Quotes & Sayings About Perceptions Of Others

Much of our suffering is caused by our false perceptions and attachment to mental images. We assume things to be true without really knowing whether they are true or not, then create a world of hurt for ourselves and others. — Joseph P. Kauffman

It was never a question of passing. It was a question of hiding. Behind Black and white perceptions of who we were
who they thought we were. Tropics. Plantations. Calypso. Cricket. We were the people with the musical voices and the coronation mugs on our parlor tables. I would be whatever figurine these foreign imaginations cared for me to be. It would be so simple to let others fill in for me. So easy to startle them with a flash of anger when their visions got out of hand
but never to sustain the anger for myself. It would be a life lived within myself. A life cut off. I know who I am but you will never know who I am. I may in fact lose touch with who I am. — Michelle Cliff

To prevent becoming overwhelmed by the world around us, we must, as the ancients practiced, learn how to limit our passions and their control over our lives. It takes skill and discipline to bat away the pests of bad perceptions, to separate reliable signals from deceptive ones, to filter out prejudice, expectation, and fear. But it's worth it, for what's left is truth. While others are excited or afraid, we will remain calm and imperturbable. We will see things simply and straightforwardly, as they truly are - neither good nor bad. — Ryan Holiday

The consistent finding of psychological research is that we are fairly accurate in our perceptions of others. It's our self-perceptions that are distorted because we look at ourselves in a rose-colored mirror. — Jonathan Haidt

Sexual agency is about being able to define your sexuality by the decisions you yourself make, and NOT by the perceptions, expectations or opinions of others. — Miya Yamanouchi

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

Perception does not define who we are, but it does define where we are limited, and where we are not yet free. — Georgi Y. Johnson

In spite of her desire for a contained universe, her life felt scattered, full of many small moments, without great purpose. That is what she thought, though what is most untrustworthy about our natures and self-worth is how we differe in our own realities from the way we are seen by others. — Michael Ondaatje

The Ego, as noted, is simply the content of your PSM [Phenomenal Self Model] at this moment (your bodily sensations, your emotional state, your perceptions, memories, acts of will, thoughts). But it can become the Ego only because you are constitutionally unable to realize that all this is just the content of a simulation in your brain. It is not reality itself but an image of reality - and a very special one indeed. The Ego is a transparent mental image: You - the physical person as a whole - look right through it. You do not see it. You see with it. The Ego is a tool for controlling and planning your behavior and for understanding the behavior of others — Thomas Metzinger

A first impression works like a magic mirror; it reflects what intrigues us rather than echoing a truthful picture. A first impression is the creating of an imagined character born from personal desires, perceptions, and biases. Though sparked by an introduction to a real, living, breathing individual, the person remains a mystery long after parting. It is a fictitious ghost masked with similar features that remains. A first impression is rarely accurate; therefore, it should never be trusted. — Richelle E. Goodrich

What binds Buddhism, Sufism, and Quaker practices together is a belief in our interconnectedness; profound respect for others; being guided by a greater good beyond material possessions, status, and image; valuing silence and stillness of the mind; acceptance of differences; developing inner awareness of one's perceptions and motivation; commitment to service; and seeking guidance from within. — Charlotte Kasl

The way of Zen is to become independent and strong. Don't rely on others for perceptions of life and truth. Do it individually. Go to a teacher of Zen to learn how to do that, not to get answers for individual life situations. — Frederick Lenz

The people in the world, and the objects in it, and the world as a whole, are not absolute things, but on the contrary, are the phenomena of perception ... If we were all alike: if we were millions of people saying do, re, mi, in unison, One poet would be enough ... But we are not alone, and everything needs expounding all the time because, as people live and die, each one perceiving life and death for himself, and mostly by and in himself, there develops a curiosity about the perceptions of others. This is what makes it possible to go on saying new things about old things. — Wallace Stevens

Never compromise your perceptions and truth to validate the perceptions of others. — Debasish Mridha

