Quotes About Perspective

The eye is bigger than the belly.

Half the world knows not how the other half lives.

He that talkes much of his happinesse summons griefe.

History is always the interpretation of the present

I ain't a Kat… and I ain't Krazy… it's what's behind me that I am… it's the idea behind me, Ignatz, and that's wot I am.

Criticism is the art of appraising others at one's own value.

Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible, and perhaps altogether unseen.

An optimist is a fellow who believes a housefly is looking for a way to get out.

Criticism is the art wherewith a critic tries to guess himself into a share of the artist's fame.

I drink to make other people interesting." or "I only drink to make other people seem more interesting.

To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted

As soon as we become aware of money, we develop beliefs about it-- beliefs we cling to, sometimes for the rest of our lives, often at the cost of our souls.

Days change so many things -- yes, hours -- we see so differently in suns and showers.

We categorize as we do because we have the brains and bodies we have and because we interact in the world as we do.

People do not necessarily vote in their self-interest. They vote their identity. They vote their values. They vote for who they identify with.

The newspaper was always behind the news, not in front. You shouldn't ever go to the papers for information. They usually printed what they thought people wanted to see, and they had no explanation to give. It wasn't the king they saw. That wasn't the king at all. It was the king's shadow.

If you ask him for a shilling, or two or three shillings, he'll give freely freely, but if he know that he got to spend a few hundred dollars, which is no more than three shillings compare to what he got, boys, he will cry buckets of tears.

Some hours ago we had discovered a giant. Now we had discovered a man. The giant was the man, but being a man he could no longer be a giant. The man had undermined the giant.

He had been seen by another. He had become a part of the other's world, and therefore no longer in complete control of his own. The eye was another kind of cage. When it saw you the lid came down, and you were trapped.

Dead seriousness. Without laughter, the rough and rocky places on the path might be too painful to bear. Humor not only lightens your load, it also broadens your perspective. To be deadly serious is to suffer tunnel vision. To be able to laugh at yourself clears the vision.

Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.

Someday you're going to have to learn to separate what seems to be important from what really is important.

Jonathan Edwards is sometimes criticized for having too dim a view of human nature, but it may be helpful to be reminded that his grandmother was an incorrigible profligate, his great-aunt committed infanticide, and his great-uncle was an ax-murderer.

Yet it would be a failure of imagination if we were to start out-as today's histories sometimes do-by simply judging people of the past for having outlooks that are not like our own. Rather, we must first try to enter sympathetically into an earlier world and to understand its people. Once we do that we will be in a far better position both to learn from them and to evaluate their outlooks critically.