Subjective Quotes

My point is that meaning is always personal, changeable and subjective. There is no 'correct' interpretation of a photograph. ~ Bill Jay

Everything in food is science. The only subjective part is when you eat it. ~ Alton Brown

All law must be subjective; the soil knows how to take a seed and make a plant from it; it does not know whether it is making a tomato or a potato ... It knows how to create without knowing what It creates. ~ Ernest Holmes

You don't need validation or approval from anyone but yourself. Even if the entire world goes against, disagrees with or attempts to crush you, stand up for what you believe in, and stand up alone if you have to! It's better to die while living your own truth than to live in the truth of another. Lord Krishna in the holy Bhagavad Gita pointed this out when he said;

"It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection."

Integrity is the key to freedom. It's only your own truth that can 'set you free.' It's perfectly fine if your truth doesn't match that of others because the experience of physical reality is a completely subjective one. It doesn't make either of you wrong, as long as you're both being true to yourselves, that's all that matters. ~ Craig Krishna

If any scientist wants to argue that subjective experiences are irrelevant, their challenge is to explain why torture or rape are wrong without reference to any subjective experience. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

People at the top are closing ranks so tightly that all possibility of subjective deviation has gone, and difference can be sought only in the more distinguished cut of an evening dress. ~ Theodor Adorno

He (Rene Descartes) posited the existence of two parallel yet separate domains of reality: res cogitans, the thinking substance of the subjective mind whose essence is thought, and res extensa, or the extended substance of the material world. Mental stuff and material (including brain) stuff are absolutely distinct, he argued. ~ Jeffrey M. Schwartz

The only problem in art is to achieve a balance between subjective and objective. ~ Piet Mondrian

Psychoanalysis is essentially a theory of unconscious strivings, of resistance, of falsification of reality according to one's subjective needs and expectations. ~ Erich Fromm

The subjective mind is entirely under the control of the objective mind. With the utmost fidelity it reproduces and works out to its final consequences whatever the objective mind impresses upon it. ~ Thomas Troward

Mythology is a subjective truth. Every culture imagines life a certain way. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik

Birch fallacy is the assumption that you can infer subjective intention from objective consequence: we lost China to the Communists, therefore the President of the United States and the Secretary of State wished China to go to the Communists. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

subjective disturbance ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Comedy's so subjective, and if someone comes to watch, doesn't get it, doesn't find it funny, then fine. ~ Johnny Vegas

When you're doing comedy, it is so subjective. What is funny to you is not funny to another person. What is dirty to you is not dirty to the other person. Comedy is one of those things you throw against the wall and see what sticks. ~ Larry The Cable Guy

The arts objectify subjective reality, and subjectify outward experience of nature. Art education is the education of feeling, and a society that neglects it gives itself up to formless emotion. Bad art is corruption of feeling. ~ Susanne Katherina Langer

What I think I am saying is that phenomenal consciousness - the raw feel of experience - is invisible to conventional scientific scrutiny and will forever remain so. It is, by definition, subjective - where as science, by definition, adopts an objective stance. You can't be in two places at once. You either experience consciousness "from the inside" ([...]) or you view it "from the outside" ([...]). Science can study the neural activity, the bodily states, the environmental conditions, and the outward behaviours - including verbal behaviours that stand for different states of awareness ([...]), but the quality - the feel - of our experiences remains forever private and therefore out of bounds of scientific analysis. I can't see a way round this. Privateness is a fundamental constituent of consciousness. ~ Paul Broks

I guess I just look at talent as a very subjective thing. I mean, if you never tried playing an oboe, how do you know you're not the most talented oboe player ever? The point is that if you don't love it, then it doesn't matter. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I have not much faith in women in fiction ... Women are so horribly subjective and they have such scorn for the healthy commonplace. When a woman writes a story of adventure, a stout sea tale, a manly battle yarn, anything without wine, women, and love, then I will begin to hope for something great from them, not before. ~ Willa Cather

