Quotes About Subjectivity

There are no facts, only interpretations.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

It is impossible to describe a landscape so validly as to exclude all other descriptions, for no one can see the landscape in all its aspects at the same time, and no single view can prevent the existence and validity of other equally possible views.

The existentialist will not ask, "What is this thing?" but "What does this thing signify for me?" Thus he will put the altogether subjective "significance" in place of the objective nature, which is not only the height of absurdity but also of pride and insolence. As true greatness " signifies" nothing for the little man, he will see in it only a kind of infirmity the better to be able to enjoy his own "significant" inflatedness.

History is subjective. History is alterable. History is, finally, little more than modeling clay in a very warm room.

If you could explain something perfectly, then you'd never need art.

He needed more than vague explanations and abstract ideas—but those were the very soul of art. If you could explain something perfectly, then you'd never need art. That was the difference between a table and a beautiful woodcutting. You could explain the table: its purpose, its shape, its nature. The woodcutting you simply had to experience.

It's all just in our heads." "Who cares if it's all in our heads?" Finally she looked at me, frowning. "Who cares?" I said. "Yes, it's all in my head. But pain is 'all in my head' too. Love is 'all in my head.' All the things that matter in life are the things you can't measure! The things our brains make up! Being made-up doesn't make them unimportant.

Poems don't deserve numbers

cooking was an art—and art was subjective. One man could love an ice sculpture while another thought it boring. It was the same with food and drink. It did not make the food broken, or the person broken, to not be liked.

I spent years in a graduate literature program learning what makes great writing, and the only conclusion we came to was that the future of graduate literature programs was safe because nobody is ever going to agree on what makes great writing.

No man can judge another man's heart or trials, for no man can truly know them.

Every one carries his own inch-rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.

Whether he sleeps or wakes, whether he runs or walks, whether he uses a microscope or a telescope, or his naked eye, a man never discovers anything, never overtakes anything or leaves anything behind, but himself. Whatever he says or does he merely reports himself. If he is in love, he loves; if he is in heaven, he enjoys, if he is in hell, he suffers. It is his condition that determines his locality.

In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference.

We see our lives from our own point of view; that is the privilege of the weakest and humblest of us;

It's you who draw me out. I exist in you. Not in others.

Every one asks me what I 'think' of everything," said Spencer Brydon; "and I make answer as I can—begging or dodging the question, putting them off with any nonsense. It wouldn't matter to any of them really," he went on, "for, even were it possible to meet in that stand-and-deliver way so silly a demand on so big a subject, my 'thoughts' would still be almost altogether about something that concerns only myself.

We must allow the artist his subject. It is only what he makes of it that we can judge.

When a portrait commences badly it's because you're not describing the woman you have in mind: you are thinking more about those who are going to look at the portrait than about the woman who is sitting for you.

You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.

art is the objectification of feeling

Yes, but everyone is beautiful to someone.

I don't see how an article of clothing can be indecent. A person, yes.