Quotes About Reality

The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always in the past and therefore is always unreal. Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality.

Well, maybe it was just that I wasn't going to like anybody because I had to work and I had to explain to my teachers why I wasn't keeping up. I'd fall asleep and things in class and they'd lecture me about the reality of their classroom. I said, 'You want to see my reality?' I opened up my backpack to where you usually keep your pencils. That's where I kept my bills... electric bills, rent... That was my reality.

Everyone is a theologian, either conscious or unconscious, in the sense that everyone has some conception of the nature of reality, of the demands of reality, and of those elements in reality that support or threaten meaningful existence.

That we do not discover reality but rather invent it is quite shocking for many people. And the shocking part about it - according to the concept of radical constructivism - is that the only thing we can ever know about the real reality (if it even exists) is what it is not. It is only with the collapse of our constructions of reality that we first discover that the world is not the way we imagine.

I've seen [Donald Trump] appear in a film or a TV show cameo or the tabloids, and he's a grotesquely distasteful human being and always has been, always made me want to take a shower. But other people fell in love with him as a reality star. So does that mean that the entertainment industry is doing something wrong? I think reality TV answered that question a long time ago: Yes, it's doing something terribly wrong. But there's some great reality TV, and I'm not bagging on it completely.

The art of managing and leading comes down to a simple thing. Determining and facing reality about people, situations, products, and then acting decisively and quickly on that reality. Think how many times we have procrastinated, hoped it would get better. Most of the mistakes you've made have been through not being willing to face into it, straight in the mirror that reality you find, then taking action on it. That's all managing is, defining and acting. Not hoping, not waiting fro the next plan. Not rethinking it. Getting on with it. Doing it. Defining and doing it.

The illusion that mechanical progress means human improvement ... alienates us from our own being and our own reality. It is precisely because we are convinced that our life, as such, is better if we have a better car, a better TV set, better toothpaste, etc., that we condemn and destroy our own reality and the reality of our natural resources. Technology was made for man, not man for technology. In losing touch with being and thus with God, we have fallen into a senseless idolatry of production and consumption for their own sakes.

Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality.

Today we cannot assume people, even all Christians, understand the Bible's implicit, underlying view of reality. We have to dig it out and show it to people, including Christians, and ask them to "see reality as this" rather than "as that" - where "that" refers to any number of unbiblical ideas about reality.

Few things are more important at this time in history than for religious people to listen to the New Atheists as if these unbelievers were speaking with God's voice, because they are! The word "God" used to be identified with reality - indeed, ultimate reality. In all cultures and at all times, the divine was no mere person, but was a personification of reality.

As far as trying to make it terms of social hierarchy or status and all that in art and music - I've always felt that that stuff was bullshit. It's got very little to do with reality, and reality is where things live. You look at a painting and think, "Oh, it's beautiful. It inspires me," whatever. But it's never going to inspire you like reality. A lot of these artists and musicians who prioritize skill over experience, they sit around masturbating themselves over knowledge and intellect rather than just going to a place.

The artist's task is not to alter the world as the eye sees it into a world of aesthetic reality, but to perceive the aesthetic reality within the actual reality. (On photographs by Helen Levitt)

The criteria or the paradigm for us is not the West, not the Western paradigm, because the West has its own culture, we have our own culture, they have their own reality, we have our own reality.

The dignity of a woman's life is infinite, her status immeasurable, her capacity unbounded, her role divine...In the fast changing world of today her vision penetrates into the reality of the far beyond, the reality which endures beyond change.

Apparently when we enter the Earth existence, the third dimensional reality, we exist with a façade as actors playing various roles. For some it is the adventure of the experience, the journey. For others it is entrapment in an illusion that takes on all the qualities of reality.

Evolving Culture, Reality, as we perceive it, is largely shaped by the artifacts, both material and symbolic, of thought, thought that leads to creative manifestation in form and color. With that in mind, it might be suggested that the visual artist, - from commercial designer to fine art painter - has much to do with most things that enter your everyday visuals, and thus form a major portion of one's reality and, certainly, how this culture manifests and evolves.

You will reply that reality hasn't the slightest need to be of interest. And I'll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypotheses may not. In the hypothesis you have postulated, chance intervenes largely. Here lies a dead rabbi; I should prefer a purely rabbinical explanation; not the imaginary mischances of an imaginary robber.

Today, when death and old age are increasingly concealed behind euphemisms and comforting baby talk, and life is threatened with being smothered in the mass consumption of hypnotic mechanized vulgarity, the need to confront man with the reality of his situation is greater than ever. For the dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without fear, without illusions - and to laugh at it.

Watt's concern, deep as it appeared, was not after all what the figure was, in reality, but with what the figure appeared to be, in reality.

I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale".

I hate reality shows that are not reality.

During times of challenge, what you have faith in is what determines what the challenge will turn into. Have faith in the reality of the challenge, and it will birth more challenges. Have faith in the reality of miracles, and the challenge will transform into something else.

