Selected reality quotes

1. Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it....

2. To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

3. If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview.

4. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

5. It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to. . . . The feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.

6. Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.

7. If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.

8. The entire universe - for one thing - only exists in your perceptions. That's all you're gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow that's being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality.

9. There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

10. I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag, whereas they are responsible for burning that for which the flag stands: the United States as a territory, as a people, and as a biological manifestation. That is an example of our perennial confusion of symbols with realities.

11. I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

12. At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

13. There is always a philosophy for lack of courage.

14. God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.

15. I don't believe in mathematics.

16. Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

17. If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone.

18. Let us repeat the two crucial negative premises as established firmly by all human experience: (1) Words are not the things we are speaking about; and (2) There is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation.

19. The complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.

20. In the meantime, it just makes it a little harder to smile. But so does the world.

21. I don't know where the artificial stops and the real starts.

22. There can be no immaculate conception of socialism.

23. I read the newspapers avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.

24. A thought is a screen, not a mirror; that is why you live in a thought envelope, untouched by Reality.

25. People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favour progress, provided they can have it without change.

26. Thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it.

27. There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.

28. I doubt whether any girl would be satisfied with her lover's mind if she knew the whole of it.

29. There is such a difference between life and theory.

30. Truth is a golden thread, seen here and there In small bright specks upon the visible side Of our strange being's party-coloured web.

31. A world where nothing is had for nothing.

32. All I want is a little more than I'll ever get.

33. Keep some souvenirs of your past, or how will you ever prove it wasn't all a dream?

34. This is serious: some of the things that are supposed to last the rest of my life are already wearing out.

35. I never miss reality when I'm not in it, but it's sometimes nice to come back to.

36. What could possibly be more fantastic than reality?

37. Why does merely attempting to understand Reality so often seem to lead to going insane?

38. My first line of defense against reality is called sleep.

39. It wasn't a matter of courage or dreams, but something a whole lot simpler. A pilot would call it ground orientation. I'd spent a long time circling above the clouds, looking for life, while Hallie was living it.

40. Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.

41. He touched me... Control myself and try to act As if I remember my name But he touched me...he touched me... And suddenly nothing is the same!

42. 'Man's craving for the supernatural is as natural as our discounting of the present moment... The natural becomes trite and commonplace to us and we take refuge in an imaginary world above and beyond it.' (p.261}

43. I think he who knows himself will know accurately, not the opinion of others about him, but what he is in reality: he ought to discover within himself what is right for him to do and not learn it from without:

44. When you sit at home comfortably folded up in a chair beside a fire, have you ever thought what goes on outside there? Probably not. You pick up a book and read about things and stuff, getting a vicarious kick from people and events that never happened. You're doing it now, getting ready to fill in a normal life with the details of someone else's experiences. Fun, isn't it? You read about life on the outside thinking about how maybe you'd like it to happen to you, or at least how you'd like to watch it. Even the old Romans did it, spiced their life with action when they sat in the Coliseum and watched wild animals rip a bunch of humans apart, reveling in the sight of blood and terror. They screamed for joy and slapped each other on the back when murderous claws tore into the live flesh of slaves and cheered when the kill was made. Oh, it's great to watch, all right. Life through a keyhole. But day after day goes by and nothing like that ever happens to you so you think that it's all in books and not in reality at all and that's that. Still good reading, though. Tomorrow night you'll find another book, forgetting what was in the last and live some more in your imagination. But remember this: there are things happening out there. They go on every day and night making Roman holidays look like school picnics. They go on right under your very nose and you never know about them. Oh yes, you can find them all right. All you have to do is look for them. But I wouldn't if I were you because you won't like what you'll find. Then again, I'm not you and looking for those things is my job. They aren't nice things to see because they show people up for what they are. There isn't a coliseum any more, but the city is a bigger bowl, and it seats more people. The razor-sharp claws aren't those of wild animals but man's can be just as sharp and twice as vicious. You have to be quick, and you have to be able, or you become one of the devoured, and if you can kill first, no matter how and no matter who, you can live and return to the comfortable chair and the comfortable fire. But you have to be quick. And able. Or you'll be dead.

