Viewpoint Quotes & Sayings

Foreword of my book: The Pawn
"It is being said that time and space could be tied to their creator's stance of what they are to him or her. It can possibly be perceived by those who become the receivers of this viewpoint as something different or the same." (Claire Manning Writer/Author 2016) — Claire Hamelin Manning

No matter how advanced society becomes, institutionally or technologically, a house in which nature can be sensed represents for me the ideal environment in which to live. From a functional viewpoint, the courtyard of the Rowhouse in Sumiyoshi forces the inhabitant to endure the occasional hardships. At the same time, however, the open courtyard is capable of becoming the house's vital organ, introducing the everyday life and assimilating precious stimuli such as changes in nature. — Tadao Ando

The next time someone asks for your opinion, and you know it's contrary to that person's viewpoint, take the risk of putting your perspective on the table rather than taking the path of least resistance by agreeing or saying you have no opinion. — Lois P Frankel

Americans have the mistaken viewpoint that Lady Liberty is only a peacetime luxury who is ill-equipped to fight the nasties. Therefore, they reason, we need an equally nasty Big Brother. Americans have forgotten that Lady Liberty is one ferocious mother when protecting her children. — Mary Ruwart

There is another viewpoint that must be stated without equivocation: if Muslims want to immigrate to open and developed societies in order to better themselves, then it is they who must expect to do the adapting. We no longer allow Jews to run separate Orthodox courts in their communities, or permit Mormons to practice polygamy or racial discrimination or child marriage. That is the price of "inclusion," and a very reasonable one. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The present Western civilization ... is dominated by the extravert viewpoint. There are plenty of reasons for this domination: extraverts are more vocal than introverts; they are more numerous, apparently in the ratio of three to one; and they are accessible and understandable, whereas the introverts are not readily understandable, even to each other, and are likely to be thoroughly incomprehensible to the extraverts. — Isabel Briggs Myers

Biochemists assume that the three cellular kingdoms evolved from a single common ancestor, because the alternative of supposing an independent origin of life two or more times presents still greater difficulties. The common ancestor is merely hypothetical, as are the numerous transitional intermediate forms that would have to connect such enormously different groups to the ancestor. From a Darwinist viewpoint all these hypothetical creatures are a logical necessity, but there is no empirical confirmation that they existed. — Phillip E. Johnson

When we understand the other fellow's viewpoint - understand what he is trying to do - nine times out of ten he is trying to do right. — Harry S. Truman

I want to hear an alternative viewpoint, and I don't want girls to be defanged and declawed and pretty and mute. — Shirley Manson

The way you view the things you treat changes the way you treat the things you view. — A. Spencer

There is a sky full of stars aplenty, and all you can babble about is a cold, little rock we call the moon. This is how it is with petty problems that exist too close to us. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Nietzsche seems sometimes to replace the "transcendence" which stands at the center of traditional accounts the existence of a transcendent God, or, failing that, a transcendental viewpoint with that of a continually transcending activity ... There is no single, final perspective, but given any one perspective, we can always go beyond it. — Raymond Geuss

So it's not all that important who people really are. Honestly, you could end up spending your life with almost anyone, and it wouldn't matter who - because the person they are to you is totally dependent on your view of them. — Steph Bowe

I think that if your approach is one where you don't want to alienate anybody, you're going to have to soften the viewpoint or the information that you're offering to such an extent that it doesn't have the power to make any difference. You have to take that risk. — Eddie Vedder

Many people think that when we practice agriculture, nature is helping us in our efforts to grow food. This is an exclusively human-centered viewpoint ... we should instead, realize that we are receiving that which nature decides to give us. A farmer does not grow something in the sense that he or she creates it. That human is only a small part of the whole process by which nature expresses its being. The farmer has very little influence over that process ... other than being there and doing his or her small part. — Masanobu Fukuoka

No, I most certainly do not think advertising people are wonderful. I think they are horrible, and the worst menace to mankind, next to war; perhaps ahead of war. They stand for the material viewpoint, for the importance of possessions, of desire, of envy, of greed. And war comes from these things. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly ... time-y wimey ... stuff. — Steven Moffat

Propaganda by censorship takes two forms: the selective control of information to favour a particular viewpoint, and the deliberate doctoring of information in order to create an impression different from that originally intended. — James A.C. Brown

From the strictest humanitarian viewpoint, any attempt to stop the processes by which over crowded cities purge themselves is not a kindness. — Robert A. Heinlein

I don't think anything changes until ideas change. The usual American viewpoint is to believe that something is wrong with the person. — James Hillman

