Blindness Quotes

Never, even in his wildest dreams, had his imagination come close to the reality of her.

It seems that I have been held in some dreaming stateA tourist in the waking world world, never quite awake.No kiss, no gentle word could wake me from this slumber,Until I realised that it was you who held me under.

We are all more blind to what we have than to what we have not.

Sunglasses are more useful to a blind man than freedom of speech is to a man who does not think for himself.

You collect art: you must know that the miniature artists, at the end of careers spent painting the tiniest, most exacting details that no one would ever look at, would often put their eyes out with needles. Too much beauty, yes, but also too much seeing. They were tired of seeing. The dark was safe and warm and comfortable. Blindness was a gift. I still have seeing to do.

... that destiny has to make many turnings before arriving anywhere, destiny alone knows what it has cost ...

Annie looks dreamy, but she always does because she can’t see farther than three feet away. Elizabeth looks vaguely angry, but she always does because she can see farther than three feet away.

What dreams would he have, not seeing. Life a dream for him. Where is the justice being born that way?

The evidence never seemed to matter to those in power, who had already made up their minds and did what people typically do when their worldview is threatened by new data: they attacked the messenger.

A world without radio is a deaf world. A world without television is a blind world. A world without telephone is a dumb world. A world without communication is indeed a crippled world.

The inherent prejudice in unnaturally-produced nationalism causes a form of cultural blindness, which prevents us from seeing the obvious ways we could co-exist in the world as a co-operative human family.

LEAR: ...yet you see how this world goes.GLOS.: I see it feelingly.

Art can blow us out of our pigeon hole. In deafness it may shout or scream, in blindness it may arrest our attention, in numbness it may shake up our mind. If we don’t sense anything at all and take everything for granted, art can kick us in the ass, give a conscience and make us aware. ("When is Art?")

WHO AM I?I have seven heavenly panelsLeading up to a pointed sphereI’m multidimensional like a crystalAnd my center is never clear.I’m an inventor and pioneer.A mentor to my peers.But I'm not as sound as my shell reveals,Because I’m tormented by my fears -That may appear to be groundedBut my insides are filled with tears.And the sadness is well-founded,From years and yearsOf traumatic experiencesCompoundedIn the most dementedAtmospheres.I talk but feel like nobody hears.Has reason disappeared?And, God, are you near?This is Giza’s 7th light forceAnd I'm asking you to interfere.I can no longer walk amongst the blind and deadWith open eyes and ears.I’m trying to maintain my sanityAnd to straighten up my veneerAs I roll amongst the growing calamitiesFlowing on Earth’s severely trashedFrontier.Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (2010)

When preparing for Book One, I talked to a couple of psychiatrists about psychosomatic phenomena, neuroses and dissociative conditions, for example the so—called hysterical blindness suffered by many who saw the Killing Fields in Pol Pot’s Cambodia: their eyes objectively see, but they are not aware of it and are blind because they believe they can’t see. One specialist told me that among modern Western people, ’metaphorical’ symptoms such as Fredy or those Cambodians evince are much rarer now than earlier in the twentieth century or before. Nowadays most people are better equipped by education to verbalise their neuroses, and have lots of jargon in which to do so. For most of the dissociative dimension, I could draw on things I knew from within myself.

...Goddamn himself for letting his independence slip away from him. He didn't even know how it had happened, how he had lost the ability to function on his own, or what the hell he was going to do about it now.

I don't think it had ever occurred to me that man's supremacy is not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one think. It is due to the brain's capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His civilization, all that he had achieved or might achieve, hung upon his ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet. Without that, he was lost.

Eyes and ears are not the problem... It is rage that blinds and deafens us. Or fear. Envy, mistrust. The world contracts, gets all out of joint when you are angry or afraid.

When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?

As utterly irrational as it might seem, the greed within me has the most limited vision I can possibly imagine as it has eyes only for the few things it doesn’t have, and it is completely blind to all the many remarkable things that it does.

Whenever God allows a mass blindness to cover his church, it is not out of stupidity, it is out of divine providence

Use your dick, don’t be one.