This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Right conduct, truth, and beauty are only different aspects of what is fundamentally the same. Right conduct embodies co-ordinated wholeness, which can be, and often is, called beautiful. It also embodies truth, as standing for a true perception of the relations between different individuals. Similarly, truth as being essentially motivated, involves not only a true realization of co-ordinated relations, but also the furthering of them. In a similar way, beauty involves both truth or right perception and the co-ordinated wholeness which we find also in right conduct." -
"That which is `provable’ is not Reality but perception or mentation only. Reality is subjective and knowable only by virtue of identity with the known. “Provables’ belong to the classification and level of limitation and are arbitrary abstractions whose sole `reality’ is merely the consequence of selection and identification. The phenomenal is not the same as the noumenal [understood by intellectual intuition without the aid of the senses – opposed to phenomenon.]" - David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
"When time stops, all problems disappear; they are merely artifacts of a point of perception." - David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
"There exists a continuum of consciousness uniting individual minds that could be directly experienced if the psychophysical threshold of perception were sufficiently lowered through refinement in the functioning nervous system." - William James
"Intuition [is] perception via the unconscious." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
"Reading is actually plunging into one’s own identity and, one hopes, emerging stronger than before. You see, unconsciously, we are seeking to find an affirmation to our own world perception and set of values." - Amalia Kahana-Carmon
"Faith is the song of life. Woe to him who wishes to rob life of its splendid poetry. The whole mass of prosaic literature and knowledge is of value only when it is founded on the perception of the poetry of life." - Abraham Isaac Kook
"If you want to shrink something you must first allow it to expand. If you want to get rid of something, you must first allow it to flourish. If you want to take something, you must first allow it to be given. This is called the subtle perception of the way things are. The soft overcomes the hard. The slow overcomes the fast. Let your workings remain a mystery. Just show people the results." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world." - Hans Margolius
"In all ages, literature aims at the interpretation of the universe and a deep perception of humanity by means of language." - Yukio Mishima
"This is the meaning of life - continuously to add something we haven’t know so far. That, anyway, is the meaning of all existing things. Existence is built upon the idea of the creative - that there is always something unknown to be discovered, which causes and motivates new perception, new studies, the energy to go on." - Karlheinz Stockhausen
"The evaluative aspects of our everyday lives depend on the intentionality and phenomenology of perception or appreciation." - Garrett Thomson
"In the creative vision of God the individual is present as a whole in his essential being and inner teleos and at the same time in the infinity of the special moments of his life process. Of course this is said symbolically, since we are unable to have a perception of or even an imagination of that which belongs to the divine life. The mystery of being beyond essence and existence is hidden in the mystery of the creativity of the divine life." -
"It is creative perception more than anything else that makes the individual feel that life is worth living." - Donald Woods Winnicott
"He searches all around for his thought. But what thought? It is either passionate, or hateful, or confused. What about the past, future or present? What is past that is extinct, what is future that has not yet arrived, and the present has no stability. For thought, Kasyapa, cannot be apprehended, inside, or outside, or in between both. For thought is immaterial, invisible, nonresisting, inconceivable, unsupported, and homeless. Thought has never been seen by any of the Buddhas, nor do they see it, nor will they see it. And what the Buddhas never see, how can that be an observable process, except in the sense that dharmas proceed by the way of mistaken perception? Thought is like a magical illusion; by an imagination of what is actually unreal it takes hold of a manifold variety of rebirths. A thought is like the stream of a river, without any staying power; as soon as it is produced it breaks up and disappears. A thought is like a flame of a lamp, and it proceeds through causes and conditions. A thought is like lightning, it breaks up in a moment and does not stay on... Can thought review thought? No, thought cannot review thought. As the blade of a sword cannot cut itself, so a thought cannot see itself. Moreover, vexed and pressed hard on all sides, thought proceeds, without any staying power, like a monkey or like the wind. It ranges far, bodiless, easily changing, agitated by the objects of sense, with the six sense-fields for its sphere, connected with one thing after another. The stability of thought, its one-pointedness, its immobility, its undistraughtness, its one-pointed calm, its nondistraction, that is on the other hand called mindfulness as to thought." - Satipatthana Sutra NULL
"Suffering is born of wrong thinking. The root of pain is error in perception . There can be no error in Truth, only errors in the perception of Truth. If you yearn to end human suffering, know, then, what is Real, for this Knowledge is the only source of invincible faith." - Alan Cohen
"The mind could never mar one iota of Truth. The Truth is eternal, and it is not in any way assailable. Our perception of Truth is, however, vulnerable, and it is too easily distorted by the web of ignorance, spun by the crafty spider of the rational mind. In order to know the Truth, we must learn to recognize a Source other than facts." - Alan Cohen
"The mind could never mar one iota of Truth. The Truth is eternal, and it is not in any way assailable. Our perception of Truth is, however, vulnerable, and it is too easily distorted by the web of ignorance, spun by the crafty spider of the rational mind. In order to know the Truth, we must learn to recognize a Source other than facts." -
"The mind could never mar one iota of Truth. The Truth is eternal, and it is not in any way assailable. Our perception of Truth is, however, vulnerable, and it is too easily distorted by the web of ignorance, spun by the crafty spider of the rational mind. In order to know the Truth, we must learn to recognize a Source other than facts." -
"Happiness is an attitude, a perception, an interpretation. It is not a commodity, waiting to be purchased and appropriated. It is a way of living that is loving, open, flexible, and respectful of what life offers, regardless of expectations." - Alan Epstein
"The cause of laughter is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real object." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Normal perception is completely controlled by the unconscious mind which obeys suggestions implicitly." - Arthur W Osborn
