Quotes About Perspective

The capacity for erroneous belief is very great, especially where it coincides with convenience.

Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding. The poor man has always a precise view of his problem and its remedy: he hasn't enough and needs more.

And in unraveling the complex we should always be careful not to overlook the obvious. John Kenneth Galbraith - The Affluent Society.

We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.

You have to do what you think is the right thing, but just make sure it's the right thing in the long run, and not just for the moment. Your war memories will be with you forever, you'll be asked about them thousands of times after the war is over.

Phineas created an atmosphere in which I continued now to live, a way of sizing up the world with erratic and entirely personal reservations, letting its rocklike facts sift through and be accepted only a little at a time, only as much as he could assimilate without a sense of chaos and loss.

I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case.

This is a school,' said Pete in his level voice. 'All views can be expressed and considered here. We're not indoctrinating you.' Yes, well,' Hochschwender replied coolly, 'that's a matter of point of view.

The war was and is reality for me.

I went back to the Devon School not long ago, and found it looking oddly newer than when I was a student there fifteen years before.

This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find that they are not merely smaller in relation to your growth, but that they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age. In this double demotion the old giants have become pigmies while you were looking the other way.

by means of certain small scars rising along its trunk, and by a limb extending over the river, and another thinner limb growing near it. This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find that they are not merely smaller in relation to your growth, but that they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age...the old giants have become piggies while you were looking the other way.

but people's memories are short for any sorrow that isn't theirs...

Everything is clearer when you're in love.

Living is easy with eyes closed Misunderstanding all you see It's getting hard to be someone But it all works out It doesn't matter much to me.

Later, I went back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, shit, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, 'I am the carpenter.' But that wouldn't have been the same, would it? 'I am the carpenter….

Everything is true and not true about everything. That's one thing I've learned.

Only by trying on other people's clothes do we find what size we are.

I was asked in an interview which was more important: money or love? I told the interviewer that if he had to ask the question, he wouldn't understand the answer.

Reporter lady: What's that color? John: Hm. I'd call this a color!

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see

When I went to school they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down Happy. They told me I didn't understand the assignment and I told them they didn't understand life.

Es tan ciego porque sólo ve lo que quiere ver.

Mi madre siempre me decía que la felicidad es clave para la vida. Cuando fui a la escuela, me preguntaron qué quería ser cuando fuera grande. Dije feliz. Me dijeron que no entendía la pregunta... Y yo les respondí que ellos no entendían la vida