Quotations about Reality

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. ~Philip K. Dick

No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize,
and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability. ~Samuel Johnson

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. ~Abraham Lincoln

Most passport pictures are good likenesses, and it is time we faced it. ~Katharine Brush

There is an objective reality out there, but we view it through the spectacles of our beliefs, attitudes, and values. ~David G. Myers, Social Psychology

Objectivity has about as much substance as the emperor's new clothes. ~Connie Miller

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces. ~Sigmund Freud

How do we know that the sky is not green and we are all colour-blind? ~Author Unknown

What is reality anyway! It's nothing but a collective hunch. ~Jane Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, 1985, performed by Lily Tomlin

What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter?
That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn't everyone look at himself in his own particular way?
Deformations simply do not exist. ~Pablo Picasso

What was once called the objective world is a sort of Rorschach ink blot, into which each culture,
each system of science and religion, each type of personality, reads a meaning
only remotely derived from the shape and color of the blot itself. ~Lewis Mumford, "Orientation to Life," The Conduct of Life, 1951

Gertrude Jekyll, like Monet, was a painter with poor eyesight, and their gardens - his at Giverny in the Seine valley, hers in Surrey - had resemblances that may have sprung from this condition. Both loved plants that foamed and frothed over walls and pergolas, spread in tides beneath trees; both saw flowers in islands of colored light - an image the normal eye captures only by squinting. ~Eleanor Perenyi

What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable. ~Louise Nevelson

It must be hard to be a model, because you'd want to be like the photograph of you, and you can't ever look that way. ~Andy Warhol

I have a very firm grasp on reality! I can reach out and strangle it any time! ~Author Unknown

What happens to the wide-eyed observer when the window between reality and unreality breaks and the glass begins to fly? ~Author Unknown

Listening to both sides of a story will convince you that there is more to a story than both sides. ~Frank Tyger

I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything. ~John Steinbeck

Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you're just a reflection of him? ~Calvin and Hobbes

All the mind's activity is easy if it is not subjected to reality. ~Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past: Cities of the Plain

The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it. ~Francis Bacon

There is a fine line between dreams and reality, it's up to you to draw it. ~B. Quilliam

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check. ~M.C. Escher

There's something beautifully soothing about a fact - even (or perhaps especially) if we're not sure what it means. ~Daniel J. Boorstin

Reality is a palette that humans paint on to let themselves sleep better at night. ~Author Unknown

Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there. ~E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 1960

Faith is a fine invention
When gentlemen can see,
But microscopes are prudent
In an emergency.
~Emily Dickinson, "Faith Is a Fine Invention," Poems, Second Series

Cloquet hated reality but realized it was still the only place to get a good steak. ~Woody Allen

After you've heard two eyewitness accounts of an auto accident, you begin to worry about history. ~Author Unknown

One bright day in the middle of night two dead boys rose to fight. Back to back they faced each other, drew their swords and shot one another. A deaf policeman heard the noise, and saved the lives of the two dead boys. If you don't believe this lie is true, ask the blind man, he saw it too. ~Author Unknown

This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof. ~Neil Gaiman, Books of Magic III

Every time I close the door on reality it comes in through the windows. ~Jennifer Yane

Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it. ~Jane Wagner

As I was sitting in my chair,
I knew the bottom wasn't there,
Nor legs nor back, but I just sat,
Ignoring little things like that.
~Hughes Mearns

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. ~Mahatma Gandhi