Quotes About Perspective

Say that he was right about how bad it was in the Soviet Union, but he just didn't understand the nice materialism of the West. Say that the Soviet Union was bad because the people were deprived of meaningless creature comforts, and that the West is good because the people are flooded with them.

It is the judge's responsibility always to seek the truth in trials; while it is the advocate's to make out a case for what is probable, even if it doesn't precisely correspond to the truth.

because I believe that each generation should have a chance to see a giant figure of the past from the perspective of its own time and circumstances.

Thucydides is the greatest writer of history in history. In fact, he is so good that we are trapped inside his version of events.

There were three main new schools of thought: the Epicureans, the Stoics and the Sceptics. On the whole, if an Epicurean said one thing, a Stoic would say the opposite and a Sceptic would refuse to commit himself either way.

there is, he reasoned, no such thing as evil or suffering from God's point of view, and this explains why God never tries to do anything about it.

Just as nothing can be said to be either contrary to or in accordance with God's will, so nothing is either good or bad from God's perspective, which is to say from the point of view of nature or the universe as a whole:

A Meeting In a dream I meet my dead friend. He has, I know, gone long and far, and yet he is the same for the dead are changeless. They grow no older. It is I who have changed, grown strange to what I was. Yet I, the changed one, ask: "How you been?" He grins and looks at me. "I been eating peaches off some mighty fine trees.

Well, I take it that when a man comes to die, love is more to him than a kingdom; it may be, if we could see truly, that it is more to him even while he lives.

Everything depends on the point of view and is rich in varying aspects. A picture is sublime from one corner of the room, a daub from another; a woman's full face may be perfect, her profile a disappointment; above all, what you admire in yourself becomes highly distasteful in your neighbor. The moral is, I suppose, Tolerance; or if not that, something else which has escaped me.

I believe that, by and large, people are good and everybody you meet is more likely to surprise you in a positive way than in a negative way.

But I'm not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative. Maybe that's one of the reasons we enjoy it.

We only see what we want to see.

There are two worlds. The world you understand and the world you don't. These worlds exist side by side, sometimes only centimeters apart, and the great majority of people spend their entire lives in one without being aware of the other. It's like living in one side of a mirror: you think there is nothing on the other side until one day a switch is thrown and suddenly the mirror is transparent. You see the other side.

But I'm not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative.

Why does anyone take photographs ever? We never look at them anymore.

You see the world this way because you're greedy and mad. People give to charity because they want to help.

If you stand too close to the sun you can't complain when all you become as a silhouette.

But I'm not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative. Maybe that's ones of the reasons we enjoy it.

It's none of my business, but sometimes you can spend so much time chasing something that you lose everything else while you're about it.

very wise man once defined charity in the following way. He said it was poor people in rich countries giving money to rich people in poor countries

Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative.

But I'm not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative. Maybe that's one of the reasons we enjoy it.

Why would I believe someone who spends his entire life making stuff up?