Analysis Quotes

“When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“The girl dreams she is dangerously ill. Suddenly birds come out of her skin and cover her completely... Swarms of gnats obscure the sun, the moon, and all the stars except one. That one start falls upon the dreamer.”
― Carl Gustav Jung, Man and His Symbols

“Analysis does not transform consciousness.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti

“We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state and as the cause of the state that is to follow. An intelligence knowing all the forces acting in nature at a given instant, as well as the momentary positions of all things in the universe, would be able to comprehend in one single formula the motions of the largest bodies as well as the lightest atoms in the world, provided that its intellect were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to analysis; to it nothing would be uncertain, the future as well as the past would be present to its eyes. The perfection that the human mind has been able to give to astronomy affords but a feeble outline of such an intelligence.”
― Pierre Simon de Laplace

“As regards intellectual work it remains a fact, indeed, that great decisions in the realm of thought and momentous discoveries and solutions of problems are only possible to an individual, working in solitude.”
― Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego

“The genius of a composer is found in the notes of his music; but analyzing the notes will not reveal his genius. The poet's greatness is contained in his words; yet the study of his words will not disclose his inspiration. God reveals himself in creation; but scrutinize creation as minutely as you wish, you will not find God, any more than you will find the soul through careful examination of your body.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awakening: Conversations with the Masters

“If you've spent any time trolling the blogosphere, you've probably noticed a peculiar literary trend: the pervasive habit of writers inexplicably placing exclamation points at the end of otherwise unremarkable sentences. Sort of like this! This is done to suggest an ironic detachment from the writing of an expository sentence! It's supposed to signify that the writer is self-aware! And this is idiotic. It's the saddest kind of failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're being entertained. Of course, the reader isn't really sure, either. They just want to know when they're supposed to pretend to be amused. All those extraneous exclamation points are like little splatters of canned laughter: They represent the" form of funny, "which is more easily understood (and more easily constructed) than authentic funniness.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Eating the Dinosaur

“Analysis is the art of creation through destruction.”
― P.S. Baber, Cassie Draws the Universe

“See, if you analyze stuff long enough, you’ll eventually break ideas down to the quantum level where nothing makes sense and there’s no longer any meaning to anything. And then when you try to put it all back together again, you realize the pieces just don’t fit anymore. Worse, you realize that the pieces never fit in the first place. And then you’re left with a heap of broken ideas and beliefs that are shattered beyond repair. That’s reality, and that’s what I write about.”
― P.S. Baber, Cassie Draws the Universe

“The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step outside the frame.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

“It seemed to me I was living in an insane asylum of my own making. I went about with all these fantastic figures: centaurs, nymphs, satyrs, gods and goddesses, as though they were patients and I was analyzing them. I read a Greek or Negro myth as if a lunatic were telling me his anamnesis.”
― C.G. Jung, Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice

“And as for the vague something --- was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression? --- that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver, and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare --- to divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“The intellectual is constantly betrayed by his vanity. Godlike he blandly assumes that he can express everything in words whereas the things one loves, lives, and dies for are not, in the last analysis completely expressible in words.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“To think or not to think? That is the new question.”
― Nadina Boun, The Thinking Man, Paralysis by Analysis

“It´s one thing to enjoy a story, but it´s quite another to take it for the truth.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

“Now we’ve a real intellectual impasse. Our reason, which is supposed to make things more intelligible, seems to be making them less intelligible, and when reason thus defeats its own purpose something has to be changed in the structure of our reason itself.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“A little later, when breakfast was over and I had not yet gone up-stairs to my room, I had my first interview with Doctor Brandon, the famous alienist who was in charge of the case. I had never seen him before, but from the first moment that I looked at him I took his measure, almost by intuition. He was, I suppose, honest enough -- I have always granted him that, bitterly as I have felt toward him. It wasn't his fault that he lacked red blood in his brain, or that he had formed the habit, from long association with abnormal phenomena, of regarding all life as a disease. He was the sort of physician -- every nurse will understand what I mean -- who deals instinctively with groups instead of with individuals. He was long and solemn and very round in the face; and I hadn't talked to him ten minutes before I knew he had been educated in Germany, and that he had learned over there to treat every emotion as a pathological manifestation. I used to wonder what he got out of life -- what any one got out of life who had analyzed away everything except the bare structure.”
― Ellen Glasgow, The Shadowy Third

