“To perceive is to construct intellectually, and if the child draws things as he conceives them, it is certainly because he cannot perceive them without conceiving them.”

— Jean Piaget

Source: The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932), Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism 
Context: To perceive is to construct intellectually, and if the child draws things as he conceives them, it is certainly because he cannot perceive them without conceiving them. But to give up gradually the spurious absolutes situated away and apart from the context of relations that has been built up during experience itself is the work of a superior kind of rationality. When the child comes to draw things as he sees them, it will be precisely because he has given up taking isolated objects in and for themselves and has begun to construct real systems of relations which take account of the true perspective in which things are connected.

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Jean Piaget 66

Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & acad… 1896–1980

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“When the child comes to draw things as he sees them, it will be precisely because he has given up taking isolated objects in and for themselves and has begun to construct real systems of relations which take account of the true perspective in which things are connected.”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

“He exists, not only inconceivably as God, but also conceivably as a man; not only above the world, but also in the world, and of the world; not only in a heavenly and invisible, but in an earthly and visible form. He becomes and is, He exists—we cannot avoid this statement; to do so would be the worst kind of Docetism—with objective actuality. Does this mean, then, that He exists as one thing amongst others, and that as such He can be perceived and may be known like other things? Well, we cannot deny that He is a thing like this, and can be perceived and knovra as such, if He was and is a man in the world, with an earthly and visible form. But, of course, a man is not merely a thing or object. As a man among men he is a human Thou, and as such distinct from all mere things.”

Karl Barth book Church Dogmatics

4:2
Church Dogmatics (1932–1968)

“I want to perceive and understand the hidden powers and laws of things, in order to have them in my power.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.”

David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Part I, Essay 23: Of The Standard of Taste
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)
Source: Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays
Context: Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others.

“The labyrinth is conceived as a network of constructs, each of which is essentially an abstraction and, as such, can be picked up and laid down over many, many different events in order to bring them into focus and clothe them with personal meaning. Moreover, the constructs are subject to continual revision, although the complex interdependent relationship between constructs in the system often makes it precarious for the person to revise one construct without taking into account the disruptive effect upon major segments of the system.”

George Kelly (psychologist) (1905–1967) American psychologist and therapist

George A. Kelly, "Man's construction of his alternatives." Assessment of human motives (1958): 33-64.

“He could not construct for the child's pleasure the world he'd lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

“Until the world perceives that “good” cannot be applied to a thing because it is our own, and “bad” because it is another’s, there is no prospect of realizing community.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“The Power of the Word,” p. 54.
Language is Sermonic (1970)

“He that made all things for love, by the same love keepeth them, and shall keep them without end.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The First Revelation, Chapter 8

“To thee, when thou didst try to conceive of them, the ways of the days to come seemed follies scarce to be thought of; yet shall they come to be familiar things”

William Morris book A Dream of John Ball

Source: A Dream of John Ball (1886), Ch. 12: Ill Would Change Be At Whiles Were It Not For The Change Beyond The Change.
Context: To thee, when thou didst try to conceive of them, the ways of the days to come seemed follies scarce to be thought of; yet shall they come to be familiar things, and an order by which every man liveth, ill as he liveth, so that men shall deem of them, that thus it hath been since the beginning of the world, and that thus it shall be while the world endureth... Yet in time shall this also grow old, and doubt shall creep in, because men shall scarce be able to live by that order, and the complaint of the poor shall be hearkened, no longer as a tale not utterly grievous, but as a threat of ruin, and a fear. Then shall these things, which to thee seem follies, and to the men between thee and me mere wisdom and the bond of stability, seem follies once again; yet, whereas men have so long lived by them, they shall cling to them yet from blindness and from fear; and those that see, and that have thus much conquered fear that they are furthering the real time that cometh and not the dream that faileth, these men shall the blind and the fearful mock and missay, and torment and murder: and great and grievous shall be the strife in those days, and many the failures of the wise, and too oft sore shall be the despair of the valiant; and back-sliding, and doubt, and contest between friends and fellows lacking time in the hubbub to understand each other, shall grieve many hearts and hinder the Host of the Fellowship: yet shall all bring about the end, till thy deeming of folly and ours shall be one, and thy hope and our hope; and then — the Day will have come.

“One thing about which fish know exactly nothing is water, since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the element they live in.”

Marshall McLuhan book War and Peace in the Global Village

Source: War and Peace in the Global Village

“To perceive is to construct intellectually, and if the child draws things as he conceives them, it is certainly because he cannot perceive them without conceiving them.”

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Jean Piaget 66

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