Perceptual Distortion Quotes

No matter how smart or well-educated you are, you can be deceived.

We are constantly misled by the ease with which our minds fall into the ruts of one or two experiences

There is always a divergence between our perception and what actually exists.

The trouble with illusions is that you aren't aware you have any until they are taken away from you.

People who believe their unquestioned thoughts cannot see what is obvious and directly in front of their faces at all times, because they are invested in what they believe to be true. As long as they live out of an unquestioned mind, they must continue to argue with what they believe is happening rather than the reality of what is really happening.

What the human eye sees is an illusion of what is real. The black and white image transforms illusions into another reality.

Oftentimes what you see cancels out what you perceive.

The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It wants to make every distinction a distinction of value; hence those fatal critics who can never point out the differing quality of two poets without putting them in an order of preference as if they were candidates for a prize.

Seeing-is-believing is a blind spot in man's vision.

Bad putting is due more to the effect the green has upon the player than it has upon the action of the ball.

At some point, a false belief collides with physical reality.

If you asked me what makes the world go round, I would say self-deception. Self-deception allows us to create a consistent narrative for ourselves that we actually believe. I’m not saying that the truth doesn’t matter. It does. But self-deception is how we survive.

An imagination is a powerful tool. It can tint memories of the past, shade perceptions of the present, or paint a future so vivid that it can entice... or terrify, all depending upon how we conduct ourselves today.

This girl: she bent reality around her like a lens bending light, she pleated it into so many flickering layers that you could never tell which one you were looking at, the longer you stared the dizzier you got.

Perception is reality, but it may not be actuality, and you have got to be able to keep the difference between that.

Now that physics is proving the intelligence of the universe what are we to do about the stupidity of mankind? I include myself. I know that the earth is not flat but my feet are. I know that space is curved but my brain has been condoned by habit to grow in a straight line. What I call light is my own blend of darkness. What I call a view is my hand-painted trompe-l'oeil. I run after knowledge like a ferret down a ferret hole. My limitations, I call the boundaries of what can be known. I interpret the world by confusing other people's psychology with my own.

I believe that we face incredible obstacles in our attempts to see the world. Everything in our nature tries to deny the world around us; to refabricate it in our own image; to reinvent it for our own benefit. And so, it becomes something of a challenge, a task, to recover (or at least attempt to recover) the real world despite all the impediments to that end.

I think everyone spins. You would just be an empty vacant shell reporting facts. I mean, you have your life that you bring with you to every moment that happens.

The greater your powers of self-delusion, the greater will be the apparent efficacy of this untruth.

Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.

The mind tends to run along the groove of one's intention and overlook the actual expression.

Man's ability to delude himself is infinite.

Sarah Palin has admitted she tried marijuana several years ago, but she did not like it. She said it distorted her perceptions, impaired her thinking, and she's hoping that the effects will eventually wear off.

Memory works like the collection glass in the Camera obscura: it gathers everything together and therewith produces a far more beautiful picture than was present originally.

Your perception plays tricks when you are hoping for something.