Quotes About Perspective

Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one.

The only happy people in the world are those who do not have to write long poems

Often we judge ourselves by our intentions and everyone else by their actions. It is possible to intend one thing while communicating something totally different. Sometimes our true motives are cleverly hidden even from us.

I have lived now for over a century, yet I can still say with complete confidence that no one can claim to have plumbed the depths of human misery who has not shared the fore-ends of a submarine with a camel.

Breaking things and hurting people, thought Harry as he marched across the gravel. A cracking fuckin' way for a bloke to earn a quid. Better than being chased around by those paparazzi cunts, at any rate. He

Don't make it worse by thinking it's more painful than it actually is.

only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.

J)ust because your version of normal isn't the same as someone else's version doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you.

"Older men are much more attractive than young boys," Petronella said. "You're trying to cheer me up. Older men are more attractive because they have more money."

When we let go of insisting that we are who we think we are and that the world should give us exactly and only what we want, all things shine forth.

Had they been in the wilderness they would have complained of the Ten Commandments.

Space, time, and objects might just be aspects of a sensory desktop specific to Homo sapiens. They might not be deep insights into objective truths, just convenient conventions that have evolved to allow us to survive in our niche.

Hustle to keep your kids on or off the Internet, eating organic or local or nothing at all. Take these actions, or none. Just don't worry about them. There is nothing to worry about, and there never was.

If, by contrast, you think that uncovering your mistakes is one of the best ways to revise and improve your understanding of the world, then this is actually a highly optimistic insight.

WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) samples make up most nonclinical neuroimaging studies as well.

After all, there have never been loonies carrying signs saying, "The End is Not Near.

we may just have to come around to the notion that there's my universe and there's your universe—but there's no such thing as the universe.

There are two kinds of fools: one who says this is old and therefore good, and the other who says this is new and therefore better.

to have beliefs different from ours.

In Europe, the present is perceived as the endpoint of history. In America, the present is perceived as the beginning of the future.

new ideas take over a vacuum formerly occupied by no well-articulated idea at all. That happens for either of two reasons: new ideas responding to new information made possible by new measurements, or else responding to new "outlooks." (Among historians of science, the term used rather than the inadequate English term "outlook" is the German Fragestellung—literally, the posing of a question, but more broadly meaning a worldview from which that question can arise.)

Lack of certainty is precisely what makes conclusions more reliable than the conclusions of those who are certain, because the good scientist will be ready to shift to a different point of view if better evidence or novel arguments emerge. Therefore certainty is not only something of no use but is also in fact damaging, if we value reliability.

drowning in two inches of water

The history of the object is more relevant than the object itself, if we want to pinpoint what is interesting to us.