Quotes about Perception

All thought is a feat of association; having what's in front of you bring up something in your mind that you almost didn't know you knew.

If you don't know how great this country is, I know someone who does Russia.

It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity.

Natural selection didn't design your mind to see the world clearly; it designed your mind to have perceptions and beliefs that would help take care of your genes.

Imagine if our negative feelings, or at least lots of them, turned out to be illusions, and we could dispel them by just contemplating them from a particular vantage point.

So if meditation did liberate you from obedience to these feelings, it would be, in a certain sense, dispelling an illusion—the illusion you implicitly subscribe to when you follow the feeling, the illusion that the rage, and for that matter the revenge it inspires, is fundamentally "good." It turns out the feeling isn't even good in the basic sense of self-interest.

The trouble with China is, there are too many chinks here.

The devil ought not to be in our line of vision but in our shadow.

Other people's opinion of you does not have to become your reality.

Just look down the road and tell me if you can see either of them. I see nobody on the road. said Alice. I only wish I had such eyes,the King remarked in a fretful tone. To be able to see Nobody! And at such a distance too!

Then you should say what you mean, the March Hare went on. I do, Alice hastily replied; at least--at least I mean what I say--that's the same thing, you know. Not the same thing a bit! said the Hatter. You might just as well say that I see what I eat is the same thing as I eat what I see!

Alice didn't think that proved it at all; however, she went on: 'And how do you know that you're mad?' 'To begin with,' said the Cat, 'a dog's not mad. You grant that?' 'I suppose so,' said Alice. 'Well then,' the Cat went on, 'you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.' 'I call it purring, not growling,' said Alice.