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Reality Quotes

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Reality Quotes

“Some god or Weltgeist has been making a movie out of us for the past six thousand years, and now we have turned a corner on the movie set of reality and have discovered the boards propping up the two-dimensional monuments of human history. The movement of humanism has reached its limit, and now at that limit it is breaking apart into the opposites of mechanism and mysticism and moving along the circumference of a vast new sphere of posthuman thought.”

Source: Passages about Earth: An Exploration of the New Planetary Culture

“To the scientists of the Renaissance, your critic was really your ally, helping you advance upon reality. Critics in science are not like drama critics, determining flops and successes. Criticism to scientists is just another means of finding out whether they're wrong, like running another experiment to see if it confirms or refutes a theory. Along with the advocacy principle of the courtroom, It is one of the best ways human beings have evolved to get closer to the truth.”

Ifs Way Humans Mean Helping Reality Running Human Beings Principles Theory Drama Findings Criticism Scientist Critics Experiments Best Way Openness Allies Renaissance Advocacy Courtroom

Author:Martin Seligman

“Calvin's theocentric irrationalism eventually revealed itself as the cunning to technocratic reason which had to shape its human material. Misery and the poor laws did not suffice to drive men into the workshops of the early capitalistic era. The new spirit helped to supplement external pressures with a concern for wife and child to which the moral autonomy of the introverted subject in reality was tantamount.”

Men Humans Children Reason Reality Law Spirit Poor Moral Wife Subjects Materials Shapes Concern Pressure Misery Eras Autonomy Cunning Workshops Supplements Introverted

Author:Max Horkheimer

“Immediate knowledge tells us only that God is, not what he is. But if God is not an empty Being beyond the stars, he must be present in the communion of human spirits, and, in his relation to these, he is the One Spirit who pervades reality and thought. Hence there can be no final separation between our immediate consciousness of him and our mediated knowledge of reality.”

Ifs Humans Reality Spirit Stars Consciousness Empty Relation Finals Separation Communion Human Spirit Beyond The Stars

Book:Typical Modern Conceptions of God: Or, The Absolute of German Romantic Idealism and of English Evolutionary Agnosticism, with a Constructive Essay

Source: Typical Modern Conceptions of God: Or, The Absolute of German Romantic Idealism and of English Evolutionary Agnosticism, with a Constructive Essay

“Humanity has been sleeping-and still sleeps-lulled within the narrowly confining joys of its little closed loves. In the depths of the human multitude there slumbers an immense spiritual power which will manifest itself only when we have learnt how to break through the dividing walls of our egoism and raise ourselves up to an entirely new perspective, so that habitually and in a practical fashion we fix our gaze on the universal realities.”

“Whatever conclusions we reach about the reality of God, the history of this idea must tell us something important about the human mind and the nature of our aspiration.”

Mind Humans Important Ideas Reality Atheism Positive Atheism Conclusion Aspiration Human Mind

Author:Karen Armstrong

“You are a child of the universe, "fearfully and wonderfully made." In the history of creation, there has never been anyone like you. Accept this reality about yourself- that you are a special, unique human being who has a place on this earth that no one else can fill. Acknowledge yourself as a glorious expression of your loving Creator. This healthy self-love will form the foundation of a joyful and satisfying life. Then, as you love and accept yourself, your inner light will shine outward to bless and heal your fellow human beings.”

“We can begin a discussion of artmaking by noting that from very early (as long ago as 200,000 years), humans have been naturally attracted to the extraordinary as a dimension of experience and that at some point they seem also to have been moved to make the ordinary extraordinary-that is, to shape or elaborate everyday, mundane reality and thereby transform it into something special, different from the everyday.”

“Everything - a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being - is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has unfathomable depth. All we can perceive, experience, think about, is the surface layer of reality, less than the tip of an iceberg. Underneath the surface appearance, everything is not only connected with everything else, but also with the Source of all life out of which it came. Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself.”