That's really an exceedingly sophisticated idea, epistemologically speaking. Does it mean that parts of the world are spurious? Or that sometimes the whole world is spurious? Or that there are plural worlds of which one is real and the others are not? Is there essentially one matrix world from which people derive differing perceptions? So that the world you see is not the world I see? — Philip K. Dick

As a scientist, objectivity is one of my most deeply held values. If we could just try harder, I once thought, surely we could each see the world as others see it and learn to respect one another's views more readily. But I learned from the Pirahas, our expectations, our culture, and our experiences can render even perceptions of the environment nearly incommensurable cross-culturally. — Daniel Everett

There is a magical quality that resides in all of us, it changes our energy,
and changes others perceptions of us. It's called:
HONESTY — Steven Aitchison

Changing our behavior purely for the sake of appearances may seem to conflict with the need to be authentic and consistent, but in many ways it is actually a result of those needs. After all, resolving the tension between standing out from the crowd and becoming isolated requires finding our niche in the world. But what would happen if we weren't accepted in the place where we felt we belonged? For others to see us as a "poseur" or as "delusional" would be painful. Even worse, what if they were right? The social consequences and self-doubt that follow when our self-perceptions conflict with how others see us can be just as destabilizing to our identity as conflicts between our own self-perceptions and actions. — Sheena Iyengar

Those who see what's obvious aren't necessarily brighter than others. They're just more likely to observe that the emperor is naked. Like children, they see what's actually there. Their perceptions are less clouded by belief systems, taboos, habits of thought. One responsibility of management
an important one
is to call attention to the invisible obvious, pointing it out as a child does (sometimes to the embarrassment of adults). Doing so also requires supporting employees who take that risk, too, and other risks as well. — Richard Farson

Very few people stutter when they are standing alone in a room speaking to themselves, so how much did Ted's blindness free him from reacting to the perceptions of others? — Katherine Preston

I find this to be the real gift of others - the elegance of their perceptions, the labor that has been put into developing interesting positions and perfection of expression. Just as you read fiction in order to discover the names for emotions and experiences that we have all had, you read the philosophy and theology of others in order to enrich your own perceptions. — Omar Saif Ghobash

When I deny the seriousness of my abuse I agree with my abuser and those who wouldn't acknowledge it. When I am in denial, I have the tendency to minimize my abuse, believe the lies others have said, as well as deny it ever happened. It is important for me to remember as much detail as I can so I can trust my own perceptions of what really happened and not depend on the validations from others. — Patty Hite

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

Know ye not that there is here in this world a secret confraternity, which one might call the Company of Melancholiacs? That people there are who by natural constitution have been given a different nature and disposition than the others; that have a larger heart and a swifter blood, that wish and demand more, have stronger desires and a yearning which is wilder and more ardent than that of the common herd. They are fleet as children over whose birth good fairies have presided; their eyes are opened wider; their senses are more subtile in all their perceptions. The gladness and joy of life, they drink with the roots of their heart, the while the others merely grasp them with coarse hands. — Jens Peter Jacobsen

Why describe God as organic? More and more I realize that my own understanding of God is largely polluted. I have preconceived notions, thoughts and biases when it comes to God. I have a tendency to favor certain portions of Scripture over others. I have a bad habit of reading some stories with a been-there-done-that attitude, knowing the end of the story before it begins, and in the process denying God's ability to speak to me through it once again.
... The result is that my understanding and perception of God is clouded, much like the dingy haze of pollution that hands over most major cities. The person in the middle of a city looking up at the sky doesn't aways realize just how much their view and perceptions are altered by the smog. Without symptoms such as burning eyes or an official warning of scientists or media, no one may even notice just how bad the pollution has become.
That's why I describe God as organic. — Margaret Feinberg

The more aware we are of our basic paradigms, maps, or assumptions, and the extent to which we have been influenced by our experience, the more we can take responsibility for those paradigms, examine them, test them against reality, listen to others and be open to their perceptions, thereby getting a larger picture and a far more objective view. — Stephen R. Covey

