Quotes About Subjectivity

Mental illness, of course, is not literally a 'thing' - or physical object - and hence it can 'exist' only in the same sort of way in which other theoretical concepts exist.

I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.

There is no such thing as a neutral therapist.

As to judging our own time, and thereby gaining some basis for a judgment of future possibilities, we are doubtless not only too close to it to appraise it but too much formed by it and enclosed within it to do so.

I'm an aesthetic empiricist. If you like something, it doesn't matter who made it. There really is no objective standard other than your own taste. You develop your own tastes, you find things that do or do not fit your tastes, and therefore are or are not 'good.' Whether they have been labeled as produced by the right person is another matter.

I've met people who will go to a movie that I can't stand and they say that they saw that movie ten times. There's something they like and identified in that movie, and I don't see it.

I take them seriously but I try not to read them. I take them personally, that's why I don't read them. I think people are lying when they say they don't care, that's not true. I take them personally.

I really can't describe what my stand-up is like - people see it and they say it's like that, or it's like this, and that's really up to them, that's fine, but I don't sit around all day analysing it. I just try and enjoy a show and interest myself because if I don't do that then I won't interest anybody else.

I don't argue with people... if they say I'm not funny, they're right, for them.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Every horse thinks its own pack heaviest.

The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.

Everyone thinks that 'Chinatown' is the best screenplay. I'm not sure it is.

I was fascinated that everybody in the story thinks that they're in the right.

Songs are about whatever you want them to be about. For me it might mean something completely different than what it means to you. So I'd say it's about whatever the listener thinks it's about.

All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool.

To me, Jon is not a fun name. Thomas is not a fun name.

What beauty is, I know not, though it adheres to many things.

You cannot say that one woman is 'more beautiful' than another, though people always do. It's so ridiculous to say that.

You can make a thousand different movies about the same subject.

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder but you have question the beholder when he or she is delusional.

Ugliness is in the eye of the beholder. I learned that at my mother's knee and other low joints

People make their decisions based on what the facts mean to them, not on the facts themselves

Beauty is not defined by the masses but by the opinion of the individual.