I think we all need to learn to like ourselves-just the way we are. And if there are moderate ways to improve our looks and if we're doing it for the right reasons (not to impress our friends!), then maybe it's just fine. Beauty is very subjective-meaning that it all depends on your personal taste. I think that's why God made us all different. So instead of turning ourselves into cookie-cutter images of the latest fashion icon, why not take a moment to enjoy our differences? ~ Melody Carlson

Benjamin does attempt to decode their subjective experience, but he does this within social and historical limits, insisting that subjects inhabiting capitalist modernity, exposed to the workings of commodity fetishism, have become objects, objectified, susceptible to processes of commodification (of their labour-power, of the culture they consume). ~ Beatrice Hanssen

The conversations were miles beyond Jo's comprehension, but she enjoyed it, though Kant and Hegel were unknown gods, the Subjective and Objective unintelligible terms, and the only thing 'evolved from her inner consciousness' was a bad headache after it was all over. ~ Louisa May Alcott

I always found the dramatic side of things easier than the comedy, because there's so many ways to do comedy, and it's also subjective. Someone might not laugh at what you do, whereas if you're going to do a dramatic scene, there's usually only one way you can do it. ~ Rhys Thomas

The egos manifest with feelings and emotions and this gives us a false perception of reality. We therefore don't see reality clearly as it is, but see external forms and events colored by the subjective feelings within us.

When we do perceive reality however, we do so with consciousness and the mind is able to clearly interpret it. The less the feelings of the egos are present, the clearer our perception of the present moment is, which means the clearer we are able to see any situation, issue, or person at the time we have to deal with them, and we are also more able to perceive the beauty of the moment. ~ Belsebuub

In practice, without appropriate government intervention, Smith's "invisible hand" dons brass knuckles and conducts gang warfare, creating fierce battles between competitors who would be more than happy to define and enforce their own private property interests according to their own subjective rules. ~ Denise Caruso

Science and Spirituality are two sides of the same coin and we cannot separate one from the other. Science is trying to find the truth in an objective or physical manner where as spirituality tries it subjectively or metaphysically. ~ Thomas Vazhakunnathu

Humility is really a subjective matter. Only God can truly tell a man who's humble! ~ Kingsley C. Okei

Our megatechnic culture, based as it is on the strange supposition that subjective malice has no reality and that evils do not exist, except in the sense of reparable mechanical defects, has proved itself incompetent to take on such responsibilities. ~ Lewis Mumford

Delight is a subjective reason for praying, but it is a valid one. ~ Peter Kreeft

It is this outer reach of existential abnegation – the moment where subjective identity deserts itself and becomes enslaved without consciousness of its subjugated condition – that Mirbeau consistently sought to decry with horror. ~ Emily Apter

Note the individual and subjective nature of each case. No two are alike and there is no reason to expect them to be. Each man or woman must find for himself or herself that occupation in which hard work and long hours make him or her happy. Contrariwise, if you are looking for shorter hours and longer vacations and early retirement, you are in the wrong job. Perhaps you need to take up bank robbing. Or geeking in a sideshow. Or even politics. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

When I was in school, I liked math because all the problems had answers. Everything else seemed very subjective. ~ Lisa Randall

Economists tell us that the 'price' of an object and its 'value' have very little or nothing to do with one another. 'Value' is entirely subjective economic value, anyway while 'price' reflects whatever a buyer is willing to give up to get the object in question, and whatever the seller is willing to accept to give it up. Both are governed by the Law of Marginal Utility, which is actually a law of psychology, rather than economics. For government to attempt to dictate a 'fair price' betrays complete misunderstanding of the entire process. ~ L. Neil Smith

