Perception Quotes
More Perception Quotes
Natural thunder heralds the wetness of fresh water high clouds to quench the thirst of fields gone dry and parched, a messenger of blessed rain, but this was as dry as hell must be. My distraught perception refused to believe it, because of the insane suddenness with which it sounded, swelled and hit, and how casually it came to murder my child.
anna akhmatova— "The First Long Range Artillery Fire On Leningrad," translated by Daniela Gioseffi (1993)
The widespread inability to understand technological artifacts as fabricated entities, as social and cultural phenomena, derives from the fact that in retrospect only those technologies that prove functional for a culture and can be integrated into everyday life are 'left over.' However, the perception of what is functional, successful and useful is itself the product of social and cultural--and last but not least--political and economic processes. Selection processes and abandoned products and product forms are usually not discussed.
johannes grenzfurthner— Interview with Furtherfield
The basis for the Bharat Natyam technique is the perception of the human body as a geometric ideal both in its static position (pictured as the straight axis around which a circle could be drawn) and its articulation through the dance (which explores all the harmonious geometric shapes possible from the central axis within the circle).
Shobana Jeyasingh— In The Routledge Dance Studies Reader, edited by Alexandra Carter and Janet O'Shea; Chapter 17: "Getting Off the Orient Express" (1998, p. 184).
selected by Nanobug 2004 If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern. ~ William Blake
— used 9 February 2004, selected by Moby
The function of criticism is the reeducation of perception of works of art? The conception that its business is to appraise, to judge in the legal and moral sense, arrests the perception of those who are influenced by the criticism that assumes this task.
john dewey— 1934 Art as Experience.
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception orother, of heat orcold, light or shade, pain or pleasure.I nevercan catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.
David Hume— 1739 A Treatise of Human Nature, bk.1, pt.4, section 6.
Down for a new radio, to Ross Lake, and back up. Three days walking. Strange how unmoved this place leaves one; neither articulate or worshipful; rather the pressing need to look within and adjust the mechanism of perception.
— 1969 Earth House Hold,'Lookout's Journal, Crater Shan 28 July'.
Boredom lies only with the traveler's limited perception and his failure to explore deeply enough. After a while, I found my perception limited.
william least heat-moon— Part Seven, Chapter 7
Most of these who are thrust into combat soon find it impossible to maintain the mythic perception of war.
chris hedges— War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning
Many church folk, in their self-conscious attempt to be overtly morally upright, emit all the wrong signals, thus messing with people’s perception of the gospel.
alan hirsch— p. 52 (The Faith of Leap (2011))
By experience; by a sense of human frailty; by a perception of "the soul of goodness in things evil;" by a cheerful trust in human nature; by a strong sense of God's love; by long and disciplined realization of the atoning love of Christ; only thus can we get a free, manly, large, princely spirit of forgiveness.
frederick william robertson— P. 252. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
The concept of communication includes all of those processes by which people influence one another... This definition is based on the premise that all actions and events have communicative aspects, as soon as they are perceived by a human being; it implies, futhermore, that such perception changes the information which an individual processes and therefor influences him.
Gregory Bateson— p.6 as cited in: Stewart L. Tubbs, Robert M. Carter (1978) Shared Experiences in Human Communication. p.1
We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future. We shall never be able to say, "Ha! My perception, my accounting for that series, will indeed cover its next and future components," or "Next time I meet with these phenomena, I shall be able to predict their total course.
Gregory Bateson— p.29 (Mind and Nature, a necessary unity, 1988)
Reality is so dull, Alan thought. Any mistake in one’s perception of it is inevitably more interesting than the real thing, and lucky are those who remain uninformed of their error.
amanda filipacchi— Love Creeps (2005)
It isn't my profundity that makes me a mental marvel, it's the amazing detail of my perception. There's nobody else who can keep so many things on his mind at once.
r. a. lafferty— Atlas, in Ch. 4
Like all real treasures of the mind, perception can be split into infinitely small fractions without losing its quality. The weeds in a city lot convey the same lesson as the redwoods; the farmer may see in his cow-pasture what may not be vouchsafed to the scientist adventuring in the South Seas.
