Quotes About Subjectivity

Nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.

Die Welt des Glücklichen ist eine andere als die des Unglücklichen.

Suppose that the colour struck you as brighter on one day than on another; would you sometimes say: I must be wrong, that colour is certainly the same as yesterday? This shews that we do not always resort to what memory tells us as the verdict of the highest court of appeal.

Ma che colpa abbiamo, io e voi, se le parole, per sè, sono vuote?...E voi le riempite del senso vostro, nel dirmele, e io nell'accoglierle, inevitabilmente, le riempio del senso mio. Abbiamo creduto d'intenderci, non ci siamo intesi affatto.

Abbiamo tutti dentro un mondo di cose: ciascuno un suo mondo di cose! E come possiamo intenderci, signore, se nelle parole ch'io dico metto il senso e il valore delle cose come sono dentro di me; mentre chi le ascolta, inevitabilmente le assume col senso e col valore che hanno per sé, del mondo com'egli l'ha dentro? Crediamo di intenderci; non ci intendiamo mai!

Una realtà non ci fu data e non c'è, dobbiamo farcela noi: non sarà mai una per tutti e per sempre ma di continuo e infinitamente mutabile.

But don't you see that the whole trouble lies here. In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do.

I saw then my father for the first time, as I had never seen him before, externalized in his own life, but not as he had been to himself, not as he had felt himself to be, which was something I could never know; but rather, as a being that was wholly strange to me, in that reality which, as I now be held him, I might suppose that others had imposed upon him.

how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself.

Sí! En eso consiste todo», pensaba, «en ese atropello. Cada uno quiere imponer a los otros el mundo que lleva dentro como si fuese el de afuera, y que todos deban verlo a su modo, y que los otros no puedan ser sino como los ve él».

Yet everything that may be imagined of us is really possible, even though it may not be true for us. True for us? Others laugh. It is true for them. So true is it, understand, that if you do not hold fast to that reality which is bestowed upon you as your own, they are in a position to bring you to realize that the reality which they confer upon you is truer than any of your own.

One man's weakness is another man's mercy.

People must flatter their own eyes with their pathetic lives. The things I was saying followed logically the things that I had said before, yet bore no relation to what I was thinking and feeling.

The work of art offers an experience of contradictions and incommensurabilities – these are much better than truths.

nothing is straightforward in the world of literary taste.

We have a situation in which human beings, who must deal with each other, have vastly different views as to the nature of reality, yet each one believes his or her own view to be the correct one since it is based on the microcosm of personal experience.

Es posible que mañana muera, y en la tierra no quedará nadie que me haya comprendido por completo. Unos me considerarán peor y otros mejor de lo que soy. Algunos dirán que era una buena persona; otros, que era un canalla. Pero las dos opiniones serán igualmente equivocadas.

to look at a work of art and then to make a judgement as to whether or not it is art, and whether or not it is Christian, is presumptuous.

Don't try to make comparisons. By whose standards do we compare?

A. J. Wheeler. He says: "Nothing is more important about the quantum principle than this, that it destroys the concept of the world as 'sitting out there,' with the observer safely separated from it by a 20-centimeter slab of plate glass. Even to observe so minuscule an object as an electron, we must shatter the glass.

You young people are always so obsessed with truth. The truth is often overrated.

This could all be a coincidence, of course. Perhaps Chamberlain and his cohort, for whatever private reason, were determined to see the Hitler they wanted to see, regardless of the evidence of their eyes and ears. Except that the same puzzling pattern crops up everywhere.

What you feel, and what is real – all just a matter of perspective.

You don't see the world as it is, you see it, as you are.