolic World

Knowledge is love and light and vision.
Helen Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968), American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was known as a deaf-blind genius

The visible world only becomes the real world by the operation of thought.
Jean Metzinger (June 24,1883 –November 3, 1956), French painter, theorist, writer and poet

A new vision and understanding of something demands a new way of talking about it, for the old terminology gets in the way of this effort. Stubbornly entrenched behind the words coined by a particular conceptual orientation are its secrete prejudices. Any attempt to open out an adequately human vista onto the phenomena of undisturbed existence must include a critique of the most important idea of traditional biology, physiology, and psychology.
Medard Boss (October 4, 1903 – December 21, 1990), Swiss psychoanalytic psychiatrist

A different language is a different vision of life.
Federico Fellini (January 20, 1920 – October 31, 1993) was an Italian film director and scriptwriter

We might hypothetically possess ourselves of every technological resource on the North American continent, but as long as our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be revolutionary but not transformative.
Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012), American poet, essayist and radical feminist

Vision doesn’t work like a camera; the mind is an interpreter of constantly fed information – not just from your eyes, but also from all your sensory inputs, simultaneously. These are your interfaces to the world. Your mind decodes and understands the information based on a lifetime of constructions, memories, desires and learning… it is through all that that we “see.”
Doug and Mike Starn (born 1961), American artists, identical twins

Our job is not to set things right but to see them right.
Eric Butterworth( September 12, 1916 –April 17, 2003), Canadian and American theologian, philosopher,spiritual icon in the Unity Movement

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.
Pablo Picasso (October 25, 1881 –April 8, 1973) Spanish painter and sculptor

You cannot escape the results of your thoughts. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain or rise with your thoughts, your vision, your ideal. You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration.
James Allen (November 28, 1864 –January 24,1912), British philosophical writer

Social World

Dialogues of Visions

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American Transcendentalist philosopher, essayist

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.
George Eliot (November 22, 1819 –December 22, 1880), English novelist, poet, journalist

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.
Andrew Carnegie (November 25, 1835 – August 11, 1919), Scottish-American industrialist

The great artists are those who impose their personal vision upon humanity.
Guy de Maupassant (August 5, 1850 –July 6, 1893), French writer

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.
Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924), American politician and the 28th President of the United States

The golden rule of conduct is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never all think alike and we shall always see Truth in fragment and from different points of vision.
Mahatma Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), the leader of the Indian independence movement, the Father of the Nation

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (June 29, 1900 –July 31, 1944), French writer and poet

Only he who has a different visual opening can see the world in another way and can pass on to his neighbour the information required to broaden his field of view…let us get used to looking at the world through the eyes of others.
Bruno Munari (October 24, 1907 – September 30, 1998), Italian artist, designer, and inventor

The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities.We need men who can dream of things that never were.
John F. Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), American politician, the 35th President of the United States

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.
Warren Bennis (March 8, 1925 – July 31, 2014), American scholar, organizational consultant and author

My vision of a real humanity is of pure individuals relating to each other, but not tied in any relationship. They will be loving to each other, but not being possessive of each other. They will be sharing with each other all their joys and all their blessings, but never even in their dreams thinking of dominating, thinking of enslaving the other person.
Osho (December 11, 1931 –January 19, 1990), Indian spiritual teacher and guru international following

The core of any family is what is changeless, what is going to be there -shared vision and values.
Stephen R. Covey (October 24, 1932 – July 16, 2012), American educator, author, businessman

A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done.
Ralph Nader (born February 27, 1934), American political activist, author, lecturer

Globalism began as a vision of a world with free trade, shared prosperity, and open borders. These are good, even noble things to aim for.
Deepak Chopra (born October 22, 1947), Indian-American physician, a holistic health, “New Age guru”

A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.”
John C. Maxwell (born February 20, 1947), American author, speaker and pastor

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today,and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Melody Beattie (born 2 July 1948), American author of self-help books

Make sure you are the boss. I don’t think I would encourage executives that work for me to blog. There can be only 1 public vision for an organization.
Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958), American businessman, investor, author, television personality

Good leaders have vision and inspire others to help them turn vision into reality. Great leaders create more leaders, not followers. Great leaders have vision, share vision, and inspire others to create their own.
Roy T. Bennett, American author of of self-help books

Building a shared vision. This can be achieved through empowering individuals to create a common single image of the future and the organization.
Max Cesar King, American author (Make Winners!)

