Real quotes
21.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside real — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our epoch."
"People respect us, they love us and they're entertained by us, so it's like when you trust somebody on that level, it's a lot easier to speak some real knowledge into their minds."
"Real Democrats don't make promises they can't keep."
"This sort of adoration of the real is but a heightening of the beau ideal."
"Out in the world I go! Muggers! Autograph hounds! Junkies! People with real jobs! Maybe an easy lay! United Nation functionaries and diplomats!"
"The rest of the Third World people are seeing, that the country can make a real change. No changing or trading one master for another. The only real change would be to socialize the means of production and this is what's happening in Jamaica."
"Yes, I'm a real fighter. But I often ended up empty-handed."
"It's a real pleasure to go to work when you're in the most extraordinary surroundings, and working with people who are young and interested and creatively keen."
"I felt a tremendous distance between myself and everything real."
"A real gentleman is as polite to a little girl as to a woman."
"Life is always trying to love us, but we need to be open if we are to see it. Fear shows us one world; and love shows us another world. We decide which world is real. And we decide which world we want to live in."
"I never had to say to myself, 'OK now, I've got to grow up and work for a bank, or go and sell real estate.' I never had to make that kind of break."
"Sade's stuff is real deceptive. She's got stuff about prostitutes, poverty and people on the streets."
"I have witnessed firsthand the anguish of this humanitarian tragedy - in Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and other conflict and post-conflict zones. The destruction of lives and hopes, the emotional trauma, and the economic, social, and political marginalization of the displaced, the human insecurity, with real and potentially devastating consequences over generations, in ever-widening arenas of conflict. We can and must ensure the human rights of the displaced. That begins by making their voices heard."
"Do you think it interests me that this painting represents two figures? These two figures existed, they exist no more. The sight of them gave me an initial emotion, little by little their real presence grew indistinct they became a fiction for me, then they disappeared, or rather, were turned into problems of all kinds. For me they are no longer two figures but shapes and colours, don't misunderstand me, shapes and colours, though, that sum up the idea of the two figures and preserve the vibration of their existence."
"He doesn't want you to be real, and to think and to live. He doesn't love you. But I love you. I want you to have your own thoughts and ideas and feelings, even when I hold you in my arms."
"The real enemy of happiness is the mind's fixations and delusions... If you have the right mind, you can overcome anything - you can be happy, no matter what."
"The source of peace is within us; so also the source of war. And the real enemy is within us, and not outside. The source of war is not the existence of nuclear weapons or other arms. It is the minds of human beings who decide to push the button and to use those arms out of hatred, anger or greed."
"We are finite and God will not call us everywhere or to support every worthy cause. And real needs are not far from us."
"Once in those very early days my brother brought into the nursery the lid of a biscuit tin which he had covered with moss and garnished with twigs and flowers so as to make it a toy garden or a toy forest. That was the first beauty I ever knew. What the real garden had failed to do, the toy garden did. It made me aware of nature-not, indeed, as a storehouse of forms and colors but as something cool, dewy, fresh, exuberant....As long as I live my imagination of Paradise will retain something of my brother's toy garden."
