Blindly Quotes & Sayings

We perceive, as from a great distance, a thousand years filled with dim shapes of men moving blindly, performing strangely, in an unreal shadowy world. — Carl Lotus Becker

I think games are a good medium for approaching any subject, particularly difficult ones, because by their very nature, they are abstract, invite interaction and allow us to confront and question things ... particularly rules that we may blindly follow. — Brenda Brathwaite

I sat on the bed. I looked at the Rorschach blot. I tried to make it look like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didn't. It looked more like a dead cat I once found, the fat, glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunneling away from the light. But even that isn't the real horror. The horror is this: in the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness. — Alan Moore

But if a railway in the wilderness is to be a profitable business, if it is even to be possible, if it is to obtain the labour power necessary for its construction and the security necessary for its operational demands, there must be a State authority strong and ruthless enough to defend the interests of the foreign capitalists and even to yield blindly to their interests. — Anonymous

Never blindly believe, never blindly follow. — Alex Treacher

I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowled — Bruce Lee

They might refuse the evidence of their own eyes and continue blindly on over the ridge, driven by optimism and hope that finally they would find somewhere to call home. — Garth Nix

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.
I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.
Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.
In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood. — Pablo Neruda

She realized all at once the deeper thing that bothered her, the thing that made him not just irritating but intolerable: how he kept loving her blindly when she deserved it so little. — Ann Brashares

We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is the present usually hurts. — Blaise Pascal

It is because we have such shallow views of God's love that we have such defective views of God's dealings. We blindly interpret the symbols of His providence, because we so imperfectly read the engravings of His heart. — Octavius Winslow

When we venture in that unfamiliar sea, we trust blindly in those who guide us, believing that they know more than we do. — Paulo Coelho

Whosoever, therefore, asks any one to believe blindly, or drags people behind him by the controlling power of his superior will, does an injury to humanity, though he may not intend it. — Swami Vivekananda

[F]reedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that "Oh, I don't get involved in politics," as if that makes you somehow cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable. — Bill Maher

were rabid, foaming bats blindly cleaving the air around his head. And it seemed that every few steps he would run straight into a twister of mosquitoes. Though he had been paid a large amount of cash up front, he was seriously considering increasing his daily fee on this one. — David Baldacci

You're blindly following a tradition that says because women didn't leave behind voluminous records of their thoughts and deeds, then they didn't have any thoughts and deeds - they were just standing on the sidelines while history was made by men. Just because a woman didn't have a vote doesn't mean that she didn't have an informed opinion. It doesn't mean she was incapable of thinking or acting. — Christi Phillips

There is something inherently stupid about gentrified thinking. It's a dumbing down and smoothing over of what people are actually like. It's a social position rooted in received wisdom, with aesthetics blindly selected from the presorted offerings of marketing and without information or awareness about the structures that create its own delusional sense of infallibility. Gentrified thinking is like the bourgeois version of Christian fundamentalism, a huge, unconscious conspiracy of homogenous patterns with no awareness about its own freakishness. The gentrification mentality is rooted in the belief that obedience to consumer identity over recognition of lived experience is actually normal, neutral, and value free. — Sarah Schulman

Having a title only doesn't make one a leader; talented people without a title don't follow blindly, they practice leadership via influence. — Pearl Zhu

Our lives can only be interpreted in retrospect, yet must be lived from day to day, blindly. What folly, the human condition! — Joyce Carol Oates

Questioning authority doesn't make you resistant; who should follow blindly without knowing the destination — LDarnell

I run blindly through the madhouse ... And I cannot even pray ... For I have no God. — Grant Morrison

You spoke about things they couldn't see and so they laughed. Yet to row up the dark river against the current, to take the unknown road blindly, stubbornly, and to search for words rooted like the knotted olive tree- let them laugh. And to yearn for the other world to inhabit today's suffocating loneliness, this ravaged present- let them be. — Giorgos Seferis

To follow by faith alone is to follow blindly — Benjamin Franklin

Bran tore his eyes away from the monster. That was when he noticed the bundle in Robb's arms. He gave a cry of delight and moved closer. The pup was a tiny ball of grey-black fur, its eyes still closed. It nuzzled blindly against Robb's chest as he cradled it, searching for milk among his leathers, making a sad little whimpery sound. Bran reached out hesitantly. "Go on," Robb told him. "You can touch him." Bran — George R R Martin

Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice. — Charles Bukowski

Working without a plan may seem scary. But blindly following a plan that has no relationship with reality is even scarier. — Jason Fried

There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why,
when it did not seem worthwhile to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. — Kate Chopin

The advice of friends must be received with a judicious reserve; we must not give ourselves up to it and follow it blindly, whether right or wrong. — Pierre Charron

It is a sad thing to want for happiness, but it is a terrible thing to see another groping about blindly for it, when it is almost within the grasp. — Theodore Dreiser

To blindly trust government is to automatically vest it with excessive power. To distrust government is simply to trust humanity - to trust in the ability of average people to peacefully, productively coexist without some official policing their every move. The State is merely another human institution - less creative than Microsoft, less reliable than Federal Express, less responsible than the average farmer husbanding his land, and less prudent than the average citizen spending his own paycheck. — James Bovard

You were speaking of my name a little while ago. That touched me; but let us, whoever we may be, distrust names. They may delude us. I am called Felix, and I am not happy. Words are liars. Let us not blindly accept the indications which they afford us. It — Victor Hugo

There really are people, and institutions made up of people, who respond with hatred in the presence of goodness and would destroy the good insofar as it is in their power to do so. They do this not with conscious malice but blindly, lacking awareness of their own evil - indeed, seeking to avoid any such awareness. — M. Scott Peck

Better to toil blindly, beating every stone in turn for grains of gold, whether they contain any or not, than lie down in apathetic decay. — John Muir

If you believe someone believe blindly either you get a good relation or a good lesson — Arun Kumar

Don't love too blindly: blindly you will love if you love at all, but a little care is still possible to a well-disciplined heart. May that heart be yours as it was not mine. Cultivate the art of renunciation. — Thomas Hardy

D'Artagnan wished to stop the young woman, seize her and gaze upon her, were it only for a minute; but quick as a bird she glided between his hands, and when he wished to speak to her, her finger placed upon her mouth, with a little imperative gesture full of grace, reminded him that he was under the command of a power which he must blindly obey, and which forbade him even to make the slightest complaint. — Alexandre Dumas

Let not the rash marble risk
garrulous breaches of oblivion's omnipotence,
in many words recalling
name, renown, events, birthplace.
All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.
Let not the marble say what men do not.
The essentials of the dead man's life
the trembling hope,
the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual delight
will abide forever.
Blindly the uncertain soul asks to continue
when it is the lives of others that will make that happen,
as you yourself are the mirror and image
of those who did not live as long as you
and others will be (and are) your immortality on earth. — Jorge Luis Borges

To start blindly with a statement is a sign of arrogance and narrow-mindedness, and will lead to conflict. To start blindly with a question is a sign of uncertainty and honesty, and will lead to wisdom. — Scott Watson

On many occasions I have been asked if I think persecution will come to the Western church. My answer might surprise you. I believe that if you find yourself enslaved inside a controlling church structure of legalism and bondage, then you are already being persecuted! So many Christians seem impossibly distracted from hearing God's voice. Instead of listening to that still, small voice that brings true peace and joy, they blindly follow the voices of mainstream religion. The worst kind of persecution for a Christian is when you are separated from the joy and presence of the Holy Spirit. — Brother Yun

You don't know where you belong ...
You need something to swear to,
As you fol-low blindly along;
You just need to belong somehow. — Cyndi Lauper

Or it might be better to say that all of us need to flee blindly from time to time so as not to become copies of the world's expectations, and maybe, too, to give us the courage to remember some of those great, bold thoughts that made a child get up in the night, heart pounding, and write down a secret promise for his life. — Fredrik Sjoberg

In his essay 'Self-Reliance' Emerson wrote, 'Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.' The Apostle Paul reminds us that whoso would be a Christian must also be a a nonconformist. Any Christian who blindly accepts the opinions of the majority and in fear and timidity follows a path of expediency and social approval is a mental and spiritual slave. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I wonder sometimes if I'm not, after all, a piece in some other player's game, following blindly his grand designs without ever knowing that my path along the board is only a feint, while the important matters are played out elsewhere by other men.
But whether there's some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this: To see what might be, to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost. When a life spins out as joyfully as mine has done, then the price, one paid so painfully, is now recalled in gladness. I have received full value. Here among the shepherds, my cup is filled with the water of life; it overflows. — Orson Scott Card