45. see them walking, if you dare if you call that walking stumble, stagger, fall and drag themselves along the streets of heaven

46. I know that it will hurt I know that it will break your heart the way things are and the way they've been and the way they've always been

47. 'In order to have any sense of control over our own life, we need to know that we're able to make sense out of our experience, in all of its many aspects. It's the need that religion addresses, that philosophy addresses... if you have a moral code that you do your best to live up to, other things being equal, it's very positive in its consequences for your self esteem, even if the moral code is in some ways mistaken. If you conscientiously try to live it to the best of your ability, that would have a salutary effect on your self-esteem. If you violate it, it would have a negative effect on your self-esteem. But suppose you have nothing to violate, no worldview-that absence will limit your self-esteem, because you need to feel aligned with reality. You need feel that you are in appropriate contact with the real world. Now your theory of what the real world is might be right or wrong. But so long as you are able to believe that you are in contact with the real world and are acting on that knowledge, your self-esteem benefits... Regardless, upsetting as it may be to orthodox Objectivists, I think you can show that in the short run and in [a coerced] environment, a person who has some overarching faith has a better chance of surviving. But I wouldn't explain that all away by saying ignorance is bliss. The point is to understand what function a belief system provides. Then you can understand why an imperfect one is sometimes beneficial'[8]

48. Ignorance and deception can't save anybody. Knowing saves them:

49. I see that you are a person who refuses to revise his view of the would. You can only bear to live in a world where all the bad things happen to you are someone else's fault, where everyone must have conspired against you to deprive you of your due. Unfortunately, that world happens not to be the real world

50. You're still young so you still think the whole universe revolves around you. But the fact is that it doesn't

51. He'd find out soon enough what losing everything could mean

52. Before the story he refused to even think about it; after the story, it became conceivable to him, and, once he could conceive of it, it soon became inevitable

53. What an ugly world you choose to live in Not neat and pretty like yours, not bound about by rules the way yours is. Laws and principals, theories and hypotheses, may they cover your eyes and keep you happy

54. Gradually he began to realize that despite all the secrets she knew and all the strange powers that she seemed to have, she was not an angel or any other kind of supernatural being. She was a woman, still young, yet with a great deal of pain and wisdom in her eyes. She was a woman, and she was his friend. Why should that have surprised him? It was always from the love of strong women that he had found whatever joy had been granted him in his life

55. To me, the truth is what actually happened. Yet it is impossible to know anything approaching the whole truth about past events. Even the people living them could not possibly understand. That truth is always out of reach

56. I was the last to know what was happening to me. Or at least I was the last to know that I knew

57. You don't exist, you can't be real she means it one way, but I believe it another

58. Power was my dream. You're real

59. There are stranger things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy

60. A dream is by definition a series of sensations that occur in the brain when both our senses of perception and our powers of will and reason are in abeyance, so that we have no control over that flux of sensations. But it is, of course, a well-known phenomenon that when we dream that we are dreaming, the dream ends and we awaken. Then the conscious mind takes over and we are again responsible for our thoughts, and must face a day in which we must be responsible for our actions, which, by their wisdom or folly, may determine the rest of our lives. Our dreams may give expression, pleasant or painful, to our subconscious desires or fears. But in our waking hours we must, if we are rational, make our decisions on the basis of the most objective and cold-blooded estimates that we can make: estimates of the forces and tendencies in the world about us; estimates of the realities with which we must deal; remembering always that nothing is likely to happen just because we think it's good, or unlikely to happen just because we think it's evil.

61. 'Parents are frequently inclined, because of a time-flattered sense of security, to take their children for granted. Nothing ever has happened, so nothing ever will happen. They see their children every day, and through the eyes of affection; and despite their natural charm and their own strong parental love, the children are apt to become not only commonplaces, but ineffably secure against evil. The astonishment of most parents at the sudden accidental revelation of evil in connection with any of their children is almost invariably pathetic. But it is possible. Very possible. Decidedly likely. Some, through lack of experience or understanding, or both, grow hard and bitter on the instant. They feel themselves astonishingly abased in the face of notable tenderness and sacrifice. Others collapse before the grave manifestation of the insecurity and uncertainty of life - the mystic chemistry of our being. Still others, taught roughly by life, or endowed with understanding or intuition, or both, see in this the latest manifestation of that incomprehensible chemistry which we call life and personality, and, knowing that it is quite vain to hope to gainsay it, save by greater subtlety, put the best face they can upon the matter and call a truce until they can think. We all know that life is unsolvable - we who think. The remainder, imagine a vain thing and are full of sound and fury signifying nothing.'

