Quotes About Perspective

Planet Earth is estimated to have a lifetime of nine billion years. And we're right smack in the middle of our lifetime. We've been in the universe for 4.5 billion years. So, that should mean something. We should sort of take a look at where we came from and where we are going.

The universe, it balances. It makes sure you don't get a head that's too big. I love it.

Everyone has bad days, and when you're having a bad day, you think, 'Here I am being singled out by a hostile, malicious universe that is picking exclusively on me.' And then you read a book about bad days and realize they happen to everyone, not just tormented, persecuted you.

There's that old theory that humankind and this planet were seen as the centre of the universe. That was thrown away - how could we be so presumptuous? Well, I subscribe to that.

Is it possible that I am not alone in believing that in the dispute between Galileo and the Church, the Church was right and the centre of man's universe is the earth?

We don't really have a place in the universe, as far as on a timeline. But nothing else does, either. Therefore every moment really is the most important moment that's ever happened, including this moment right now.

I'm trying to convey to my audience that you really can't judge a book by its cover, and there's more to the universe than you can see with your eyes.

One of the things that was kind of shocking for humans... was to come to terms with was the fact that, hey, we may not be the center of the universe.

But that incessant drive to be out there in the literary universe that was important to me when I was in my twenties, like going to a Paris Review party or whatever, that seems totally irrelevant now.

How can a speck of a universe be physically identical to the great expanse we view in the heavens above?

The adults don't know what's happening on the kids' universe and the kids don't know what's happening on the adults' universe.

The writer needs to react to his or her own internal universe, to his or her own point of view. If he or she doesn't have a personal point of view, it's impossible to be a creator.

No, no, I never despair, because George Bush is not running the universe. He may be running the United States, he may be running the military, he may be running even the world, but he is not running the universe, he is not running the human heart.

I think growing up is difficult and it's a process that I'm always interested in, with kids and adults, they are often on two different universes.

I don't think of 'Monsters, Inc.' as existing in the same space as Carl Frederickson from 'Up,' or whatever, you know? They seem like completely different universes to me.

Europeans forget that one-third of the American people have had a personal conversation with Jesus Christ and that the born-again are not just little old ladies in black but also CEOs and provosts of universities and candidates for office.

Most American elementary schools and high schools, and nearly all colleges and universities, teach everything that is significant from a liberal/Left perspective.

I've spent a good deal of time in the Middle East over the years, lecturing at universities in places like Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and Morocco.

The fact that I spent my life in universities in a manner that I no longer have close identification with bricklayers is a pain to me.

My American undergraduate education probably gave me a better idea of the fundamentals of what European civilization is about, better than the undergraduate education you get at most European universities.

When I went to university, I finally got exposed to European films, and they had a strong impact on me. I felt those films had a lot of things to say that weren't getting expressed in the films I was used to seeing.

I think people who don't go away to university are missing out on one of the great life experiences. You meet people from so many different places and it's the shared life experience that helps you grow.

There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.

My university work was not central to my education.