Quotes About Perception

some might say: 'Fragmentation of cities, religions, political systems, conflict in the form of wars, general violence, fratricide, etc., are the reality. Wholeness is only an ideal, toward which we should perhaps strive.' But this is not what is being said here. Rather, what should be said is that wholeness is what is real, and that fragmentation is the response of this whole to man's action, guided by illusory perception, which is shaped by fragmentary thought.

In the long run it is far more dangerous to adhere to illusion than to face what the actual fact is.

Clarity of perception and thought evidently requires that we be generally aware of how our experience is shaped by the insight (clear or confused) provided by the theories that are implicit or explicit in our general ways of thinking.

we merely say that man is continually developing new forms of insight, which are clear up to a point and then tend to become unclear. In this activity, there is evidently no reason to suppose that there is or will be a final form of insight (corresponding to absolute truth)

The notion that the one who thinks (the Ego) is at least in principle completely separate from and independent of the reality that he thinks about is of course firmly embedded in our entire tradition.

The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion.

Bush Sr. was a jerk, Quayle an idiot, Clinton was atrocious and disgusting, most of those who persecuted him were hypocritical, Gore is shallow and weak, Bradley is an idealist, Bush Jr. a fool, and all of the independent candidates act like they're on drugs.

The truth is, of course, that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.

I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously.

The moment you know you know you know.

You would think that a rock star being married to a super-model would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is.

Some writers, no matter how good they are, can't speak to us. Something about the way they see the world, I think, string sentences together, alienates us as surely as the ramblings of a madman on a bus.

All Cretans are liars, as a Cretan poet once told me.

Sometimes you can hear the wire, hear it reaching out across the miles; whining with its own weight, crying from the cold, panting at the distance, humming with the phantom sounds of someone else's conversation. You cannot always hear it - only sometimes; when the night is deep and the room is dark and the sound of the phone's ringing has come slicing through uneasy sleep.

I send my friends e-mail messages about the progress of my garden, especially of my roses. It left them with the impression, I think, that I was concerned with nothing else. I felt no urgency in correcting that notion. People obsessed with their gardens have probably caused the least suffering in the world of any category of men.

As sci-fi writer Theodore Sturgeon said, 90 percent of everything is crap. But science fiction has not been forgiven for its crap. The reason is that science fiction inherently distrusts the 'eternal verities' on which literature graduates base their doctoral dissertations. Literature departments were uncomfortable with that. But things change.

Several travelers noted that American masters wanted above all to be "popular" with their slaves—a characteristically American need that was probably rare in Brazil or the Caribbean.

Our own filters and biases cloud our abilities to understand and to communicate effectively. It

In 1948, psychologists asked more than 10,000 adolescents whether they considered themselves to be a very important person. At that point, 12 percent said yes. The same question was asked in 2003, and this time it wasn't 12 percent who considered themselves very important, it was 80 percent.

While it pretends not to, it subliminally sends the message that those who are smarter and more accomplished are actually worth more than those who are not.

People tend to want to live up to their friends' high regard.

He read vividly.

Bowie drew our attention to the fact that a person could play the part of a rock star before actually becoming one.

I tell you what completely took the biscuit for me – the song 'Tonight' with Tina Turner. Now she was really good, but I just thought, This record is so poppy.