Quotes About Perception

It's not that students don't "get" Kafka's humor but that we've taught them to see humor as something you get—the same way we've taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That

The sun, if your fluttering eye catches it even slightly, gives you the blue and red floaters a flashbulb gives you.

Since pain is a totally subjective mental experience, we do not have direct access to anyone or anything's pain but our own; and even just the principles by which we can infer that others experience pain and have a legitimate interest in not feeling pain involve hard-core philosophy—metaphysics, epistemology, value theory, ethics.

Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden

I went to her for comfort and found her almost hostile. Her eyes were dark and she was silent and trying with every fiber to look Unhappy.

Mark has been more comfortable with the general drift of a conversation before, lots of times. What if the stories that really stab him are really other people's stories? What if they're bullshit? What if he alone isn't clued into this, and there's no way to know ?

What looks like the cage's exit is actually the bars of the cage.

He asks the 80 students to respond based on their 'gut feeling'. Again, students are given five options, ranging from 'less than 1%' to 'above 40%'. About half of them believe the true answer is less than 5%, of which plenty go for the 'less than 1%' option. Only 1 in 6 get it right, picking the highest option: it turns out that the true figure is 41%. He invites those people – 13 in total – to stand up.

But everyone who guessed in this way went low, rather than high. It suggests that there is some form of systemic bias in play.

They" are violent. "They" are dangerous. And "we" are innocent.

Richard Rohr reminds us that "we cannot attain the presence of God. We're already totally in the presence of God. What's absent is awareness.

Il ne se faisait plus aucune illusion sur les Musulmans au Maroc, où, à la veille de l'indépendance, il les avait vus soudainement passer d'une attitude amicale à la sauvagerie la plus meurtrière. Il

you can make a fortune selling people what they want, but you can go broke selling them what they need.

To be truthful i am not entirely sure what people mean when they talk of happiness. There are moments of joy and laughter, the comfort of friendship, but enduring happiness? If it exists i have not found it

If a million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing

The truth? What the Hell is the truth? We're born, we live and we die. Everything else is just shades of opinion.

Fear cannot be trusted...It exaggerates everything. It is both treacherous and dishonest.

People believe what they want to believe. The truth rarely makes a difference.

You have lived too long in the forest, Laitha; you do not understand the world. Men like to think they control it but this is nonsense. Women rule, as they always have. They tell a man he is god-like. The man believes them and is in their thrall. For without them to tell him, he becomes merely a man.

I choose to pay. I am cursed with a staff a stallion would be proud of. It takes an experienced woman to accept it. There are even some whores who hide when they see me coming.

As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. I wish, I wish he'd go away! —HUGHES MEARNS The Psychoed

I'm the only person who exists in my world—but isn't it that way for all of us?

The terrible thing about death is that you don't know you've died. —Or is that the terrible thing? Maybe that's the blessing.

Dr. Obama had that same trick of looking at you so sadly that you felt sorrier for her than for yourself.