Quotes About Perspective

We do not want to be told what we know. We do not want to call things by their names, although we're willing to call one another bad ones. We call meanness nobility and hatred honor. The way to make yourself a hero is to make me out a scoundrel. You won't admit that either, but it's true.

there's no need for algebra where two and two make five.

Her lack of magnificence in a magnificent world

Purgatory was a bit damp,' said Bengt, 'but heaven was more or less as I'd imagined it.

An outsider may wonder how deep a specialist must dig his hole before he realizes that he has lost sight of the horizon...

I suppose that I have not many months to live: but of course I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.

What we should lament is not the loss of houses or of land, but the loss of men's lives. Men come first; the rest is the fruit of their labour.

I am the same as I was, and do not alter; it is you who have changed. What has happened is this: you took my advice when you were still untouched by misfortune, and repented of your action when things went badly with you; it is because your own resolution is weak that my policy appears to you to be mistaken.

the question is not so much whether they are guilty as whether we are making the right decision for ourselves.

Anyone who maintains that we have nothing useful to learn from listening to speeches either lacks sense or has a secret agenda at stake. - Diodotus

had almost said of mankind. For though the events of remote antiquity

By Thucydides 431 BC

Translated by Richard Crawley

but of a large part of the barbarian world

Schönheit liegt im Auge des Betrachters.

Did you ever to think, maybe your not too big? Maybe this town's just to small? - Big Fish

I don't care if you're spoiled, for God's sake! I'm spoiled. We're all spoiled, life does that. It's what you do with yourself after you realize you've been spoiled that matters. It's the life you make in the ruins.

I would certainly rather the industry not go broke, but if that's what it takes for everyone to acquire some values and lose that sense of entitlement, maybe a little belt-tightening wouldn't be so tragic.

You have no control over other people's taste, so focus on staying true to your own.

A hammer looks like a useful tool to a carpenter; the nail has a different impression altogether.

we should ask who is missing from the data we're being shown, and whether our conclusions might differ if they were included.

we should keep an open mind, asking how we might be mistaken, and whether the facts have changed.

I worry about a world in which many people will believe anything, but I worry far more about one in which people believe nothing beyond their own preconceptions.

the "curse of knowledge" is a constant obstacle to clear communication: once you know a subject fairly well, it is enormously difficult to put yourself in the position of someone who doesn't know it.