#perception

Every culture has its southerners -- people who work as little as they can, preferring to dance, drink, sing brawl, kill their unfaithful spouses; who have livelier gestures, more lustrous eyes, more colorful garments, more fancifully decorated vehicles, a wonderful sense of rhythm, and charm, charm, charm; unambitious, no, lazy, ignorant, superstitious, uninhibited people, never on time, conspicuously poorer (how could it be otherwise, say the northerners); who for all their poverty and squalor lead enviable lives -- envied, that is, by work-driven, sensually inhibted, less corruptly governed northerners. We are superior to them, say the northerners, clearly superior. We do not shirk our duties or tell lies as a matter of course, we work hard, we are punctual, we keep reliable accounts. But they have more fun than we do ... They caution[ed] themselves as people do who know they are part of a superior culture: we mustn't let ourselves go, mustn't descend to the level of the ... jungle, street, bush, bog, hills, outback (take your pick). For if you start dancing on tables, fanning yourself, feeling sleepy when you pick up a book, developing a sense of rhythm, making love whenever you feel like it -- then you know. The south has got you. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#culture #north #north-and-south #northerners #perceptions

Not even the most heavily-armed police state can exert brute force to all of its citizens all of the time. Meme management is so much subtler; the rose-tinted refraction of perceived reality, the contagious fear of threatening alternatives. ↗

— Peter Watts

#marketing #memes #perception-of-reality #power #totalitarianism

Here in this body are the sacred rivers: here are the sun and moon as well as all the pilgrimage places... I have not encountered another temple as blissful as my own body. ↗

— Saraha

#mysticism #object #perception #saraha #subject

Smartass Disciple: But, you said that it's the truth?? Master of Stupidity: O Yes. That is yesterday's truth. ↗

— Toba Beta

#master-of-stupidity #perception #smart-ass-disciple #truth #life

There are many things which can not be expressed by words. There are many words which can not be spelled by human tongue. There are many tongues which utter one single truth. ↗

— Toba Beta

#human #life #perception #tongue #truth

Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change of attitude. ↗

— Katherine Mansfield

#self-perception #attitude

The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception. ↗

— Walter Benjamin

#masses #much #perception #process #reality

I just wanted to have fun for myself - I felt I had a lot to say, and I realized that I missed having a magazine as a place to express my ideas. The Times column is a place for me to unload those perceptions. ↗

— Tina Brown

#express #felt #fun #had #have fun

I became an American in 2006. It got me thinking about what is my America and what's my perception of America. ↗

— Tracey Ullman

#america #american #became #got #i

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

— Cat Deeley

#being famous #changed #famous #grown #hasn