#blindness

Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality. ↗

— Sheri S. Tepper

#ignorance #intelligence #narrow-mindedness #opinions #reality

They say that right before you die your whole life flashes before you – a medley of your own personal greatest hits. Well then, I must be about to live, because events that haven’t happened yet are constantly pushing themselves into my head. ↗

— Emlyn Chand

#fiction #paranormal #psychic-powers #ya #yalit

Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design. ↗

— Adam Ferguson

#ages #any #blindness #design #enlightened

Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ...each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts. ↗

— Tennessee Williams

#ego #fear #heart #life #love

Well, we can't afford blindness anymore. There are tens of thousands of thugs who loathe liberty and love death, and want to annihilate Western civilization. ↗

— Tony Snow

#annihilate #anymore #blindness #civilization #death

Two kinds of blindness are easily combined so that those who do not see really appear to see what is not. ↗

— Tertullian

#blindness #combined #easily #kinds #really

To be blind is not miserable; not to be able to bear blindness, that is miserable. ↗

— John Milton

#bear #blind #blindness #miserable

No one needed to say it, but the room overflowed with that sort of blessing. The combination of loss and abundance. The abundance that has no guilt. The loss that has no fix. The simple tiredness that is not weary. The hope not built on blindness. ↗

— Aimee Bender

#beautiful #blessing #blindness #description #guilt

I chanced on a wonderful book by Marius von Senden, called Space and Sight. . . . For the newly sighted, vision is pure sensation unencumbered by meaning: "The girl went through the experience that we all go through and forget, the moment we are born. She saw, but it did not mean anything but a lot of different kinds of brightness." . . . In general the newly sighted see the world as a dazzle of color-patches. They are pleased by the sensation of color, and learn quickly to name the colors, but the rest of seeing is tormentingly difficult. . . . The mental effort involved . . . proves overwhelming for many patients. It oppresses them to realize, if they ever do at all, the tremendous size of the world, which they had previously conceived of as something touchingly manageable. . . . A disheartening number of them refuse to use their new vision, continuing to go over objects with their tongues, and lapsing into apathy and despair. . . . On the other hand, many newly sighted people speak well of the world, and teach us how dull is our own vision. ↗

— Annie Dillard

#nature #seeing #vision #experience

If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#blindness #blindness-of-man #damnation #damned #faust