There was a time when you trusted me with your life!"
"And there was a time when you used your brain instead of blindly following orders, — Karen Chance

But in love, merit is won blindly and unaccountably, and in this blindness and unaccountability lies happiness.
pp. 445-446 — Ivan Goncharov

And try letting yourself be carried away by your feelings, blindly, without reflection, without a primary cause, repelling consciousness at least for a time, hate or love, if only not to sit with your hands folded. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Cruelly unjust both in their act and their thought, accompanied by a feeling that they are helping the world to receive its deserts; men who are honest can blindly go on robbing others of their — Rabindranath Tagore

I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly. — Madeleine L'Engle

Strength of character is never with those who blindly follow. You need to be able to make your own choices and walk your own path. — Celeste Lim

Therefore, before any action is taken, we must explain the policy, which we have formulated in the light of the given circumstances, to Party members and to the masses. Otherwise, Party members and the masses will depart from the guidance of our policy, act blindly and carry out a wrong policy. — Mao Zedong

It is no different from the way it is on Earth, if one is paying attention. If only people would pay closer attention, to everything. Then they would know what mattered without stumbling blindly (albeit at times willingly) in the wrong direction. Man may be born to trouble, be he doesn't have to stay there. — Lorna Jane Cook

I have tried to show why I believe that the biologist is the most romantic figure on earth at the present day. At first sight he seems to be just a poor little scrubby underpaid man, groping blindly amid the mazes of the ultra-microscopic, engaging in bitter and lifelong quarrels over the nephridia of flatworms, waking perhaps one morning to find that someone whose name he has never heard has demolished by a few crucial experiments the work which he had hoped would render him immortal. — John B. S. Haldane

I am free. I am one of the few free people in this country of utterly transparent slavery. A slavery covered by a sloppy coat of contemporary varnish. I have fought a long and bloodless battle for this pitiable personal freedom. I fought for my freedom against the temptations, ambitions, and appetites witch drive everyone blindly on the slaughterhouse. To the so-called modern slaughterhouse for human dignity, honor, and for something else, too, which we forgot about a long time ago. — Tadeusz Konwicki

I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men — Charles Darwin

Evil exists in this world because it has its place. For had you never sat blindly through the darkness of night, your eyes wouldn't turn toward the sunrise to appreciate its warmth and illumination. — Richelle E. Goodrich

She had kept well behind the safety barrier her entire life, but now she was standing there at the edge of the precipice for the very first time, fumbling blindly with the realization that there were other ways to live, at how intense and rich life could be. — Katarina Bivald

Right now, we are doing it blindly. — Donald Berwick

The boundaries of a person's reality often do not change until that person forsakes what he or she feels confident in and then goes blindly with faith. — Robert Kiyosaki

I would venture to say none of us understand the road we walk," he said, philosophically. "You may be a bit better prepared, but we are all traveling blindly into a future that is murky to us. Death or delight may be around the next bend, we never know. Nor can we. We can merely prepare ourselves and walk bravely forward." I — Terry Mancour

Never question yourself to satisfy the comfort of those living blindly by the false masks of life. — Nikki Rowe

Thought is an acid, eating us away. At first we imagine it will only eat into that which is rotten and sick and must be removed. But thought thinks otherwise. It eats blindly. It begins with the prey you most gladly throw to it - but don't imagine it will be content with that! It doesn't stop until it has gnawed away the last thing you hold dear. — Hjalmar Soderberg

He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see. — Ayn Rand

Just as you can't blindly follow fashion, you can't follow fitness, either. — Anushka Sharma

we should all listen blindly. — Brian Manning

Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever. — Ernest Becker

Had he but turned back then, and looked out once more on to the rose-lit garden, she would have seen that which would have made her own sufferings seem but light and easy to bear
a strong man, overwhelmed with his own passion and despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone: the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love and as soon as her light footstep had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade, where her tiny hand had rested last. — Emmuska Orczy

Not to be content with Life is the unsatisfactory state of those which destroy themselves; who being afraid to live, run blindly upon their own Death, which no Man fears by Experience. — Thomas Browne

Blindly, Grace pushed away from the velvet-lined wall...

