Perceptual Error Quotes

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. This is an error of the intellect as inevitable as that error of the eye which lets you fancy that on the horizon heaven and earth meet.

In cases of major discrepancy its always reality thats got it wrong ... reality is frequently inaccurate.

The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.

Have you ever considered, beloved other, how invisible we are to each other? We look at each other without seeing. We listen to each other and hear only a voice inside out self. The words of others are mistakes of our hearing, shipwrecks of our understanding. How confidently we believe OUR meanings of other people's words.

A writer judging his own work is like deceived husband - he is frequently the last person to appreciate the true state of affairs.

Hence it happens that one takes words for concepts, and concepts for the things themselves.

Believe in your own eyes and you'll get into a lot of trouble, hot water, a mess.

I have only one eye, I have a right to be blind sometimes... I really do not see the signal!

One of the most pervasive mistakes is to believe that our visual system gives a faithful representation of what is "out there" in the same way that a movie camera would.

Whatsoever accidents or qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they are not there, but are seemings and apparitions only. The things that really are in the world without us, are those motions by which these seemings are caused. And this is the great deception of sense, which also is by sense to be corrected. For as sense telleth me, when I see directly, that the colour seemeth to be in the object; so also sense telleth me, when I see by reflection, that colour is not in the object.

The senses interfere everywhere, and mix their own structure with all they report of.

You´re not perceiving what's out there. You're perceiving whatever your brain tells you.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

I have an audio stigmatism whereby I hear things wrong - I have audio illusions.