Do you want a sign that you're asleep? Here it is: you're suffering. Suffering is a sign that you're out of touch with the truth. Suffering is given to you that you might open your eyes to the truth, that you might understand that there's falsehood somewhere, just as physical pain is given to you so you will understand that there is disease or illness somewhere. Suffering occurs when you clash with reality. When your illusions clash with reality, when your falsehoods clash with truth, then you have suffering. Otherwise there is no suffering.

When we follow our hearts, we follow the path of lessons we were meant to take and gain knowledge from. Sometimes the heart conquers over reason, and this may lead us to making serious mistakes, but these are mistakes written for us to grow. This is the real reason you hear 'FOLLOW YOUR HEART'. And the real reason you hear, 'FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS' is because our dreams expose us to our true multidimensional realities outside of this delusional realm we call reality. Our TRUE reality can be found in our dreams, where we are our true multidimensional selves.

Race is a core reality of American experience. Media images on television need to reflect that reality to help people who consume media and who don't have the day-to-day, face-to-face contact with others, or where that contact is minimal, to help them have a greater appreciation of other experiences and how they're all part of the American fabric.

Being in the ring became my reality, and, in my reality, I'd think I was someone special.

I think that Donald Trump successfully mobilized a big chunk of America to vote for him and he's going to win. He has won. He's going to be the next president and regardless of what experience or assumptions he brought to the office, this office has a way of waking you up and those - those aspects of his positions or predispositions that don't match up with reality, he will find shaken up pretty quick because reality has a way of asserting itself.

I have a feeling Virtual Reality will further expose the conceit that 'reality' is a fact. It will provide another reminder of the seamless continuity between the world outside and the world within, delivering another major hit to the old fraud of objectivity. 'Real,' as Kevin Kelly put it, 'is going to be one of the most relative words we'll have.'

There was no way to grasp the reality of the present which slid away each second, invisible as air; reality only existed after the fact, in one's vision of the past.

Faith is not a refuge from reality. It is a demand that we face reality ... The true subject matter of religion is not our own little souls, but the Eternal God and His whole mysterious purpose, and our solemn responsibility to Him.

Reality is created by the mind, we can change our reality by changing our mind.

For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline, and virtue. For the modern, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique.

Once we have taken the backward step to an abstract view of our whole system of beliefs, evidence, and justification, and seen that it works only, despite its pretensions, by taking the world largely for granted, we are not in a position to contrast all these appearances with an alternative reality. We cannot shed our ordinary responses, and if we could it would leave us with no means of conceiving a reality of any kind.

The only reality we can ever truly know is that of our perceptions, our own consciousness, while that consciousness, and thus our entire reality, is made of nothing but signs and symbols. Nothing but language. Even God requires language before conceiving the Universe. See Genesis: “In the beginning was the Word.

For those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into supernatural reality. In other words, for those who have a religious experience all nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality.

Never face reality unless your reality is just the way you want it to be.

Those who tell you that man is unable to perceive a reality undistorted by his senses, mean that they are unwilling to perceive a reality undistorted by their feelings. "Things as they are" are things as perceived by your mind; divorce them from reason and they become "things as perceived by your wishes.

If, on thinking this, I look up to see if reality can quench my thirst, I see inexpressive facades, inexpressive faces, inexpressive gestures. Stones, bodies, ideas - all dead. All movements are one great standstill. Nothing means anything to me, not because it's unfamiliar but because I don't know what it is. The world has slipped away. And in the bottom of my soul - as the only reality of this moment - there's an intense and invisible grief, a sadness like the sound of someone crying in a dark room.

We are insane. That is what sin is. Sanctity is identitical with sanity. It means living the truth, living in reality. Sin always substitutes unreality for reality.

Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life.

The only reality is the one we have inside us. What makes most people’s lives so artificial and unworthy is that they falsely regard outside images as reality and they never allow their own inner world to speak.

All beautiful forms of this world are in the process of transformation. Nothing is stable. With every moment, our reality is changing. Mother Ganges, like nature, is constant, but no manifestation of hers remains. Likewise, all that we hold dear in this world is imperceptibly vanishing. We cannot cling to anything. But if we can appreciate the beauty of the underlying current of truth, we can enjoy a reality deeper than the fickle waves of joy and sorrow.

I enjoy reality as much as the next man. It's just that in my case, fortunately, reality includes a good stiff belt every now and then.

The American citizen lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly irridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.

Reality is not protected or defended by laws, proclamations, ukases, cannons and armadas. Reality is that which is sprouting all the time out of death and disintegration.

I can think of nothing more gallant, even though again and again we fail, than attempting to get at the facts; attempting to tell things as they really are. For at least reality, though never fully attained, can be defined. Reality is that which, when you don’t believe in it, doesn’t go away.

The realists do not take the photograph for a 'copy' of reality, but for an emanation of past reality, a magic, not an art.

Since when has love ever looked for reasons, or evidence? Why would love bow to the reality of things, when it creates a reality of its own, so much more vivid, wherein everything resonates to the key of the heart?