I have you – a god of mixed heritage – on an expedition that could unleash the Destroyer from her hole. Arikos, another god, on the same team who is masquerading as a human. The demigod Solin, who I have to ride herd on constantly anyway, who gave them their permits. Megeara, a human who is sensitive and subjective to the voices of the gods. And the pissed-off goddess, Apollymi, who will do anything to be free, and once free wouldn't hesitate to destroy every one of us. I can't imagine why I'm concerned over this, can you? (ZT) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Interpreting criticism as a subjective opinion with a solution instead of a personal
rebuke will help you grow, build better relationships, become more successful. ~ Dr.prem Jagyasi

In derogating the notion of 'victim', neoliberalism promotes a conception of victimization as subjective rather than social, a state of mind rather than a worldly situation. As a result, victims of poverty, inequality, discrimination and violence are discursively constructed as the authors of their own suffering, or as genuine victims of incomprehensible crime. ~ Rebecca Stringer

You've always lived inside me, but I only realised it after I've met you. In order to love, you don't need to find someone in the outer world. Rather, you need to sense what mental image is always in your inner world. Love is the projection of this subjective mental image into someone outside. ~ Elmar Hussein

As students, we have all known two types of teachers, the pedantic and the inspiring. The former have a definite method and operate according to well-established habits; the latter need neither, because they know the subject through and through, Indeed, we may say that teaching methods, which generate subjective habits, are but poor substitutes for the kind of objective intimacy with the subject matter to be taught, which we call 'habitus ~ Yves Simon

Is," "is," "is" - the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

I stay subjective because that's what I do. That's one of my abilities. I don't need to watch it because I've had the adventure. I don't do low-budget acting. I do the same acting, whether I'm in a Jim Cameron or not. I always try to do good work. There's no snobbery in there ~ Lance Henriksen

What is possible is subjective. It's a matter of perspective. ~ Christopher Paolini

The problem of good as it faces the atheist is this: Nature, which is the nuts-and-bolts reality for the atheist, has no values and thus can offer no grounding for good and evil. Values on the atheist view are subjective and contingent. ~ William A. Dembski

Just as legendary rivers were used to represent the flow of life, so Mount Athos is a handy image to show human vulnerability. Its minerals themselves reminding us that ours is a planet constituted around Nature's awesome violence! Struggling to survive then, is integral to our existence. Literature on these issues, transforming rock and boulder into a subjective mountain, where fleshly mountaineers set forth, in the blinding brilliance of an alpine dawn, to ascend their own transgressions, remains telling. Breathing in, when nearing the top, to smell the pure air of spiritual comprehension: of heady intrinsic freedom, only to descend, once more, into the obscure and the pedestrian; albeit existentially transformed! In this way, indeed, Mount Athos transfigures many a man. ~ David William Parry

Nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a psychological law that whatever we desire to accomplish we must impress upon the subjective or subconscious mind; that is, we must register a vow with ourselves, we must make our resolution with vigor, with faith that we can do the thing we want to do; we must register our conviction with such intensity that the great creative forces within us will tend to realize them. Our impressions will become expressions just in proportion to the vigor with which we register our vows to accomplish our ambitions, to make our visions realities. ~ Orison S. Marden

My narrative style centers around intimate, highly subjective depictions of personal experience and internal landscapes. In 'March,' everything fell into place as soon as I began identifying strongly with John Lewis as a young boy and saw how we shared the same kind of gravity and intensity as youngsters. ~ Nate Powell

On the one hand, all truth is relative; on the other hand, postmodernism tells it like it really is.
On the one hand, all cultures are equally deserving of respect; on the other, Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad.
Values are subjective
but sexism and racism are really evil.
Technology is bad and destructive
and it is unfair that some people have more technology than others.
Tolerance is good and dominance is bad
but when postmodernists come to power, political correctness follows. ~ Stephen Hicks

I think you're always subjective because you always have a point of view, but I'm always sort of curious about what is the point of view I don't agree with. There is a truth in that because there always is. ~ Margaret Brown

We insist that society should conform to our own subjective illusion of reality. ~ Robert Anthony

