Quotes About Perspective

Anybody can tell stories,' Iff replied. 'Liars, and cheats, and crooks, for example. But for stories with that Extra Ingredient, ah, for those, even the best storytellers need the Story Waters. Storytelling needs fuel, just like a car; and if you don't have the Water, you just run out of Steam.

I have lived twice as long as I should have," the oldest one said, his voice crackling like an old radio because decades were rubbing up against each other around his vocal chords, "and I've never seen so many people so cheerful in such a bad time. It is the Devil's work.

You see, captain,  here is the truth of the business: some persons are better, others are less.  But it may be nice for you to think otherwise.

To know one man's story you have to swallow the world.

to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world.

Porque lo que crees depende de lo que has visto, no solo lo que es visible sino aquello que estás dispuesto a suponer.

I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each I,...contains a similar multitude. To understand me, you'll have to swallow a world.

Trapped inside a metaphor, I've often felt the need to re-describe it, to change the terms. This isn't so much a balloon, I've wanted to say, as a bubble within which I'm simultaneously exposed and sealed off.... depriving me of reality, reducing me to an abstraction.... [NY, Dec. 1991; Columbia Graduate School Of Journalism Speech]

If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world.

Our minds are all we have. They are all we have ever had. And they are all we can offer others.

Some people are content in the midst of deprivation and danger, while others are miserable despite having all the luck in the world. This is not to say that external circumstances do not matter. But it is your mind, rather than circumstances themselves, that determines the quality of your life. Your mind is the basis of everything you experience and of every contribution you make to the lives of others. Given this fact, it makes sense to train it.

Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. What if someone says, Well, that's not how I choose to think about water.? All we can do is appeal to scientific values. And if he doesn't share those values, the conversation is over. If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?

The point is that most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday.

When we presume to lie for the benefit of others, we have decided that we are the best judges of how much they should understand about their own lives—about how they appear, their reputations, or their prospects in the world.

Atheism is just a way of clearing the space for better conversations.

None of these adventitious mental states are the real you. You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.

Almost all our suffering is the product of our thoughts. We spend nearly every moment of our lives lost in thought, and hostage to the character of those thoughts. You can break this spell, but it takes training just like it takes training to defend yourself against a physical assault.

This is not to say that external circumstances do not matter. But it is your mind, rather than circumstances themselves, that determines the quality of your life. Your mind is the basis of everything you experience

It should go without saying that these rival belief systems [Judaism, Islam, Christianity] are all equally uncontaminated by evidence.

But it is your mind, rather than circumstances themselves, that determines the quality of your life.

But if they don't try a psychedelic like psilocybin or LSD at least once in their adult lives, I will wonder whether they had missed one of the most important rites of passage a human being can experience.

Is it possible to be happy before anything happens, before one's desires are gratified, in spite of life's difficulties, in the very midst of physical pain, old age, disease, and death?

The doors leading out of the prison of scriptural literalism simply do not open from the inside.

The burn of lifting weights, for instance, would be excruciating if it were a symptom of terminal illness. But because it is associated with health and fitness, most people find it enjoyable.