It has always surprised me how little attention philosophers have paid to humor, since it is a more significant process of mind than reason. Reason can only sort out perceptions, but the humor process is involved in changing them.

As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope.

It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope.

Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body. Then look at, or think of, the person triggering this emotion: With mindfulness, you can see that she is unhappy, that she is suffering. You can see her wrong perceptions. You can see that she is not beautiful when she says things that are unkind.

No other planet in the solar system is a suitable home for human beings; it's this world or nothing. That's a very powerful perception.

Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.

The funny thing is, people's perceptions of what a song is about is usually wrong a majority of the time. But they're still going to read what they want to into it.

It seems like everybody's perception of me is very bipolar. To one group, it's overpaid, overrated; to another group, it's underpaid, underrated, underdog. It's funny to me because there's no real balance.

Spirit borrows from matter the perceptions on which it feeds and restores them to matter in the form of movements which it has stamped with its own freedom.

Inner peace can be reached only when we practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past, and is therefore the means for correcting our misperceptions.

There is a misperception among job seekers that opportunities for women in tech exist only for those with coding or engineering experience. To be sure, technology firms do need women with these skills, but they also need women with expertise in other areas, like marketing and finance.

In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear. Through initiatives like My Brother's Keeper, I'm personally committed to changing both perception and reality.

It is more interesting to be compared to someone famous, because it lets you gauge what perceptions people have about your appearance.

I think it's useful, as a famous person, to have as little separation between the perception of you and how you really are - because otherwise I'd be sitting here thinking I'm keeping secrets, and wondering when you're going to find out.

There's this common perception that having a famous last name is all you need. A surname may get you a meeting, but if there's no talent you won't get the part.

Being famous hasn't changed my perception of myself - I've just grown up.

A famous person to themselves, they don't get up in the morning and think, I'm famous. I'm not famous to me. Famous is a perception.

I actually do not believe that there are any collisions between what I believe as a Christian, and what I know and have learned about as a scientist. I think there's a broad perception that that's the case, and that's what scares many scientists away from a serious consideration of faith.

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

With each film, you are still trying to get the length and measure right. And failure is all about others' perception of you. When you have one success, they think you know it all. But if you fail, they think they know it all.

I can go into the wilderness and not see anyone for days and experience a kind of space that hasn't changed for tens of thousands of years. Having that experience was necessary to my perception of how photography can look at the changes humanity has brought about in the landscape. My work does become a kind of lament.

What you see is not what others see. We inhabit parallel worlds of perception, bounded by our interests and experience. What is obvious to some is invisible to others.

Perception often lags behind reality, and I can say from experience that the vast majority of public officials in Louisiana are much better than our reputation holds us to be.

A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.