Inner World

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.
Thucydides ( c.460 – c.400 BC), Ancient Greek historian and general

Yesterday is but a dream,
Tomorrow is only a vision.
But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Kālidāsa (c. 4th–5th c. CE) Indian writer and poet

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.
David Hume (7 May 1711 – 25 August 1776), Scottish philosopher, historian

Vision motivates, sustains and dispels doubt.
Thomas Young (13 June 1773 – 10 May 1829) English physician and polymath

I have seen gleams in the face and eyes of the man that have let you look into a higher country.
Thomas Carlyle (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881), Scottish philosopher and writer

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.
Thomas Carlyle

The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn,—not the material of my every-day existence–but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, editor, and literary critic

I mean that I value vision, and dread being struck stone blind.
Charlotte Brontë (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855), English novelist and poet

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.
George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), English novelist, poet

I shut my eyes in order to see.
Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903), French post-Impressionist artist

We lift ourselves by our thought. We climb upon our vision of ourselves. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always everywhere.
Orison Swett Marden (11 June 1848– March 10 1924), American inspirational author and founder of Success magazine

We lift ourselves by our thought. We climb upon our vision of ourselves. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always everywhere.
Orison Swett Marden

The size of your accomplishments, the quality of your achievement, will depend very largely on how big a man you see in yourself, what sort of image you get of your possible self, yourself at your best.
Orison Swett Marden

Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
Carl Gustav Jung (26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961), Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst

Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.
Carl Gustav Jung

That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm; the experiences that are called “visions,” the whole so-called “spirit-world,” death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been so crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God.
Rainer Maria Rilke (4 December 1875–29 December 1926), Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist

And you suddenly know: It was here!
You pull yourself together, and there
stands an irrevocable year
of anguish and vision and prayer.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
Helen Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968), American author, political activist, and lecturer

It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born.
James Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941), Irish novelist, short story writer, and poet

You rarely achieve finality. If you did, life would be over, but as you strive new visions open before you, new possibilities for the satisfaction of living.
Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962), American politician, diplomat and activist, wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt

The picture must all come out of the artist’s inside… It is the image that lives in the consciousness, alive like a vision, but unknown
David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930), English
novelist, poet, playwright

Consciousness is the grave of things, the place where they cease to exist, beyond which they end. And when they have ended, it seems that they no longer have any essential existence except in the visions in me.
Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 – 22 February 1980), Austrian artist, poet and playwright

The qualities of a great man are “vision, integrity, courage, understanding, the power of articulation, and profundity of character.
Dwight Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969), the 34th President of the United States from 1953 to 1961.

Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
Henry Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980), American writer

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (29 June 1900 – 31 July 1944), French writer, poet and pioneering aviator

Vision is a whole perceptual system, not a channel of sense.
James Jerome Gibson (January 27, 1904 – December 11, 1979), American psychologist

I discover vision, not as a ‘thinking about seeing,’ to use Descartes expression, but as a gaze at grips with a visible world, and that is why for me there can be another’s gaze.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961), French phenomenological philosopher

Receptivity requires a nimbleness, a fine-honed sensitivity in order to let one’s self be the vehicle of whatever vision may emerge.
Rollo May (April 21, 1909 – October 22, 1994), American existential psychologist

If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr (October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007), American historian, social critic

I am personally convinced that one person can be a change catalyst, a transformer in any situation, any organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an entire loaf. It requires vision, initiative, patience, respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a transforming leader.
Stephen R. Covey (October 24, 1932 – July 16, 2012), American educator, author, businessman

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown.
Denis E. Waitley (born 1933), American motivational speaker

A successful artist is able to pursue a vision and let that vision take that person places where they would never expect to go.
Betty LaDuke (born 1933), American artist and writer

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992), American writer, feminist

A leader will find it difficult to articulate a coherent vision unless it expresses his core values, his basic identity. One must first embark on the formidable journey of self-discovery in order to create a vision with authentic soul.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (born 29 September 1934), Hungarian and American psychologist

The entrepreneur is our visionary, the creator in each of us. We’re born with that quality and it defines our lives as we respond to what we see, hear, feel, and experience. It is developed, nurtured, and given space to flourish or is squelched, thwarted, without air or stimulation, and dies.
Michael Gerber (born June 20, 1936), American author

Forget about trying to compete with someone else. Create your own pathway. Create your own new vision.
Herbie Hancock ((born April 12, 1940), American pianist and composer

Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.
Harriett Jackson Brown Jr. (Born in 1940), American author, best known for his inspirational books

A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter (born March 15, 1943), American professor of business at Harvard Business School

A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power.
Brian Tracy (born January 5, 1944), Canadian-American motivational speaker and self-development author

The more boundless your vision, the more real you are.”
Deepak Chopra (born October 22, 1947), Indian-American physician, a holistic health

When you believe in your dream and your vision, then it begins to attract its own resources. No one was born to be a failure.
Myles Munroe (20 April 1954 – 9 November 2014), Bahamian evangelist and ordained minister

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.
Neil Gaiman (10 November 1960), English author

Don’t focus on where you are today, keep positive vision and see yourself accomplishing your goals and fulfilling your destiny.
Joel Osteen ((born March 5, 1963), American televangelist

If you go back to your earliest dreams as a child, some of the answers will be there. Our greatest energy comes from our dreams and visions. So may you find that wellspring and find the spirit speaking clearly.
Miriam MacGillis, member of the Dominican Sisters of Caldwell, New Jersey.