Becoming a little child meant becoming aware that all is gift, that I am helpless and powerless to add a single inch to my spiritual stature. Without the subjective awareness of utter dependence, the personal consciousness of a dynamism outside of self at work in us, I seriously question whether anyone has made real progress in the spiritual life. ~ Brennan Manning

If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this: that he regarded only subjective realities as realities, as "truths" - that he saw everything else, everything natural, temporal, spatial and historical, merely as signs, as materials for parables. The concept of "the Son of God" does not connote a concrete person in history, an isolated and definite individual, but an "eternal" fact, a psychological symbol set free from the concept of time. The same thing is true, and in the highest sense, of the God of this typical symbolist, of the "kingdom of God," and of the "sonship of God." Nothing could be more un-Christian than the crude ecclesiastical notions of God as a person, of a "kingdom of God" that is to come, of a "kingdom of heaven" beyond, and of a "son of God" as the second person of the Trinity. All this - if I may be forgiven the phrase - is like thrusting one's fist into the eye (and what an eye!) of the Gospels: a disrespect for symbols amounting to world-historical cynicism.... But it is nevertheless obvious enough what is meant by the symbols "Father" and "Son" - not, of course, to every one - : the word "Son" expresses entrance into the feeling that there is a general transformation of all things (beatitude), and "Father" expresses that feeling itself - the sensation of eternity and of perfection. - I am ashamed to remind you of what the church has made of this symbolism: has it not set an Amphitryon story at the threshold of the Christian "f ~ Nietszche

The simple fact is that all magick is psychological and subjective. Real magick is poetic and imaginary. ~ Jean De Cabalis

A photograph is not necessarily a lie, but it isn't the truth either. It's more like a fleeting, subjective impression. ~ John Berger

To this day God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse. ~ Carl Jung

Comics are drawings, not photographs, and as such they present a subjective view of reality. ~ Frederik L. Schodt

An external attribution exists to make you feel less shitty. It's a handy tool, wherein you perceive anything positive that happens to you as a mistake, subjective, and/or never a result of your own goodness. Negative things, alternately, are the objective truth. And they're always your fault. ~ Melissa Broder

One cannot, without reflection, make some into bearers of goodness and others into miscreants, judging them by relative positive or negative criteria. These, like everything else, change according to historical circumstances, the character of a society, the time and subjective points of view. ~ Daisaku Ikeda

Short of dragging her to the water kicking and screaming-and destroying Emma's trust in him-Galen made the snap decision to leave them both in Rayna's care. And the word "care" can be very subjective where his sister is concerned.
But they couldn't waste any more time; with Yudor's head start on them, a search party might have already been dispatched, and if not, then Galen knew it was coming. And he couldn't-wouldn't-risk them finding Emma. Beautiful, stubborn Half-Breed Emma.
And he's a little perturbed that Nalia would.
The three of them plod holes in the sand reaching up to Emma's back porch, alongside a recent trail of someone else's-probably Emma's-footsteps leading from the beach. Galen knows this moment will always be burned into his memory. The moment when his brother, the Triton king, put on human clothes and walked up to a house built by humans, squinting in the broad daylight with eyes unaccustomed to the sun.
What will he say to Nalia? What will he do? ~ Anna Banks

From the subjective perspective, he may seem cruel, even wicked. But the glory of the man is to be found in the objective perspective. ~ Robert Harris

I think that people create the world that they live in. Your existence is very subjective, and you tell stories and organize the world outside of you into these stories to help you understand it. ~ Charlie Kaufman

I like to point out that people very often confuse the idea that truth is subjective with the fact that truth is perishable. ~ Errol Morris

Here was opportunity to make an audience walk and move, be sociable in a way never dreamed of by the rigors of cinema-watching, in circumstances where many different perspectives could be brought to bear on a series of phenomena associated with the topics under consideration. Yet all the time it was a subjective creation under the auspices of light and sound, dealing with a large slice of cinema's vocabulary. ~ Peter Greenaway

