Orson Scott Card Quotes on Perception
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You don't seem to understand that you don't have the right to put blinders on other people's eyes
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Those who know each other only through symbolic representations are forced to imagine each other. And because their imagination is imperfect, they are often wrong.
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Don't call the speaker of truth a liar.
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If you treat me this way, then I will treat you like a great lord, and if you do not detect the irony in my actions, then who of the two of us is the fool?
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In [his] mind, madness. Thousands of competing contradictory impossible visions that make no sense all because they can't all fit together but they do fit together, he makes them fit together, this way today, that way tomorrow, as they're needed. As if he can make a new idea-machine inside his head for every new problem he faces. As if he conceives of a new universe to live in, every hour a new one, often hopelessly wrong and he ends up making mistakes and bad judgments, but sometimes so perfectly right that it opens things up like a miracle and I look through his eyes and see the world his new way and it changes everything. Madness, and then illumination. We knew everything there was to know before... Now we discover that there are so many ways of knowing the same things that we'll never find them all.
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All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.
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He pretended all this time that humans were rational human beings, when we are really the most terrible monsters these poor aliens could ever have conceived of in their nightmares.
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These other kids didn't know love when they saw it.
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You are so intent that you believe only what you believe that you believe, that you remain utterly blind to what you rely believe without believing that you believe it.
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He saw them with such better understanding that they took on power and meaning beyond anything in his experience before.
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[He] didn't know what to say. He didn't even know the name for what he was feeling. 'I think that I don't know you.' she looked at him, a little perplexed. 'No that's wrong. I think that I didn't know you before, even though I thought I knew you, and know that I finally know you, I don't really know you at all.'
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Odd isn't it, that physically plain people are perfectly able to see physical beauty in others, while people who are morally maimed are blind to goodness and decency. They honestly think it doesn't exist Oh they know it exists all right. They just never know which people have it.
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She began to understand things she had never understood before. The world was not as clear and simple a place as she had thought till now.
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I see that you are a person who refuses to revise his view of the would. You can only bear to live in a world where all the bad things happen to you are someone else's fault, where everyone must have conspired against you to deprive you of your due. Unfortunately, that world happens not to be the real world
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Frozen, right? But to others, it looks like you're calm as could be. That's why some of the others tease you so mercilessly sometimes. They thing you're made of stone, and they want to break in and touch the human feelings. They just don't know that when you seem most stony, that's when you're the most frightened and breakable.
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Religion isn't always pretty. Especially viewed from the outside, by an unbeliever.
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To remember is real. To imagine is nothing That's silly... Most of the things people say they remember they only imagine anyways
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Boys always argued as if they knew then had the forces of logic on their side, even when they were being completely irrational. Even when their 'Logic' defied the evidence
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Everything possible to be believed is an image of the truth.
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A man always assumes that others are as virtuous as himself
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Alvin saw how measure was with Delphi. She wasn't a noticeably pretty girl, though not particular ugly either; she was strong and stout and laughed loud as a donkey. But Alvin saw how measure had a way of looking at her like the most beautiful sight he ever could see. She'd look up and there he'd be, watching her with a kind of dreamy smile on his face, and shed laugh or blush or look away, but for a minute or two she'd move more graceful, walking partly on her toes maybe, like she was dancing, or getting set to fly. Alvin wondered then if he could ever give such a look to Miss. Larner as would make her so full of joy that she couldn't hardly stay connected to the earth
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A liar sees lies, even when they aren't there. Just as a hypocrite sees hypocrites whenever he runs across good people. Can't stand to think that anyone might really be what you only pretend to be
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Before the story he refused to even think about it; after the story, it became conceivable to him, and, once he could conceive of it, it soon became inevitable
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They were good eyes. Kind eyes. Weary, but well-meaning.
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What I'm telling you is, there's some people who do things so bad it tears the fabric of the world, and then there's some people so sweet and good that they can feel it when the world gets torn. They see things, they know things, only they're so good and pure that they don't understand what it is that they're seeing
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What does she think we are, idiots? Well, yes, actually. Brilliant, but idiots. It's not as if she didn't have plenty of evidence of absentmindedness from everyone of them.
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What a clear world you live in. All the lines neatly drawn
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There was other folks who had a way of sucking you to them, without saying a thing, without doing a thing, you just went into a room and couldn't take your eyes off them, you wanted to be close - I saw that other kids felt the same way, just automatically liked them, you know? But I could feel it like they was on fire, and suddenly I was cold and needed to warm myself. And id say something about it and people would look at me like I was crazy enough to lock right up, and I finally caught on that I was the only one who had those feelings
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Are they blind? They don't know how to watch things. They don't know how to see anything but what the expect to see
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You are not what you seem So many people have said that that I'm beginning to think that's precisely how I do seem. What is it I seem to be that you have now discovered that I'm not?
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A year ago? It was yesterday. It was forever.
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Sometimes people aren't what they seem I know that... No you don't... Because you are exactly what you seem, and so you always assume that other people are, too
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What is reality?
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His eyes stayed open. Seeing nothing. Seeing everything
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She's not ignorant, she's just stupider than I ever imagined
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People always believer things were better - before
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But you tell me that you loved her, though she was an adulteress. Isn't she the same person tonight? Has she changed between yesterday and today? Or is it only you who have changed?
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Her action ... meant one thing to him and something quite different to her; it was so different that it was not even the same event.