In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Independent dance - and, fine, it's a very good thing that it remains independent - is a much tougher life: all dancers expect that, and accept that there will be periods of not being able to work, provided there are choice moments during the year when they really can work.
Siobhan Davies

Innumerable confusions and a feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transition.
Marshall McLuhan

It is in revolutionary periods that the culmination of previous trends and the beginning of new ones appear.
C. L. R. James

It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn't get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.
Richard P. Feynman

It is, I think, particularly in periods of acknowledged crisis that scientists have turned to philosophical analysis as a device for unlocking the riddles of their field. Scientists have not generally needed or wanted to be philosophers.
Thomas Kuhn

It was really a very small company when I started and it changed very rapidly during those first periods.
Jack Kilby

It's very important to go through periods where you sound just rotten and you know it, and you have to persevere or give up.
Steve Lacy

Italy in the first years got food, for the first year or the first periods got food. Then we got raw materials and then we got tool machines, let's say, instruments for working.
Gianni Agnelli

Life is a series of commas, not periods.
Matthew McConaughey

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.
Harry S. Truman

Most of my life I've had long periods of feeling down and lost. That's why every five years or so I've smashed my life to pieces and started again.
Siobhan Fahey

Music and songs are written at different periods of time, at different times in your life. They reflect the feelings you have and to be honest, I quite like having positive emotions.
Scott Ian

My spine healed incorrectly. There were long periods when I'd be perfectly all right, and then there were many other times when I wasn't, when my back would give out and throw me down to the floor amid waves of nauseating pain.
Dick York

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can't be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!
Arthur C. Clarke

One aspect of this is the way we have come during recent centuries to appreciate that the world and indeed the very universe in which we live have evolved over immense periods of time.
John G. D. Clark

Out of Coltrane's whole history, there are things which I think are great from all the periods.
Lee Konitz

Overall, the anarchy was the most creative of all periods of Japanese culture for in it there appeared the greatest landscape painting, the culmination of the skill of landscape gardening and the arts of flower arrangement, and the No drama.
J. M. Roberts

Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.
Alfred North Whitehead

Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.
George Santayana