Reality quotes
10.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside reality — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The ideal American type is perfectly expressed by the Protestant, individualist, anti-conformist, and this is the type that is in the process of disappearing. In reality there are few left."
"In the spiritual reality of the church, neither Marcel Lefebvre, nor his bishops and priests, nor the people who frequent the SSPX chapels suffered or suffer excommunication. I believe history will record that the intent to impose such an excommunication was invalid and illicit."
"I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man - and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their "differences" in color."
"You seek identity in the midst of indistinguishab le chaos, in sprawling nameless reality."
"Men who no longer can make sure of the reality which they feel and experience through talking about it and sharing it with their fellow-men, live in the same nightmare of loneliness and uncertainty which, in a normal world, is the terrible fate of insanity."
"The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought and sold and bartered away."
"One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation."
"The artist who gives up an hour of work for an hour of conversation with a friend knows that he is sacrificing a reality for something that does not exist."
"I write to understand my circumstances, to sort out the confusion of reality, to exorcise my demons. But most of all, I write because I love it!"
"I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system -- that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up."
"To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is. A pessimistic attitude can never create the calm and serene smile which blossoms on the lips of Bodhisattvas and all those who obtain the way."
"Suffering is basically the mind's refusal to accept reality as it is."
"The passions possess a certain injustice and self interest which makes it dangerous to follow them, and in reality we should distrust them even when they appear most trustworthy."
"People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster."
"Ambitions tend to remain undisturbed by realities."
"What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them."
"Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity."
"Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."
"You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Paty, which is collective and immortal."
"Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice."