No doubt very few people understand the purely subjective nature of the phenomenon that we call love, or how it creates, so to speak, a supplementary person, distinct from the person whom the world knows by the same name, a person most of whose constituent elements are derived from ourselves. ~ Marcel Proust

Philosophy as such is nothing but genuine awareness of the problems, i.e., of the fundamental and comprehensive problems. It is impossible to think about these problems without becoming inclined toward a solution, toward one or the other of the very few typical solutions. Yet as long as there is no wisdom but only quest for wisdom, the evidence of all solutions is necessarily smaller than the evidence of the problems. Therefore the philosopher ceases to be a philosopher at the moment at which the 'subjective certainty' [quoting M. Alexandre Kojève] of a solution becomes stronger than his awareness of the problematic character of that solution. At that moment the sectarian is born. The danger of succumbing to the attraction of solutions is essential to philosophy which, without incurring this danger, would degenerate into playing with the problems. But the philosopher does not necessarily succumb to this danger, as is shown by Socrates, who never belonged to a sect and never founded one. And even if the philosophic friends are compelled to be members of a sect or to found one, they are not necessarily members of one and the same sect: Amicus Plato. ~ Leo Strauss

It occurred to her, in a moment of sudden clarity, that what had always caused her anxiety, or stress, or worry, was not any one force, nothing independent and external- it wasn't danger to herself or the constant calamity of other people and their problems. It was internal: it was subjective: it was not knowing. ~ Dave Eggers

Contemporary paganism gives me a subjective lens through which the world in which I live can be interpreted on an aesthetic and an ethical basis. I'm interested in narrative, myth, and story, in folklore and the way we connect to the turning of the seasons and the natural world. ~ Liz Williams

The world is how we see the world. Some people see the world good, the other people see the world bad. Every person has an idea of the world with a subjective [viewpoint]. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

Money is something that can be measured; art is not. It's all subjective. ~ Jerry Saltz

Our subjective experience of time is highly variable. We all know that days can pass like weeks and months can feel like years, and that the opposite can be just as true: A month or year can zoom by in what feels like no time at all. ~ Joshua Foer

What then, is time?" asks the saint. "If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not." Neither the past nor the future, argues Augustine, truly exists - and the present is merely an instant. "The present of things past is memory," he writes; "the present of things present is perception; and the present of things future is expectation." Augustine's conclusion - never fully stated, but unmistakably implied - is that time is subjective. It exists in the mind alone, and nowhere else. ~ John Wray

Materialism ends up denying the existence of any irreducible subjective qualitative states of sentience or awareness. ~ John Searle

Only by honoring the greater truths (the macrocosmic truth) may we begin to honor our subjective truths (our microcosmic truth). This is a recognition of the greater mystery of life and a deep honoring of being a child of that great mystery. In that profound recognition rests the awareness that the same macrocosmic mystery is within us, and it manifests and takes its course in many ways. When we simply recognize this fundamental aspect of the nature of existence, we can begin to understand its presence in our lives. And then finding ourselves moving away from the career or relationship we thought we'd be in for the rest of our life is less of a shock or a "something must be wrong" and more of a deep, humble sigh of "alright, okay, here we go, and so it is." This is the way life moves. We do not hold the reins, and to feign so creates only pain. Evolution necessitates change. ~ Tehya Sky

They also,' Skaffen-Amtiskaw said, 'refuse to acknowledge machine sentience fully; they exploit proto-conscious computers and claim only human subjective experience has any intrinsic value; carbon fascists. ~ Iain M. Banks

Certainly truths are to be found in all the philosophers, and above all half-truths, but these truths are flanked with errors and inconsistencies, and there is moreover no need for them; hence it is pointless to dwell on them. Partial truths are only to be accepted in the domain of traditional orthodoxy, because they are only acceptable in the context of the total Truth, which alone guarantees their exactitude and their efficacy. To think while denying the total Truth, which is both objective and subjective, is completely inconsistent; it is not really thinking.
[Letter on Existentialism to Huston Smith] ~ Frithjof Schuon

