Robert McNamara Quotes

Seeing is not always believing.

It's so easy for us to misperceive and see the things in others that we want to see. And, when we're wrong, and often we're dead wrong, we miss the truth.

Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty.

Perception's not reality.

Things are not always as they seem.

I feel that one of the most important lessons that can be learned is that what we "see" may be different than what is actually in front of us.

Did you ever think that maybe what you see isn't really what's true?

No doubt about it: error is the rule, truth is the accident of error.

An error becomes an error when born as truth.

Error is certainty's constant companion. Error is the corollary of evidence. And anything said about truth may equally well be said about error: the delusion will be no greater.

People think that they see, but they don't.

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.

I realize that nothing's as it seems.

Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many.

I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.

Pray look better, Sir... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills.

People say they love truth, but in reality they want to believe that which they love is true.

It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.

If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.

We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

I often tend to think that things are not what they seem.

Perception is not always reality.

Things are NEVER what they seem, Pa, I thought. I used to think they were, but I was wrong or stupid or blind or something. Old folks are forever complaining about their failing eyesight, but I think your vision gets better as you get older. Mine surely was.

We are led to believe a lie When we see not through the eye.

The truth is a fog, in which one man sees the heavenly host and the other one sees a flying elephant.