Perception Quotes

The question is not what you look at, but what you see. It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.

~ Henry David Thoreau

The destruction of sight, wherever the injuries be sustained, follows the same law: all colours are affected in the first place, and lose their saturation. Then the spectrum is simplified, being reduced to four andsoon to two colours; finally a grey monochrome stage is reached, although the pathological colour is never identifiable with any normal one. Thus in central as in peripheral lesions ‘the loss of nervous substance results not only in a deficiency of certain qualities, but in the change to a less differentiated and more primitive structure’.

~ Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Night is the permanent revolution, that of the globe. Every sundown the streets change, becoming sinister or libidinous, or, for that matter, longer or narrower or unexpectedly twisted. The familiar rebels against those who presume to know it. The map is altered and time is telescoped. Daylight restores things to their normal condition, or is that really their normal condition? The map of the city wrinkles and unfolds, wrinkles and unfolds.

~ Luc Sante

That melting pot stuff was always more about what this country wanted to believe about itself than the way people really felt.

~ Wally Lamb

All forms are limited. Some of the limitations are time, place, culture, language.

~ Idries Shah

I can't prove it yet know it when I seem it.

~ Brian Spellman

For many, what they see on television becomes more true than what they see with their eyes in the external world. But this is not so, for one must never forget that every television and has been edited. The viewer does not see the event. He sees in edited form of the event. It is not the event which is seen, but an edited symbol or an edited image of the event. An aura and illusion of objectivity and truth is built up, which could not be totally the case, even if the people shooting the film were completely neutral.

~ Francis A. Schaeffer

Discernment is a light of protection and direction in a world that grows increasingly dark.

~ Elder David A. Bednar

Clothing doesn't really change a man. But it changes how others react to him.

~ Brandon Sanderson

My life is so bad that it's worse than it really is.

~ Brian Spellman

Look at a cloud and it may seem very still. Look at it a few minutes later and it could have transformed into a totally different shape without you even noticing. When it may seem that you are standing still, quite the contrary, you are actually transforming every second. Next time you gaze at the clouds, remember you are moving right along with them.

~ Jason Micheal Ratliff

Your perception of the world and the way you see yourself in it has created within your mind a concept, a philosophy, of the way you believe things to be.

~ Chris Prentiss

By changing how you perceive things and how you act upon those perceptions, you will change your life.

~ Chris Prentiss

You may plainly perceive the traitor through his mask, he is well-known everywhere in his true colors, his rolling eyes and his honeyed tones impose only on those who do not know him.

~ Molière

Education stuffs you full of ideas without the coinciding experience that gave rise to those ideas in the first place, giving you incorrect perspective and notions.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot see physically with his eyes....Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite. It is the emancipation of the mind. It is an exploration into unknown areas.

~ Arshile Gorky

Teachers should be made aware of visual stress symptoms and the potential difference coloured lights, overlays and lenses could make to a learners perception.

~ Adele Devine

Stuff only allows you to rent temporary pleasure.

~ Linda Deir

Careful preparation is necessary before people can perceive something which is there all the time.

~ Idries Shah

Poisonous relationships can alter our perception. You can spend many years thinking you’re worthless… but you’re not worthless, you’re unappreciated.

~ Steve Maraboli

Our perceptions shape whether challenges are obstacles that block our path to success or important arrows that steer us in the direction we want to go.

~ Julie Connor

The yellow eyes had fallen from the tired star. Lorq's face erupted about the scar at some antic from the Mouse that Katin had missed. Rage, Katin pondered. Rage. Yes, he is laughing. But how is anyone supposed to distinguish between laughter and rage in that face? But the others were laughing too. Yet some way, somehow, we do.

~ Samuel R. Delany

There are three types of actions: purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous. Characters, to be immediate and apprehensible, must be presented by all three.' Katin looked toward the front of the car. The captain gazed through the curving plate that lapped the roof. His yellow eyes fixed Her consumptive light that pulsed fire-spots in a giant cinder. The light was so weak he did not squint at all. I am confounded, Katin admitted to his jeweled box, 'nevertheless. The mirror of my observation turns and what first seemed gratuitous I see enough times to realize it is a habit. What I suspected as habit now seems part of a great design. While what I originally took as purpose explodes into gratuitousness. The mirror turns again, and the character I thought obsessed by purpose reveals his obsession is only habit; his habits are gratuitously meaningless; while those actions i construed as gratuitous now reveal a most demonic end.

~ Samuel R. Delany

...human beings have a distorted view of risk. They don't see the whole picture. Our perceptions are twisted by stories in the media, by films, by our own personalities and experiences. So, despite the unlikely odds, we still worry about being raped or murdered. We hear a sound in the night and think of burglars, not mice... It's kind of a protective pessimism: if we worry about the worst happening, it may miss our door.

~ Ruth Dugdall

Habits of the mind also provide our mental framework – the way we see the world

~ Gyalwa Dokhampa

In spiritual moments we nearly perceive a grand, divine conspiracy of interconnectedness between us and everything.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Nothing happens ‘to’ you, everything happens ‘for’ you.

~ Linda Deir

If a boat is shattered by a storm, the desperate passengers cling to the floating pieces of the hull. In that moment, it's not a broken boat. To a drowning man, it's a floating miracle.

~ Elmer Seward

We stood as the ground shifted and we saw the view from belowthrough tiled floors and concrete stairs, our feet burning holes in the foundation while you whispered of dreams.

~ Marie Anzalone

Eventlessness has no post to drape duration on.

~ John Steinbeck

Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic.

~ Edward De Bono

Where was the line between compassion and foolishness, kindness and weakness? And that was from her position. From theirs, it might be a line between mercy and cruelty, consideration and callousness.

~ Rohinton Mistry

As for everything else, so for a mathematical theory: beauty can be perceived but not explained.

~ Arthur Cayley

Perceptions of the world and of other actors diverge from reality in patterns that we can detect and for reasons that we can understand.

~ Robert Jervis

Adapting our own perception, following rather than leading and building bridges are all keys to helping the child with autism learn.

~ Adele Devine

How do you see the world? Happy endings come not through events but through a shift in perception.

~ Jane Tara

The flawlessly beautiful were flawlessy happy, weren't they? To Kristy this had always seemed self-evident. Tonight, however, the alcohol made her wonder if envy hadn't blinded her. Perhaps to be flawless was another kind of sadness.

~ Clive Barker

For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique.

~ Edgar Allan Poe

Our visual field, the entire view of what we can see when we look out into the world, is divided into billions of tiny spots or pixels. Each pixel is filled with atoms and molecules that are in vibration. The retinal cells in the back of our eyes detect the movement of those atomic particles. Atoms vibrating at different frequencies emit different wavelengths of energy, and this information is eventually coded as different colors by the visual cortex in the occipital region of our brain. A visual image is built by our brain's ability to package groups of pixels together in the form of edges. Different edges with different orientations - vertical, horizontal and oblique, combine to form complex images. Different groups of cells in our brain add depth, color and motion to what we see.

~ Jill Bolte Taylor

Sometimes a person’s first assumption was very telling. It revealed how they perceived the situation.

~ Sara Sheridan