Altogether, these observations suggest that several processes contribute to psychotic experience: the loss of familiarity with the world, hypothetically associated with noisy information processing; increased novelty detection mediated by the hippocampus; associated alterations of prefrontal cortical processing, which have reliably been associated with impairments in working memory and other executive functions; increased top-down effects of prior beliefs mediated by the frontal cortex that may reflect compensatory efforts to cope with an increasingly complex and unfamiliar world; and finally disinhibition of subcortical dopaminergic neurotransmission, which increases salience attribution to otherwise irrelevant stimuli. Furthermore, increased noise of chaotic or stress-dependent dopamine firing can reduce the encoding of errors of reward prediction elicited by primary and secondary reinforcers, thus contributing to a subjective focusing of attention on apparently novel and mysterious environmental cues while reducing attention and motivation elicited by common and natural and social stimuli. ~ Andreas Heinz

It must not be supposed that the subjective elements are any less 'real' than the objective elements; they are only less important ... because they do not point to anything beyond ourselves ... ~ Bertrand Russell

Look, people need to conform the external reality they face daily with this subjective feeling they likewise experience constantly. To do this they have two options. First, they can achieve what passes for great things. Now the external reality matches their feeling; they really are better than the rest and maybe they'll even be remembered as such. These are the ambitious people, the overachievers. These are also, however, the people who go on these abominable talk shows where they can trade their psychoses for exposure on that box, modernity's ultimate achievement. Not that this tact, being ambitious, is not the preferred course of action. The reason is it's the equivalent of sticking your neck out which we all know is dangerous. Instead many act like they have no ambition whatsoever. Their necks come back in and they're safe. Only problem is now they're at everyone else's level, which we've seen is untenable. The remedy of course is that everyone else needs to be sunk. This helps explain racism's enduring popularity. If I myself don't appear to be markedly superior to everyone else at least I'm part of the better race, country, religion et cetera. This in turn reflects well on my individual worth. There are other options, of course. For example, you can constantly bemoan others' lack of moral worth by extension elevating yourself. Think of the average person's reaction to our clients. Do these people strike you as so truly righteous that they are viscerally pained by our cl ~ Sergio De La Pava

Nothing is obvious in itself. Obviousness is subjective. ~ Rex Stout

Objective reality is a synthetic construct, dealing with a hypothetical universalization of a multitude of subjective realities. ~ Philip K. Dick

All we can know is our own subjective version of reality. That's the way we go through our lives. Everybody. ~ Krishna Das

The camera is an extension of yourself ... Your story treatment may be subjective, but it is important to remain objective as to truth. ~ Cornell Capa

Most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, frightfully objective sometimes
but the task is precisely to be objective toward oneself and subjective toward all others. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

The mind was designed not to defend what we want, but to discover what is ultimately true, which should shape our wants and satisfy them more deeply with God. The purpose of the mind is not to rationalize subjective preferences, but to recognize objective reality and to help the heart revel in God. ~ John Piper

I love math because there's always a right answer. It's not interpretive; it's not subjective. There is a correct destination, even if you have to hack through confusing parts to get there. That's not always true in life. ~ Emery Lord

I want to explain the new alchemy [in the "From Earth, Air, Fire, and Water to a New Vision of Mind and Time"], which has to do with understanding what I call the subjective and objective qualities of existence. ~ Fred Alan Wolf

The DID patient should be seen as a whole adult person with the identities sharing responsibility for daily life. Despite patients' subjective experience of separateness, clinicians must keep in mind that the patient is a single person and generally must hold the whole person (i.e., system of alternate identities) responsible for the behavior of any or all of the constituent identities, even in the presence of amnesia or the sense of lack of control or agency over behavior.
From p8
International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. (2011). Guidelines for treating dissociative identity disorder in adults, third revision: Summary version. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 12, 188–212. ~ James A. Chu

