Definition of Insight

Insight

A sight or view of the interior of anything; a deep inspection or view; introspection; -- frequently used with into.

Power of acute observation and deduction; penetration; discernment; perception.

Related Definitions:

Acute, And, Anything, Deduction, Deep, Discernment, Frequently, Interior, Into, Introspection, Observation, Of, Or, Penetration, Perception, Power, Sight, The, Used, View, With

Insight Quotations

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.
Vincent Van Gogh

The method of political science is the interpretation of life; its instrument is insight, a nice understanding of subtle, unformulated conditions.
Woodrow Wilson

Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction.
Bertrand Russell

I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.
Arthur Conan Doyle

The best way in the world to deceive believers is to cloak a message in religious language and declare that it conveys some new insight from God.
Charles Stanley

A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.
Marshall McLuhan

As the unity of the modern world becomes increasingly a technological rather than a social affair, the techniques of the arts provide the most valuable means of insight into the real direction of our own collective purposes.
Marshall McLuhan

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.
Thomas Carlyle

The worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.
Herodotus

Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.
Bette Davis

For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.
Honore De Balzac

It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress.
Paul Dirac

If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you do not already possess.
Mortimer Adler

I was really glad to meet Jane Clark because it did give me an insight. I couldn't imagine what kind of woman she was. I was hugely impressed by her energy, straightforward nature and enthusiasm for life.
Jenny Agutter

The best vision is insight.
Malcolm Forbes

The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.
Denis Diderot

Only when inspired to go beyond consciousness by some extraordinary insight does beauty manifest unexpectedly.
Arthur Erickson

It is insight into human nature that is the key to the communicator's skill. For whereas the writer is concerned with what he puts into his writings, the communicator is concerned with what the reader gets out of it. He therefore becomes a student of how people read or listen.
William Bernbach

A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

India saw from the beginning, and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight, that life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities.
Sri Aurobindo

And no book gives a deeper insight into the inner life of the Negro, his struggles and his aspirations, than, The Souls of Black Folk.
Ray Stannard Baker

God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.
Abraham Joshua Heschel

Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.
Jared Diamond

Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information.
Peter Ustinov

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed; he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.
Walter Lippmann

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.
Leo Rosten

I recognized that information was, in many respects, like a public good, and it was this insight that made it clear to me that it was unlikely that the private market would provide efficient resource allocations whenever information was endogenous.
Joseph Stiglitz

More Insight Quotations

Insight Translations

insight in German is Einblick
insight in Norwegian is innsikt
insight in Spanish is perspicacia
insight in Swedish is inblick, insikt

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