Perception quotes
1.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside perception — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"A literary work can only be received through symbols, through concepts - for that is what words are; but cinema, like music, allows for utterly direct, emotional, sensuous perception of the work."
"Miracles surround us at every turn if we but sharpen our perceptions of them."
"All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions."
"Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception."
"Perception starts with the eye."
"What we call art would seem to be specialist artifacts for enhancing human perception."
"Lateral thinking is concerned not with playing with the existing pieces but with seeking to change those very pieces. It is concerned with the perception part of thinking. This is where we organise the external world into the pieces we can then 'process'."
"Man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern."
"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."
"I've never been reckless - it's always calculated. I'm mischievous, but I'm calculated."
"If you could get rid of yourself just once, the secret of secrets would open to you. The face of the unknown, hidden beyond the universe would appear on the mirror of your perception."
"The greatest propaganda in the world is our mother tongue, that is what we learn as children, and which we learn unconsciously. That shapes our perceptions for life. That is propaganda at its most extreme form."
"If general perception changes from seeing the glass as 'half-full' to seeing it as 'half empty' there are major innovative opportunities."
"I'm not angry, I'm not an angry person, but I do sometimes like playing with the perception of anger, as in pretending that I'm more angry than I actually am, and sometimes it works quite well."
"What the joke displays is a switch in perception. This is important in changing the way we think."
"Our vulgar perception is not concerned with other than vulgar phenomena."
"This perception of division between the seer and the object that is seen, is situated in the mind. For those remaining in the heart, the seer becomes one with the sight."
"Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective."
"Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring."
"Underneath the world of sense perceptions and the world of mind activity, there is the vastness of being. There's a vast spaciousness. There's a vast stillness and there's a little ripple activity on the surface, which isn't separate, just like the ripples are not separate from the ocean."