The only thing separating you from your grandest vision is courage.
Christie Ruffino, American author and breakthrough speaker

Live the Life of Your Dreams: Be brave enough to live the life of your dreams according to your vision and purpose instead of the expectations and opinions of others.
Roy T. Bennett, American author of of self-help books

Don’t let others tell you what you can’t do. Don’t let the limitations of others limit your vision. If you can remove your self-doubt and believe in yourself, you can achieve what you never thought possible.
Roy T. Bennett

Personal Vision

It is maintained the painters see the same object differently, for example in respect to color, and that due to this variation in their vision one can immediately recognize their works, even from a distance.
Maurice Quentin de La Tour (5 September 1704 – 17 February 1788), French Rococo portraitist

My eyes make pictures, when they are shut.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834), English poet, literary critic, philosopher

Take your sensibility and use it as a vision.
George Eliot (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), English novelist, poet

Literature is always personal, always one man’s vision of the world, one man’s experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others.
William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939), Irish poet

The only limits are, as always, those of vision
Charles Kettering (August 29, 1876 – November 25, 1958), American inventor, engineer, businessman

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965), British essayist, playwright, literary critic and poet

Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.
Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967), American poet, short story writer

The poet is the one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.
Anais Nin (February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977), French essayist and memoirist

If you go as far as you can see, you will then see enough to go even farther.
James Broughton (November 10, 1913 – May 17, 1999), American poet and poetic filmmaker

I had left the visible, physical blue at the door, outside, in the street. The real blue was inside, the blue of the profundity of space, the blue of my kingdom, of our kingdom!
Yves Klein ( 28 April 1928 – 6 June 1962), French artist

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown.
Denis Waitley (born 1933), is an American motivational speaker

Your vision of where or who you want to be is the greatest asset you have.
Paul Arden (7 April 1940 – 2 April 2008), British author of motivation books, creative director of Saatchi and Saatchi

A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter (born March 15, 1943), American professor of business at Harvard Business School

A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe.
Oprah Winfrey (born January 29, 1954), American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer

May a good vision catch me
May a benevolent vision take hold of me, and move me
May a deep and full vision come over me,
and burst open around me
May a luminous vision inform me, enfold me.
David Abram ((born June 24, 1957), American philosopher, cultural ecologist

Create a vision and never let the environment, other people’s beliefs, or the limits of what has been done in the past shape your decisions. Ignore conventional wisdom.
Tony Robbins (February 29, 1960), American author, entrepreneur and life coach

A beginning artist naturally focuses on the work of others, finding a rhythm to match her own. At a certain point however, you have to stop doing that, internalize the search, and find your own visual poetry. What is your inner vision? It’s vital to make that shift.
Catherine Nash, English Professor , feminist cultural geographer

Standing in the inspiring vision of my future, I boldly take every step – large and small -with courage and intent.
Jonathan Lockwood Huie, American author, known as “The Philosopher of Happiness”

I strive toward my vision, while accepting gratefully whatever life offers me.
Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Objective World

Better to illuminate than merely to shine to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.
Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 7 March 1274), Italian Dominican friar, Catholic priest, and Doctor of the Church.

By far the greatest impediment and aberration of the human understanding arises from [the fact that]…those things that strike the sense outweigh things which, although they may be more important, do not strike it directly. Hence, contemplation usually ceases with seeing, so much so that little or no attention is paid to things invisible.
Francis Bacon (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), English philosopher, statesman scientist

A man to carry on a successful business must have imagination. He must see things as in a vision, a dream of the whole thing.
Charles M. Schwab (February 18, 1862 – September 18, 1939), American steel magnate

Vision without execution is just hallucination.
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947), American business magnate

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so you shall become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.
James Allen (28 November 1864 – 24 January 1912), British philosophical writer known as a pioneer of the self-help movement

Hesitating to act because the whole vision might not be achieved, or because others do not yet share it, is an attitude that only hinders progress.”
Mahatma Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), Leader of the Indian independence movement, writer

The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
Rainer Maria Rilke (4 December 1875–29 December 1926), Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist

The only journey is the one within.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945), the 32nd President of the United States (1933 -1945)

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.
Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970), American self-help author

Visualize this thing you want. See it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blueprint and begin.
Robert Collier (April 19, 1885– 1950), American author of self-help

With a penetrating vision you can dissipate the obstruction, remove the obstacle,dissolve the wrong condition.
Ernest Holmes (January 21, 1887 – April 7, 1960), American New Thought writer, teacher, and leader.