Right into the path of a giant as tall and as hard as an oak.

A firm hand caught her about the waist as strong fingers captured her wrists. She blinked the sting of unshed tears from her eyes to find herself entangled not with an oak, but with a man possessed of dark brown hair and dangerous golden eyes. A wry smile curved his lips as the orchestra began the opening strains of a waltz. — Erica Ridley

In science men have learned consciously to subordinate themselves to a common purpose without losing the individuality of their achievements. Each one knows that his work depends on that of his predecessors and colleagues, and that it can only reach its fruition through the work of his successors. In science men collaborate not because they are forced to by superior authority or because they blindly follow some chosen leader, but because they realize that only in this willing collaboration can each man find his goal. — John Desmond Bernal

The Bible admonishes us to live each day fully - not living in the past or the future. But God never intends for us to walk blindly from day to day. He expects us to discern what He is doing and what He desires. He intends for us to have a capacity to see beneath the surface of life and to expose and analyze the unseen. — Charles F. Stanley

I try and find and access the parts of myself that still blindly believe and have faith in a lot of things. I don't mean to be cynical, but I've also discovered that I still have a lot of those. And they may not be where I expected them to be. Maybe I've been in relationships, and this is a movie about relationships, like romance relationships - so maybe I've been in some that have sort of made me lose my faith. But deep down inside, I still have blind faith. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord,

Who was the Future, died full long ago.

Knowledge which is the Past is folly. Go,

Poor, child, and be not to thyself abhorred.

Around thine earth sun-winged winds do blow

And planets roll; a meteor draws his sword;

The rainbow breaks his seven-coloured chord

And the long strips of river-silver flow:

Awake! Give thyself to the lovely hours.

Drinking their lips, catch thou the dream in flight

About their fragile hairs' aerial gold.

Thou art divine, thou livest, - as of old

Apollo springing naked to the light,

And all his island shivered into flowers. — Trumbull Stickney

Here it is, the end of the world; and here I am, almost the very last man; and there it is, the highest mountain in sight. I know now what my karass has been up to, Newt. It's been working night and day for maybe half a million years to get me up that mountain." I wagged my head and nearly wept. "But what, for the love of God, is supposed to be in my hands?" I looked out of the car window blindly as — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it. — Douglas MacArthur

If in my fight I can encourage even some people to understand and to abandon policies they now so blindly follow, I shall not regret any punishment I may incur. — Bram Fischer

I turned in his arms, blindly, gladly. God. All I'd ever wanted was someone to keep me. To want me, even knowing my faults. Like everything I'd ever sought out myself, with peeling paint and uneven edges and a tendency to fall apart. All I'd ever wanted was to be loved. I — Skye Warren

The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowherein a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal's gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond. — John Berger

Civilisation has, indeed, become a slaughtering-car crowned by a grinning effigy of Comfort, before which man blindly and voluntarily hurls himself in his own ignorance. — Eugen Sandow

Communists must always go into the why's and wherefore's of anything, use their own heads and carefully think over whether or not it corresponds to reality and is really well founded; on no account should they follow blindly and encourage slavishness. — Mao Zedong

The biggest mistake is not to forgive someone who broke your trust but to return him the previous version of you who trusted blindly. — Himmilicious

In some cases, the casting directors have casted blindly and have not looked into my ethnic background. — Mario Lopez

People go through life blindly, ignoring death like revellers at a party feasting on fine foods. They ignore that later they will have to go to the toilet, so they do not bother to find out where there is one. When nature finally calls, they have no idea where to go and are in a mess. — Ajahn Chah

For us the mountains had been a natural field of activity where, playing on the frontiers of life and death, we had found the freedom for which we were blindly groping and which was as necessary to us as bread. — Maurice Herzog

