quotations about perception
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
WILLIAM BLAKE
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
It is not hard to see things as they really are, it is simply a matter of tearing down walls, ridding oneself of defenses and presumption, rendering oneself vulnerable, an idiot, a fool. But it is not easy to see things as they really are, because it is painful, it is real, it requires response, it's an incredible commitment. To go nine-tenths of the way is to suffer at every moment utter madness. To go all the way is to become sane.
PAUL WILLIAMS
Das Energi
It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.
ANAÏS NIN
attributed, The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations
When we become fixed in our perceptions, we lose our ability to fly.
YONGEY MINGYUR RINPOCHE
Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom
It's impossible to make a judgment as to which perceptions are real, and which are false, without assuming your personal view to be more valid than your neighbor's.
LAURA TILLMAN
The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts
There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.
J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER
attributed, Pearls of Wisdom
People see what they want to see and what people want to see never has anything to do with the truth.
ROBERTO BOLAÑO
2666
Only in quiet waters things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.
HANS MARGOLIUS
attributed, A Toolbox for Humanity
Perceptions about people can be powerful. They can also be powerfully wrong.
CRAIG DRESANG
"Yolo Hospice: Perceptions beyond our circumstances", The Davis Enterprise, April 17, 2016
What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are.
C. S. LEWIS
The Magician's Nephew
Your opinion is your opinion, your perception is your perception--do not confuse them with "facts" or "truth". Wars have been fought and millions have been killed because of the inability of men to understand the idea that EVERYBODY has a different viewpoint.
JOHN MOORE
Quotations for Martial Artists
While intuitively, we may believe that consciousness is a continual flow, there's considerable evidence to suggest that our conscious perception comes in discrete snapshots, like distinct images flicking quickly through a film reel.
OLIVIA GOLDHILL
"A 'time slice' theory of consciousness suggests we're not continually aware of our surroundings", Quartz, April 18, 2016
Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Three Guineas
Truth is universal. Perception of truth is not.
ANONYMOUS
All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
All civilization in a sense exists only in the mind. Gunpowder, textile arts, machinery, laws, telephones are not themselves transmitted from man to man or from generation to generation, at least not permanently. It is the perception, the knowledge and understanding of them, their ideas in the Platonic sense, that are passed along. Everything social can have existence only through mentality.
ALFRED L. KROEBER
The Superorganic
No two people see the external world in exactly the same way. To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is -- in other words, not a thing, but a think.
PENELOPE FITZGERALD
The Gate of Angels
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
Studies in Pessimism
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
ROBERTSON DAVIES
attributed, The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotes
The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
MARCEL PROUST
"The Captive", Remembrance of Things Past