Observation capitalizes inspiration.
Alex Osborn (May 24, 1888 – May 5, 1966), American advertising executive and the author of “brainstorming”.

Envisioning the end is enough to put the means in motion.
Dorothea Brande (1893–1948), American writer and editor

Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture.
Norman Vincent Peale (May 31, 1898 – December 24, 1993), American minister and author

The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.
Vance Havner (October 17, 1901 – August 12, 1986), American author

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion. Jack Welch
The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps – we must step up the stairs.
Vance Havner

I have learned the novice can often see things that the expert overlooks. All that is necessary is not to be afraid of making mistakes, or of appearing naïve.
Abraham Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970), American psychologist

Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.
Peter Drucker ( November 19, 1909 – November 11, 2005), Austrian-born American management consultant, educator, and author

Vision without execution is delusion. The joy is in the results
Peter Drucker

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.
Warren Bennis (March 8, 1925 – July 31, 2014), American scholar, organizational consultant and author

Vision animates, inspires, transforms purpose into action.
Warren Bennis

You can observe a lot just by watching.
Yogi Berra (May 12, 1925 – September 22, 2015), American professional baseball catcher,

We must put vision into action…. If we want to live healthy lives, we have to build into our daily life moments of vision and then let our action be formed by that vision.”
David Steindl-Rast (born July 12, 1926), Catholic Benedictine monk

Strategic planning is worthless – unless there is first a strategic vision.
John Naisbitt (born January 15,1929), American author and public speaker in the area of futures studies

Children are a wonderful gift…They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.
Desmond Tutu (born 7 October 1931), South AfricanAnglican clergyman and theologian

An old Crow chief, asked about the difference between the Indian way of life and that of the whites, responded that for the Indian there were visions, for the whites there were only ideas. Visions, in the Indian context, require action and this action manifests itself in the community, enabling the people to go forward in confidence and obedience. The vision is complete, it is comprehensive, it includes and covers everything, and there is no mistaking its applicability. Ideas, on the other hand, have only a limited relevance.
Vine Deloria, Jr. (March 26, 1933 – November 13, 2005), Native American author, theologian, historian, and activist

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown.
Denis Waitley (born 1933), American motivational speaker, writer

As painters…we must always remember that our precious poetic visions and spiritual insights will remain forever locked within us until we can boil them down to a complex arrangement of a few hundred or possibly even thousands of brushstrokes…
Richard Schmid (October 5, 1934), American realist artist

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.
Jack Welch (born November 19, 1935), American retired business executive, author, and chemical engineer

The only way to implement our vision for society is to bring it down to the situation of a single household.
Chogyam Trungpa (March 5, 1939 – April 4, 1987, Buddhist meditation master and holder of both the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages

You must first clearly see a thing in your mind before you can do it.
Alex Morrison (Born 1941), Canadian former Lieutenant Colonel

All successful people are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.
Brian Tracy (born January 5, 1944), Canadian-American motivational public speaker and self-development author

Leadership is working with goals and vision; management is working with objectives.
Russel Honore (born 1947), American retired Lieutenant General

It’s not what the vision is, it’s what the vision does.
Peter Senge (born 1947), American systems scientist, the author of the concept “Learning organization”.

You should paint those visions of paradise rather than just talking about them.”
Paulo Coelho (born August 24, 1947), Brazilian lyricist and novelist

If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.
Steven Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011),American entrepreneur, business magnate, inventor

The vision is really about empowering workers giving them all the information about what’s going on so they can do a lot more than they’ve done in the past.
Bill Gates (born October 28, 1955), American business magnate, author, philanthropist

Success needs vision to see, passion to transcend, patience to withstand and the character to overcome failures.
Amit Ray (born August 12, 1960), Indian author, and spiritual master

The vision of a champion is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion, when nobody else is looking.
Mia Hamm (born March 17, 1972), American retired professional soccer player

If you have a vision, do something with it.
Anthony J. D’Angelo (born 1972), American author, the founder of Collegiate EmPowerment

Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.
Anthony J. D’Angelo

The best way to succeed is to have a specific Intent, a clear Vision, a plan of Action, and the ability to maintain Clarity. Those are the Four Pillars of Success. It never fails!
Steve Maraboli (born April 8, 1975), American author, keynote speaker and Scientist

Create a vision for the life you really want and then work relentlessly towards making it a reality.
Roy T. Bennett, American author of self-help books

. . . a leader is someone who has a drive, commitment and most importantly, a vision and skill set to transform an idea into an innovation.
Daniel Transon, American author

Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.
Joel A. Barker, American Businessman

Believe in yourself,in your vision for your future and in your ability to take a small step each day toward achieving your vision.
Jonathan Lockwood Huie, American author, known as “The Philosopher of Happiness”

An inspiring vision – then courageous action.
Jonathan Lockwood Huie