Things always appear clear and simple from behind glass. It is in the thick of tribulations that blurring details arise, complicating my life. You can't rightly judge me, nor can you assist, from a shielded viewpoint. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative. We find that it is not a new scene which is needed, but a new viewpoint. — Norman Rockwell

I am closer to a European viewpoint of the world than an American one. My ethics and ideals are based on European concepts. — Bianca Jagger

From the dog's viewpoint, however, they are directly asserting dominance with that stare. When you respond by giving him what he wants, the dog interprets this as a submissive gesture on your part, and also reads this as your acceptance that the dog has a higher status in the pack than you do. — Stanley Coren

The world is full of opinions. But I am not searching for opinions, I'm searching for truths. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless. Christmas dinner's dark and blue. When you stop and try to see it From the turkey's point of view.
Sunday dinner isn't sunny. Easter feasts are just bad luck. When you see it from the viewpoint of a chicken or a duck. Oh how I once loved tuna salad Pork and lobsters, lamb chops too Till I stopped and looked at dinner From the dinner's point of view. — Shel Silverstein

If you can concentrate on listening to another person - without your own viewpoint getting in the way, without judging or discarding or thinking of a response - for the simple purpose of taking in someone else's reality, you start to understand her. — L. Alison Heller

Tommy was persuaded that the murder charge was buttressed by that antagonism, which, from the prosecution's viewpoint, was probably ninety percent of their case. The bloodstains, being absent from the bunk room on the night of the murder, the discovery of the knife - all these things when taken together painted a compelling portrait. It was only upon examining each separately that the supposition unraveled somewhat. — John Katzenbach

When I'm writing from a character's viewpoint, in essence I become that character; I share their thoughts, I see the world through their eyes and try to feel everything they feel. — George R R Martin

Every viewpoint is a view from a point. — Richard Rohr

The only truth is that we cannot speak the truth . The only acceptable viewpoint is that we cannot express a viewpoint. — Murong Xuecun

Wisdom is the capacity to see things from God's viewpoint. — Charles Stanley

That's what makes the creationist viewpoint not just staggeringly wrong, but sadly impoverished. In twisting around the Second Law of Thermodynamics, they take a powerful tool for understanding the world and try to make it into a barrier to understanding instead. — Bill Nye

From the viewpoint of what you can do, therefore, languages do differ - but the differences are limited. For example, Python and Ruby provide almost the same power to the programmer. — Yukihiro Matsumoto

If we are to engage the viewpoint of the soul, we must cease from judging, — Gary Zukav

Your business will look totally different from your customer's viewpoint, so jump the counter and start to see things from their perspective. — Feargal Quinn

On the other hand, I view the whole matter from a cosmic perspective. I don't take a position. I believe that there are no more positions to take, no certainties, no facts. Many people find this confusing about my films; they say I am hiding out behind irony. But from a cosmic viewpoint, it is eternally unimportant whether one lives or not. — Peter Greenaway

Your opinion of yourself is your most important viewpoint. You are infinitely greater than you think you are. — Neville Goddard

Most literature on the subject of agile methodology... is written from the viewpoint of software developers and programmers, and tends to place its main emphasis on programming techniques and agile project management - testing is usually only mentioned in the guise of unit testing and its associated tools. ...However, unit tests alone are not sufficient and broader-based testing is critical to the success of agile development processes. — Tilo Linz

Clearly, Simon Baz brings such a different viewpoint to 'Green Lantern.' The very nature of the corps concept of overcoming fear, I felt Simon was a great character to explore, while getting a different viewpoint on things. — Geoff Johns

It is important to stress that, in America at least, no matter how small and how badly off a particular stigmatized category is, the viewpoint of its members is likely to be given public presentation of some kind. It can thus be said that Americans who are stigmatized tend to live in a literarily-defined world, however uncultured they might be. If they don't read books on the situation of persons like themselves, they at least read magazines and see movies; and where they don't do these, then they listen to local, vocal associates. An intellectually worked-up version of their point of view is thus available to most stigmatized persons. A comment is here required about those who come to serve as representatives of a stigmatized category. Starting out as someone who is a little more vocal, a little better known, or a little better connected than his fellow-sufferers, a stigmatized person may find that the "movement" has absorbed his whole day, and that he has become a professional. — Erving Goffman

From the viewpoint of economic democracy, the capitalism-socialism debate was a debate between private and state capitalism (i.e., the private or public employment system), and the debate was as misframed as would be a debate between the private or public ownership of slaves. — David P. Ellerman

Millions of statements are made about the president every day on every subject and from every standpoint; threats of violence are not an integral feature of any one subject or viewpoint as distinct from others. Differential treatment of threats against the president, then, selects nothing but special risks, not special messages. — David Souter

