Unreflective Quotes & Sayings

In endowing us with memory, nature has revealed to us a truth utterly unimaginable to the unreflective creation, the truth of immortality ... The most ideal human passion is love, which is also the most absolute and animal and one of the most ephemeral. — George Santayana

The idea that we should check on our unreflective belief acquisition sounds great, but we need to know whether the processes of reflection which we put to work serves to improve our reliability or not. — Hilary Kornblith

The fault I find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four books in a lifetime give us anything that is of real importance. — Marcel Proust

(Ibid. on using the verb to be in this culturally envenomed way, too, as in 'I'll Be There For You,' which has become the sort of empty spun-sugar shibboleth that communicates nothing except a certain unreflective sappiness in the speaker. — David Foster Wallace

Striving after good theology is similar to managing a sweet tooth. Psychological dynamics will always make certain theological systems more or less appealing. And yet psychologically appealing and intuitive theological systems are not always healthy. In short, these psychological dynamics function as a sweet tooth, a kind of cognitive temptation that pulls the intellectually lazy or unreflective (because we are busy folk with day jobs) into theological orbits that hamper the mission of the church. As with managing the sweet tooth, vigilance and care are needed to keep us on a healthy path. — Richard Beck

We must remain human, even in the most difficult times ...
Because, despite everything, there must always be humanity within us. We have to bring it to others. — Vittorio Arrigoni

Democracy the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob conditions. — H.L. Mencken

We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy and ironic self-doubt; culture means a form of life that is customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective and irrational. — Terry Eagleton

Such is the content of the mental life of the Hemingway hero and the good guy in general. Every day he gets beaten into a servile pulp by his own mechanical reflexes, which are constantly busy registering and reacting to the violent stimuli which his big, noisy, kinesthetic environment has provided for his unreflective reception. — Marshall McLuhan

Life had since become fast and cruel and unreflective, and people were too busy counting their gains to bother about the idols of their youth. — Ruskin Bond

I was writing full time after quitting a job as a high school English teacher, and I hadn't been able to sell anything, and my bank account was down to zero, and all of my friends were like 'What are you doing in the basement, when are you going to get a real job?', and my parents thought I'd completely lost it. — Matthew Quick

No matter what happens or what we go through, there is always a miracle waiting for us. The miracle is you. — Takatsu

resistance often lacks an overt political project and frequently reflects social practices that are informal, disorganised, apolitical, and atheoretical in nature. In some instances it can reduce itself to an unreflective and defeatist refusal to acquiesce to different forms of domination; on some occasions it can be seen as a cynical, arrogant, or even naive rejection of oppressive forms of moral and political regulation — Henry A. Giroux

I know, a lot of the films I've done, it's obvious I'm going to beat up six guys and just walk out the door. There's not a lot of motivating factors - it's just action for the sake of action. — Jason Statham

Love, in the sense of spontaneous, unreflective action, spells the death of the old man. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We all know the Lincoln of the Second Inaugural and the Gettysburg Address. We need to know the Lincoln of the Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society and of the Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions, both talks in which he vents his favorite enthusiasms. We need to understand his thirst for economic and industrial development. We need to realize that he was a lawyer for corporations, a vigorous advocate of property rights, and a defender of an "elitist" economics against the unreflective populist bromides of his age. We need to focus on his love for the Founders as guides to the American future. We need to grapple with his ferocious ambition, personal and political. — Rich Lowry

When we recognise that reflective processes are no more outside the causal net than unreflective processes, and that they are bound by similar constraints, we may come to understand the nature of reflection for the first time. — Hilary Kornblith

The cliche had it that kids were the future, but that wasn't it: they were the unreflective, active present. They were not themselves nostalgic, because they couldn't be, and they retarded nostalgia in their parents. Even as they were getting sick and being bullied and becoming addicted to heroin and getting pregnant, they were in the moment, and she wanted to be in it with them. She wanted to worry herself sick about schools and bullying and drugs. — Nick Hornby

I associate times with certain music. It still is that for me. It's telling the story of our lives. — James Hetfield

Really unreflective people are now inwardly without Christianity, and the more moderate and reflective people of the intellectual middle class now possess only an adapted, that is to say marvelously simplified Christianity. A god who in his love arranges everything in a manner that in the end will be best for us; a god who gives to us and takes from us our virtue and our happiness, so that as a whole all is meet and fit and there is no reason for us to take life sadly, let alone exclaim against it; in short, resignation and modest demands elevated to godhead — Friedrich Nietzsche

A telephone survey says that 51 percent of college students drink until they pass out at least once a month. The other 49 percent didn't answer the phone. — Craig Kilborn

An unreflective mind is a poor roof. Passion, like the rain, floods the house. But if the roof is strong, there is shelter. Whoever follows impure thoughts Suffers in this world and the next. In both worlds he suffers And how greatly. — Gautama Buddha

Naked people look funny when they are for-real naked, outside-a-magazine naked. — Donald Miller

God is the one that's ultimately in control of everything. You can't try to change things when they're not meant to be changed. — Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

Solitude is a natural place for a writer to be. — Chuck Palahniuk

I argue is that philosophers have had a tendency to present a kind of mystical view of the powers of reflection. Unreflective belief acquisition is seen in mechanistic terms, but when philosophers talk about reflection, it is as if reflective processes are not bound by the kinds of limitations which inevitably arise from being embedded within the same causal structure which governs unreflective belief acquisition. — Hilary Kornblith

An unreflective passion for social justice may be one of the biggest obstacles to creating peace and prosperity in the 21st century. While there are most certainly factory owners in China whom we would rightly regard as criminal in their treatment of their workers, it is very important not to confuse these incidents with the phenomenon of globalization. It is a good thing that Wal-Mart is encouraging more humane standards in its supplier's factories. — Michael Strong

For Christians ... an unreflective faith is not possible if we take seriously the injunction to love God with the mind as well as the heart and soul. — Delwin Brown

My guilty pleasure is Simon & Garfunkel. I'm embarrassed about it. They're dorky. — Kemp Muhl

The worry that unreflective belief acquisition may be unreliable, after all, applies equally to reflective belief acquisition: it too may be unreliable. To my mind, the plausibility of internalist views about justification is dramatically decreased when one becomes vividly aware of what introspection and reflection actually achieve. — Hilary Kornblith

There is so much to the human mind we don't understand. But, you see, if you have faith, you can do anything. — Rachel Joyce

Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic. — John Rawls

The thing with Joy Division's music is that each member was playing like a separate line. We hardly ever played together; we all played separately. But when you put it together, it was like the ingredients in a cake. — Peter Hook