# Perception

Perception (from the Latin perceptio, percipio) is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment.

## Quotes

    Sorted alphabetically by author or source
* The cultural bias of the translator inevitably shapes his or her perception of the materials being translated, often in ways that he or she is unaware of. Culture is fundamentally a shaper of perception, after all, and perception is shaped by culture in many subtle ways. In short, it’s hard to see the forest when you’re a tree.
** Paula Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Beacon Press. 1 September 1992. ISBN 978-0-8070-4617-3. Chapter Three
* Truth is universal. Perception of truth is not.
** Anonymous quote, in Quotations for Martial Artists : Hundreds of Inspirational Quotes to Motivate and Enlighten the Modern Warrior (2003) by John Moore, p. 87
* Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.
** Douglas Adams, in Mostly Harmless (Chapter 9)
* That neither our Thoughts, nor Passions, nor Ideas formed by the Imagination, exist without the Mind, is what every Body will allow. And it seems no less evident that the various Sensations or Ideas imprinted on the Sense... cannot exist otherwise than in a Mind perceiving them... For as to what is said of the absolute Existence of unthinking Things without any relation to their being perceived, that seems perfectly unintelligible. Their Esse is Percipi, nor is it possible they should have any Existence, out of the Minds or thinking Things which perceive them.
** George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. (1710). "On the Principles of Human Knowledge" Part I, § 3
* If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
** William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, A Memorable Fancy, (1790–1793).
* As men of inward light are wont To turn their optics in upon't.
** Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part III (1678), Canto I, line 481, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 593
* In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
** Desiderius Erasmus in Adages (1500)
* It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
** Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities
* The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.
** Kahlil Gibran, as quoted in If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People? (2009) by John Lloyd and ‎John Mitchinson, p. 103
* They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.
** Kahlil Gibran, as quoted in Visualizing Categorical Data (2000) by Michael Friendly, Ch. 3.5 Sieve Diagrams, p. 85
* It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.
** C. W. Leadbeater, in The Chakras (1927), p. 138
* What perception is, every one will know better by reflecting on what he does himself, what he sees, hears, feels, &c. or thinks, than by, any discourse of mine. Whoever reflects on what passes in his own mind, can-not miss it: and if he does not reflect, all the words in the world cannot make him have any notion of it.
** John Locke, Essay on Humane Understanding Vol 2 p. 121 CH 9 S1
* The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 22 But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! 23
** Matthew, Chapter 6, New King James Version
* He gives us the very quintessence of perception.
** James Russell Lowell, My Study Window, Coleridge, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 593
* Whatever may have been written or thought about perception in literate cultures, it remains a special competency of consciousness, its essential faculty. Day by day, minute by minute, consciousness is preoccupied with perception. Through perception it is captivated by an external world. Without perception it would have to terminate its autopoiesis, and even dreams can occur only by suggesting perceptions.
** Niklas Luhmann, Art as a Social System (1995) 1. Perception and Communication: The Reproduction of Forms
* That books do not take the place of experience, and that learning is no substitute for genius, are two kindred phenomena; their common ground is that the abstract can never take the place of the perceptive.
** Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, E. Payne, trans., Vol. II, Ch. 7, p. 74
* I see the same sadness in the eyes of conformists as I do in the eyes of those convulsing radically in opposition. I talk to people that aren't like me, individually, thoughtfully. And I listen. If I walk away from a conversation thinking differently than before I entered into it, I have succeeded in doing something that doesn't compute. If I haven't interacted and challenged what I know, resulting in a change of perception, I am still running my own set of stupid old programs.
** Paul J. Schrag, in Adbusters (2003)
* You must choose: Do you wish to see (perceive) nothing, or do you want to see things as they really are? It is not hard to see things as they really are, it is simply a matter of tearing down walls, ridding oneself of defenses and presumption, rendering oneself vulnerable, an idiot, a fool. But it is not easy to see things as they really are, because it is painful, it is real, it requires response, it's an incredible commitment. To go nine-tenths of the way is to suffer at every moment utter madness. To go all the way is to become sane. Most people prefer blindness. But most people are a dying race.
** Paul S. Williams, Das Energi (1973)
** Michael C Gregersen "perception can blind us like the noon day sun" University of Phoenix (2010)
* Being lifted out of your normal routine completely changes your perception of everything. I often think that this time twist is like taking a drug, it alters your consciousness.
** Andrea Zittel Art Is the Highest Form of Hope & Other Quotes by Artists by Phaidon (2016) p 249

## See also

* Senses