Quotes About Perspective

History matters. Facts matter. But above all else, context matters. Changing history and facts—canceling them as if they did not exist or changing them to suit some twenty-first-century weaponized truism is another form of propaganda and lie.

language helps create our reality.

That is really the direction in spiritual direction, as I understand it. As gently as possible, I try to say, It seems as though the light is coming from over there," and I point to it, hoping that I don't point in such a way that I block the person's view.

The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness.

Don't try to get him to "see everything" [at an art museum]. You'll give him pictorial indigestion. One sure way of making a person hate apples is to take him to an orchard at 9:00 a.m. and force feed him apples until noon! Indeed, the revulsion may last a lifetime. So it is with pictures and museums.

Seeking out people with different views, different perspectives, different ideas is often challenging, because it requires us to set aside judgment and open our minds. But we have to remind ourselves that to get beyond where we are, where I believe most of us are, we would all be be well served to choose our music carefully, to stop talking and listen to one another.

In Henry David Thoreau's Walden, written during his year in a one-room cabin with few possessions, is this quote: "The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life that is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Not only should the conventional "rules" of marriage not apply necessarily to individual wives, but the euphoria of Phase One is old news. We being to learn that while nothing is as good as it seems, nothing is quite as dire as it appears.

Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.

To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.

Time exists in order that everything doesn't happen all at once…and space exists so that it doesn't all happen to you.

No matter where life takes you,' she said, 'the place where you stand at any moment is holy ground.

You'll never be happy with what you want until you can be happy with what you've got.

And if you don't believe memories are worth more than money, then perhaps you've not made the right kind of memories.

Despite the starvation and the hard work, some of the prisoners realized that life in Australia was actually better than life back in England. In England, they had been beggars with no way to get land of their own.

One person's weed is another person's wildflower.

Does that mean you're prepared to deal with whatever turns up? People aren't sometimes. When they learn the real truth, they're all of a sudden content to live with a lie.

Stories are never a waste of time

Perhaps even people you like and admire immensely can make you see the World in ways you would rather not.

Every window in Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.

I'm sorry," I said. "You didn't do nothing," he said in surprise. "I can be sorry even if it's not my fault." He looked at me as if this were a new idea for him.

Mientras no estás enamorada, mientras tu corazón es libre y tu mirada no es de nadie, entre todos los hombres que podrían interesarte ni uno solo se digna a prestarte atención; después, en el momento en que te sientes atrapada por una única persona y no te importan los demás absolutamente nada, todos te persiguen, pronuncian dulces palabras, te galantean.