Perspective Quotes
More Perspective Quotes
I do not want to discuss evolution in such depth, however, only touch on it from my own perspective: from the moment when I stood on the Serengeti plains holding the fossilized bones of ancient creatures in my hands to the moment when, staring into the eyes of a chimpanzee, I saw a thinking, reasoning personality looking back. You may not believe in evolution, and that is all right. How we humans came to be the way we are is far less important than how we should act now to get out of the mess we have made for ourselves.
jane goodall— P. xx. (Reason for Hope: a Spiritual Journey (2000))
The people who do make big discoveries are the ones who somehow manage to free themselves from conventional ways of thinking and to see the subject from a new perspective.
anthony james leggett— Interview 2003 Nobel Laureates in Physics, 9 December 2003 (8:02).
In our time of ever-increasing specialization, there is a tendency to concern ourselves with relatively narrow scientific problems. The broad foundations of our present-day scientific knowledge and its historical development tend to be forgotten too often. This is an unfortunate trend, not only because our horizon becomes rather limited and our perspective somewhat distorted, but also because there are many valuable lessons to be learned in looking back over the years during which the basic concepts and the fundamental laws of a particular scientific discipline were first formulated.
— in Einstein's Researches on the Nature of Light, Emil Wolf (2001). Selected works of Emil Wolf: with commentary. World Scientific. p. 536. ISBN 9810242042.
There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.
douglas adams— Speech at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge, UK, (1998)
From the perspective of those who are entitled, the problems begin when those they despise do not go along with--and have the power and wherewithal to not go along with--the perceived entitlement.
derrick jensen— p. 106 (The Culture of Make Believe (2003))
But of course their doctrine states that the purpose of a suit is to harass, not to win, so from that perspective they hurt us all. They've had a real chilling effect on journalism, both before and after my piece.
Richard Behar— Interview in Marr, David (January 19, 2008). "Print and be damned - CULT". The Age: p. 3, First Edition, Section: Insight.
A project like Pangea, which enables us to enter in to the situations of others, imaginatively, is fulfilling what the religions call the Golden Rule... going into one's own experience, and going into other's experience, and seeing the world from another perspective — that's what we desperately need in our dangerously polarized world.
karen armstrong— YouTube video
Grattan-Guiness's uniformly interesting and valuable account of the interwoven development of logic and related fields of mathematics . . . between 1870 and 1940 presents a significantly revised analysis of the history of the period. . . . [His] book is important because it supplies what has been lacking: a full account of the period from a primary mathematical perspective.
ivor grattan-guinness— From James W. Van Evra's review in Isis of The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870-1940
It’s amazing to me that not only can we put a probe around Saturn and get images of its moons, but our math and physics are so freaking accurate we can say, "Hey, you know what? On this date at this time if we turn Cassini that way we’ll see a moon over 2 million kilometers away pass in front of another one nearly 3 million kilometers away."Every morning, I have a 50/50 chance of finding my keys. That kinda puts things in perspective.
phil plait— "A marvelous night for a (Saturn) moon dance" (10 February 2010)
"No critic, not even a topical analyst, can escape seeing the musical past from a present perspective. But...the common-language approach of the topical-analyst critics permits a separation between present sensibility and the general sensibilities of the late eighteenth century, allowing for an ever-evolving dialogue between the vanished past and the evanescent present."
harold powers— Harold Powers, "Reading Mozart's Music", p.43.
Western civilization presents one of the most difficult tasks for historical analysis, because it is not yet finished, because we are a part of it and lack perspective, and because it presents considerable variation from our pattern of historical change.
carroll quigley— Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 333-334
In the midst of events there is no perspective.
barbara tuchman— p. 454 (A Distant Mirror (1978))
It was not my intention to make such a production of the emptiness between us, playing tuba on the tombstone of a soprano to try to keep some dead singer's perspective alive. It's just that I could have swore you had sung me a love song back there; and that you meant it.
buddy wakefield— "Hurling Crowbirds at Mockingbars"
It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars .
arthur c. clarke— The Exploration of Space (1951), p. 187
Anna’s reaction is more complex than you might imagine, and it’s at such a moment you appreciate the woman in the writer-director’s chair. Women, I suspect, are more likely than men to view sex from the over-all perspective of what we may call their lives. In a country like Saudi Arabia, whose citizens express discomfort about men and women even attending movies together, I have little doubt which gender is more concerned.
