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.
"Rude people will now & then ask me why I think I know so much about Politics. I tell them it's because I'm Smart... But that is a lie: The real reason is because I'm an incurable Gambling addict."
"I think it might be better to have the President sort of like the King of England - or the Queen - and have the real business of the presidency conducted by ... a city manager-type, a Prime Minister, somebody who's directly answerable to Congress, rather than a person who moves all his friends into the White House and does whatever he wants for four years."
"Any candidate who'd offered a real possibility of an alternative to Nixon - someone with a different concept of the presidency - could have challenged him and come very close to beating him."
"I wanted to be an actor. That was my real goal. But I wasn't any good at it, so I wrote my own material and acted through that. That's my idea of fun. I get to be all these things in the songs."
"As an automobile needs premium fuel to operate well, our bodies need real, fresh food to maintain health. Packaged food creates dis-ease. There’s no nourishment in it. The body can only handle it for so long. Then, when you do have a problem, you usually take an over-the-counter or prescription drug. This is another form of poison."
"With portable cameras and affordable data and non-linear digital editing, I think this is a golden age of documentary filmmaking. These new technologies mean we can make complicated, beautifully crafted and cinematic films about real-life stories."
"I'd always envied actors who got to play real people or got to do research. I've always just had these scripts where, I mean not in a bad way, but it was right on the page."
"I would think that would be really liberating to play like a real cad or a villain or something like that, and that's something I haven't gotten the chance to do a lot."
"Coming from the cotton plantation, the southern regions, I was brought up with real nice kids, mannered kids, who would go to church on Sunday."
"Improv Everywhere tramples the lines drawn between spectacle and spectator, theatre and real life, public and private, performance and protest, and reclaims the streets for ordinary people."
"I've had trouble being in relationships and writing. This has been a real problem for me. I don't know if it's because I'm not free to fantasize or create these fantasy things about other people"
"Alice started to cry. It came with no sound, no shuddering, no childlike hysterics, just a soul-deep release that turned into moisture and dripped down her puffy pink cheeks. She touched her tears, frowning. Then she looked up at Julia and whimpered two words before she fell asleep. ‘Real hurts.’"
"Real friends. The kind that don't purposely hurt your feelings or stop liking you for no reason."
"I think I have always wanted to tell stories. My mother was the real catalyst. I kept talking about it and so she pulled out a story I wrote (and illustrated) back in elementary school. She used that as proof that I should be writing and had been doing so unconsciously for years."
"I came out of an electronic music scene that based all its music on software. It was a real boys thing, a real testosterone thing - software and the relationship between music and the software - to the point where it was like a closely guarded secret."
"I don't know if people really know, when you shoot a TV show like you're really family and it really works, it's because it seems real to everybody, even to us. We were all so very close."