I will only say generally, that in proportion as any given body is more fitted than others for doing many actions or receiving many impressions at once, so also is the mind, of which it is the object, more fitted than others for forming many simultaneous perceptions; and the more the actions of the body depend on itself alone, and the fewer other bodies concur with it in action, the more fitted is the mind of which it is the object for distinct comprehension. We may thus recognize the superiority of one mind over others, and may further see the cause, why we have only a very confused knowledge of our body, and also many kindred questions, which I will, in the following propositions, deduce from what has been advanced. — Baruch Spinoza

In college - while figuring the things out that most people do in college - I had no game. No confidence. I had Birkenstocks. And overalls. A budding romance novel addiction. But no cool. No poise. I was trying on a thousand different personalities, but a lot of them were formed by the perceptions of others. — Molly O'Keefe

Beneath the noisy surface of our minds, there are deep reserves of memory and association, of feelings and perceptions that process and record our life's experiences beyond our conscious awareness. So at times, creativity is a conscious effort. At others, we need to let our ideas ferment for a while and trust the deeper unconscious ruminations of our minds, over which we have less control. Sometimes when we do, the insights we've been searching for will come to us in a rush, — Ken Robinson

If I had been a different sort of person, maybe less impressionable, less intense, less fearful, less utterly dependent upon the perceptions of others - maybe then I would not have bought the cultural party line that thinness is the be-all and end-all of goals. Maybe if my family had not been in utter chaos most of the time, maybe if my parents were a little better at dealing with their own lives maybe if I'd gotten help sooner, or if I'd gotten different help, maybe if I didn't so fiercely cherish my secret, or if I were not such a good liar, or were not quite so empty inside ... maybe. — Marya Hornbacher

Non-surrender hardens your psychological form, the shell of the ego, and so creates a strong sense of separateness. The world around you and people in particular come to be perceived as threatening. The unconscious compulsion to destroy others through judgment arises, as does the need to compete and dominate. Even nature becomes your enemy and your perceptions and interpretations are governed by fear. The mental disease that we call paranoia is only a slightly more acute form of this normal but dysfunctional state of consciousness. Not only your psychological form but also your physical form - your body - becomes hard and rigid through resistance. Tension arises in different parts of the body, and the body as a whole contracts. — Eckhart Tolle

Not only are we inescapably alone in the realms of our private thoughts, perceptions and feelings, but we are also, paradoxically, inescapably together in a world with others. — Stephen Batchelor

The only reality you can be sure about is in your own perceptions. If the universe exists, it exists inside your own mind and the minds of others. — Al Ries

So many, such mingled emotions, that no one of them was separable from the others! She could have wept for her mother, who was crying quietly back there ten feet and for the loveliness of the June sunlight flooding in at the windows. She was beyond all conscious perceptions. Only a sense, colored with delirious wild excitement, that the ultimately important was happening - and a trust, fierce and passionate, burning in her like a prayer, that in a moment she would be forever and securely safe. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Strategists seek to increase available options by manipulating structure and context, and in this way dictate the terms of conflict. One of the most captivating discussions of manipulating rules and boundaries to further the end of politics is in William Riker's thought-provoking conception of heresthetics. Riker produces more than a dozen examples of a master strategist's manipulation of perceptions, agendas, rules, and procedures to assure the strategist's desired results would ensue. The strategist does not seek a specific outcome or decision; instead the process of decision-making is altered to increase the likelihood that a desired decision will be made. In most cases, the strategist provides additional choices for the opponent, inducing the other side to make a decision that was not previously apparent, but now seems necessary. By increasing the choices of others, strategists increase their own power. — Everett C. Dolman

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

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

People want to work with somebody who feels shame, who worries about the perceptions of others. Dishonesty is something we don't like in others. — Frans De Waal

And as the years flowed by, some villagers told travelers of a beast and a beauty who lived in the castle and could be seen walking on the battlements, and others told of two beauties, and others, of two beasts. — Emma Donoghue

Philosophy exists in profoundest opposition to rhetoric, which is speaking for the sake of producing or controlling some effect in others' perceptions. Philosophy is about the caustic or cauterizing effect of the truth, not the currying of sensibilities. — Kenny Smith

people seemed to be especially prone to making mistakes when they judged the accuracy of their own perceptions if those perceptions were of themselves and not others. — Anonymous

