Quotes About Perception

Memory uses the filling-in trick, but imagination is the filling-in trick

There are many good things about getting older, but no one knows what they are.

memory does not store a feature-length film of our experience but instead stores an idiosyncratic synopsis

The historian Will Durant performed the remarkable feat of summarizing Kant's point in a single sentence: 'The world as we know it is a construction, a finished product, almost–one might say–a manufactured article, to which the mind contributes as much by its moulding forms as the thing contributes by its stimuli.

But just as we tend to treat the details of future events that we do imagine as though they were actually going to happen, we have an equally troubling tendency to treat the details of future events that we don't imagine as though they were not going to happen. In other words, we fail to consider how much imagination fills in, but we also fail to consider how much it leaves out.

the only thing these facts clearly show is that people tend to see what they want to see.

what we objectively get (wealth) is not the same as what we subjectively experience when we get it (utility).

Time is not an object but an abstraction, hence it does not lend itself to imagery

Because the media control sources of information, according to Dylan, "We live in a world of fantasy where Disney has won. . . . It's all fantasy.

One learns a lot if others assume you are deaf to their tongue.

sunt lacrimae rerum, "There are tears in things.

and what he knows and we know (Odysseus), the poet introduces an important theme that will continue to grow throughout his poem, which is: What is the difference between who we are and what others know about us? This tension between anonymity and identity will be a

En fait, nous créons nos propres prisons. Celles-ci sont toujours à l´exacte dimension du regard que nous posons sur les situations auxquelles nous sommes confrontés.

On commence par savoir, ensuite on comprend, enfin seulement vient la Connaissance.

If you want to know what the English really think about consumption, ignore what they say, but look at what they do.

Texans are no longer comfortable with submitting their political will to a people who, they perceive, wouldn't know liberty and good government if it jumped up and bit them in the ass. There is a precedent for this feeling in Texas. The Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico specifically calls out the other Mexican States for their weakness in the face of Santa Anna's tyranny.

O importante não é saber como aconteceu, mas, sim, sentir que o que aconteceu foi um evento importante. Esse evento se chama consciência. Tomar consciência foi a grande revolução que Rairu proporcionou às pessoas que estavam no mundo de baixo. Elas não sabiam que havia outra maneira de viver. Quando desejaram partir em busca desse novo mundo, puseram-se a caminho, e muitos conseguiram chegar até em cima, porém, outros não quiseram...

Posso fazer só mais uma pergunta? — Faça. — Karu-Sakaibê e Rairu existem de verdade? Minha avó olhou de soslaio para minha mãe, que escutava, atenta, a nossa conversa. Depois, me chamou bem pertinho dela e, encostando sua boca em meu ouvido, sussurrou: — Para quem precisa deles, sim; para quem não precisa, não.

Most people look to music to validate their tastes, rather than simply react to what they hear.

The body immediately confers perfection, that is, certainty with regard to the true nature of things . . . thanks to the contact with the power of the Self," says Abhinavagupta.

We do not touch in the same way a teacup that desires us, we do not look in the same way at a tree that desires us, because each contact with reality becomes a celebration of the universality of desire. Fixation on a single object thus ceases to exist.

when our desire occupies all of space the absence of one object goes totally unnoticed, because the flow of our awareness remains free to come into contact with thousands of others.

A peaceful mind realizes that it has the ability to grasp everything instantaneously. It no longer has to "stockpile" the materials of reality in order to deal with them later. It sees things directly, without projection and without judgment, in all their evidence and obviousness, in their naked reality.

In short, to empty the mind means 'to polish the mirror', thereby permitting clear reflections of external phenomena and spontaneous insights into the true nature of reality.