Quotes About Perception

Politicians, real-estate agents, used-car salesmen, and advertising copy-writers are expected to stretch facts in self-serving directions, but scientists who falsify their results are regarded by their peers as committing an inexcusable crime. Yet the sad fact is that the history of science swarms with cases of outright fakery and instances of scientists who unconsciously distorted their work by seeing it through lenses of passionately held beliefs.

There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.

If you ask me to tell you anything about the nature of what lies beyond the phaneron… my answer is "How should I know?"… I am not dismayed by ultimate mysteries… I can no more grasp what is behind such questions as my cat can understand what is behind the clatter I make while I type this paragraph.

It is part of the pholosophic dullness of our time that there are millions of rational monsters walking about on their hind legs, observing the world through pairs of flexible little lenses, periodically supplying themselves with energy by pushing organic substances through holes in their faces, who see nothing fabulous whatever about themselves.

Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.

My wife and I own a cat we call Eureka, after Dorothy's cat in the fourth Oz book. In Eureka's dim mind she must be a kind of polytheist, fed as she is by the two of us, and by neighbors when we take a trip; surrounded on all sides by giant creatures who move about on their hind legs to do things utterly beyond her ken. But we who are her gods have a power of speculation far greater than that of her tiny feline brain.

We cannot tell that we are constantly splitting into duplicate selves because our consciousness rides smoothly along only one path in the endlessly forking chains

Photographers, like painters, seldom retire.

the picture in order to move us must never merely remind us of life, but must acquire a life of its own, precisely in order to reflect life'.

A great deal of the information embedded in a work of art is not – yet at least – accessible just by looking at an image of it while sitting at home. The deepest and richest experiences are not virtual but physical: they involve looking at real things and talking to real people.

from a small one. That's because, if you are looking at the original, its impact is physiological. In the same way, standing next to a big tree feels quite unlike being next to a sapling.

But Michelangelo did not want us to know how he learned to sculpt and, whatever the truth of the matter, he succeeded in suppressing it. The impression he wanted to pass down was that he just picked up the art of sculpture through sheer brilliance and inherent understanding of design; conceivably, that might even be correct.

Truth is rarely writ in ink; it lives in nature.

If you are physically sick, you can elicit the interest of a battery of physicians; but if you are mentally sick, you are lucky if the janitor comes around.

Paradoxical as it sounds, many intellectuals prefer life in the mud to life in clear water.

I find that most men would rather have their bellies opened for five hundred dollars than have a tooth pulled for five.

It's so nice to be around a man who isn't hung up about his car," she said. "Mom, I can't believe you're saying that. You treat that Coupe Deville like it's a member of the family." "But I'm a woman, darling. I'm supposed to feel that way about my Deville.

Tell me how you read and I'll tell you who you are.

The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.

Thus "phenomenology" means ???????????? ?? ????????? -- to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself.

only he who already understands can listen

a person generally stands to benefit more from appearing dumber than he is rather than smarter.

Some people are so smart that they're dumb about the most important things.

Dying is all about letting go and letting be, as is the awareness of God. People who have traveled far along the contemplative path are often aware that the sense of separation from God is itself pasted up out of a mass of thoughts and feelings. When the mind comes into its own stillness and enters the silent land, the sense of separation goes. Union is seen to be the fundamental reality and separateness a highly filtered mental perception.