Quotes about Subjectivity

Things are in their essence what we choose to make them. A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.

I observed once to Goethe ... that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him as when he is away. He replied, "Yes! because the absent friend is yourself, and he exists only in your head; whereas the friend who is present has an individuality of his own, and moves according to laws of his own, which cannot always be in accordance with those which you form for yourself."

I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.

Another weakness found in altogether too many people is the habit of measuring everything, and everyone, by their own impressions and beliefs.

Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute, and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.

And unless one decorates one's house for oneself alone, best leave it bare, for other people are all wall-eyed.

The reason is that as far as I am concerned, what happened to me is a purely private matter. In another time, in another place it might be held to be a public matter. But in this place, in this time, it is not. It is my bussines, mine alone. 'This place being what?' 'This place being South Africa

Your mind makes out the orange by seeing it, hearing it, touching it, smelling it, tasting it and thinking about it but without this mind, you call it, the orange would not be seen or heard or smelled or tasted or even mentally noticed, it's actually, that orange, depending on your mind to exist! Don't you see that? By itself it's a no-thing, it's really mental, it's seen only of your mind. In other words it's empty and awake.

One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom anpther's folly.

Since its beginnings, Western music is bound, by an insurmountable convention, to the need to express subjectivity. It stands against the harsh sound of the outside world just as the sensitive soul stands against the insensibility of the universe.

There is nothing harder to explain than humor.