Quotes About Perspective

Man never had an idea - man will never have an idea, except those supplied to him by his surroundings. Every idea in the world that man has came to him by nature.

The older I got, I started to realize more it's not necessarily that any of us are inherently bad or good; you just kind of carve your own way, and you are your experiences and your surroundings and what you grow up in.

I think that place is a huge part of pretty much any musician's work, in how one responds to an environment, whether it be your actual surroundings or the more figurative place we're all living in.

All of my surroundings influence my songwriting. It's autobiographical, although I leave enough space so it's relatable.

What is newest to one in foreign countries is not always the people, but their surroundings, and those same little details of life and circumstance which make no impression on a man in his own land until he returns to it after a prolonged absence, and then they stand out very sharply for a while.

An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it.

We all live in this little bubble that we just expect to live forever and I think those of us that have been with people battling cancer, you realise, actually, this surrounds us everywhere we go.

Even the largest of my dreams and ambitions, I realize with increasing dismay, were puny, measly, compared to the object of my dreaming. I would not say my life to date has been built overmuch of compromise, but still, it surrounds me.

I adore John Mayer. I don't see how anything that surrounds John could be negative.

I've done an informal, anecdotal survey about marriage, and I've found no evidence that it brings happiness.

There are moments when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level and surveys the long windings of destiny.

I decided to go and find India on my own. So, I hired a cab for a drive round old Delhi. I was knocked off center by the sheer energy that goes into daily survival.

The things that prey on my mind in London seem to disappear as soon as I find myself in a different environment. Survival mode kicks in.

Humor - I see it as a survival skill.

People react differently to hearing 'Procedure X has a 70 percent chance of survival' and 'Procedure Y has a 30 percent chance of death.' Phrased that way, people flock to Procedure X, even though the numbers are the same.

I like language, words. And I think the survival skills I've developed over the years have added a lot to my perspective.

To a certain degree, I think both self-narrativizing and selective memory are essential survival skills.

You know what I always dreamed of? That with the greenhouse effect, one day Estonia can be what L.A. is right now. I always thought when the end of the world comes, I want to be in Estonia. I think then I'd survive.

An extreme optimist is a man who believes that humanity will probably survive even if it doesn't take his advice.

You have what is right in front of you. You survive and you have your family. That's the whole world.

Sometimes what I think what the news is missing is the human element, the connection - the moment that you look into a little girl's eyes or a father who has just left his family and risked everything just to try and survive.

I'm lucky to be alive. I'm one of only 40 people who have survived the surgery I had, and when you've been that close to dying, you re-evaluate what's really important to you - and it's nothing to do with fame and money.

I couldn't possibly have any regrets, because I've been very lucky, I've been celebrated, and I've survived. I couldn't have one single regret. That would be absurd.

It still amazes me when I look at some of the films I've been a part of, and some of the people I've gotten to meet and work with. I also look back sometimes and realize that I was lucky to have lived through them and even to have survived them, at times.