Perceptions Quotes

“We see the world, not as it is, but as we are──or, as we are conditioned to see it.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

“Once you've seen how broken someone is it's like seeing them naked—you can't look at them the same anymore.”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“Two people can see the same thing, disagree, and yet both be right. It's not logical; it's psychological.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

“Here’s what I think: the only reason I’m not ordinary is that no one else sees me that way.”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

“Humans are pattern-seeking story-telling animals, and we are quite adept at telling stories about patterns, whether they exist or not.”
― Michael Shermer

“We are happy when people/things conform and unhappy when they don't. People and events don't disappoint us, our models of reality do. It is my model of reality that determines my happiness or disappointments.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“When the brain becomes too tired, the mind stops decrypting the perceptions in our mental world and surrenders willingly to the unguarded moments of life.
For some time, the safeguards of our thinking pattern weaken and discontinue the decoding of the chips of daily reality.
The mind picks the instants which are above suspicion, pure and innocent. ("Uber alle Gipfeln ist Ruh" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“A piece of art comes to life, when we can feel, it is breathing, when it talks to us and starts raising questions. It may dispel biased perceptions; make us recognize ignored fragments and remember forsaken episodes of our life story. Art may sometimes even be nasty and disturbing, if we don’t want to consent to its philosophy or concept, but it might, in the end, perhaps reconcile us with ourselves. ("When is Art?")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“If our feelings clash with our perceptions and we cannot breathe anymore, below the leaden sky of a harsh reality, we have to kill the dormant virus of lassitude, punch the air and propel us on a new course, taking back a genuine interest in the world, and create an open space to overcome the impairment of emotional thinking. -( "No monsters hide at this point" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Every culture has its southerners -- people who work as little as they can, preferring to dance, drink, sing brawl, kill their unfaithful spouses; who have livelier gestures, more lustrous eyes, more colorful garments, more fancifully decorated vehicles, a wonderful sense of rhythm, and charm, charm, charm; unambitious, no, lazy, ignorant, superstitious, uninhibited people, never on time, conspicuously poorer (how could it be otherwise, say the northerners); who for all their poverty and squalor lead enviable lives -- envied, that is, by work-driven, sensually inhibted, less corruptly governed northerners. We are superior to them, say the northerners, clearly superior. We do not shirk our duties or tell lies as a matter of course, we work hard, we are punctual, we keep reliable accounts. But they have more fun than we do ... They caution[ed] themselves as people do who know they are part of a superior culture: we mustn't let ourselves go, mustn't descend to the level of the ... jungle, street, bush, bog, hills, outback (take your pick). For if you start dancing on tables, fanning yourself, feeling sleepy when you pick up a book, developing a sense of rhythm, making love whenever you feel like it -- then you know. The south has got you.”
― Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover

“In his student days, he used to argue that if a woman has no other course open to her but starvation, prostitution, or throwing herself from a bridge, then surely the prostitute, who has shown the most tenacious instinct for self-preservation, should be considered stronger and saner than her frailer and no longer living sisters. One couldn't have it both ways, he'd pointed out: if women are seduced and abandoned they're supposed to go mad, but if they survive, and seduce in their turn, then they were mad to begin with.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“If we learn to see things as they are and not as we would like them to be, we avoid many frustrations. If we do not confuse our hopes with our perceptions, the glass house of our values will remain lustrous. ("Like peeing against the wind" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Causing any damage or harm to one party in order to help another party is not justice, and likewise, attacking all feminine conduct [in order to warn men away from individual women who are deceitful] is contrary to the truth, just as I will show you with a hypothetical case. Let us suppose they did this intending to draw fools away from foolishness. It would be as if I attacked fire -- a very good and necessary element nevertheless -- because some people burnt themselves, or water because someone drowned. The same can be said of all good things which can be used well or used badly. But one must not attack them if fools abuse them.”
― Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies

“There's only room for one hero in this story-and everyone knows the devil doesn't get to be the good guy.”
― Joe Hill, Horns

“There’s a writer for you,” he said. “Knows everything and at the same time he knows nothing.”

[narrator]It was my first inkling that he was a writer. And while I like writers—because if you ask a writer anything you usually get an answer—still it belittled him in my eyes. Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It’s like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward trying—only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Love of the Last Tycoon

“And as the years flowed by, some villagers told travelers of a beast and a beauty who lived in the castle and could be seen walking on the battlements, and others told of two beauties, and others, of two beasts.”
― Emma Donoghue, Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins

“Then again, that's how quickly people's perceptions could change. It only took one mistake, one stupid decision.”
― Siobhan Vivian, Not That Kind of Girl

“... to be forceful was not the same as being powerful and to be gentle was not the same as being fragile...”
― Deborah Levy, Swimming Home

“I could now see her the way she actually is and not in the distorted way my mind presented her to me when I was trying to find a reason to reject her and move on”
― Jack Weyland, As Always, Dave

“Are you listening, Jasper? Sometimes you'll be walking in the city late at night, and a woman walking in front of you will spin her head around and then cross the street simply because some members of your gender rape women and molest children!”
― Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

“Do you think he's the murderer?"
"It's worse than that -- he's an actor!”
― Julian Fellowes, Gosford Park: The Shooting Script

“Remember to be conscious of what seeds you plant, as the garden of your mind is like the world. The longer seeds grow, the more likely they are to become trees. Trees often block the sun’s rays from reaching other seeds, allowing only plants that are acclimated to the shadow of the tree to grow—keeping you stuck with that one reality.”
― Natasha Potter

“We never see the full picture. We cannot know a person’s life and challenges at a glimpse.
We never hear the full story. We cannot grasp a person’s viewpoint through mere words.
We never feel the full pain. We cannot perceive a person’s heart and mind in a conversation.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year

“Everyone had secret corners and alleys that no one else saw—what mattered were your major streets and boulevards, the stuff that showed up on other people’s maps of you.”
― Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

“Morris Weissman [on the phone, discussing casting for his movie]: "What about Claudette Colbert? She's British, isn't she? She sounds British. Is she, like, affected or is she British?”
― Julian Fellowes, Gosford Park: The Shooting Script

“Opportunities can become obstacles, same way obstacles can become opportunities; it all depends on how they are being interpreted by the mind of a person.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Watchwords

“Perception does not define who we are, but it does define where we are limited, and where we are not yet free.”
― Georgi Y. Johnson, I Am Here: Opening the Windows to Life and Beauty

“Every ZERO Is 3/4th Of an HERO...!
It’s All in the PERCEPTION!”
― Sujit Lalwani

“Once you’re on equal footing, it’s important to listen to and consider the other person’s point of view. Research shows that we often exaggerate how extreme our opponents are.

“Somebody says something and we all of a sudden create this whole construct about who they are as a person and what type of intention they have, and then we proceed as if that’s true,” said Julia Minson, an associate professor at Harvard Kennedy School. “That automatically sets up the adversarial environment in which someone has to lose.” She explains that it’s important to learn more about the other person’s actual intent, rather than filing it in with your own assumptions.”
― Evelyn Nam

“Walking down a street I see, in those who pass by me, not the facial expressions that they really have but the expressions that they would have if they knew what I'm like and the kind of life I lead, if my face and my gestures betrayed the shy and ridiculous abnormality of my soul. In eyes that don't even look at me I suspect there are smirks (which I consider only natural) directed at the awkward exception I embody in a world of people who know how to act and to enjoy life; and the passing physiognomies, informed by an awareness that I myself have interposed and superimposed, seem to snicker out loud at my life's timid gesticulations.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet