Perceptions Quotes

Stereotype threat, then, is one way our national history seeps into our daily lives. That history leaves us with stereotypes about groups in our society that can be used to judge us as individuals when we're in situations where those stereotypes apply - in the seat next to a black person on an airplane or interacting with minority students, for example. The white person in that situation will not want to be seen in terms of the stereotype of whites as racially insensitive. And the black person, for his or her part, will not want to be seen in terms of the stereotypes about blacks as aggressive, or as too easily seeing prejudice, and so on. Fighting off these possible perceptions on a long airline flight - or more famously, perhaps, in a school cafeteria - could be more than either party wants to take on. They just want to have lunch or get to Cleveland. Avoidance becomes the simplest solution. ~ Claude M. Steele

Mother Angelica is proof that we are not limited by other's perceptions, and that God sometimes calls the most unlikely people to great things. ~ Raymond Arroyo

It is more interesting to be compared to someone famous, because it lets you gauge what perceptions people have about your appearance. ~ Arthur Smith

It is infinitely harder to ask questions in such a way that the audience is led not to the answers (the province of the demagogue) but to new perceptions. ~ Gore Vidal

We simply don't have the words to convey the force of these perceptions to our straight selves, perhaps because they are the kinds of perceptions that precede words. ~ Michael Pollan

Your healthy self-esteem is one of the most significant and powerful drivers in your life. It drives your perceptions, attitudes, opinions, relationships, communications, and your decisions. ~ Susan C. Young

Our perceptions shape whether challenges are obstacles that block our path to success or important arrows that steer us in the direction we want to go. ~ Julie Connor

Factors affecting effective regional cooperation are mindsets and perceptions emanating from the past. ~ Khaleda Zia

In all our perceptions, from vision to hearing, to the pictures we build of people's character, our unconscious mind starts from whatever objective data is available to us - usually spotty - and helps to shape and construct the more complete picture we consciously perceive. ~ Leonard Mlodinow

Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass. ~ David Hume

Bring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander. You have the power to increase his perceptions and conceptions. ~ Dorothea Lange

Whether in private debate or in public, any attempt I made to explain how the Black Muslim movement came about, and how it has achieved such force, was met with a blankness that revealed the little connection that the liberals' attitudes have with their perceptions or their lives, or even their knowledge - revealed, in fact, that they could deal with the Negro as a symbol or a victim but had no sense of him as a man. ~ James Baldwin

I think that it's a space that there are a lot of projections onto - the soon-to-be sexualized and already-sexualized young woman. There are so many outside perceptions grafted onto her, that she feels all at once completely blank and completely full. I noticed that a lot in your book, as well, this repetition of a shallowness. But there is also depth in the constant repetition of this shallowness. ~ Tamara Faith Berger

You've seen what you've seen; you've felt what you've felt. Ideology is for people who don't trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world. ~ Douglas Coupland

Interesting," said Sabetha, "that I mention my own feelings, and you seem to think that what I'm after is reassurance concerning your perceptions. ~ Scott Lynch

It has ever been my lot, though formally myself a teacher, to be taught surely by none. There are times when I have thought to read lessons in the sky, or in books, or from the behavior of my fellows, but in the end my perceptions have frequently been inadequate or betrayed. Nevertheless, I venture to say that of what man may be I have caught a fugitive glimpse, not among multitudes of men, but along an endless wave-beaten coast at dawn. As always, there is this apparent break, this rift in nature, before the insight comes. The terrible question has to translate itself into an even more terrifying freedom. ~ Loren Eiseley

Why Is It So Important to Remember?

When you were abused, those around you acted as if it weren't happening. Since no one else acknowledged the abuse, you sometimes felt that it wasn't real. Because of this you felt confused. You couldn't trust your own experience and perceptions. Moreover, others' denial led you to suppress your memories, thus further obscuring the issue.

You can end your own denial by remembering. Allowing yourself to remember is a way of confirming in your own mind that you didn't just imagine it. Because the person who abused you did not acknowledge your pain, you may have also thought that perhaps it wasn't as bad as you felt it was. In order to acknowledge to yourself that it really was that bad, you need to remember as much detail as possible. Because by denying what happened to you, you are doing to yourself exactly what others have done to you in the past: You are negating and denying yourself. ~ Beverly Engel

Human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions ~ Salman Rushdie

To strengthen the connection between your conscious mind and your subconscious mind is to gain access to a map and compass to help you move towards your dream. To gain access to the subconscious mind is to gain the ability to see and create the future, the ability to shift the present, and the ability to alter your own perceptions of the past. ~ Kevin Michel

I believe that both art and the human striving for cognitive comprehension are manifest forms of the grand game in which nothing more is stipulated than the game's rules; both art and actively solicited perceptions are but special cases of the recurring creative act to which we owe our existence. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Sense of beauty, perception, and the mathematical universe are all part of the same texture. ~ Neeti Sinha

I know that I'm an animal that displays bilateral symmetry. I understand that one side should be the mirror of the other, and that human perceptions of beauty are intimately associated with symmetry. For example, I am very handsome. ~ Mark Rippetoe

It is therefore clear that the five perceptions (i.e., the five senses) just like the other kinds of perceptual powers manifest the Divine Identity, which is the First Beloved and the Perfect Goal of man. Asf r, I, 1, p. 118 ~ Ibrahim Kalin

Concentration of ownership in the media is high and increasing. Furthermore, those who occupy managerial positions in the media, or gain status within them as commentators, belong to the same privileged elites, and might be expected to share the perceptions, aspirations and attitudes of their associates, reflecting their own class interests as well ... ~ Noam Chomsky

When we reflect on our past sentiments and affections, our thought is a faithful mirror, and copies its objects truly; but the colours which it employs are faint and dull, in comparison of those in which our original perceptions were clothed. ~ David Hume

Somebody said, "Well, you're going to write your definitive book about your life, biography." No, I'm not. I haven't done that. I wrote a book of letters which gives an insight into the real me as opposed to the public perceptions of me. But I'm convinced historians will figure out the things we got wrong and hopefully the things we got right. ~ George H. W. Bush

Cannes or any other major festival is basically an animal in its own nature, creating very specific perceptions of films in a moment. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

It is clear, then, that the desire for certainty shapes our spaces of possibility, our perceptions, and our lives both personally and professionally. Usually, this need saves us. But it also sabotages us. This produces an ongoing tension between what we might think of as our conscious selves and our automatic selves. To overcome our inborn reflex that pushes us to seek certainty (sometimes at any cost), we must lead with our conscious selves and tell ourselves a new story, one that with insistent practice will change our future past and even our physiological responses. We must create internal and external ecologies that… celebrate doubt!
This means the biggest obstacle to deviation and seeing differently isn't actually our environment as such, or our" intelligence, or even - ironically - the challenge of reaching the mythical "aha" moment. Rather, it is the nature of human perception itself, and in particular the perceived need for knowing. Yet the deep paradox is that the mechanisms of perception are also the process by which we can unlock powerful new perceptions and ways to deviate. Which means that mechanism of generating a perception is the blocker… and the process of creating perception is the enabler of creativity ~ Beau Lotto

Happiness is a state of mind. The key to happiness is being able to disconnect your life from your perceptions. If you saw things as they really were, you would be happy automatically. ~ Frederick Lenz

Must recognize that greater knowledge about Islam is not enough to alter people's perceptions of Muslims. Minds are not changed merely through acquiring data or information (if that were the case it would take no effort to convince Americans that Obama is, in fact, a Christian). Rather, it is solely through the slow and steady building of personal relationships that one discovers the fundamental truth that all people everywhere have the same dreams and aspirations, that all people struggle with the same fears and anxieties. Of course, such a process takes time. It may take another generation or so for this era of anti-Muslim frenzy to be looked back upon with the same shame and derision with which the current generation views the anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish hysterics of the past. But that day will no doubt come. Perhaps then we will recognize the intimate connections that bind us all together beyond any cultural, ethnic, or religious affiliations. Inshallah. God willing. ~ Reza Aslan

Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body. Then look at, or think of, the person triggering this emotion: With mindfulness, you can see that she is unhappy, that she is suffering. You can see her wrong perceptions. You can see that she is not beautiful when she says things that are unkind. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

I find that because of modern technological evolution and our global economy, and as a result of the great increase in population, our world has greatly changed: it has become much smaller. However, our perceptions have not evolved at the same pace; we continue to cling to old national demarcations and the old feelings of "us" and "them. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here - the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos. ~ Frank Herbert

I longed to stabilize my core identity and to withstand the pressure of other people's words, behaviors, moods, and perceptions. I wanted to be less easily thrown. ~ Merri Lisa Johnson

With intimacy comes the possibility of "engulfment" or being taken hostage by the demands of others. We may have distorted perceptions of the "demands" and obligations placed upon us by those who claim to love us. Trusting that love to be unconditional is almost impossible for us, and we are always scanning for the unstated "subtext" or hidden "agenda" connected to this love. ~ Mary Crocker Cook

To change reality, change your thoughts and perceptions. ~ Debasish Mridha

In describing the ways that religious and other types of communities appropriate and understand their histories, among both fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists, the sociologist Anthony Giddens utilizes the term "reflexivity" and states that it is the characteristic of "all human action." Reflexivity takes place when individuals and/or communities utilize their perceptions of their histories as a way of guiding their present and future actions. For Giddens, tradition is a means of "handling time and space, which asserts any particular activity or experience with the community of past, present, and future, these in turn being structured by recurrent social practices." In light of this, tradition is a set of entities which religious communities and cultures continually reconstruct within certain parameters. Religions are not completely static in that almost every new generation reinvents the religious and cultural inheritance from the generations that preceded it. ~ Jon Armajani

Life becomes perfect if I look at it through my imperfect perceptions. ~ Debasish Mridha

Sometimes I feel limited by people's perceptions of what I can and cannot do, or what I do or don't look like. ~ Mira Sorvino

Minutes turn into hours
that add up to days
amounting to weeks
that become months
melting into years
accumulating for decades
to pile up for centuries
and ultimately form minutes again―
just on a grander, divine scale. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

In ordinary speech the words perception and sensation tend to be used interchangeably, but the psychologist distinguishes. Sensations are the items of consciousness
a color, a weight, a texture
that we tend to think of as simple and single. Perceptions are complex affairs that embrace sensation together with other, associated or revived contents of the mind, including emotions. ~ Jacques Barzun

That is the beauty of memory, isn't it? Our reality is always clouded by our perceptions of truth. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Thus higher-order memorization is a multistage process, involving the transfer of perceptions, or perceptual syntheses, from short-term to long-term memory. It is just such a transfer that fails to occur in people with temporal lobe damage. ~ Oliver Sacks

Self-reflection entails asking yourself questions about your values, assessing your strengths and failures, thinking about your perceptions and interactions with others, and imagining where you want to take your life in the future. ~ Robert L. Rosen

What you see is not what wee se. What you see is distracted by memory, by being who you are, all this time, for all these years. ~ Don DeLillo

The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, our perceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday the body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptible as a child who, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth. ~ Ellen Bass

Wine appreciation is not a simple sum of its parts any more than poetry appreciation is an arithmetic notation of its similes, alliterations, or rhythmic
style. Most complex flavor perceptions are cerebral creations. They start from the detection of separate sensations, but it is their combined interactions
that generate odor memories. Only the unique combinations of multiple sensations generate the typical fragrance of an object, be it wine, coffee,
lilacs, or fried bacon. ~ Roland S. Jackson

It must be something voluntary, something self induced - like getting drunk, or talking yourself into believing some piece of foolishness because it happens to be in the Scriptures. And then look at their idea of what's normal. Believe it or not, a normal human being is one who can have an orgasm and is adjusted to society. It's unimaginable! No question about what you do with your orgasms. No question about the quality of your feelings and thoughts and perceptions. And then what about the society you're supposed to be adjusted to? Is it a mad society or a sane one? And even if it's pretty sane, is it right that anybody should be completely adjusted to it? ~ Aldous Huxley

In I Praise My Destroyer, Diane Ackerman demonstrates once again her love for the specific language that rises from the juncture of self and the natural world, and her skillful use of that language. Whether she turns her attention to the act of eating an apricot 'the color of shame and dawn,' or to 'the omnipotence of light,' or to grief when 'All the greens of summer have blown apart,' her linking of unique images, her energetic wit and whimsy, her compassionate investment in life, always bring new pleasures and perceptions to the reader. ~ Pattiann Rogers

The bond between a book reader and a book writer has always been a symbiotic one, a means of intellectual and artistic cross-fertilization. The words of the writer act as a catalyst in the mind of the reader, inspiring new insights, associations, and perceptions, sometimes, even epiphanies. And the very existence of the attentive, critical reader provides the spur for the writer's work. It gives the author the confidence to explore new forms of expression, to blaze difficult and demanding paths of thought, to venture into uncharted and sometimes hazardous territory. ~ Nicholas Carr

It is a truism that when one is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The glory of art is that it can show this proverbial hammer how everything looks to a screwdriver--and to a plowshare, and to an earthenware pot. If reality is the sum of our perceptions, to acquire more varying points of view is to acquire, literally, more reality. ~ Matthew Woodring Stover

There is no reason to suppose that taste is in any way a lower sense than the other four; a fine palate is as much a gift as an eye that discerns beauty or an ear that appreciates and enjoys subtle harmonies of sound, and we are quite right to value the pleasures that all our senses give us and educate their perceptions. ~ E.F. Benson

Mrs. Heath wanted to sprinkle their minds with grass seed and watch the blades spike up through the earth, flat and predictable as a golf course. She wanted dependable students, well fed but not necessarily nourished. But he was not in that category. Admittedly, he could not count on his perceptions of letters and words, and he was not always accurate. He misused words most when he liked their sound. A sentence had a kind of music, and the word sounded right. The definitions were never as interesting as the sound they made coming out of your mouth. He rolled their flavors around on his tongue, tasting every nook and cranny, but he could not be trusted to deliver the right answer and she would never give him better than a C, no matter what genius work he produced. The way he saw it, his mind was a big unruly field of wildflowers. One day he would shower the world with blossoms. ~ Elizabeth Brundage

When someone says "I Love You," it is imperative that you know if you are loved for "WHAT you are" or "WHO you are."
When the academic qualifications, professionals, positions, possessions, good look, fat bank accounts and all that has been acquired over the years are taken away, all that is left is "Who you are" - Your Personality (character, values, perceptions.)
"We are never truly loved, until we are loved for WHO and not WHAT we are ~ Olaotan Fawehinmi

We don't yet have a body of scientific knowledge about evil to be called a facet of psychology. Therefore, religious reasoning for actions will always be at the discretion of the psychologist, thus making them the judge and jury over what is delusion and what is a spiritual experience that has to be sedated. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Expectations are the engines of our perceptions. ~ Seth

Correct Overestimated Feedback Fears

One of the reasons anxious people fear feedback is that they tend to judge their performance more harshly than others judge them. If you're feeling anxious, you'll probably overestimate the likelihood that any feedback you'll get will be negative - the negative predictions thinking error.
Let's say you need to get feedback on your delivery of an upcoming presentation. You fear that you'll get crucified, that people will say your presentation style is horrible and won't say anything nice. How likely does this feared outcome feel? You might say, "It feels 99% likely." How likely is it in reality? You think, "Objectively, maybe 50%?" Your answer of 50% may still be an overestimate, but at least it jump-starts the shift in your thinking. It alters you that your anxious feelings are, to some extent, clouding your perceptions.
Although it seems strange that people can shift their thinking just based on whether they are asked to think with their anxious mind or their objective mind, this isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. There's lots of research evidence that people's thinking changes based on how they're asked to think about something. For example, my own doctoral research asked people in relationships how their judgments of their romantic partner compared to reality. People recognized that they tended to view their partners more positively than warranted by reality.
Experiment: Think of a current area in your life wh ~ Alice Boyes

It's impossible to just localize your perceptions - because the stimuli come from both eyes. ~ Guido Molinari

We can conceive a thinking being to have either many or few perceptions. Suppose the mind to be reduced even below the life of anoyster. Suppose it to have only one perception, as of thirst or hunger. Consider it in that situation. Do you conceive any thing but merely that perception? Have you any notion of self or substance? If not, the addition of other perceptions can never give you that notion. ~ David Hume

Musicians always have music in their heads about their perceptions of the world. ~ Pattie Boyd

You expand your consciousness, your ideas, your perceptions. You break away from self-adopted restrictions. You grow as you learn to step aside from limiting conceptions and dogmas. ~ Seth

I was looking at the sensoriums of heroes. I was sensing through the eyes and nose of Shelley and John Webster, and using the hearing and touch of Ginsberg and Duncan and Kerouac–– and the jazz lucidity of Creeley, and the Doug fir of Snyder, and the almost mystical, physical perceptions of D.H. Lawrence and of Olson himself. I was convinced that poetry was about, by, and from, the meat, that poetry was the product of flesh brushing itself against experience. We are seekers moving in the Tathagata brushing ourselves against the universe of the real, solid illusions. It is by our touches that we become ourselves –– as our ancestors became us and as we became our maturing, sharpening, brightening selves. ~ Michael McClure

Despite fear narrowing hostages' perceptions of options available to them, their perceptions are probably more accurate than outsiders'. Being there, hostages both have more information than do outsiders and are forced to live with terrifying contingencies that outsiders probably cannot even imagine. Outsiders' perceptions are often distorted by a need to believe that, if they were taken hostage, they would be able to escape. ~ Dee L.R. Graham

There's no way to remove the observer - us - from our perceptions of the world. ~ Stephen Hawking

We are happy when people/things conform and unhappy when they don't. People and events don't disappoint us, our models of reality do. It is my model of reality that determines my happiness or disappointments. ~ Stefan Zweig

I don't believe in limits, so I have no limitations. ~ Clyde Lee Dennis

who insisted every day that I see my own worth beyond my mother's rejecting eyes. But of course, a mother's eyes are the very first mirror we look into, the image that gets imprinted on our souls - whether they gaze back at us with love or with disgust. So I don't know how to differentiate between her perceptions of me and my own when hers were the first I've ever known, so deeply ingrained from the second I hit the world. ~ Kerry Kletter

Remember to be conscious of what seeds you plant, as the garden of your mind is like the world. The longer seeds grow, the more likely they are to become trees. Trees often block the sun's rays from reaching other seeds, allowing only plants that are acclimated to the shadow of the tree to grow - keeping you stuck with that one reality. ~ Natasha Potter

I knew her better than herself ... and she was beautiful and strong and felt deep. It has always surprised me to see the way she saw herself; how little she thought about her person. It struck me as surprising because every single time I've seen her, I've thought her larger than life. And that's why the world feared her. Because they couldn't compare to her; she raised a new bar for others to be measured by. Because looking at the sun hurts ... and she was that to me. My own piece of sky. ~ Eiry Nieves

Right up to the middle of this century all perceptions of the world around us were delivered via the bookshelf or the paper route. ~ Theodore Bikel

What he has in addition is pure empathy and projection," Dr. Bloom said. "He can assume your point of view, or mine – and maybe some other points of view that scare and sicken him. It's an uncomfortable gift, Jack. Perception's a tool that's pointed on both ends. ~ Thomas Harris

The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times. ~ Robert Morgan

Nobody has ever come back from the dead, and there is significant evidence that near death experiences are the product of brain activity that, while in an unconscious state, consist of perceptions that are just not reliable. ~ Al Stefanelli

We read critics for the perceptions, for what they tell us that we didn't fully grasp when we saw the work. The judgments we can usually make for ourselves. ~ Pauline Kael

After all, color in itself has no color - it's simply a construction of the mind: a sensation, like the Humming Chorus from Madame Butterfly and the smell of honeysuckle. ~ Jasper Fforde

When you give me art - give me something that reaches inside of my core and twists, taking the very breath that sustains me away.
Give me something that wakens me from my lethargy.
Give me something that causes me to ponder and question all that I have come to know; due to my circumstances that I have been allotted in this life.
Give me something that causes me to question my pride and arrogance of knowing that I am right in my thoughts, beliefs and perceptions.
Shake me: as if you had grabbed me and pushed me against the wall - shattering all of my preconceived notions; causing me to break out of the box that I have put others in.
Give me something that scraped over the scar tissue of wounds that you carry within, opening them afresh and causing you pain - real core pain - pain that you had pushed down; pain that now resides in your closet of skeletons.
When you give me art, give me you, or give me nothing at all…
©2014 Suzanne Steele ~ Suzanne Steele

As he observed her in musing silence, a novel thought occurred to him. It slipped through his mind so subtly that it seemed to mingle like smoke with his physical perceptions, with the way the dim light through the stained-glass window fell across her hair in little iridescent rainbows, and the scent of old tobacco and dust lingered in the room. He wondered - absurdly - if this was what she had come for - simply to sit in the stillness and be alive and share it with him.
Something inside, something tiny he hadn't even known was there, seemed to unfold, to spread tentative petals open like a desert flower sensing rain.
She turned and looked up at him, her great unblinking eyes full of forest wisdom. He thought foolishly: Let me stay here. I need this. ~ Laura Kinsale

By eloquence I understand those appeals to our moral perceptions that produce emotion as soon as they are uttered. This is the very enthusiasm that is the parent of poetry. Let the same man go to his closet and clothe in numbers conceptions full of the same fire and spirit, and they will be poetry. ~ Kobe Bryant

I was so much in the habit of having Albertine with me, and now I suddenly saw a new aspect of Habit. Hitherto I had regarded it chiefly as an annihilating force which suppresses the originality and even the awareness of one's perceptions; now I saw it as a dread deity, so riveted to one's being, its insignificant face so incrusted in one's heart, that if it detaches itself, if it turns away from one, this deity that one had barely distinguished inflicts on one sufferings more terrible than any other and is then as cruel as death itself. ~ Marcel Proust

I have no control over people's perceptions of me at all and that's one of the things I decided very early on is that I can't control the way other people think of me. All I can do, especially when it comes to my career is go out there and do cool unique kinds of things. ~ Macaulay Culkin

There is something about early mornings that changes your perceptions subtly. The light is new; no one has put on the defences of the day. All is reset and not quite real yet. ~ Maureen Johnson

Everyone carries this thick prism of gunk that they see the world through. Each person has layers of stuff, making it hard to see anyone clearly. So until someone invents soul glasses that will remove all distortions from their perceptions? Worrying about what people think? Is a complete waste of time. ~ Jessica Bendinger

Philosophy is the abstract art of thoughts and perceptions that form colors of words and languages that paint the canvas of our minds. ~ Debasish Mridha

It win be a device that will permit communication without any time interval between two points in space. The device will not transmit messages, of course; simultaneity is identity. But to our perceptions, that simultaneity will function as a transmission, a sending. So we will be able to use it to talk between worlds, without the long waiting for the message to go and the reply to return that electromagnetic impulses require. It is really a very simple matter. Like a kind of telephone. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

We talked about how easy it was to make the mistake of anthropomorphizing animals, and projecting our own feelings and perceptions on to them, where they were inappropriate and didn't fit. We simply had no idea what it was like being an extremely large lizard, and neither for that matter did the lizard, because it was not self-conscious about being an extremely large lizard, it just got on with the business of being one. To react with revulsion to its behavior was to make the mistake of applying criteria that are only appropriate to the business of being human. ~ Douglas Adams