Movies, by nature, are not subjective, they're objective. ~ Stephen Chbosky

The animate earth - this moody terrain that we experience differently in anger and in joy, in grief and in love - is both the soil in which all our sciences are rooted and the rich humus into which their results ultimately return, whether as nutrients or as poisons. Our spontaneous experience of the world, charged with subjective, emotional, and intuitive content, remains the vital and dark ground of all our objectivity ~ David Abram

Realism is always subjective in film. There's no such thing as cinema verite. ~ Crispin Glover

Before asserting a prognosis on any patient, always be objective and never subjective. For telling a man that he will win the treasure of life, but then later discovering that he will lose, will harm him more than by telling him that he may lose, but then he wins. ~ Suzy Kassem

Aesthetics is both politics and philosophy, a series of agreements and disagreements between subjective minds. ~ Jimenez Lai

We use the mind to create ourselves. Stuck amid the inevitable gaps between the mint of imagination and the postholes of actuality, we stutter step through the stratum of objective and subjective reality. We constantly amend our internal mental maps. Each day we awaken from the nighttime dream world with a revised identity of ourselves. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

... inebriation brings about for an hour or two a state of subjective idealism, pure phenomenalism; everything is reduced to appearances and exists only as a function of our sublime self. ~ Marcel Proust

There's a floating distraction in the contemporary world, life at a distance enabled by technology. I want people to commit at the level of their subjectivity. The idea of subjective commitment is at the core of ethics, something that divides the self from itself. I become an ethical self. I cannot meet that ideal, I cannot fulfill it, it divides me from myself and it makes me strive harder. This ideal subjective ethical drive is at the heart of an absolutely earnest, radical politics that insists that people will be able to engage with each other, and they're lifted from irony at that point. ~ Simon Critchley

The merely conscious being does not have a preference for continued life. Perhaps while having a pleasurable experience it has a preference for that experience to continue, or while having a painful experience it has a preference for that experience to end, but it will not have any preferences for the long-term future, and the desires it has do not survive periods of sleep or temporary unconsciousness, because unlike a self-aware being, it has no conception of its own future existence after a period of sleep. Thus if we are concerned only about the thwarting of preferences, for a merely conscious being, painless killing and administering an anesthetic seem to be equivalent. Killing does not thwart any more desires than putting the being to sleep. The being will be able to continue to satisfy its preferences after it awakes, but from the being's subjective perspective it is as if a new being, with new preferences, came into existence. ~ Peter Singer

We're all martyrs and we're all villains. That's the truth for everything, because it's all subjective. It's all relative. ~ Drew Lerman

We are enveloped in peace, whether or not we feel ourselves to be at peace. By that I mean the peace that passes understanding is not a subjective sensation of peace; if we are in Christ, we are in peace even when we feel no peace. ~ Brennan Manning

If the possessor of a units of money receives h additional units, then it is not at all true to say that he will value the total stock a + h exactly as highly as he had previously valued the stock a alone. Because he now has disposal over a larger stock, he will now value each unit less than he did before; but how much less will depend upon a whole series of individual circumstances, upon subjective valuations that will be different for each individual. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Memory is so subjective. We all remember in a visceral, emotional way, and so even if we agree on the facts - what was said, what happened where and when - what we take away and store from a moment, what we feel about it, can vary radically. ~ Alan Cumming

In a sense, matters of the heart are mostly subjective and unconscious, and that's not bad. Soul connections should not always be made on a rational basis. What a boring life that would be! The unconscious part of ourselves has a wisdom of its own, and in some ways our heart knows what it wants and needs. That is valid. But God has made us with two sides of our being, the rational and the emotional; when they are in conflict, we are in trouble. ~ Henry Cloud