aldo leopold— p. 174 ("Conservation Esthetic")
When one analyzes the pre-conscious step to concepts, one always finds ideas which consist of "symbolic images." The first step to thinking is a painted vision of these inner pictures whose origin cannot be reduced only and firstly to the sensual perception but which are produced by an 'instinct to imagining' and which are re-produced by different individuals independently, i.e. collectively... But the archaic image is also the necessary predisposition and the source of a scientific attitude. To a total recognition belong also those images out of which have grown the rational concepts.
wolfgang pauli— Letter to Markus Fierz (1948)
At last, Mythic feeling and conscious perception no longer confront each other as antagonists but as allies. Passionate nationalism is no longer directed toward tribal, dynastic or theological loyalties, but toward that primal substance, the racially based nationhood itself. Here is the message which will one day melt away all dross, eliminate all that is base, and bring into being all that is noble.
alfred rosenberg— Mythisches Ergreifen und bewusstes Erkennen stehen sich heute im Sinne des deutschen Erneuerungsgedankens endlich einmal nicht feindlich, sondern sich gegenseitig steigernd gegenüber: der glühendste Nationalismus nicht mehr auf Stämme, Dynastien, Konfessionen gerichtet, sondern auf die Ursubstanz, auf die artgebundene Volkheit selbst, ist die Botschaft, die einst alle Schlacken schmelzen wird, um das Edle herauszuholen und das Unedle auszumerzen. (Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts ("The Myth of the Twentieth Century") - Page 45 - 1930)
The basic purpose of life and the basic purpose of education is to enhance one’s boundaries of perception. I don’t want the children to just survive after ten years of schooling here. They must blossom and flower wherever they go. -Sadhguru (on Isha Vidhya rural education project)
jaggi vasudev— Isha Insights Magazine, Spring Edition 2009
It is not worth asking how to define consciousness, how to explain it, how it evolved, what its function is, etc., because there's no one thing for which all the answers would be the same. Instead, we have many sub-capabilities, for which the answers are different: e.g., different kinds of perception, learning, knowledge, attention control, self-monitoring, self-control, etc.
— Aaron Sloman, comp.ai.philosophy (14 Dec. 1994) as quoted in Marvin Minsky, The Emotion Machine (2006)
The basic purpose of life and the basic purpose of education is to enhance one’s boundaries of perception. I don’t want the children to just survive after ten years of schooling here. They must blossom and flower wherever they go. -Sadhguru (on Isha Vidhya rural education project)
— Isha Insights Magazine, Spring Edition 2009
The new perception is that the United States has entered a war with Islam itself. Terrorism is a tactic. You cannot eradicate it by declaring a war against it.
— Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the national board of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) at the National Press Club, Bush office is anti-Muslim, group says, July 17, 2007
— Unindicted co-conspirator in terror funding case says Bush Administration promoting "Islamophobia", 17 July 2007
It is the public’s perception that their children are safe from tornadic wind events while at school because their school has an established tornado shelter. However, it may be a tornado shelter in name only; in fact, the only reason that area may be a “shelter” is because someone called it one. A tornado safer area designed by an experienced architectural and engineering team is essential in providing what FEMA has labeled “near-absolute” protection from tornadoes.
— Corey Schultz, PBA Architects, Wichita, Kansas; John Metz, Building Data Services, Wichita, Kansas
Alcmaeon was, says [J.] Wachtler, the first who attempted to explain the phenomenon of sound and our perception of it by reference to the structure of the ear itself. Empedocles to some extent follows or agrees with him. ...Empedocles teaches that hearing is caused by the impact of the air-wave against the cartilage which is suspended within the ear, oscillating as it is struck, like a gong.
— John Isaac Beare, Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition from Alcmaeon to Aristotle (1906)
The followers of Heraclitus insisted the Immortal Principle was change and motion. But Parmenides ' disciple, Zeno, proved through a series of paradoxes that any perception of motion and change is illusory. Reality had to be motionless.
— Robert M. Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist , a certain physiological precondition is indispensable; intoxication . Intoxication must first have heightened the excitability of the entire machine: no art results before that happens.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, in Nietzsche's Revaluation of Values: A Study in Strategies, p.132
We create art to express our perception as to what is not visible in nature. There is no past or future in art…. art should always be in the present!
— Marko Stout, The New York Times (28 December 2012)
"It is a refiner as well as a purifier of the heart; it imparts correctness of perception, delicacy of sentiment, and all those nicer shades of thought and feeling which constitute elegance of mind."
— Mrs. John Sanford, The Lady's Manual of Moral and Intellectual Culture (1854) Causes of Female Influence.
