# Quote — Colin Wilson, The Outsider

> Most men have nothing in their heads but their physical needs; put them on a desert island with nothing to occupy their minds and they would go insane. They lack real motive. The curse of civilization is boredom.

- Author: [Colin Wilson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/colin-wilson.md)
- Book: [The Outsider](https://www.leafyquotes.com/colin-wilson/the-outsider.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Colin_Wilson#The_Outsider_(1956)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/colin-wilson/the-outsider/most-men-have

## More from this book

> There is in Shaw, as in Gurdjieff and Nietzsche, a recognition of the immense effort of Will that is necessary to express even a little freedom, that places them beside Pascal and St. Augustine as religious thinkers. Their view is saved from pessimism only by its mystical recognition of the possibilities of pure Will, freed from the entanglements of automatism.

p. 292 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/colin-wilson/the-outsider/there-is-in-shaw.md)

> Cézanne's painting is strictly painting, and its value is immense; but Van Gogh's painting has the Outsider's characteristic: it is a laboratory refuse of a man who treated his own life as an experiment in living; it faithfully records moods and developments of vision on the manner of a Bildungsroman.

p. 103 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/colin-wilson/the-outsider/cezannes-painting-is-strictly.md)

> 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.

p. 231 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/colin-wilson/the-outsider/the-exploration-of-oneself.md)