Source: A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“The power of the human spirit inspires me. Movies, books, stories, people, anything that reminds us that we are more than just this physical body and our capacity for love and courage can bend reality.”

People Humans Book Stories Body Reality Spirit Inspire Capacity Human Spirit Physical Body Love And Courage Story People

Author:Caity Lotz

“For too long, we've assumed that there is a single template for human nature, which is why we diagnose most deviations as disorders. But the reality is that there are many different kinds of minds. And that's a very good thing.”

Mind Humans Kind Long Different Reality Human Nature Good Things Very Good Disorder Different Kinds Deviation

Author:Jonah Lehrer

“I cannot, will not, withhold from my young readers the harsh realities of human hunger and suffering and loss, but neither will I neglect to plant that stubborn seed of hope that has enabled our race to outlast wars and famines and the destruction of death.”

Humans War Reality Young Suffering Literature Loss Race Reader Destruction Plant Hunger Seeds Neglect Harsh Stubborn Famine Children's Literature Harsh Reality

Book:Read for Your Life #21

Source: Read for Your Life #21

“If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself - as men have done to women, and class has done to class, and nation has done to nation - you may hate it or deify it; but in either case you have denied its spiritual equality and its human reality. You have made it into a thing, to which the only possible relationship is a power relationship. And thus you have fatally impoverished your own reality.”

Source: The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction

“You cannot be naïve about evil. You cannot be naïve to the reality that there are human beings and human situations which have totally identified with the dark side of reality. They are malicious. Realism teaches you to put up appropriate boundaries so that people can't do any more evil than possible. But that doesn't mean you do evil back to them.”

People Humans Mean Reality Evil Sides Dark Human Beings Situation Teach Boundaries Appropriate Realism Dark Side Malicious

Author:Richard Rohr

“How can we accept a situation in which there are no longer orchestras, choruses, libraries or art classes to nourish our children? We need more support for the arts, not less -- particularly to make this rich world available to young people whose vision is choked by a stark reality. How many children, who have no other outlet in their lives for their grief, have found solace in an instrument to play or a canvas to paint on? When you take into consideration the development of the human heart, soul and imagination, don't the arts take on just as much importance as math or science?”

“The city is a cultural invention enforcing on the citizen knowledge of his own nature. And this we do not like. That we are aggressive beings, easily given to violence; that we get along together because we must more than because we want to, and that the brotherhood of man is about as far from reality today as it was two thousand years ago; that reason's realm is small; that we never have been and never shall be created equal; that if the human being is perfectible, he has so far exhibited few symptoms - all are considerations of man from which space tends to protect us.”

“The human intellect is the great truth-organ; realities, as they exist, are the subjects of its study; and knowledge is the result of its acquaintance with the things which it investigates.”

Humans Reality Results Study Subjects Intellect Organs Acquaintance

Author:Moses Harvey

“It's a pity we're still officially living in an age called the Holocene. The Anthropocene - human dominance of biological, chemical and geological processes on Earth - is already an undeniable reality.”

Humans Stills Reality Age Earth Process Climate Change Pity Chemicals Dominance

Author:Paul J. Crutzen

“Specific protection must be granted to human rights defenders and whistleblowers who have in some contexts been accused of being unpatriotic, whereas they perform, in reality, a democratic service to their countries and to the enjoyment of human rights of their compatriots.”

Humans Country Reality Rights Democratic Human Rights Protection Granted Enjoyment Accused Defenders Unpatriotic Whistleblowers

Author:Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

“Among all the many great transitions that have marked the evolution of Western civilisation ... there has been only one-the triumph of Christianity -that can be called in the fullest sense a "revolution": a truly massive and epochal revision of humanity's prevailing vision of reality, so pervasive in its influence and so vast in its consequences as to actually have created a new conception of the world, of history, of human nature, of time, and of the moral good.”

“I guess I'm interested in the behind-the-surface feelings of the human condition, in my own way. I was always struck by the gap - at least in the books I was reading - between what people tell stories about and what I actually feel. I started thinking about a gap between fantasy and reality.”

