quotations about reality
I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
On Certainty
It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.
PHILIP K. DICK
Valis
Really, nobody knows whether the world is realistic or fantastic, that is to say, whether the world is a natural process or whether it is a kind of dream, a dream that we may or may not share with others.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
The Paris Review, winter-spring 1967
The most exciting thing for me is crossing that bridge between something we know is real and something that is extraordinary. The thing for me has always been how you cross that bridge.
J. J. ABRAMS
interview, The Fresno Bee, December 16, 2015
What is reality? Is it not merely a term for the philosopher to conjure with, behind which he may craftily conceal his ignorance?
JOHN GRIER HIBBEN
The Problems of Philosophy
I realized that it is not only the physical world that differs from the aspect in which we see it; that all reality is perhaps equally dissimilar from what we believe ourselves to be directly perceiving and which we compose with the aid of ideas that do not reveal themselves but are none the less efficacious, just as the trees, the sun and the sky would not be the same as what we see if they were apprehended by creatures having eyes differently constituted from ours, or else endowed for that purpose with organs other than eyes which would furnish equivalents of trees and sky and sun, though not visual ones.
MARCEL PROUST
The Guermantes Way
The only reality was nothingness, and over it a hypocrisy of words.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Reality is divinely indifferent.
RICHARD BACH
Illusions
Where is reality?... It is something dark and dramatic that is present but cannot be grasped for it has no visible form and, therefore, can be neither described nor represented. Reality ... is not to be found in description but in a certain underlying mood. It mysteriously appears when bidden by a call of the political order. Once that summons is made, reality appears.
JOSÉ MARÍA MORENO GALVÁN
attributed, "Nauru: What Reality is This?", Counterpunch, January 22, 2016
Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
JOHN LENNON
attributed, As Time Goes By: Living in the Sixties with John Lennon
A fundamental value in the scientific outlook is concern with the best available map of reality. The scientist will always seek a description of events which enables him to predict most by assuming least. He thus already prefers a particular form of behavior. If moralities are systems of preferences, here is at least one point at which science cannot be said to be completely without preferences. Science prefers good maps.
ANATOL RAPOPORT
Science and the Goals of Man: a study in semantic orientation
Reality is not a fad That changes with the latest whim.
DAVID EDWIN HALL
"Rejoicing in Reality", Quiet Time Poems
At the end of the day, reality is what's left when all enhanced realities are put away. It used to be easier to tell the difference--art, film, music, playstations--all of these enhanced realities were limited in their means and scope such that they could distract from, inform, communicate with, but not substitute for reality. Now technology has advanced and has become so integral to our personal and social lives that the line between enhanced reality and reality reality is blurred. Devices have become real extensions of our physical body in the virtual reality we've created for ourselves.
AMANDA KNOX
"Amanda's View: Reality is Better", Ballard News Tribune
I like reality. It tastes like bread.
JEAN ANOUILH
Plays
There are intangible realities which float near us, formless and without words; realities which no one has thought out, and which are excluded for lack of interpreters.
NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY
attributed, Mystery in Life
The reality of today, different as it is from the reality of my society one hundred years ago, is and can be important if we have the energy and the inclination to challenge it, to go out and engage with its peculiarities, with the things that we do not understand. The real danger is the tendency to retreat into the obvious, the tendency to be frightened by the richness of the world and to clutch what we always have understood.
CHINUA ACHEBE
There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra
The raw materials of reality without the glue of time are materials adrift and reality is as meaningless as the balsa parts of a model airplane scattered to the wind.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Human kind cannot bear very much reality.
T. S. ELIOT
Murder in the Cathedral
Better to bridge the gap between virtual reality and reality reality by marrying the two, by enhancing our environment and finding further means to access those populating it, even if through a game.
AMANDA KNOX
"Amanda's View: Reality is Better", Ballard News Tribune
We live on two levels ... the realistic level and the fantastic level, and which is the real one, really?
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Night of the Iguana