Quotes about Perception

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

Belief creates the actual fact.

Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.

Everyone knows what attention is. It is taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration of consciousness are of its essence. It implies a withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.

Psychology is the science of mental life

Whatever is beyond this narrow rational consciousness we mistake for our only consciousness.

Our normal waking consciousness . . . is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus and at a touch they are all there in all their completeness . . . No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.

Knowledge about a thing is not the thing itself.

a man does not cry because he is sad, he is sad because he cries

In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides.

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.