People Thinking Way Feels Humans Book Stories Feelings Reality Reading My Own Behinds Fantasy Conditions Surface Gaps Human Condition Fantasy And Reality

Author:Signe Baumane

“Steven Spielberg making a Ready Player One movie is going to change the course of human history as pertains to how quickly virtual reality is adopted. He's going to shows the whole world the potential of VR, which is one of the reasons I think he's doing it. Once you have to compose for 360 degrees, and a movie is different every time you watch it depending on where you choose to look, it's like the dawn of a new era.”

Thinking World Humans Looks Different Reason Whole Shows Reality Courses Watches Player Ready Degrees Whole World Eras Dawn You Choose Adopted Human History Virtual Reality New Era

Author:Ernest Cline

“I know there is no danger that I will ever forget that people construct their own reality, that human beings are not led to the same version of events and of the world by the same physical evidence.”

People Knows World Humans Reality Human Beings Forget Events Danger Evidence Versions Constructs

Author:Dale Spender

“the curse of human nature is imagination. When a long anticipated moment comes, we always find it pitched a note too low, for the wings of imagination are crushed into its withering sides under the crowding hordes of petty realities.”

Humans Long Moments Reality Sides Imagination Human Nature Lows Wings Notes Curse Petty Crushed Horde Withering

Author:Gertrude Atherton

“Stories ought not to be just little bits of fantasy that are used to wile away an idle hour; from the beginning of the human race stories have been used - by priests, by bards, by medicine men - as magic instruments of healing, of teaching, as a means of helping people come to terms with the fact that they continually have to face insoluble problems and unbearable realities.”

“The element which is conveniently missing from today's Republican Party is the human one. People's hopes and realities become numbers and words, devoid of personality and easy to erase.”

People Humans Reality Today Easy Party Numbers Missing Personality Republican Elements Republican Party Erase

Author:Steven Weber

“21st century is the century of knowledge and the world has always looked at India whenever knowledge finds prominence. Emergence of knowledge society is no more a slogan but has become a reality. Knowledge will be the fountainhead of all the activities that happen in human development.”

World Humans Reality Happens Education Century Development Activity India 21st Century Slogans Human Development Emergence Fountainhead Prominence

Author:Narendra Modi

“The real poetry and beauty in life comes from an intense relationship with reality in all its aspects. Realism is in fact the ideal we must aspire to, the highest point of human rationality.”

Humans Real Facts Reality Highest Aspect Ideals Intense Realism Aspire Rationality Beauty Of Life

Book:The 50th Law

Source: The 50th Law

“People will always want it [reality TV shows], if it's produced well and if it's telling people's stories - that's all anybody wants: to connect with another human being on a very basic level. If the stories are told well, I think it can continue and continue.”

People Ifs Thinking Want Humans Wells Stories Shows Reality Human Beings Levels Tvs Tv Shows Reality Tv

Author:Cat Deeley

“Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Think things, not words." In words, many see a need for "social justice" to override "the dictates of the market." In reality, what is called "the market" consists of human beings making their own choices at their own cost. What is called "social justice" is government imposition of the notions of third parties, who pay no price for being wrong.”

Thinking Needs Humans Said Reality Government Choices Social Justice Human Beings Party Pay Cost Thirds Social Justice Notion Holmes Being Wrong Imposition Third Parties

Author:Thomas Sowell

“Loving the ideal more than the reality is the cause of all the misery the human species creates for itself.”

Humans Reality Causes Ideals Misery Species Human Species

Author:Dean Koontz

“I'm used to people with very high IQs knowing how to recognize reality, but there's a huge human tendency where it may be instructive to think that whatever you're doing to succeed is all right.”

People Thinking Humans May Reality Used Knowing Huge Succeed Tendencies

Author:Charlie Munger

“Atheists often denounce Christianity as harsh and negative. But in reality it offers a much more positive view of the human person than any competing religion or worldview. It is so appealing that adherents of other worldviews keep free-loading the parts they like best.”