“The Ph.D is one of the chosen who know that some things can never be fathomed, no matter how hard you try. What good are explanations? There is no possibility of explaining how such a work [Mozart's Requiem, in the instance] could ever have come into being. (The same holds true for certain poems, which should not be analyzed either.)”
― Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher

“Is not the semblance of guilt, however slight the tinge, already a corruption?”
― Oakley Hall, Warlock

“Scenár postupného oživenia európskej a teda aj slovenskej ekonomiky je aj naďalej vystavený viacerým rizikám. Tieto obavy vychádzajú najmä z faktu, že spúšťacím mechanizmom súčasnej recesie bola systémová kríza vo finančnom sektore, kde pretrvávajú naďalej problémy a treba otvorene povedať, že situácia sa nijako nezlepšuje ani za posledné roky. Európsky finančný systém nie je zdravý a pseudoriešenia dlhovej krízy vo forme prekrývania starých dlhov novými nie sú správne a celkový dlh v Európe nezmenšujú. No a v neposlednom rade treba spomedzi ďalších rizikových faktorov ohrozujúcich pozitívny vývoj Slovenska a EÚ uviesť slabú kondíciu trhu práce a už spomínaný nepriaznivý stav verejných financií vo väčšine krajín EÚ, čo v kombinácii s dlhovou krízou a problémami jednotlivých krajín prefinancovať svoj dlh zatiaľ nenabáda k prílišnému optimizmu.”
― Radovan Kavický, Slovakia 2010. A report on the State of Society and Democracy and Trends for 2011

“If you distance yourself from reality and just cling to cliches about democracy find yourself a different job than analyzing politics”
― Hany Ghoraba

“I believe that I have not been fair to you and that, as a result, I must have led you around in circles and hurt you deeply.

In doing so, however, I have led myself around in circles and hurt myself just as deeply. I say this not as an excuse or a means of self-justification but because it is true. If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well. So please try not to hate me. I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed being than you realize. Which is precisely why I do not want you to hate me. Because if you were to do that, I would really go to pieces. I can't do what you can do: I can't slip inside my shell and wait for things to pass. I don't know for a fact that you are really like that, but sometimes you give me that impression. I often envy that in you, which may be why I led you around in circles so much.

This may be an over-analytical way of looking at things. Don't you agree? The therapy they perform here is certainly not over-analytical, but when you are under treatment for several months the way I am here, like it or not, you become more or less analytical. "This was caused by that, and that means this, because of which such-and-such."

Like that. I can't tell whether this kind of analysis is trying to simplify the world or complicate it.

In any case, I myself feel that I am far closer to recovery than I once was, and people here tell me this is true. This is the first time in a long while I have been able to sit down and calmly write a letter. The one I wrote you in July was something I had to squeeze out of me (though, to tell the truth, I don't remember what I wrote - was it terrible?), but this time I am very calm. How wonderful it is to be able to write someone a letter! To feel like conveying your thoughts to a person, to sit at your desk and pick up a pen, to put your thoughts into words like this is truly marvellous. Of course, once I do put them to words, I find I can only express a fraction of what I want to say, but that's all right. I'm happy just to be able to feel I want to write to someone. And so I am writing to you.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Some of my early ones, written by a person brought up in a Protestant tradition, without benefit of the confessional and before the heyday of analysis, were an attempt to both understand and forgive the blunders and difficulties of the writer.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Bring Me a Unicorn: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1922-1928

“All tin-pot expropriators have fragile egos, and if sarcasm helps ease the Boomers out of office, let there be sarcasm. (Foreward)”
― Bruce Cannon Gibney, A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

“In your exploration, observe, analyse, reflect, and beware.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“Understanding develops slowly.”
― F. William Lawvere, Conceptual Mathematics: A First Introduction to Categories

“Analysts reformulated problems to suit their solutions.”
― Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920

“If we understand the analysis of how and why, problems will not cause problems.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih

“Stand on what you've built.”
― Maria Brito, How Creativity Rules the World: The Art and Business of Turning Your Ideas into Gold

“Cultivate a 'use me' mindset within yourself; it will aid in discovering your capacities and refining your skills.”
― Somen Kanungo, Founder, DEC Bangladesh