Real quotes
21.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"I'm not trying to sign people up to a creed, I'm much more interested in the people that disagree. These ideas are powerful but this isn't mysticism in the ordinary sense to be protected by mumblings about faith and all that. This is the real thing."
"The real justification for psychedelics is that they feed new data into your model."
"The war on drugs was never meant to be won. Instead, it will be prolonged as long as possible in order to allow various intelligence operations to wring the last few hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit profits from the global drug scam; then defeat will have to be declared. "Defeat" will mean, as it did in the case of the Vietnam War, that the media will correctly portray the true dimensions of the situation and the real players, and that public revulsion at the culpability, stupidity and venality of the Establishment's role will force a policy review."
"Any real ecstasy is a sign you are moving in the right direction."
"In real life, I'm always in tracksuits, and I never wear makeup."
"We must consider how very little history there is--I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were fought, we can depend upon as true; but all the coloring, all the philosophy, of history is conjecture."
"Scarce any man becomes eminently disagreeable but by a departure from his real character, and an attempt at something for which nature or education has left him unqualified."
"When the desire of wealth is taking hold of the heart, let us look round and see how it operates upon than whose industry or fortune has obtained it. When we find them oppressed with their own abundance, luxurious without pleasure, idle without ease, impatient and querulous in themselves, and despised or hated by the rest of mankind, we shall soon be convinced that if the real wants of our condition are satisfied, there remains little to be sought with solicitude or desired with eagerness."
"There is in this world no real delight (excepting those of sensuality), but exchange of ideas in conversation."
"The perfect day for quitting is not real. It will never come, so might as well start today"
"Such is the state of every age, every sex, and every condition: all have their cares, either from nature or from folly; and whoever, therefore, finds himself inclined to envy another, should remember that he knows not the real condition which he desires to obtain, but is certain that by indulging a vicious passion, he must lessen that happiness which he thinks already too sparingly bestowed."
"On Sir Joshua Reynolds's observing that the real character of a man was found out by his amusements. Yes, Sir, no man is a hypocrite in his pleasures."
"Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them."
"Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words."
"Like an image in a dream the world is troubled by love, hatred, and other poisons. So long as the dream lasts, the image appears to be real; but on awaking it vanishes."
"Among the numerous stratagems by which pride endeavors to recommend folly to regard, there is scarcely one that meets with less success than affectation, or a perpetual disguise of the real character by fictitious appearances."
"I think of my books now as suspense novels, usually with a love story incorporated. They're absolutely a lot harder to write than romances. They take more plotting and real character development."
"I just can't vote to go to war unless I think there's a real clear-cut American purpose in the war, that we're going to win and that we're not going fight for stalemate."
"I think that, most importantly, when I see issues of war, I see them in a personal vein, and I am reluctant to go to war unless there's a real, valid American interest because I've seen the wounded soldiers."
"I am probably going to pay for this at some point, but I think pretty much everyone I come into contact with is fair game. So I use real names sometimes if the poem says it happened like that. It feels right if I use the real person I reference. Of course the poem is all lies, even when it's true, so I guess I can sleep at night."