"One-half of life is admitted by us to be passed in sleep, in which, however, it may appear otherwise, we have no perception of truth, and all our feelings are delusions; who knows but the other half of life, in which we think we are awake, is a sleep also, but in some respects different from the other, and from which we wake when we, as we call it sleep. As a man dreams often that he is dreaming, crowding one dreamy delusion on another." - Blaise Pascal
"Automatized and conditioned patterns of perception, thinking, feeling, and behaving dominate our lives... We appear to be intelligent and conscious, but it is all automatized programs." - Charles T. Tart
"What the world, which truly knows nothing, calls “mysticism” is the science of ultimates… the science of self-evident Reality, which cannot be “reasoned about,” because it is the object of pure reason or perception." - Coventry Patmore, fully Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
"[Zen] is not a kind of “self-actualization,” an expansion of the limited, isolated Me, of the empirical ego. Neither is it a regression, a return into that vegetative ooze of Oneness, before we became aware of our differentiation as separate egos. On the contrary, the Zen experience is the overcoming of the hallucination that the Me is the valid center of observation of the universe. It is a momentary, radical turnabout, a direct perception of and insight into the presence, into the transiency, the finitude that I share with all beings." - Frederick Franck
"Deep ecology is supported by modern science... but it is rooted in a perception of reality that goes beyond the scientific framework to an intuitive awareness of the oneness of all life, the interdependence of its multiple manifestations and its cycles of change and transformation. When the concept of the human spirit is understood in this sense, as the mode of consciousness in which the individual feels connected to the cosmos as a whole, it becomes clear that ecological awareness is truly spiritual." - Fritjof Capra
"What is the true content of art, and with what aim is this content to be presented? On this subject our consciousness supplies us with the common opinion that it is the task and ima of art to bring in contact with our sense, our feeling, our inspiration, all that finds a place in the mind of man... Its aim is therefore placed in arousing and animating the slumbering emotions, inclinations, and passions; in filling the heart, in forcing the human being, whether cultured or uncultured, to feel the whole range of what man’s soul in its inmost and secret corners has power to experience and to create, and all that is able to move and to stir the human breast in its depths and in its manifold aspects and possibilities; to present as a delight to emotion and to perception all that the mind possesses of real and lofty in its thought and in the Idea - all the splendor of the noble, the eternal, and the true; and no less to make intelligible misfortune and misery, wickedness and crime; to make men realize the inmost nature of all that is shocking and horrible, as also of all pleasure and delight; and, finally, to set imagination roving in idle toyings of fancy, and luxuriating in the seductive spells of sense-stimulating visions." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"In imagination, not in perception, lies the substance of experience, while knowledge and reason are but its chastened and ultimate form." - George Santayana
"Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out, and minutely articulated." - George Santayana
"Perception is a mirror, not a fact... The ego does everything it can to prevent us from understanding that our thoughts, not the outside world, cause what we see and experience, and that the world we experience is the effect of our own thoughts." - Gerald G. Jampolsky
"All perception of truth is a perception of an analogy; we reason from our hands to our heads." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"Action from principle, the perception and performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"The perception of beauty is a moral test." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"In order to arrive at the reality of outer objects I have just as little need to resort to inference as I have in regard to the reality of the object of my inner sense, that is, in regard to the reality of my thoughts. For in both cases alike the objects are nothing but represenations, the immediate perception (consciousness) of which is at the same time a sufficient proof of their reality." - Immanuel Kant
"Psychologists have hitherto failed to realize that imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself." - Immanuel Kant
"Change the story and you change perception; change perception and you change the world." - Jean Houston
"The world is a single whole. Everything is linked with everything else. The world 'sounds'. It is a 'chord'. The imagination and freedom necessary for feeling, experiencing, and living through - rather than merely knowing - these are more likely to be associated with an ana-logical process of perception than with logical thinking. Logic aims at security. The ana-logician has the courage to embark on risk and adventure. Logic is goal-oriented and passes judgment. Analogy ponders and establishes relationships. The logician sees. The ana-logician listens... The eye glimpses surfaces and is attached to them, always remaining superficial (on the surface). The ear penetrates deep into the realms it investigates through hearing." - Joachim-Ernst Berendt
"Words like "really," "absolute," "fact," and the like should be stricken from the dictionary, as they all require every person to have the same perception of things. Not only is that not preferable, it may not even be possible." - John A. Marshall, fully John Aloysius Marshall
"I can never feel certain of any truth, but from a clear perception of its beauty." - John Keats
"Perceptual space, under its triple form, visual, tactile and motor, is essentially different from geometric space. It is neither homogeneous, nor isotropic; one can not even say that it has three dimensions. It is often said that we ‘project’ into geometric space the objects of our external perception; that we ‘localize’ them. Has this a meaning, and if so what? Does it mean that we represent to ourselves external objects in geometric space? Our representations are only the reproduction of our sensations; they can therefore be ranged only in the same frame as these, that is to say, in perceptual space. It is impossible for us to represent to ourselves external bodies in geometric space, as it is for a painter to paint on a plane canvas objects with their three dimensions. Perceptual space is only an image altered in shape by a sort of perspective, and we can represent to ourselves objects only by bringing them under the laws of this perspective. Therefore we do not represent to ourselves external bodies in geometric space, but we reason on these bodies as if they were situated in geometric space." - Henri Poincaré, fully Jules Henri Poincaré