Humans Persons Reality Views Christianity Offers Negative Atheist Harsh Competing Worldview

Book:Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

Source: Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“As a piece of travel literature alone, 'The Ends of the Earth' succeeds in providing a tangible sense of the sweaty, smelly reality of many exotic points on the map, with glimpses of their cruelty but also, occasionally, of beauty and human kindness. As a piece of analysis, it is deeply thought-provoking.”

Humans Ends Reality Earth Literature Kindness Pieces Succeed Cruelty Analysis Maps Thought Provoking Providing Provoking Glimpse Tangible Exotic Human Kindness Smelly

Author:Francis Fukuyama

“To the extent that language forces experiences into categories it is a screen between reality and the human being. In a word, we pay for its benefits... Therefore, while using language, as we must of necessity, we should be aware of its shortcomings.”

Should Humans Reality Language Force Human Beings Pay Benefits Screens Categories Shortcomings

Author:Abraham Maslow

“We need to make equal pay and equal opportunity for women and girls a reality so women's rights are human rights once and for all.”

Needs Humans Reality Girl Opportunity Pay Rights Equal Human Rights Womens Rights Equal Opportunity Equal Pay

Author:Hillary Clinton

“To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you and your obligations to your fellow man.”

Men Humans States Dream Reality Social Human Beings Fellows Obligation Your Dreams Tension Appetite Fellow Man

Author:John Updike

“Don't think about why you question, simply don't stop questioning. Don't worry about what you can't answer, and don't try to explain what you can't know. Curiosity is its own reason. Aren't you in awe when you contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure behind reality? And this is the miracle of the human mind - to use its constructions, concepts, and formulas as tools to explain what man sees, feels and touches. Try to comprehend a little more each day. Have holy curiosity.”

“In the general course of human nature, A power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will.”

Men Humans Reality Courses Power Human Nature Amount Historical Subsistence

Book:The Federalist

Source: The Federalist

“Lust, that state commonly known as 'being in love,' is a kind of madness. It is a distortion of reality so remarkable that it should, by rights, enable most of us to understand the other forms of lunacy with the sympathy of fellow-sufferers. But, paradoxically, mad and suffering as one is, and the heat of the flame, few of us are glad as we feel that passion slip away No, while most people have been at their unhappiest when in love, it is nevertheless the state the human being yearns for above all.”

“The language we're exchanging, the fillings in our teeth, the pavement on the road outside, everywhere you look, for better or for worse, you're going to see evidence that accepting reality is not a human's tendency, and not what we're good at, and not, in my speculation, what God or Natural Selection hired us to do. We've been hired, by this universe, to dream, to aspire, to make things that weren't real real - and because that involves a lot of failure, we're damn good at doing that, too.”

“Rigorously investigated and fearlessly reported, A Crime So Monstrous is a passionate and thorough examination of the appalling reality of human bondage in today's world. In his devastating narrative, Ben Skinner boldly casts light on the unthinkable, yet thriving, modern-day practice of slavery, exposing a global trade in human lives. The abuses detailed in these pages are repugnant, but there is hope to be found: by giving voice to the victims, Skinner helps restore their dignity and makes crucial strides toward closing this shameful chapter in history.”

“The people of Earth are emerging from an amnesiac-like state of collective shock, which has blocked the influx of spiritual knowledge into the human gene pool. And while it is quite obvious to many that “You create your reality”, the vast majority of humans still need to be awakened from the unconsciously controlled trance of powerlessness that they voluntarily took on.”

Source: Path of Empowerment: New Pleiadian Wisdom for a World in Chaos

“Robin [Williams] was a world treasure. As we mourn his tragic death, we must remember him for the great waves of laughter that he was able to illicit from us, how his humor and insights - though they came from a place of pain and uncertainty - connected us and reminded us of how flawed and fragile...how human we are. How we are capable of moments of inspired transcendence and others of unspeakable despair.”