Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

I would not describe my personality. And I think when you describe people, you are making a mistake. That's not how they are; that's how you perceive them at that moment. It's limiting in front of something that is magnificent and unlimited: life.

Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves.

I have never experienced another human being. I have experienced my impressions of them.

There is no such thing as an objective interpretation.

People see in stories what they’re looking for, my young friend.

I loathe my own face, and I've done self-portraits because I've had nobody else to do.

One is never satisfied with a portrait of persons whom one knows. That is why I have always pitied portraitists. One demands so seldom of others the impossible, but demands just that of the portraitists.

You must look into people as well as at them.

We think that - as kids, you know - that kids make up stories and live in a sort of fictional place, but that, as grown-ups, we tell the truth and live in fact. But, of course, the reality is we take the facts that we know, and then we fill in all the blanks.

I get along very well with people - that's both an advantage and a disadvantage.

I respect Koulibaly a lot and we got to talk to each other, to understand what kind of person he is.

Everyone thinks they're the hero in their own story.

You can't supervise your own history.

Sometimes I feel a bit socially disconnected in terms of being a little bit gullible about how people interrelate emotionally.

A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.

All photographs are self-portraits.

I observed once to Goethe that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him as when he is away. He replied, "Yes! because the absent friend is yourself, and he exists only in your head; whereas the friend who is present has an individuality of his own, and moves according to laws of his own, which cannot always be in accordance with those which you form for yourself.

Witness testimony is always flawed. It's better than circumstantial evidence, sure, but people aren't camcorders; they don't record every action and reaction, and the very act of remembering involves chosing words, actions and images. In other words, any witness who was supposed to be giving a court facts is really just giving them a version of fiction.

We are not slow at discovering the selfishness of others; for this plain reason--because it clashes with our own.

Look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them.... Without knowing it, we are coloring everything, putting our spin on it all.

Who judges best of a Man, his Enemies or himself?

My character - and for that matter my worst habits - could only be described by someone else. You can't open a box with the crowbar inside it.

Things do not have meaning. We assign meaning to everything.

Self-evident, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else.

Our inner weighing of evidence is not a careful mathematical calculation resulting in a probabilistic estimate of truth, but more like a whirlpool blending of the objective and the personal. The result is a set of beliefs - both conscious and unconscious - that guide us in interpreting all the events of our lives.