roger ebert— Review of Humpday (22 July 2009)
Only he who is capable of a genuine encounter with the other is capable of an authentic encounter with himself, and the converse is equally true…From this perspective, every spiritual exercise is a dialogue, insofar as it is an exercise of authentic presence, to oneself and to others.
pierre hadot— trans. Michael Chase (1995), p. 91
Some people do not understand us correctly and believe that the goal of our effort is to return to our land. Our ideal is going forwards then that - our ideal is the vision of the Great eternal truth; it is an ideal that always goes forward; it is an ideal that never ends, it is always growing, so that every step forward that we take, our horizon keep going ahead of us, and in perspective we see before us the purpose that is greater and more noble, which we’ll try to put our selves towards.
theodor herzl— From: Zionism - an ideal that never ends - speech, 26 June 1899
The IPCC WG1 Chapter 3 Report clearly cherrypicked information on the robustness of the land near-surface air temperature to bolster their advocacy of a particular perspective on the role of humans within the climate system. As a result, policymakers and the public have been given a false (or at best an incomplete) assessment of the multi-decadal global average near-surface air temperature trends.
roger a. pielke— "Documentation of IPCC WG1 Bias by Roger A. Pielke Sr. and Dallas Staley - Part I," Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group Weblog (2007-06-20) [3]
Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
carl sagan— Cosmos (1980, p. 339)
I have tried at times to place humans in perspective against the vastness of universal time and space. I have been concerned with where we, as a race, may be going and what may be our purpose in the universal scheme if we have a purpose. In general, I believe we do, and perhaps an important one.
clifford d. simak— As quoted in the Associated Press obituary (27 April 1988)
No one really knew the sciences except the Lord Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, by reason of his length of life and experience, as well as of his studiousness and zeal. He knew mathematics and perspective, and there was nothing which he was unable to know; and at the same time he was sufficiently acquainted with languages to be able to understand the saints and the philosophers and the wise men of antiquity but his knowledge of languages was not such as to enable him to effect translations until the latter portion of his life...
roger bacon— Roger Bacon, Opus Tertium (c. 1267) p.91
Enterprise Architecture Planning (EAP) results in a high-level blueprint of data, applications, and technology that is a cost-effective, long-term solution; not a quick fix. Management participation provides a business perspective, credibility, and de-mystifies the systems planning process. EAP can be labeled as business-driven or data -driven because
— a stable business model (independent of organizational systems, and procedures) is the foundation for the architectures,
— data is defined before applications, and
— data dependency determines the sequence for implementing application systems...
It is within the purview of each context to define its own rules and techniques for deciding how the object-oriented mechanisms and principles are to be managed. And while the manager of a large information system might wish to impose some rules based on philosophical grounds, from the perspective of enterprise architecture, there is no reason to make decisions at this level. Each context should define its own objecttivity.
— Rob Mattison, Michael J. Sipolt (1994) The object-oriented enterprise: making corporate information systems work. McGraw-Hill. p. 270
There is a key trait in people who do polyamory well, and it's this: They are good at regulating their strong emotions. By that I mean, when something emotionally intense is happening to you, either good or bad, you're able to see it as part of a larger whole and keep it in perspective.
— "Control Tower: Not Too Emo". The Stranger. January 31, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
Palestine is an Arab and Islamic land, and nobody is allowed to forsake any part of Palestine. Any agreement or negotiations that grant the Jews any rights in Palestine are null and void from the perspective of Islamic law. Our religion does not accept such an agreement, and nor do our national interest or the interest of humanity.
— Hamed Al-Bitawi, head of the Palestinian Islamic Scholars Association, on Al-Aqsa TV (15 May 2007) ; also in transcript at Free Republic (7 June 2007)
Someone told me that creativity is just learning to do something with a different perspective.
— Ben Carson, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story. (p. 84)
For many parts of Nature can neither be invented with sufficient subtlety, nor demonstrated with sufficient perspicuity , nor accommodated unto use with sufficient dexterity, without the aid and intervening of the mathematics , of which sort are perspective, music , astronomy , cosmography , architecture , engineery, and divers others.
— Sir Francis Bacon, in Tom Sorell, et al., Scientia in Early Modern Philosophy: Seventeenth-Century Thinkers on Demonstrative Knowledge from First Principles, Springer, 28 October 2009, p.4
Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.
— Christopher Morley, as quoted in An Enchanted Life : An Adept's Guide to Masterful Magick? (2001) by Patricia Telesco, p. 189
