Quotes About Perspective

MARTIN (Serious) Am I too young for Alzheimer's? STEVIE Probably. Isn't it nice to be too young for something?

But I can see. I can see everything. I can see things that mom and dad can't. Or won't.

It is not the logical part of thinking that changes emotions but the perceptual part. If we see something differently, our emotions may alter with the altered perception. (p64)

Critical thinking does seem a superior sort of thinking because it seems as though the critic is actually going beyond the scope of what is being criticized in order to criticize it. That is only rarely a true assumption because, most often, the critic will seize on some little aspect that he or she understands and tackle only that.

In real-life situations apparently logical lines of argument are often (not always) based on an inability to see alternative possibilities. In a similar way the ability to think of an alternative explanation is by far the best way of destroying the arrogance of an apparently logical line of argument.

No amount of excellence on the part of a computer can lead to the solution of a problem if the problem has been incorrectly defined by the programmer. In

Lateral thinking has very much to do with perception. In lateral thinking we seek to put forward different views. All are correct and all can coexist. The different views are not derived each from the other but are independently produced. In this sense lateral thinking has to do with exploration just as perception has to do with exploration.

The first step to expanding your reality is to discard the tendency to exclude things from possibility.

I must reluctantly observe that two causes, the abbreviation of time, and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life.

Notwithstanding the propensity of mankind to exalt the past, and to depreciate the present

This is the theory… that anything that is art… is presumably about some certain thing, but is really always about something else, and it's no good having one without the other, because if you just have the something it is boring and if you just have the something else it's irritating.

I just don't think humanity is the ultimate end. We're so smug about ourselves, secure about how much we know. Well, I've lived with cats most of my life, so I'm very aware that there's another world going on. . . . it sees everything differently, hears everything differently, and probably thinks differently.

I thought it was going to be different; It turned out to be(,) just the same.

More and more, I think you should have no expectations and do everything for its own sake. That way you won't be hit in the head quite so frequently.

We spend all our lives trying to avoid reality in one way or another. I've always had a rather strong sense of unreality. I feel other people exist in a way I don't.

I've decided that, as somebody's pointed out, the older you get, it's very difficult to tell how much younger anyone else is. I mean I can't really tell the difference now between people who are fifteen and people who are thirty-five.

I always feel that other people's lives are filled with meaning. You look at them on the street and think how real their lives must be. Of course, you also know that isn't true.

Study the historian before you begin to study the facts.

If we can widen the range of experiences beyond what we as individuals have encountered, if we can draw upon the experiences of others who've had to confront comparable situations in the past, then - although there are no guarantees - our chances of acting wisely should increase proportionately.

Good historians...have the future in their bones

It used to be said that facts speak for themselves. This is, of course, untrue. The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context.

The facts are really not at all like fish on the fishmonger's slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend, partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use – these two factors being, of course, determined by the kind of fish he wants to catch. By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants.

Aprender acerca del presente a la luz del pasado quiere también decir aprender del pasado a la luz del presente. La función de la historia es la de estimular una mas profunda comprensión tanto del pasado como del presente por su comparación recíproca.

What is history?, our answer, consciously or unconsciously, reflects our own position in time, and forms part of our answer to the broader question, what view we take of the society in which we live.