Because you are the product of an educational system which recycles historical facts written by the victors whose perceptions are often skewed and self-serving. ~ Ednah Walters

Writers allow us to see ourselves more clearly, they express spiritual signposts that assist us find ourselves. Writers' self-revelations allow us to grasp personal reflections that remain unrealized and indistinct within ourselves. Nuggets of personal perception remain veiled, until we read carefully chosen words sharing the author's crystallized perceptions. Provocative authors resolutely tap into that robust vein of common yearning and assiduously engineer their way through humankind's rampant library of collective neurosis. Reading a master's scintillating prose allows our own inchoate thoughts to shape up under the splendid beam of sunlight that they cast onto pages bearing their soul's freshly minted words. Their astutely crafted pages conveying everlasting imagery immunizes their work from the harshness of time's relentless march forward. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The world is not static, and if the roots of our perceptions, traditions, hold static, then we are doomed, I say, into destructive dogma. ~ R.A. Salvatore

When we pray for God to illumine our path, we are saying, 'Dear God, please show me the way. What thoughts do I need to think, to be able to navigate my life at this point? What perceptions do I need; what insights will guide me? Who do I need to forgive? What parts of my personality do I need to look at; what changes do I need to make? Please come upon me and heal my life. Amen. ~ Marianne Williamson

The ability to know that your perceptions are accurate has to happen without others' validation. Intuition is not the result of diet, rituals, or wind chimes. It's the natural consequence of having self-esteem, the greatest power you can have. With self-esteem, your life can broaden into an adventure because you can know in your gut that you can handle the unknown. And you can handle helping others without fear, which is true liberation. ~ Caroline Myss

To change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions. ~ Stephen R. Covey

The person in peak-experiences feels himself, more than other times, to be the responsible, active, creating center of his activities and of his perceptions. He feels more like a prime-mover, more self-determined (rather than caused, determined, helpless, dependent, passive, weak, bossed). He feels himself to be his own boss, fully responsible, fully volitional, with more "free-will" than at other times, master of his fate, an agent. ~ Abraham Maslow

All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

One has a more practical survival level, that's the mind function. The heart function obviously has an internal level that has to do with the quality of developing perceptions, feelings, the self. And the spirit level has to do with the pondering part of our lives. ~ Caroline Myss

I don't do anything to try to change people's perceptions of me. I tend to think that's sort of an ego driven thing. ~ Steve Carell

Artists who have produced experimental innovations have been motivated by aesthetic criteria: they have aimed at presenting visual perceptions. Their goals are imprecise, so their procedure is tentative and incremental. ~ David Galenson

Gradually I saw that it was less interesting for me, as an artist, to frame the world wholly according to my own perceptions. I wanted instead to create situations in which I allowed others' perceptions to surface with my own. ~ Wendy Ewald

Truth travels down from the heights of philosophy to the humblest walks of life, and up from the simplest perceptions of an awakened intellect to the discoveries which almost change the face of the world. At every stage of its progress it is genial, luminous, creative. ~ Edward Everett

To this day, I remain awestruck by the fact that human beings are capable of this type of metamorphosis. We don't have to stay stuck displaying the same personality traits over the course of our lifetime but are free to transform into higher expressions of ourselves. Today I can honestly say that I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that human beings are capable of making radical and lasting change. After a decade of coaching individuals and leading groups, I have discovered that if I don't buy into people's perceptions of who they are and what they are capable of, I can bypass their public personas and see who they are in their highest expression. With a little effort, I can see their magnificence and their potential no matter what they look like or what condition their emotional, spiritual, or financial world is in. I can see through their acts, their personas, their fears and insecurities. I can see who they are apart from the baggage they carry around. The undeniable fact is that underneath all of our public personas, we already are that which we desire to be. Our only job is to see past our own limitations so that we can return to that which we already are. ~ Debbie Ford

The worst thing you can do is try to manipulate or control perceptions. It's impossible, and when you are found out the result is disastrous. Better to be transparent and play well with others so that when bad things happen you have a reservoir of good will to bank on. ~ John Gerzema