62. Peep how we do it/Keep it real/Its penitentiary steel/This ain't no freestyle battle/All you niggas getting killed

63. These external regions, what do we fill them with Except reflections

64. One of the limits of reality Presents itself in Oley when the hay, Baked through long days, is piled in mows. It is A land too ripe for enigmas, too serene.: Things stop in that direction and since they stop The direction stops and we accept what is As good. The utmost must be good and is:

65. Stevens' way of informing us comes in language and imagery so radically different from previous times that it is difficult to recognize exactly what he means. But throughout his poetry he speaks, like the mystics, primarily of the nature of our relationship with the universe. He continually circles back to the idea that we actively participate in what the world looks like and what it means. Although cast in modern terms, this idea is profoundly spiritual and moral. Since he gives no evidence of any direct visionary experience, it's not possible to say Stevens is a 'mystic' or a 'contemplative' poet. But he is a major figure in modern poetry because he synthesizes the concerns of the modern world - the emphasis on the human self as maker of meaning, the emphasis on scientific rationality, the emphasis on creating new forms to replace outmoded beliefs - with the perennial concerns of the human spirit. To find meaning, or the good - or by implication, God - we need to radically adjust our conception of reality. This takes powerful acts of individual imagination, and the possibilities are immense... Contrary to all appearances, to the difficulty of his verse, and to the preoccupied, distracted interpretations of contemporary critics, Wallace Stevens' poetry is a profoundly spiritual force. Anyone interested in the spiritual problems of modern humans must reckon with it.

66. Reality is a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.

67. No poet, in his greatest imaginings, could conceive of anything greater than the real;

68. If my uncle had wheels and pedals, he'd be a bicycle. We really can't engage in 'if's.

69. He knew what is what.

70. This is petrified truth.

71. God, the truth hurts!

72. What is reality?

73. As the case stands.

74. 'I had been in touch with a lot of people I thought would stand by me in the front row of the scrum, (I) didn't know it was going to collapse.'

75. It does not matter that Dicken's world is not lifelike; it is alive.

76. I would say that in my scientific and philosophical work, my main concern has been with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular as a coherent whole, which is never static or complete but which is an unending process of movement and unfoldment...

77. Marriage is a romance in which the hero dies in the first chapter.

78. You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

79. One pill makes you larger And one pill makes you small, And the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all. Go ask Alice when she's ten feet tall.

80. You can't handle the truth!

81. We are afraid of the known and afraid of the unknown. That is our daily life and in that there is no hope, and therefore every form of philosophy, every form of theological concept, is merely an escape from the actual reality of what is. All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society.

82. There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

83. Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes.

84. We are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we're in the present, but we aren't. The present we know is only a movie of the past.

85. I know faces, because I look through the fabric my own eye weaves, and behold the reality beneath.

86. Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why, then, should we desire to be deceived?'

87. Politicians are the same all over: they promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.

88. By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

89. Facts are stubborn things.

90. Princess Bibesco delighted in a semi-ideal world - a world which, though having a counterpart in her experience, was to a great extent brought into being by her own temperament and, one might say, flair.

91. We should face reality and our past mistakes in an honest, adult way. Boasting of glory does not make glory, and singing in the dark does not dispel fear.

92. The symbol is the enemy of the reality, and the reality is ever one's true guide, true friend, true companion, and true self.

93. There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

94. Cloud cuckoo land

95. This is petrified truth.

96. The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.

97. Exactly! It is absurd - improbable - it cannot be. So I myself have said. And yet, my friend, there it is! one cannot escape from the facts.

98. I can imagine anything! That's the trouble with me. I can imagine things now - this minute. I could even make them sound all right, but of course none of them would be true.

99. I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be.

100. I should esteem it the extreme of imprudence to prolong the precarious state of our national affairs, and to expose the Union to the jeopardy of successive experiments, in the chimerical pursuit of a perfect plan. I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man. The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necessarily be a compound, as well of the errors and prejudices, as of the good sense and wisdom, of the individuals of whom they are composed.