Quotations about:
    reality


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There are more truths in twenty-four hours of a man’s life than in all the philosophies.

Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934) Belgian writer
The Revolution of Everyday Life, 1.1 (1967)
 
Added on 6-Aug-15 | Last updated 6-Aug-15
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Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Following the Equator, ch. 15, epigraph, “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar” (1897)
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Sometimes paraphrased, "Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense." More on this quotation and its variants here.
 
Added on 17-Jul-15 | Last updated 20-Jan-19
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HAMLET: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Hamlet, Act 1, sc. 5, l. 187ff (1.5.187-188) (c. 1600)
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Added on 16-Jul-15 | Last updated 19-Jan-24
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Those who are destitute of philosophy may be compared to prisoners in a cave, who are only able to look in one direction because they are bound, and who have a fire behind them and a wall in front. Between them and the wall there is nothing; all that they see are shadows of themselves, and of objects behind them, cast on the wall by the light of the fire. Inevitably they regard these shadows as real, and have no notion of the objects to which they are due. At last, some man succeeds in escaping from the cave to the light of the sun; for the first time he sees real things, and becomes aware that he had hitherto been deceived by shadows. If he is the sort of philosopher who is fit to become a guardian, he will feel it is his duty to those who were formerly his fellow prisoners to go down again into the cave, instruct them as to the truth, and show them the way up. But he will have difficulty in persuading them, because, coming out of the sunlight, he will see shadows less clearly than they do, and will seem to them stupider than before his escape.

Plato (c.428-347 BC) Greek philosopher
The Republic, 7.514

Summ. Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, ch. 15 (1946)
 
Added on 11-Jun-15 | Last updated 11-Jun-15
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When the gap between the ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.

Barbara W. Tuchman (1912-1989) American historian and author
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Foreward (1978)
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Added on 2-Jun-15 | Last updated 2-Jun-15
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Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Back to Methuselah, Part 5 (1921)
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Added on 16-Apr-15 | Last updated 16-Apr-15
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If this is a dream, then perhaps our dreaming
Can touch life’s height to a finer fire:
Who knows but the heavens and all their seeming
Were made by the heart’s desire?

Edwin Markham (1852-1940) American poet
“The Crowning Hour” (2), The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems (1913)
 
Added on 20-Mar-15 | Last updated 20-Mar-15
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Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.

Shunryū Suzuki (1905-1971) Japanese Zen Buddhist master
Not Always So, “Wherever You Are, Enlightenment Is There” (2002)
 
Added on 9-Feb-15 | Last updated 9-Feb-15
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You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) American architect, engineer
(Attributed)
 
Added on 3-Feb-15 | Last updated 3-Feb-15
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All descriptions of reality are limited expressions of the world of emptiness. Yet we attach to the descriptions and think they are reality. That is a mistake.

Shunryū Suzuki (1905-1971) Japanese Zen Buddhist master
Not Always So, “Letters from Emptiness” (2002)
 
Added on 2-Feb-15 | Last updated 2-Feb-15
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The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it’s very brightly colored, and it’s very loud, and it’s fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, “Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?” And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, “Hey, don’t worry; don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.” And we … kill those people. “Shut him up! I’ve got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real.” It’s just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. … But it doesn’t matter, because it’s just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.

Bill Hicks (1961-1994) American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, musician [William Melvin "Bill" Hicks]
Revelations (1993)
 
Added on 30-Jan-15 | Last updated 30-Jan-15
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Left to themselves, the facts do not speak; left to themselves they do not exist, not really, since for all practical purposes there is no fact until some one affirms it.

Carl L. Becker (1873-1945) American historian
“Everyman His Own Historian” (3), speech, American Historical Association, Minneapolis (29 Dec 1931)
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Added on 20-Jan-15 | Last updated 20-Jan-15
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Let us then admit that there are two histories: the actual series of events that once occurred; and the ideal series that we affirm and hold in memory. The first is absolute and unchanged — it was what it was whatever we do or say about it; the second is relative, always changing in response to the increase or refinement of knowledge. The two series correspond more or less, it is our aim to make the correspondence as exact as possible; but the actual series of events exists for us only in terms of the ideal series which we affirm and hold in memory.

Carl L. Becker (1873-1945) American historian
“Everyman His Own Historian” (1), speech, American Historical Association, Minneapolis (29 Dec 1931)
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Added on 6-Jan-15 | Last updated 6-Jan-15
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Science admits no exceptions; otherwise there would be no determinism in science, or rather, there would be no science.

Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, scientist
Leçons de Pathologie Expérimentale (1872)
 
Added on 26-Dec-14 | Last updated 26-Dec-14
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Since history is not an objective reality, but only an imaginative reconstruction of vanished events, the pattern that appears useful or agreeable to one generation is never entirely so to the next.

Carl L. Becker (1873-1945) American historian
The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (1932)
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Added on 16-Dec-14 | Last updated 16-Dec-14
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I am an agnostic partly because I don’t think it is part of the human condition ever to have very much certainty about anything but moments of pleasure and of imminent and immanent death. I don’t think we have a language, will ever have a language, that can describe transcendence in any useful way and am aware that transcendence may be nothing more than the illusory aspiration of a decaying piece of meat on a random rock. The thing is to be humble enough to be content with that while acting to other people as generously as if better things were true, and making art as if it might survive and do good in the world. Because what else are we going to do with the few short years of our life?

Roz Kaveney (b. 1949) British writer, critic, poet
“On Good Friday, I may not have faith, but that doesn’t make me an atheist,” The Guardian (29 Mar 2013)
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Added on 22-Oct-14 | Last updated 22-Oct-14
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‘Patriotism is not enough.’ But neither is anything else. Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything will really do.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
The Island, “Notes on What’s What” (1962)
 
Added on 22-Oct-14 | Last updated 22-Oct-14
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Style has to do with the way in which ideas are believed and advocated rather than with the truth or falsity of their content.

Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970) American historian and intellectual
“The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” Herbert Spencer Lecture, Oxford (Nov 1963)
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Reprinted in Harpers (Nov 1964). Often misattributed to Douglas Hofstadter.
 
Added on 7-Oct-14 | Last updated 7-Oct-14
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There is nothing that I tell you with more eager desire that you should believe — nothing with wider ground in my experience for requiring you to believe, than this, that you never will love art well, till you love what she mirrors better.

John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art critic, painter, writer, social thinker
Eagle’s Nest, Lecture 3, “Relation of Wise Art to Wise Science,” sec. 41 (15 Sep 1872)
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Added on 1-Sep-14 | Last updated 1-Sep-14
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Paradox though it may seem — and paradoxes are always dangerous things — it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish poet, wit, dramatist
“The Decay of Lying: A Dialogue,” Littell’s Living Age (16 Feb 1889)
 
Added on 24-Jun-14 | Last updated 24-Jun-14
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For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearance, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian politician, philosopher, political scientist
The Discourses on Livy, Book 1, ch. 25 (1517)
 
Added on 6-Jun-14 | Last updated 27-Jan-20
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Most people, given the choice to face a hideous or terrifying truth or to conveniently avoid it, choose the convenience and peace of normality. That doesn’t make them strong or weak people, or good or bad people. It just makes them people.

Jim Butcher (b. 1971) American author
Turn Coat (2009)
 
Added on 29-Apr-14 | Last updated 29-Apr-14
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I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal.

Groucho Marx (1890-1977) American comedian [b. Julius Henry Marx]
(Attributed)
 
Added on 27-Mar-14 | Last updated 23-Nov-21
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Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.

Those of us who are not in the asylum, and not demonstrably due there, are nevertheless, no doubt, insane in one or two particulars. I think we must admit this; but I think that we are otherwise healthy-minded. I think that when we all see one thing alike, it is evidence that, as regards that one thing, our minds are perfectly sound. Now there are really several things which we do all see alike; things which we all accept, and about which we do not dispute. For instance, we who are outside of the asylum all agree that water seeks its level; that the sun gives light and heat; that fire consumes; that fog is damp; that six times six are thirty-six, that two from ten leaves eight; that eight and seven are fifteen. These are, perhaps, the only things we are agreed about; but, although they are so few, they are of inestimable value, because they make an infallible standard of sanity. Whosoever accepts them him we know to be substantially sane; sufficiently sane; in the working essentials, sane. Whoever disputes a single one of them him we know to be wholly insane, and qualified for the asylum.

Very well, the man who disputes none of them we concede to be entitled to go at large. But that is concession enough. We cannot go any further than that; for we know that in all matters of mere opinion that same man is insane — just as insane as we are; just as insane as Shakespeare was. We know exactly where to put our finger upon his insanity: it is where his opinion differs from ours.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Christian Science, Book 1, ch. 5 (1907)
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Added on 26-Jun-13 | Last updated 26-Jan-19
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No man practises so well as he writes. I have, all my life long, been lying till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Comment (14 Sep 1773), in James Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)
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Added on 14-Jun-13 | Last updated 29-Dec-21
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A transition from an author’s book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
The Rambler, #14 (5 May 1750)
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Added on 18-Jan-13 | Last updated 26-Jun-22
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Reality cannot be ignored, except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
“Religion and Time” (1943)

Reprinted in Christopher Isherwood, Vedanta for Modern Man (1951).
 
Added on 29-Nov-12 | Last updated 4-Jan-22
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Most people today don’t want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing. They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety. They want answers that are, in effect, escapes.

Louis Kronenberger (1904-1980) American critic, novelist, biographer
“Unbrave New World,” The Cart and the Horse (1964)

An allusion to Proverbs 15:1 "A soft answer turneth away wrath."
 
Added on 21-Nov-12 | Last updated 17-Nov-17
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Prospect is often better than possession.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #3958 (1732)
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TROUT: After all, what is reality anyway? Nothin’ but a
collective hunch.

Jane Wagner (b. 1935) American humorist, writer, director
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Part 1 (1985) [perf. Lily Tomlin]
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Variant: "Reality is a collective hunch."
 
Added on 9-Apr-12 | Last updated 15-Feb-24
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HARRIS: Forget for this moment the smog and the cars and the restaurant and the skating and remember only this. A kiss may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true.

Steve Martin (b. 1945) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, musician
L. A. Story (1991)
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Added on 21-Mar-12 | Last updated 15-Jan-24
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If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact, not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.

Shimon Peres (1923-2016) Polish-Israeli politician, statesman
(Attributed)

Widely attributed to Peres in different sources. Quoted in the Wall Street Journal (7 Feb 2001). Donald Rumsfeld says that Peres made the observation to him.
 
Added on 23-Feb-12 | Last updated 24-Nov-14
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Life does not consist mainly — or even largely — of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one’s head.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Autobiography, Part 1, sec. 28 “New York, January 10, 1906” (2003)

Full text.
 
Added on 30-Jun-11 | Last updated 26-Jan-19
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In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
Conversation (c. 1941), quoted in Hubertus zu Löwenstein, Towards the Further Shore (1968)
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Added on 10-Jun-11 | Last updated 21-Feb-21
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I honestly beleave it iz better tew know nothing than two know what ain’t so.

[I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.]

Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Everybody’s Friend, Or; Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, “Sollum Thoughts” (1874)
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This was Billings signature aphorism, and he used variations on multiple occasions. Variants and evolutions have also been misattributed to Will Rogers, Mark Twain, and Artemus Ward, sometimes from their own paraphrases of Billings. Some variations (usually without specific citations) include:
  • "The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so."
  • "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
  • "You’d better not know so much, than know so many things that ain’t so."
In a similar vein, Billings wrote, "Wisdum don't konsist in knowing more that iz new, but in knowing less that iz false. [Wisdom doesn't consist in knowing more that is new, but in knowing less than is false.]" [Source]

More discussion about this quotation:

 
Added on 26-Jan-11 | Last updated 16-Dec-21
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All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called “facts.” They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) American poet, essayist, scholar
“The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,” Atlantic Monthly (1857-11)
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Collected in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, ch. 1 (1858)
 
Added on 24-Aug-10 | Last updated 4-May-23
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Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) American jurist, Supreme Court Justice
“Natural Law,” Harvard Law Review (1918-11)
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Legal citation: 32 Harvard Law Review 40, 41 (1918).
 
Added on 5-May-10 | Last updated 21-Dec-23
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Sandman 75 p30

SHAKESPEARE: Well, my own fine words notwithstanding, life is no play. We meet people once, and never see them again. There is no shape to events, no point at which we turn to the audience for their praise. No time at which we step behind the stage, to see the actors changing their wigs, and painting their faces, and muttering their lines.

Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British author, screenwriter, fabulist
Sandman, Book 10. The Wake, # 75 “The Tempest” (1996-02)
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Speaking to Morpheus. Final issue of the series.
 
Added on 27-Apr-10 | Last updated 21-Mar-24
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Destiny leads the willing, but drags the unwilling.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #1275 (1732)
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Added on 18-Dec-09 | Last updated 26-Jan-21
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A timid man sees dangers that do not exist.

