Quotes About Perception

This is investing, where the smart money isn't so smart, and the dumb money isn't really as dumb as it thinks. Dumb money is only dumb when it listens to the smart money.

That is why the discipline of managing mental models—surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works—promises to be a major breakthrough for building learning organizations.

Do we meet each person curious about the miracle of a human being that we are about to connect with? Or do we meet a poor person that we are about to help?

Then, if you bring a certain kind of open, moment-to-moment, nonjudgmental awareness to what you're attending to, you'll begin to develop a more penetrative awareness that sees beyond the surface of what's going on in your field of awareness. This is mindfulness. Mindfulness makes it possible to see connections that may not have been visible before. But seeing these connections doesn't happen as a result of trying—it simply comes out of the stillness.

The prejudiced person can't see how his prejudice shapes what he "sees" and how he acts. In some sense, if he did, he would no longer be prejudiced. To operate, the "thought" of prejudice must remain hidden to its holder.

Thought presents itself (stands in front) of us and pretends that it does not represent.

How can we stop going faster while our ability to see further ahead is decreasing?

Selling" generally means getting someone to do something that she might not do if she were in full possession of all the facts.

Huntin too hard for the truth ain't a good idea, y'know," he added. "By the time you stumble over it, it ain't the truth no more. Unless there's death in it. I reckon death is about as close to truth as a man can come.

I have never figured out how women work but I do know that their skin color has no significance. Black or white, every last one is pretty pink on the inside and they are all impossible.

Course truth don't count for much after all these years cause folks hangs on to what it suits 'em to believe and won't let go of it.

There is a difference between right and wrong, always was and always will be, but each man's wrong and each man's right are different.

Well, he was scarcely a parfit gentil knight; as Wolfie said, he looked like some Hollywood Geronimo trying to kick a ninety-dollar habit.

As the hand held before the eye conceals the greatest mountain, so the little earthly life hides from the glance the enormous lights and mysteries of which the world is full, and he who can draw it away from before his eyes, as one draws away a hand, beholds the great shining of the inner worlds. RABBI NACHMANN OF BRATZLAV

You could of heard a spider sip a breath.

You truly see by not trying to see.

I think I must be disappointed, having come so far, and yet I do not feel that way. I am disappointed, and also, I am not disappointed. That the snow leopard is, that it is here, that its frosty eyes watch us from the mountain—that is enough.

Man wants the truth about Ed Watson," Daniels jeered. "Where you aim to find it? Smallwoods'll tell you their truth, Hardens'll tell you theirs. Fat-ass guard out there, he'll tell you his and I'll give you another. Which one you aim to settle for and make your peace with?

the hand held before the eye conceals the greatest mountain, so the little earthly life hides from the glance the enormous lights and mysteries of which the world is full, and he who can draw it away from before his eyes, as one draws away a hand, beholds the great shining of the inner worlds. RABBI NACHMANN OF BRATZLAV

In the boulder at my back, there is a shudder, so slight that at another time it might have gone unnoticed. The tremor comes again; the earth is nudging me. And still I do not see.

Memory is at its best when it's selective, when we have edited out the dull, the disappointing, and the disagreeable until we are left with rose-colored perfection. This is often quite inaccurate but usually very comforting. It can also be fascinating to revisit. Was it really like that? Were we really like that?

We might treat a rabbit as a pet or become emotionally attached to a goose, but we had come from cities and supermarkets, where flesh was hygienically distanced from any resemblance to living creatures. A shrink-wrapped pork chop has a sanitized, abstract appearance that has nothing whatever to do with the warm, mucky bulk of a pig. Out here in the country there was no avoiding the direct link between death and dinner.

Half-familiar sounds could be dimly recognized as words through the swirls and eddies of Provençal: demain became demang, vin became vang, maison became mesong.

There is more empty space in the book you're holding, than book. The electrons in the atoms of the book are moving so fast, they give the illusion of solid ink on solid paper. It's not. It's just an illusion. If all the electrons would stop moving for even an instant, the book would not just crumble into dust, it would disappear. Poof