Ivan Pavlov
Physiologist
"While you are experimenting, do not remain content with the surface of things."
Surface quotes
Surface
159 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Civil Rights Leader
"We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive."
Marguerite Duras
Writer, Filmmaker
"You alone became the outer surface of my life, the side I never see, and you will be that, the unknown part of me, until I die."
Che Guevara
Revolutionary, Guerrilla Leader
"Real revolutionaries adorn themselves on the inside, not on the surface."
James Bryant Conant
Chemist, Educator
"Behavior which appears superficially correct but is intrinsically corrupt always irritates those who see below the surface."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside surface — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Surface quotes (page 1 of 8)
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"Depth must be hidden. Where? On the surface."
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"Reality, whether approached imaginatively or empirically, remains a surface, hermetic."
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"The experiences of your past life which are stored within come up to the surface to be rejected. By rejecting all these by and by the inside will have to be cleansed."
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"Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface."
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"People live through such pain only once. Pain comes again—but it finds a tougher surface."
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"To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces."
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"Do not allow yourself to be misled by the surfaces of things"
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"A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom."
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"Our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by."
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"Days are coloured bubbles that float upon the surface of fathomless nights."
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"Youth and age touch only the surface of our lives."
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"As each human being is an integral part of the collective human consciousness, they affect the world much more deeply than is visible on the surface of their lives."
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"Drums all have their own particulars - each drum has a place where they sound the best - where they ring out and resonate the best, and the head surface isn't too loose or too tight, mainly so you get a good rebound off of the head."
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"Vanity is but the surface."
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"I had a mad impulse to throw you down on the lunar surface and commit interstellar perversion with you."
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"They lack suggestive power. And when a book lacks suggestive power, however hard it hits the surface of the mind it cannot penetrate within."
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"A system, artificially stabilized, and of course you have hidden risks under the surface, and you don't know where the risks are."
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"She shows us only surfaces, but she is million-fathoms deep."
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"The main problem with solar on the Earth's surface is that it is so intermittent, and we don't have decent storage yet."
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"It is only after you have come to know the surface of things ... that you can venture to seek what is underneath. But the surface of things is inexhaustible."
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