Shall I tell you the difference between our Holy Father and ourselves? We see things from a single view-point. He sees things from several. We decide that the thing is as we see it. But He has seen it otherwise, and He presents it as a more or less complete coaction of its qualities. See this sapphire. Well, you see the face of it: underneath, if I take it off my finger, there are a number of facets to be seen and a number more which are hidden by the gold of the setting. Now my meaning is that our Holy Father has seen all the facets as well as the table of the sapphire, or the thing. Consequently He knows a great deal more about the sapphire, or the thing, than we do. You must have noted that in Him. You must have noted how that every now and then, when He deigns to explain, He makes mysteries appear most wonderfully lucid. — Frederick Rolfe

From the viewpoint of political power, culture is absolutely vital. So vital, indeed, that power cannot operate without it. It is culture, in the sense of the everyday habits and beliefs of a people, which beds power down, makes it appear natural and inevitable, turns it into spontaneous reflex and response. — Terry Eagleton

Magic is always there. Sometimes it just takes an artist to find it and show the rest of us where to look. — Amy Neftzger

But man had changed. He had lost the old knowledge and old skills. His mind had become a flaccid thing. He lived from one day to the next without any shining goal. But he still kept the old vices - the vices that had become virtues from his own viewpoint and raised him by his own bootstraps. He kept the unwavering belief that his was the only kind, the only life that mattered - the smug egoism that made him the self-appointed lord of all creation. — Clifford D. Simak

Maybe I should mention it: I was not from the beginning mainly interested in papilloma virus; I was mainly interested in infectious agents in human cancer. So papilloma viruses came up as the most likely candidate from my viewpoint. — Harald Zur Hausen

Failure to get a right viewpoint in the beginning of our Christian lives may result in weakness and sterility for the rest of our days! — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Seeing oneself as a prophetic minority does not mean retreat, and it certainly does not mean victim status. It also does not confer faithfulness. Marginalization can strip away from us the besetting sins of a majoritarian viewpoint, but it can bring others as well. We must remember our smallness but also our connectedness to a global, and indeed cosmic, reality. The kingdom of God is vast and tiny, universal and exclusive. Our story is that of a little flock and of an army, awesome with banners. Our legacy is a Christianity of persecution and proliferation, of catacombs and cathedrals. If we see ourselves as only a minority, we will be tempted to isolation. If we see ourselves only as a kingdom, we will be tempted toward triumphalism. We are, instead, a church. We are a minority with a message and a mission. — Russell D. Moore

It took me years and cost me countless thousands of dollars in lost business before I finally learned that it doesn't pay to argue, that it is much more profitable and much more interesting to look at things from the other person's viewpoint and try to get that person saying 'yes, yes. — Dale Carnegie

I tremble for our world, where, in the smallest of ways, we find it impossible ... to find room for the other in our minds. If we cannot accommodate a viewpoint in a friend without resorting to unkindness, how can we hope to heal the terrible problems of our planet? — Karen Armstrong

All my books are adventures, but they also have a social viewpoint. — Anatoly Rybakov

I define a thriller as a big-stakes, multiple-viewpoint novel involving suspense, action, and mystery, in which the reader doesn't know everything but usually knows more than any single character. — F. Paul Wilson

Procrastination is illogical from every viewpoint. It is like the man who wanted to cross the stream, so he sat on the bank to wait for all the water to run by. — Vernon Howard

If I see only my bias, I have surrendered to a single myopic lens through which to view the world. If I dare to surrender my bias, I will spend the rest of my life seeing the world and throwing away lenses. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

From a historical viewpoint, religion is just a kind of superstition, and from a political viewpoint it is a tool of social control. — Mario Bunge

I always saw myself as more of a watcher, although I suppose my siblings might have a different viewpoint on it. — Amy Adams

The movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century.Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them - as an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people. — Ben Hecht

Between each album I try to gain a new insight that I didn't have before and perhaps write a song about something that I've written about before, but from a fresh viewpoint. — Don Henley

I know that it is a hopeless undertaking to debate about fundamental value judgements. For instance, if someone approves, as a goal, the extirpation of the human race from the earth, one cannot refute such a viewpoint on rational grounds. But if there is agreement on certain goals and values, one can argue rationally about the means by which these objectives may be obtained. — Albert Einstein

This was a really amazing part of your adventure, Hamlet. You're sure that, should you ever one day write a book about this story or perhaps a stage production, you'd DEFINITELY include this scene. Why, you'd have to be literally crazy to write a story where you journey to England, get attacked by pirates - actual pirates! - but then just sum up that whole adventure in a single sentence. Hah! That'd be the worst. Who puts a pirate-attack scene in their story and doesn't show it to the audience? Hopefully nobody, that's who! Even from a purely structural viewpoint, you've got to give the audience something awesome to make up for all the introspection you've been doing; that just seems pretty obvious is all. — Ryan North