I had been brought up to be something of an intellectual, but there seemed at the time no connection between my newly formed ideas and the world to which I had returned. Indeed, I did not even recognize my ideas as ideas at all: they seemed to be culled from somewhere else and did not belong to me. I did not know then what I am just beginning to know now: that my ideas were indeed mine, that I had reacted and changed and moved, that I had already analyzed and synthesized, rejecting some thoughts, adopting others, putting yet others away for a while to be thought on. I did not recognize how mentally active an individual I had become, already divorced from the world through my own thoughts, my own perceptions of right and wrong, of honour and justice, of what mattered and what did not. (2007: 117) — Jean Said Makdisi

At first he who invented any art that went beyond the common perceptions of man was naturally admired by men, not only because there was something useful in the inventions, but because he was thought wise and superior to the rest. But as more arts were invented, and some were directed to the necessities of life, others to its recreation, the inventors of the latter were always regarded as wiser than the inventors of the former, because their branches of knowledge did not aim at utility. — Aristotle.

The problems that we have in Jamaica are not fundamentally economical but mental, if we changed the way we saw the world then many of us would be better off. Our failures and pitfalls are not because of what others did not do for us but stems from what we are culturally as a people unwilling to do for ourselves. We are a people shackled by our own perceptions.
We are much too given to pessimism, believing that the obeah man oil can kill you too earnestly than how we embrace the anointment of the Pastor's Olive Oil. I guess evil to us is such a strong, pervasive muse. — Crystal Evans

Freeman's theory helps to explain how love and plasticity affect each other. Plasticity allows us to develop brains so unique in response to our individual life experiences - that it is often hard to see the world as others do, to want what they want, or to cooperate. But the successful reproduction of our species requires cooperation. What nature provides, in a neuromodulator like oxytocin, is the ability for two brains in love to go through a period of heightened plasticity, allowing them to mold to each other and shape each other's intentions and perceptions. The brain for Freeman is fundamentally an organ of socialization, and so there must be a mechanism that, from time to time, undoes our tendency to become overly individualized, overly self-involved, and too self-centered. — Norman Doidge

The greatest power one human being can exert over others is to control their perceptions of reality, and infringe on the integrity and individuality of their world. This is done in politics, in psychotherapy. — Philip K. Dick

The thought of being whoever I want is a terrifying thing, because I have only ever been who everyone has wanted me to be. — Dianna Hardy

It remains a mystery why these three young men, veterans of the same training and the same crash, differed so radically in their perceptions of their plight. Maybe the difference was biological; some men may be wired for optimism, others for doubt. As a toddler, Louie had leapt from a train — Laura Hillenbrand

But mostly what we think of as the 'meaning' of life concerns the style of the private autobiography we each write and which records how we 'see' ourselves. Whether this autobiography reads as a narrative of progress in which difficulties are transcended, or is chaotic, is the test of whether one's life seems to be meaningful or not. Meaning is something we find, or fail to find, as we follow through this project. We can see how love figures here: love is a major theme, but how we see our experience of love depends upon our general thinking. If, for example, we work with extremely high expectations of love we impose a tragic style upon our self-perceptions: for our experience of love will always be seen under an aspect of failure - failure focused upon ourselves or others. Hence the more subtle our thinking about love, the more intelligently we discriminate ideals from reality, the more interesting our autobiography becomes. — John Armstrong

In all societies, women are in double jeopardy; on the one hand we are expected to conform to certain emotional standards in our relationships with others at the penalty of being declared insane; on the other, our political perceptions are labeled "irrational" and "hysterical. — Adrienne Rich

A human language is a system of remarkable complexity. To come to know a human language would be an extraordinary achievement for a creature not specifically designed to accomplish this task. A normal child acquires this knowledge on relatively slight exposure and without specific training. He can then quite effortlessly make use of an intricate structure of specific rules and guiding principles to convey his thoughts and feelings to others, arousing in them novel ideas and subtle perceptions and judgments. — Noam Chomsky