Quotes About Perception

Tell me what you can't forget, and I'll tell you who you are." —Julie Buntin, Marlena

People think they want the truth, but the opposite is true. Honesty is mean and rough and ugly, while lying can be kinder, softer and more humane. It's not honesty that we want, but consideration and respect.

It isn't what we don't know that gets us into trouble. It's what we know for sure that just isn't so.

I think that sometimes you can forget what the truth is if you hear a lie often enough.

The truth is a story. The truth is a habit. The truth is a compromise. The truth is a casualty. The truth died long ago.

Sometimes when a man feels bad about himself, he doesn't want to be with a woman who looks at him with nothing but love. Instead he wants to lie on top of a woman who knows how nasty and shallow and faithless he can be … a woman who doesn't put him on a pedestal or expect him to be a knight in shining armour … a woman who's happy with the worst he can be.

How does anyone know what's true or real? Things we once accepted as facts are now accepted as being wrong. The earth is not flat, smoking isn't good for us, Pluto isn't a planet, witches weren't burnt at the stake in Salem, and humans have more than five senses. Everything has a half-life—even facts.

Always look for sparrows before you look for canaries.

You cook with your senses," he said when someone did something stupid. "And one of those senses is common sense.

The definition of a philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black hat, which isn't really there. And the definition of a theologian is he's somebody who finds it.

t]he Darwinian argues that morality simply does not work (from a biological perspective), unless we believe that it is objective. Darwinian theory shows that, in fact, morality is a function of (subjective) feelings; but it shows also that we have (and must have) the illusion of objectivity. (Ruse 1998, 253; emphasis mine)

Possessing a theory of mind means that an individual ascribes mental states, such as purpose, intention, knowledge, beliefs, doubts, pretending, liking, and so forth, to himself and to others.

Plainly stated, I believe consciousness is an instinct.

He once told me he didn't like to meet people he admired because they invariably disappointed in person.

Festinger was the intellectually intense discoverer of "cognitive dissonance," the idea that when a personal belief is challenged by new information, we tend to ignore the new information in order to reduce mental conflict.

Hence at any moment only part of the visual elements of a scene is available for conscious perception.

Libet has provided us with an intriguing possible mechanism for explaining why we think we are doing in real time things that we have in fact already done.

perhaps the founders understood us better than we understand ourselves.

The real mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, it is a reality to be experienced. —J. J. Van der Leeuw

Every language having a structure, by the very nature of language, reflects in its own structure that of the world as assumed by those who evolved the language. In other words, we read unconsciously into the world the structure of the language we use. —Alfred Korzybski

You are the only judge of whether a piece of art is a piece of art! It's the average man who is the judge. It's not the effete academic who will determine whether a piece of art is a piece of art anymore than an academic can tell you whether a baseball player is really a great baseball player. It's the fan in the stadium that will tell you whether he's a great baseball player.

No matter how beautiful women are, they're always worried that they aren't attractive enough. They need to be reassured. A few don't, but even they appreciate the attention.

I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud." – Dr. Carl Jung

So you should be able to see them clearly in your imagination. We always find it easier to visualize what we fear; it's what keeps us afraid of the dark." -Virginia Dare.