Giving reasons during conflict to justify or defend a viewpoint is just as manipulative as giving reasons to attack that viewpoint. Neither of these routes is an honest assertive I want that can lead to a workable compromise of interests to quickly resolve the conflict. — Manuel J. Smith

In the national debate about a serious issue, it is the expression of the minority's viewpoint that most demands the protection of the First Amendment. Whatever the better policy may be, a full and frank discussion of the costs and benefits of the attempt to prohibit the use of marijuana is far wiser than suppression of speech because it is unpopular. — John Paul Stevens

Buddha said: 'Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love,' and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person's viewpoint. — Dale Carnegie

Dawn may not appear one to all. It depends on beholders how they look at life; whether they see the fading stars or the rising sun. — Ashmita Acharya

The look that one directs at things, both outward and inward, as an artist, is not the same as that with which one would regard the same as a man, but at once colder and more passionate. As a man, you might be well-disposed, patient, loving, positive, and have a wholly uncritical inclination to look upon everything as all right, but as an artist your daemon constrains you to "observe", to take note, lightning fast and with hurtful malice, of every detail that in the literary sense would be characteristic, distinctive, significant, opening insights, typifying the race, the social or the psychological mode, recording all as mercilessly as though you had no human relationship to the observed object whatever. — Joseph Campbell

I am a Christian and of course what I write will be from that essential viewpoint. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I wanted to write something from a child's viewpoint ... Five of the characters I have played in movies have either been abused or became abusers, themselves, and I just kind of felt like there was a need. — Meg Tilly

We humans always seem to take a manipulative posture. No matter what the particulars of the situation, or the subject matter, we prepare ourselves to say whatever we want in order to prevail in the conversation. Each of us seeks to find some way to control and thus to remain on top in the encounter. If we are successful, or our viewpoint prevails, then rather than feel weak, we receive a psychological boost. — James Redfield

The direction in which the culture of an age develops is, humanly speaking, chosen by a few exceptionally intelligent men. The popular authors then pick up some of the main ideas, usually distorting and diluting them considerably, and finally fifty years or a century later the general viewpoint has seeped down to the whole populace. — Gordon H. Clark

Pescatore marveled at the seascape. It gave him vertigo. The wind deployed cloud formations. The sun seared the Moroccan coastline. He had read a line once about "the lion-colored hills of Africa." Were they lion-colored? What color was a lion exactly? — Sebastian Rotella

The viewpoint of the government is that the people must have full access to all information worldwide. — Hassan Rouhani

The institutionalization of Black Studies, Feminist Studies, all of these things, led to a sense that the struggle was over for a lot of people and that one did not have to continue the personal consciousness-raising and changing of one's viewpoint. — Bell Hooks

I try to do everything from the viewpoint of what's best for my kids. I have three kids and two great dads and it's not always easy, but you have to try to be a little selfless and we manage just fine. — Kimora Lee Simmons

Most of us live in a state of perpetual "could be better." We're so used to having control over every little parameter of our lives that we cannot focus on what's going right, only on what's going wrong. That's the viewpoint we always seem to be coming from, and it means that we are perpetually unsatisfied, unhappy, disappointed, and ungrateful. — Michael Taft

There are no guarantees. From the viewpoint of fear, none are strong enough. From the viewpoint of love, none are necessary. — Emmanuel Teney

I have a theory that there's almost this primal viewpoint on women in the business, that once you're beyond childbearing age, you are perceived as nonthreatening, nonsexual, noncastable. Sure, I already knew it before I got into it. I just didn't know I'd end up making my living from low-budget, independent films. — Marcia Gay Harden

Know the other person's viewpoint first and then talk. To Talk after comparing it or mixing it with our viewpoint is an offence. — Dada Bhagwan

I am interested in making photographs which comment on the experience of a place as well as describe it. My position has not typically been one of advocacy for or against any political position. But I regard photographs as commentary, and that includes, at times, taking a specific political viewpoint on an issue. — Mark Klett

I think now with fundamentalists, people who treat belief with a total lack of humor or empathy for any other viewpoint than their own - they, to me, are the enemy. And those people are born out of desperate extremes. — Benedict Cumberbatch

Standing on "tip toe", one stands not firmly. Straining in stride, one cannot walk far. Flaunting of deeds, one is unfavorably noticed. Being self-righteous, one is not respected. Boasting of self, one's merit is unrecognized. Glorifying of self, one loses the opportunity for greatness. From the viewpoint of Tao These represent imperfect Te, Valued as are filth or disease. — Laozi

Feminism will be just as oppressive to women as the media if it compels us to change who we are. The ends will not justify the means. It is like a corset that, although originally intended to make us feel good, about ourselves, has been pulled so tight that we are not left with enough room to breathe. Feminism often seems to be looking down its nose at us these days, as it militantly tells us how to behave- focusing on appearances according to a male dominated society. Have they forgotten that it is the societal viewpoint which needs to be changed? Somewhere along the line this movement got off track.


