PERCEPTION QUOTES III
quotations about perception
As men of inward light are wont
To turn their optics in upon't.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Hudibras
Just as in the body, eye and ear develop as organs of perception, as senses for bodily processes, so does a man develop in himself soul and spiritual organs of perception through which the soul and spiritual worlds are opened to him. For those who do not have such higher senses, these worlds are dark and silent, just as the bodily world is dark and silent for a being without eyes and ears.
RUDOLF STEINER
Theosophy
There is, perhaps, one universal truth about all forms of human cognition: the ability to deal with knowledge is hugely exceeded by the potential knowledge contained in man's environment. To cope with this diversity, man's perception, his memory, and his thought processes early become governed by strategies for protecting his limited capacities from the confusion of overloading. We tend to perceive things schematically, for example, rather than in detail, or we represent a class of diverse things by some sort of averaged "typical instance."
JEROME S. BRUNER
Art as a Mode of Knowing
Generally, about all perception, we can say that a sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet ring without the iron or gold.
ARISTOTLE
"On the Soul"
Our vulgar perception is not concerned with other than vulgar phenomena.
SAMUEL BECKETT
Proust
No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.
ANSEL ADAMS
The American Annual of Photography, 1944
I view it as perception is reality. That means that depends on who's perceiving your reality. We'll leave it at that.
JOSE CANSECO
"Canseco says baseball turned its back on him", Elmira Star Gazette, April 21, 2016
If perception can grasp its object the way the object manifests itself, it will have come to terms with that object's "truth" (its reality).
QUENTIN LAUER
A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Familiar Letters
Now I don't know what perception is and I don't believe that anything like perception exists. Perception is precisely a concept, a concept of an intuition or of a given originating from the thing itself, present itself in its meaning, independently from language from the system of reference. And I believe that perception is interdependent with the concept of origin and of center and consequently whatever strikes at the metaphysics [of presence] of which I have spoken strikes also at the very concept of perception. I don't believe that there is any perception.
JACQUES DERRIDA
"Structure, Sign, and Play in the Human Discourses", The Structuralist Controversy
Perception requires imagination because the data people encounter in their lives are never complete and always equivocal.
LEONARD MLODINOW
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
Whatever may have been written or thought about perception in literate cultures, it remains a special competency of consciousness, its essential faculty. Day by day, minute by minute, consciousness is preoccupied with perception. Through perception it is captivated by an external world. Without perception it would have to terminate its autopoiesis, and even dreams can occur only by suggesting perceptions.
NIKLAS LUHMANN
Art as a Social System
The first acts of infancy are engaged in experimenting with the senses upon the outer world. The infant has every thing to learn. He does not at first know how to interpret his own sensations and perceptions. Whether the object before him is at a distance, or in contact with the eye, whether it is yielding or resistant, substance or shadow, reality or phantom, he has yet to learn.
HUBBARD WINSLOW
Elements of Moral Philosophy
The dice cannot read their own spots.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
One has not only an ability to perceive the world but an ability to alter one's perception of it; more simply, one can change things by the manner in which one looks at them.
TOM ROBBINS
Even Cowgirls Get The Blues
There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
The Doors of Perception
I shall throughout use the term perception to denote man's ability to cognize or know, or the act or result of cognizing, both as a rational and a sentient being. Whether the mind comes into possession of its knowledge by pure intuition, or by sensation, or by argument and reflection, is all the same.
HUBBARD WINSLOW
Elements of Moral Philosophy
If you can develop this ability to see what you look at, to understand its meaning, to readjust your knowledge to this new information, you can continue to learn and to grow as long as you live and you'll have a wonderful time doing it.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
You Learn by Living
Perception is reality. If you are perceived to be something, you might as well be it because that's the truth in people's minds.
STEVE YOUNG
episode 17, America's Game
Every man feels that perception gives him an invincible belief of the existence of that which he perceives; and that this belief is not the effect of reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception. When philosophers have wearied themselves and their readers with their speculations upon this subject, they can neither strengthen this belief, nor weaken it; nor can they show how it is produced. It puts the philosopher and the peasant upon a level; and neither of them can give any other reason for believing his senses, than that he finds it impossible for him to do otherwise.
THOMAS REID
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man