Negative Capability Quotes

#1. What had John Keats said about Negative Capability - holding two opposite ideas in one's mind at the same time without straining to reconcile them?

Dan Simmons

#2. I think for me in terms of this kind of dichotomy you have to hold the sense of negative capability in your mind - which is Keats line about being able to hold two different ideas 'without any irritable reach after fact or reason.'

Anne Waldman

#3. When an idea comes, spend silent time with it. Remember Keats's idea of Negative Capability and Kipling's advice to "drift, wait, and obey." Along with your gathering of hard data, allow yourself also to dream your idea into being.

Rose Tremain

#4. The greatest benefit of negative capability - the true power of negative thinking - is that it lets the mystery back in.

Oliver Burkeman

#5. It struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

John Keats

#6. All my early books are written as if I were Indian. In England, I had started writing as if I were English; now I write as if I were American. You take other people's backgrounds and characters; Keats called it negative capability.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

#7. All white people in the United States have benefited from a white supremacy. But does that mean that a white person should be viewed badly because they turn against a white supremacist policy? Just because you've benefited from something shouldn't disable you from repudiating it.

Randall Kennedy

#8. From that day the eldest princess quite changed toward Pierre and began knitting a striped scarf for him.

Leo Tolstoy

#9. Oh this? It's a 'bookworm.'
They live in books, and they love to eat important or valuable words.

CLAMP

#10. The mentality of being the super power globally or regionally has contributed strongly to the development of very negative aspects to the political cohabitation the countries of the region than proving the capability of producing solutions that would meet the needs of the public.

Nilantha Ilangamuwa

#11. The hacker community may be small, but it possesses the skills that are driving the global economies of the future.

Heather Brooke

#12. I guess the worst snow was the Kennedy inauguration in 1960. Heavy snow.

Bob Schieffer

#13. He tried to look ashamed and succeeded simply in looking pleased with himself. Odin

Neil Gaiman

#14. If you're entering a room for the first time, do it the way you would in life - look around; see how they have the furniture arranged. If your character is meeting another character for the first time, meet them the way you would in life.

Charles Nelson Reilly

#15. Winning a Nobel Prize is no big deal, but winning it with an IQ of 124 is really something.

Richard P. Feynman

#16. I do not apologize for the takeover of the region by the Jews from the Palestinians in the same way I don't apologize for the takeover of America by the whites from the Red Indians or the takeover of Australia from the blacks. It is natural for a superior race to dominate an inferior one.

Winston Churchill

#17. And my husband and I have been together for 10 years, so I guess people felt a part of it and it makes me feel really good

Beyonce Knowles

#18. Everyone who makes a mistake knows in advance that he's going to make a mistake, he simply can't stop himself. The surprise is perhaps a reaction to the size of the mistake, not the fact of its existence.

Zeruya Shalev