After all, we are constantly being told how to look, how to age, how to eat, how to act. Can't we at least think what we want? — Nancy Madore

We cannot let a minority of people hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people — Hillary Clinton

lmost everything looked more beautiful from a distance, the earth becoming more perfect as one ascended and came closer to seeing the world from God's eyes, man's hovels and palaces disappearing, the peaks and valleys of geography fading to become strokes of a paintbrush on a divine sphere. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

The world is bad but not without hope. It is only hopeless when you look at it from an ideal viewpoint. — Friedrich Durrenmatt

Scientific theories never dictate human values, but they can often cast new light on ethical issues. From a sexual selection viewpoint, moral philosophy and political theory have mostly been attempts to shift male human sexual competitiveness from physical violence to the peaceful accumulation of wealth and status. The rights to life, liberty, and property are cultural inventions that function, in part, to keep males from killing and stealing from one another while they compete to attract sexual partners. — Geoffrey Miller

If your starting point for understanding humanity is a racialist viewpoint, with superiority and inferiority projected onto people because of the color of their skin, then it's so easy to take the next step of justifying that point theologically and reading it into the Christian scripture. And that makes it harder to understand what scripture is actually saying! — Allan Boesak

A purely objective viewpoint does not exist in the cosmos or in politics. — Howard Fineman

If you won't admit there are kooks among those who share your political viewpoint, chances are, you're one of the kooks. — Raul Ramos Y Sanchez

Jamie's viewpoint is expressed almost entirely in metaphor: If she was broken, she would slash him with her jagged edges, reckless as a drunkard with a shattered bottle. He's using physical language, but he isn't talking about the physical details of the situation. Claire alludes to her emotion and shows it by her actions, but Jamie is thinking directly in pure emotions. — Diana Gabaldon

The connection between religious faith and mental disorder is, from the viewpoint of the tolerant and the "multicultural," both very obvious and highly unmentionable. — Christopher Hitchens

Every one of my books is written from the viewpoint of cops, with the exception of my book Killer on the Road, which is written from the viewpoint of a serial killer. — James Ellroy

I'm a strong believer in telling stories through a limited but very tight third person point of view. I have used other techniques during my career, like the first person or the omniscient view point, but I actually hate the omniscient viewpoint. None of us have an omniscient viewpoint; we are alone in the universe. We hear what we can hear ... we are very limited. If a plane crashes behind you I would see it but you wouldn't. That's the way we perceive the world and I want to put my readers in the head of my characters. — George R R Martin

In the Bible, the race of life is never considered from the viewpoint of speed ... We are to run it with patience. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Our lives have been depicted as an enclosure in endlessness (parenthesis). As life is brief, we pass on without bringing anything with us, in this manner the genuine importance of life is to offer and to serve humankind. When we result in these present acknowledgments, it provides us a superior viewpoint in life and how to identify with others. This living is demonstrated to bring enormous returns other than the result of individual gain. — Gladys Adevey

Now, I admire The Sims as a game, but from a story viewpoint, there are two glaring problems. First, your relationship with those characters is like they're bugs in a jar. There's no empathy. And secondly, you've got this clunky, chemistry-set interface between you and them, with bars to show how tired or angry they are. It's all tell not show. — Dave Morris

Never confuse being righteous vs. being arrogant. An arrogant person will see a person lashing out because they were hurt by them and they will not try to mend the situation or even understand their point of view. They take the superior viewpoint that others are not worthy of their time because they believe they are right and those angry with them are wrong. A righteous person doesn't care who is right or wrong. God asked them to love everyone. They make their life about leaving people in peace, not pain. — Shannon L. Alder

For a woman to be taken as seriously as a man she must be three times as effective. Happily, this is not difficult.
Simone de Beauvoir — Gale Martin

Whether the type of old sea captain that I have portrayed in my stories is gone forever, is a question. Certainly each summer I find that the ranks have perceptibly thinned. The longshore captain is still there, many of the men who are not any older than myself, but their viewpoint is not that of a man who sailed his square rigged ship out one morning with China as his destination. — Joseph C. Lincoln