Doris Kearns Goodwin Quotes

The world is how we see the world. Some people see the world good, the other people see the world bad. Every person has an idea of the world with a subjective [viewpoint].

The notion that any one person can describe 'what really happened' is an absurdity. If ten - or a hundred - people witness an event, there will be ten - or a hundred - different versions of what took place. What we see and how we interpret it depends entirely upon our individual past experience.

Truth is often a multiplicity of perspectives, and sometimes the more viewpoints and versions of events there are, the closer the reader gets to an overarching truth.

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

Nothing's beautiful from every point of view.

Everyone's going to have their own experience and perspective on everything.

It seemed to me, in some way, especially when you're looking back at distant historical events, the "Truth" with a capital "T" is kind of the juxtaposition of all the many, many, many truths that seem true to people at the time.

It's hard to tell what people realize. Everybody's different and has a different understanding of the difference in times.

If you want, you can try and get a broader perspective, or you can find people who are absolutely out of their minds, or find people that are doing incredibly complex and interesting and urgent journalism. And the same goes for our show. It's a prism into people's own ideologies, when they watch our program. This is just our take.

It is very rare or almost impossible that an event can be negative from all points of view.

Maybe it was the same with people: if you studied them,you'd see new and different things. But would you like what you saw? Did it depend on who was doing the looking?

If you convinced me And I convinced you, Would there not still be Two points of view?

There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.

There are always many sides to the truth.

The last thing we want is a monolithic viewpoint where six people are standing before a president saying the same thing over and over again.

I would never feel confident enough to express my views and opinions as the right ones because I just don't think that's possible. There are so many sides to everything that nobody is right or wrong.

The better you hear a thing put, the more certain you are there's another view.

I enjoy telling these stories that I ultimately think get a disservice on a lot of network television. I enjoy getting people to change their perspective. I enjoy pushing myself into learning and understanding things from a very different point of view. It's scary to do that. It's scary to kind of put yourself in somebody else's position.

In theory we understand people, but in practice we can't put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn't possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.

As the Chinese will tell you, history depends on your point of view.

Critics should help people see for themselves; they should never try to define things, or impose their own explanations, though I admit that if... a critic's explanations serve to increase the general obscurity, that's all to the good.

Communication starts with the understanding that there is my point of view (my truth) and someone else's point of view (his truth). Rarely is there one absolute truth, so people who believe that they speak the truth are very silencing of others.

No two people see the world exactly alike, and different temperaments will often apply the same principle, recognized by both, differently. Even one and the same person won't always maintain the same views and judgments: earlier convictions must give way to later ones.

In a way, it's all down to perception, isn't it? And everyone has their own take on everything.

Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences.