Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
Colin Henry Wilsonwas an English writer, philosopher and novelist. He also wrote widely on true crime, mysticism and the paranormal. Wilson called his philosophy "new existentialism" or "phenomenological existentialism", and maintained his life work was "that of a philosopher, andpurpose to create a new and optimistic existentialism"...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth26 June 1931
discipline vision world
The visionary disciplines himself to see the world always as if he had only just seen it for the first time.
discovery illumination world
The exploration of oneself is usually also an exploration of the world at large, of other writers, a process of comparison with oneself with others, discoveries of kinships, gradual illumination of one's own potentialities.
men world lines
As a young man I was scornful about the supernatural but as I have got older, the sharp line that divided the credible from the incredible has tended to blur; I am aware that the whole world is slightly incredible
simple perception world
Simple perception then is a fallacy. Besides the conscious prejudices that we are aware of imposing on the world, there are a thousand subconscious prejudices that we assume to be actuality.
morning eye world
When I open my eyes in the morning, I am not confronted by a world, but by a million possible worlds.
believe world decline
I had never doubted my own abilities, but I was quite prepared to believe that "the world" would decline to recognize them.
believe passion self
The "passion for incredulity" can produce as much self-deception as the uncritical will to believe.
reading listening needs
Sexual activity is driven by the same aims and motives as reading poetry or listening to music: to escape the limitations imposed by the need for particularity in the consciousness.
men self he-man
The self-surmounter can never put up with the man who has ceased to be dissatisfied with himself.
literature outsiders conflict
I've always believed that a writer has got to remain an outsider. If I was offered anything like the Nobel Prize for Literature, I'd find it an extremely difficult conflict because I'd be basically disinclined to accept.
believe thinking objectivity
No matter how honest scientists think they are, they are still influenced by various unconscious assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. Expressed in a sentence, Fort 's principle goes something like this: People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.
men space giving
One cannot ignore half of life for the purposes of science, and then claim that the results of science give a full and adequate picture of the meaning of life. All discussions of 'life' which begin with a description of man's place on a speck of matter in space, in an endless evolutionary scale, are bound to be half-measures, because they leave out most of the experiences which are important to use as human beings.
girl sex offering
The basic paradox about sex is that it always seems to be offering more than it can deliver. A glimpse of a girl undressing through a lighted bedroom window induces a vision of ecstatic delight, but in the actual process of persuading the girl into bed, the vision somehow evaporates.
horizon longing perversion
Could it be that sexual perversion and romanticism sprang from the same longing for distant horizons?