Andre Gide Quotes

Normal is all relative.

One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.

I have an opinion. I have my own taste.

There's no common taste in this world.

There is no such thing as absolute value in this world. You can only estimate what a thing is worth to you.

What may appear as a towering peak to one may seem but an ordinary eminence to another.

There's no reason to assume that my idea of what's better would really be better. I resent it when other people try to inflict their ideas of betterness on me. I don't think they know. And I can't see any authority on the horizon that's got any answers that seem worthwhile. Most of the things that are suggested are probably detrimental to your mental health.

If you make something interesting, inevitably not everybody is going to like it.

What is merit? The opinion one man entertains of another.

As long as you make your own decision and do thing because it feels good to you, there will always be people who agree and people who don’t.

We all have our own takes on things. To being yourself. The abstract, the whole thing that I play with, seems to result in seeing through your lenses, and once you express how you see things to others, you start to see there are similarities between all people. It's kind of like, no matter how far you go, you're still where you started, in a way.

You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to and I think it's beautiful.

Two people can see the same thing, disagree, and yet both be right. It's not logical; it's psychological.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is ugliness.

The fact that there is no right or wrong is what I think is maddening. I can think you're a phenomenal actor, but the guy next door can think you're a horrible actor, and neither of us is wrong and neither of us is right. It's just a matter of opinion.

People strive to achieve a certain form of perfection constantly and it's impossible because it's a form of opinion. I can think someone is pretty but the person next to me can think that they're unattractive.

I think it's incumbent upon me to try to be smart and make good choices and work with good people and work my ass off when I'm working with good people and I have to let everyone have their opinion afterwards. But this is what happens. You make a movie or you're on a show and then you have this experience and everyone tells you what you did. They tell you what you did. That's allowed. That's the experience of being human and subjectivity. That's it. We can only do what we'll do, and I can only do the best I can do.

The people in the world, and the objects in it, and the world as a whole, are not absolute things, but on the contrary, are the phenomena of perception... If we were all alike: if we were millions of people saying do, re, mi, in unison, One poet would be enough... But we are not alone, and everything needs expounding all the time because, as people live and die, each one perceiving life and death for himself, and mostly by and in himself, there develops a curiosity about the perceptions of others. This is what makes it possible to go on saying new things about old things.

Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception.

People project their own dreams, fantasies, and prejudices onto my life. So people are either fans, or jealous, or disagree. Everybody marches to a different drummer.

Taste ... is a matter of taste (Tad Allagash)

Common sense, to most people, is nothing more than their own opinions.

What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.

When people disagreed with him he urged them to be objective.

We are not machines exploring the universe, we are people.