Perspective Quotes

There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. Being right is identification with a mental position - a perspective, an opinion, a judgement, a story. For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong, as so the ego loves to make wrong in order to be right.

~ Eckhart Tolle

A fat man eating quails while children are begging for bread is a disgusting sight, but you are less likely to see it when you are within the sound of the guns.

~ George Orwell

The world you see, nature's greatest and most glorious creation, and the human mind which gazes and wonders at it, and is the most splendid part of it, these are our own everlasting possessions and will remain with us as long as we ourselves remain. So, eager and upright, let us hasten with bold steps wherever circumstances take us, and let us journey through any countries whatever: there can be no place of exile within the world since nothing within the world is alien to men.

~ Seneca

Not enough books focus on how a culture responds to radically new ideas or discovery. Especially in the biography genre, they tend to focus on all the sordid details in the life of the person who made the discovery. I find this path to be voyeuristic but not enlightening. Instead, I ask, After evolution was discovered, how did religion and society respond? After cities were electrified, how did daily life change? After the airplane could fly from one country to another, how did commerce or warfare change? After we walked on the Moon, how differently did we view Earth? My larger understanding of people, places and things derives primarily from stories surrounding questions such as those.

~ Neil Degrasse Tyson

In the fluid world of 1919, it was possible to dream of great change, or have nightmares about the collapse of order.

~ Margaret Macmillan

Peace is not only the absence of war, but also a way of seeing the world, and the choices we make are how we express and manifest that vision of the world.

~ Max Strom

If you knew how the journey was going to end, you could afford to be patient along the path.

~ Joseph J. Ellis

They were trying to orchestrate a revolution, which almost by definition generated a sense of collective trauma that defied any semblance of coherence and control. If we wish to rediscover the psychological context of the major players in Philadelphia, we need to abandon our hindsight omniscience and capture their mentality as they negotiated the unknown.

~ Joseph J. Ellis

If he (John Adams) could not control events, he could at least record them for posterity – perhaps the ultimate form of control.

~ Joseph J. Ellis

I thought it peculiar how one new experience can alter your perspective on places you've known your whole life.

~ M.j. Prest

When we see everyone the way God sees them, all their frailties and weaknesses as well as their strengths,we can learn to treat them tenderly. We must also view ourselves from God's perspective: lovingly, tenderly, and patiently. We can do the same with our spouses and other children or family members.

~ Laura Lane

You'd expect academics, people who are by training comfortable with complexity, to be the most resistant to the idea that we're shaped by any single factor. In fact, they are often the worst offenders. Immersed in their own research, shaped by their own work, many logically see everything else as a natural extension of it.

~ Nicholas Day

Leo Strauss's discoveries in the history of political philosophy had the effect of liberating his students from the yoke of contemporary thought.

~ William Kristol

I figure I'll win the fight in twenty years or so anyways when I end up with a decent life and their unemployed and living at home.

~ Alexandra Robbins

Working is prayer for the likes of us,” his master often said. “It’s the way we commune with God.”“Then how does He respond to us?” Jahan had once asked, way back when he was younger.“By giving us more work, of course.

~ Elif Shafak

Turn your face toward the sun and the shadows will fall behind you.

~ Maori Proverb

Everything in life is nonsense. It's just a question of perspective.

~ Carlos Ruiz Zafón

If we don't understand our tools, then there is a danger we will become the tool of our tools. We think of ourselves as Google's customers, but really we're its products.

~ Rebecca Goldstein

The larger question is, as virologist Jonas Salk once asked, Are we being good ancestors?

~ Steven Johnson

A world without glass would strike at the foundation of modern progress: the extended lifespans that come from understanding the cell, the virus, and the bacterium; the genetic knowledge of what makes us human; the astronomer's knowledge of our place in the universe. No material on Earth mattered more to those conceptual breakthroughs than glass.

~ Steven Johnson

I have a Greek-American friend who named her daughter Nike and is often asked why she chose to name her offspring after a sneaker.

~ Rebecca Goldstein

All too often I try to skate away from the things I'm afraid of and things I don't like and am unwilling to accept. I'm selfish and difficult to handle. I give my men cause for concern. I worry them, but they haven't given up on me yet and I love them all the more for it.

~ Gillibran Brown

The author perceives nuances of Abigail Adams' character in the occasional errors she makes in readily quoting John Milton. Rather than giving the observer a reason to quibble, they are evidence that she had absorbed Milton's works enough to feel comfortable quoting them from memory.

~ David Mccullough

Sometimes the effect arrives thanks to a different kind of breakthrough: a dramatic increase in our ability to MEASURE something, and an improvement in the tools we build for measuring. New ways of measuring almost always imply new ways of making.

~ Steven Johnson

The Law Polarity decrease that everything has an opposite it's the flip side of the coin, you're right my left, consider this next time you disagree with someone because their right from their point of view.

~ Bob Proctor

The role of biblical counselors is facilitate the discovery of a greater God awareness through spiritual eyes that look at life through scriptural lenses.

~ James Macdonald

The giving of undue prominence to one fact brings others inexorably on the head of the student to avenge his neglect of them

~ Thomas Hughes

The philosopher often appears ridiculous in the practical affairs of life, because he or she has stepped out of the rush of time.

~ Theaetetus

It was then that we connected. His sound bounced through my head and out my eyes, painting my world with new shades of color. I still remember the smile that unnoticeably took my face as I inched for another touch.

~ Charles Lee

If there is such a thing as philosophical progress, then why – unlike scientific progress – is it so invisible? Philosophical progress is invisible because it is incorporated into our points of view. What was torturously secured by complex argument comes widely shared intuition, so obvious that we forget its provenance.

~ Rebecca Goldstein

My life will not be an apology. It will be a statement

~ Andy Andrews

Hope is when we have a beautiful vision of something and a positive emotion to go along with it. When our world comes crashing down, when we are trapped in a deep, dark, despairing hopelessness, we need a bigger perspective. Hope comes when we reflect on all that we hold dearand true, when we acknowledge a higher power, when we acknowledge God in our lives and begin to see what He has planned for our lives.

~ Laura Lane

Tolstoy does not tell us how things look to the author; he tells us how they look to the characters. In short, he does not use simile and metaphor. (That astonishing assertion in Wood’s review is what got me started reading Tolstoy in the first place. How can anyone write without using metaphor and simile? That would be like—never mind.)

~ John Mark Reynolds

Plato dramatically puts the detachment of the philosopher from his time this way: to philosophize is to prepare to die.

~ Rebecca Goldstein

What is it precisely, that they are doing when they are doing science. Are they refining their instruments for observation or discovering new aspects of reality?

~ Rebecca Goldstein

I'd never had a mind for math. ... It was a logic that made little sense to me. In my perception, the world wasn't a graph or a formula or an equation. It was a story.

~ Cheryl Strayed

Every choice in life sets us on a different path and carries its own set of “what ifs” and consequences that we could worry about, but what’s the use? Rather than plaguing our thoughts with the unknown, we should focus on and accept only what we do know – and all we know is the path we’re currently on.

~ A.j. Darkholme

Wisdom is not measured by age ,Intelligence is not measured by grades ,Personality is not measured by what others say

~ O.z Osama Alzoubi

One must always forgive another's passion.

~ Pat Conroy

Everything that happens, happens at the only possible time it can happen, and it is always at exactly the right time. We cannot get to an appointment before we arrive—or after. It is only at the instant of our arrival that we can arrive, and that is always at exactly the right moment, the perfect moment, the only possible moment.

~ Wu Wei