She knew the minute HE arrived. Felt the warm blanket of comfort reach out to her frozen soul ... He made his way down the isle and sat next to her ... he didn't reach out, didn't touch her ... a single tear slid out from her closed lids and she blindly reached for his hand. He took her hand in more, gathering her close, arms coming around her warm and strong as her head sank down unto his shoulder and the tears finally came soaking the lapel of his wool suit. He offered her a perfectly white handkerchief ... she stared at it and wondered who carries that type of thing anymore? He looked back at her and explained, I'm old fashioned. — D.B. Reynolds

The night was drawing in, and the house felt more and more like a glass cage, blasting its light blindly out into the dusk, like a lantern in the dark. I imagined a thousand moths circling and shivering, drawn inexorably to its glow, only to perish against the cold inhospitable glass. — Ruth Ware

To have them putting him on, trying him on, trying him out while he himself puts them on like a sock over a foot onto the stub of himself--his extra sensitive thumb, his tentacle, his delicate, stalked slug's eye which extrudes, expands, winces and shrivels back into himself when touched wrongly, grows big again. Bulging a little at the tip, traveling forward as if along a leaf into them, avid for vision. To achieve vision in this way; this journey into a darkness that is composed of women--a woman--who can see in darkness while he himself strains blindly forward. — Margaret Atwood

That's the oldest sin of all. Pride. Spiritual pride. Believing that you're better than others. Believing that you're enlightened, you're smart, you're in the know, and everyone else is stumbling about blindly in the darkness. The old us-versus-them. My group is better than your group. My people, my nation, my country, my religion, my gender, my sexual orientation. Old as sin. And it's a Big Lie. — Jerome Wilde

It takes me a very, very long time to write a story, to write a piece of fiction, whatever you call the fiction that I write. I just go about it blindly, feeling my way towards what it has to be. — Deborah Eisenberg

Those who guide us, who inspire us, having gone our way before, are now partners with us in building a better world. Any success we have is theirs as well as ours. To copy or imitate them should be only the beginning-the apprentice stage of life. It is fine to think, "what will a Shaker do? What would Scott Nearing have said? What would Gandhi have thought?" These are good exercises for the mind, a way of weighing ideas and contemplated actions, valuable so long as we do not follow anyone blindly.
Only by standing on their shoulders can we build a better world, but we should use the wise as advisers, not masters. — William Coperthwaite

He didn't understand these people. They rushed about blindly, with never a moment to spare. Their cell phones rang, they had to check their e-mail, they had to network. Ridiculous words Amy had taught him. She said that they were frightened, that if they stopped rushing, they might have to think. And if they had to think, then they might realize how empty and pointless their lives were. — Sara Mackenzie

It is curious that the human mind could blindly accept an infinite speed but had reservations to accept a finite one, simply because it was too large! — Felix Alba-Juez

To love with understanding and without understanding. To love blindly, and to folly. To see only what is loveable. To think only of these things. To see the best in everyone around, their virtues rather than their faults. To see Christ in them! — Dorothy Day

If you understand hallucination and illusion, you don't blindly follow any leader. You must know if the person is sane or insane, over the abyss. — Marguerite Young

I do not care to be admired causelessly, emotionally, intuitively, instinctively - or blindly. I do not care for blindness in any form, I have too much to show - or for deafness, I have too much to say. I do not care to be admired by anyone's heart - only by someone's head. — Ayn Rand

There is not enough evidence, consistent evidence to make it as fact, and I say that because for theory to become a fact, it needs to consistently have the same results after it goes through a series of tests. The tests that they put-that they use to support evolution do not have consistent results. Now too many people are blindly accepting evolution as fact. But when you get down to the hard evidence, it's merely a theory. — Christine O'Donnell

Don't blindly follow any leader. — Marguerite Young

Most non-readers are nothing but an agglomeration of third-hand opinion and blindly received wisdom. — Tom Bissell

An instinct is an agent which performs blindly and ignorantly a work of intelligence and knowledge. — Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet

It never pays to walk blindly. Especially not in your own castle where familiarity hides so much - even when we have the eyes to see. — Mark Lawrence

We can believe in hierarchy. We can believe the universe was made just for us. Hierarchy and a major sense of entitlement are not insurmountable problems. The problem occurs when we treat those whom we believe lie beneath us as slaves. Religion once sustained human slavery. It was wrong then. When it blindly sanctions the slavery of every nonhuman animal, it is wrong now. — Cass R. Sunstein