The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears.

Sometimes I write about my own life. And sometimes I write about situations I see my friends going through. Sometimes I write about a scene I saw in a movie. I take inspiration from all different places.

Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.

Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it’s true.

See, people are watching you. Especially your children. They’re taking in every single thing you do. They are like video cameras with legs. And they are always in the record mode. They learn more from what you do than from what you say.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

It’s very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.

Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.

The eyes of some persons are large, others small, and others of a moderate size; the last-mentioned are the best. And some eyes are projecting, some deep-set, and some moderate, and those which are deep-set have the most acute vision in all animals; the middle position is a sign of the best disposition.

There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don’t really think most people really understand what they’ve seen.

We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics.

I give infinite thanks to God, who has been pleased to make me the first observer of marvelous things.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.

Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I’m a realist.

Assuming if there’s such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail?

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

If my mother knew I did this for a living, she’d kill me. She thinks I’m selling dope.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

The most successful detectives owe their success to noticing small signs. Scouts are natural detectives and never let the smallest detail escape them. These small things are called by Scouts ‚Sign.‘

What you see, but can’t see over is as good as infinite.

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it’s their fault.

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized that to many people he is not a sex symbol, but a mother image.

My choices, including those related to the day-to-day aspects of life, like the use of a modest car, are related to a spiritual discernment that responds to a need that arises from looking at things, at people and from reading the signs of the times. Discernment in the Lord guides me in my way of governing.

In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear. Through initiatives like My Brother’s Keeper, I’m personally committed to changing both perception and reality.

Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin to respect the sense of seeing and touching and tasting, you learn to respect all the senses.

Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.

The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.

It amazes me sometimes that even intelligent people will analyze a situation or make a judgement after only recognizing the standard or traditional structure of a piece.

He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favor of two.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

The strong man is the one who is able to intercept at will the communication between the senses and the mind.

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

It’s funny; recently I’ve started to notice people’s impersonations of me, and it’s basically like a hyperactive child.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

The more you observe politics, the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.