Perspective Quotes
More Perspective Quotes
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
A lot of people don't give him [Kane] as much credit for his art, but I thought he had a flair. It was rudimentary, but in a way that worked to his benefit in the strip. He didn't know much about perspective and anatomy, so he had to improvise.
bob kane— Jerry Robinson, "Interview", The Comics Journal 271, October 2005
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Point of view is worth 80 IQ points
alan kay— talk at Creative Think seminar, 20 July 1982
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
Je ne puis peindre mon désespoir:;; nul mot de la langue humaine ne rendrait mes sentiments. J’étais enterré vif, avec la perspective de mourir dans les tortures de la faim et de la soif.
jules verne— To describe my despair would be impossible. No words could tell it. I was buried alive, with the prospect before me of dying of hunger and thirst.Ch. XXVII: Lost in the bowels of the earth
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)
I wanted to talk to very young kids about self-image and about being different and how that can be your strength, especially from the immigrant perspective.
gloria estefan— The Book Standard (4 June 2005)
Men will not change as long as women ‘marry up.’ Men won't change until we have a perspective on how powerless power makes us. A woman cannot help a man change until she has a perspective on how powerless power makes men.
warren farrell— p. 314. (Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988))
I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.
bel kaufman— Part X, ch. 51 (Sylvia Barrett)
Ludwig offers a unique integrative perspective which encompasses the clinical wisdom accrued through twenty-five years of experience as an alcoholism researcher and therapist....The book serves as an excellent primer for clinicians and recovering persons on a practical and multiperspective approach to alcoholism treatment.
arnold m. ludwig— Contemporary Psychology, review of Understanding the Alcoholic's Mind.
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)
My contention is that the psychiatric perspective on homosexuality is but a thinly disguised replica of the religious perspective which it displaced, and that efforts to “treat” this kind of conduct medically are but thinly disguised methods for suppressing it.
thomas szasz— pp. 170-171 (The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997))
Arrangement includes the putting of things in their proper places and the elegance of effect which is due to adjustments appropriate to the character of the work. Its forms of expression are these: ground plan, elevation , and perspective . ...All three come of reflexion and invention.
vitruvius— Chapter II, Sec. 2
For the record: Though our professional circles did cross-over slightly... I never had the honour or pleasure of meeting Michael Jackson personally, nor did we ever correspond on matters of our professions, personal lives or faiths . … My approach to faith does not include concepts of "conversion/reversion" or "propagation", so the very idea that I would have even tried to "convert" Mr. Jackson (or anyone else for that matter) to my spiritual perspective, is silly.
dawud wharnsby— On rumors that he, Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens), and others had convinced Michael Jackson to convert to Islam, in a statement on his blog site in "The Passing of Michael Jackson : Enter Into Peace" (26 June 2009); Yusuf Islam also repudiated the rumors at his site: "Contrary to persistent press rumours, I was not at any kind of conversion ceremony for Michael Jackson. Nor, I believe, was Dawud Wharnsby or any of the others mentioned in connection with the story."
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
A more viable model, one much more faithful to the kind of system that society is more and more recognized to be, is in process of developing out of, or is in keeping with, the modern systems perspective (which we use loosely here to refer to general systems research, cybernetics, information and communication theory, and related fields). Society, or the sociocultural system, is not, then, principally an equilibrium system or a homeostatic system, but what we shall simply refer to as a complex adaptive system.
— Walter F. Buckley (1968) "Society as a complex adaptive system" in: Modern systems research for the behavioral scientist. Walter Buckley ed. p. 490
Don't take LSD unless you are very well prepared, unless you are specifically prepared to go out of your mind. Don't take it unless you have someone that's very experienced with you to guide you through it. And don't take it unless you are ready to have your perspective on yourself and your life radically changed, because you're gonna be a different person, and you should be ready to face this possibility.
— Timothy Leary, in a CBC documentary: "How To Go Out of Your Mind : The LSD Crisis" (1966)
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)
Whereas the management science approach is focused on the problem characteristics, the perspective of the social science is primarily concerned with the characteristics of the decision makers and their social roles.
— H.B.F. Gow, ?R.W. Kay (2003) Emergency Planning for Industrial Hazards, p. 212
Meditation is the soul's perspective glass, whereby, in her long remove, she discerneth God, as if He were nearer at hand.
— Owen Feltham, p. 406. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
One can start from the perspective of a religious naturalist or from the perspective of the world religions and arrive at the same place: a moral imperative that this Earth and its creatures be respected and cherished.
— Ursula Goodenough Interview by Jill Neimark] [5]
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
The best way to keep money in perspective is to have some.
louis rukeyser— Louis Rukeyser, How to Make Money in Wall Street (1976), p. 1
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— Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey, Warner Books: 2000, p. 2
