QuoteProject
Most vagabonds i knowed don't ever want to find the culprit that remains the object of their long relentless quest. The obsession's in the chasing and not the apprehending, the pursuit you see and never the arrest" - Tom Waits "Foreign Affairs
Tom Waits
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The journey of searching for meaning can often be more fulfilling than the actual discovery.

In this quote, Tom Waits reflects on the idea that many people are drawn to the pursuit of a goal or truth rather than the attainment of it. The 'vagabonds' represent those who seek but often find themselves more engaged in the chase, suggesting that the process and the experience of searching can be more valuable than reaching an endpoint or possessing the answer.

Themes

PursuitJourneyObsessionSearchMeaning

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can inspire people during a motivational speech about the value of perseverance.

More from Tom Waits

When you're writing, you're conjuring. It's a ritual, and you need to be brave and respectful and sometimes get out of the way of whatever it is that you're inviting into the room.
Tom WaitsRead
If you're in the middle of the ocean with no flippers and no life preserver and you hear a helicopter, this is music. You have to adjust to your needs at the moment.
Tom WaitsRead
I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.
Tom WaitsRead
Don't plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it, you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me - choke those little bad days. Choke 'em down to nothing.
Tom WaitsRead
My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.
Tom WaitsRead
Now its raining its pouring the old man is snoring now I lay me down to sleep I hear the sirens in the street all my dreams are made of chrome I have no way to get back home I’d rather die before I wake like Marilyn Monroe and throw my dreams out in the street and the rain make β€˜em grow
Tom WaitsRead

Similar quotes

Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it's to have any meaning in this world - and stop being its apologist.
BonoRead
Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.
T. S. EliotRead
The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
Carl SaganRead
When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
Abraham Joshua HeschelRead
To test a perfect theory with imperfect instruments did not impress the Greek philosophers as a valid way to gain knowledge.
Isaac AsimovRead
Who does not know the evils of war cannot appreciate its benefits.
Sun TzuRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Tom Waits | QuoteProject