Publilius Syrus (d. 42 BC) Assyrian slave, writer, philosopher [less correctly Publius Syrus]
Sententiae [Moral Sayings], # 688 [tr. Lyman (1862)]
 
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My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance — but for us, not for God.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
Letter, unsent (1927)

Written (in German) on a letter from a Colorado banker (5 Aug 1927), asking about the question of God. Quoted in H. Dukas, B. Hoffman (eds.), Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1981).
 
Added on 17-Jul-09 | Last updated 20-Feb-21
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All the martyrs in the history of the world are not sufficient to establish the correctness of an opinion. Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, — never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. Truth cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established, or affected by martyrdom. An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator
“The Great Infidels” (1881)
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Added on 12-Jun-08 | Last updated 2-Feb-16
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Manhood begins when we have in any way made truce with Necessity; begins even when we have surrendered to Necessity, as the most part only do; but begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves to Necessity; and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in Necessity we are free.

Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
“Burns,” Edinburgh Review No. 96, Art. 1 (1828-12)
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A review of Lockhart, The Life of Robert Burns (1828).
 
Added on 24-Dec-07 | Last updated 7-Dec-23
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For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Richard Feynman (1918-1988) American physicist
Rogers Commission Report into the Challenger Crash, Appendix F “Personal Observations on Reliability of Shuttle” (Jun 1986)

Full report
 
Added on 10-Oct-07 | Last updated 10-Jan-20
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There is a kind of courtesy in scepticism. It would be an offence against polite conventions to press our doubts too far and question the permanence of our estates, our neighbours’ independent existence, or even the justification of a good bishop’s faith and income. Against metaphysicians, and even against bishops, sarcasm was not without its savour; but the line must be drawn somewhere by a gentleman and a man of the world.

George Santayana (1863-1952) Spanish-American poet and philosopher [Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruíz de Santayana y Borrás]
The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress, Vol. 1 “Reason in Common Sense,” ch. 4 (1905-06)
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Added on 6-Aug-07 | Last updated 16-Mar-20
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I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) English geneticist [John Burden Sanderson Haldane]
“On Being the Right Size,” Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927)

Sometimes attributed to Arthur Stanley Eddington.
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 6-Oct-14
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We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.

[Todos sabemos que el arte no es verdad. El arte es una mentira que no acerca a la verdad, al menos, a aquella verdad que se nos da para entendar.]

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish painter and sculptor
“Picasso Speaks: A Statement by the Artist,” interview with Marius de Zayas, The Arts (May 1923)
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Discussing cubism. Translated in Quote Magazine (21 Sep 1958) as "Art is not truth; art is the lie which makes us see the truth."
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 10-Apr-20
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Insofar as statements of mathematics refer to reality, they are uncertain, and insofar as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

[Insofern sich die Sätze der Mathematik auf die Wirklichkeit beziehen, sind sie nicht sicher, und insofern sie sicher sind, beziehen sie sich nicht auf die Wirklichkeit.]

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
“Geometry and Experience [Geometrie und Erfahrung],” lecture (27 Jan 1921)
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Sometimes given as "Insofar as the statements of geometry speak about reality, they are not certain, and in so far as they are certain, they do not speak about reality. [Sofern die Sätze der Geometrie streng gültig sind, beziehen sie sich nicht auf de Wirklichkeit; sofern sie sich auf dei Wirklichkeit beziehen, sind sie nicht streng gültig.]" -- this version was popularized by Karl Popper, but it was from a misquote by Morris Schlick.
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 19-Feb-21
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Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Experience,” Essays: Second Series (1844)
 
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Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of the facts and evidence.

John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
“Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials” (4 Dec 1770)
 
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The day will happen whether or not you get up.

John Ciardi (1916-1986) American poet, writer, critic
(Attributed)
 
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Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Natural Religion” (1861-02-03)
 
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Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Mel Brooks (b. 1926) American comedic actor, writer, producer [b. Melvyn Kaminsky]
(Attributed)
 
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Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
Lectures on the English Comic Writers, Lecture 1 “On Wit and Humour” (1819)
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Sometimes altered to end "... and what they might have been."
 
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LADY MACBETH: Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what’s done is done.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Macbeth, Act 3, sc. 2, l. 13ff [Lady Macbeth] (1606)
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