Reality Quotes - Page 348

If the Creator were to bestow a new set of senses upon us, or slightly remodel the present ones, leaving all the rest of nature unchanged, we should never doubt we were in another world, and so in strict reality we should be, just as if all the world besides our senses were changed.

Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country. It's kleptocracy, it's corruption, it's a nation that's really only dependent upon oil and gas for their economy.

The most lively fancy aided by the strongest description cannot equal the reality of the opera.

One of the challenges to our nation today is overcoming the notion that art is kind of a nice-to-have, when in reality art is a need-to-have.

Music is escapism from the grim realities of life. But then as soon as you escape into the music, from my point of view, I found I had to deal with the very things that I thought I was running away from. I wanted to hit those problems on the head and resolve them. So they didn't remain as issues in my psyche.

The fact is that the camera is literal if anything, which gives it something in common with a thermometer... Often the tension that exists between the pictorial content of a photograph and its record of reality is the picture's true beauty. There is sleight of hand in photography... you make the viewer think he's seeing everything while at the same time you make him realize he's not. I try to make my pictures seem reasonable and then, at the last minute, pull the rug from beneath the viewer's feet, very gently so there's a little thrill.

Nothing is real.

But for me at any rate it was all part of dissolving the God trip or father-figure trip. Facing up to reality instead of always looking for some kind of heaven.

So many people, my friends and family, were all saying, "You're so funny. Why don't you become a comedian or an actor?" But it wasn't a reality at the time, it wasn't a road that Latin people were accepted in.

The closer you get to reality, the harder it is to make it look convincing to the audience. That's why I tend to make things [films] that are a little bit more caricature.

Once the reality sets in of a superhuman intelligence being in control of every aspect of the infrastructures we rely upon for everyday life, we will simply have to try to come to an accommodation with that entity.

At some point, the world is going to have to bite the bullet and accept a huge downsizing in its way of life to bring the assets-to-debt ratio back in touch with reality.

Reality is a wave function traveling both backward and forward in time.

Those who had been riding the upward wave decide now is the time to get out. Those who thought the increase would be forever find their illusion destroyed abruptly, and they, also, respond to the newly revealed reality by selling or trying to sell. And thus the rule, supported by the experience of centuries: the speculative episode always ends not with a whimper but with a bang.

And there was a deeper, less visible effect of the Truman loyalty program. Seeing its consequences for certain individuals and fearing its intrusion on their own lives, many in the government sought protection by strongly asserting their anti-Communism. In the public action that ensued, policy was based not on reality but, instinctively or deliberately, on personal caution...Those who urged a militant and sometimes military anti-Communism were considered sound, trustworthy and personally safe; those who questioned such a course were politically unsafe, possible even slightly disloyal.

Talk of revolution is one of avoiding reality.

The reality is that nearly 80 percent of the world's purchasing power lies outside the United States, and if we don't tap those markets, others will.

The reality is that there is an enormous value to gut-check instinctive decision-making in the world that is not hampered by reams and reams of research and complexity.

We cannot wholly rely, as though it were Medieval times, [on the notion that] the only reality is what we see in front of us. There are germs. There are changes that are happening in our planet's ecology that are happening over such a long period of time that we cannot see the changes.

That catharsis is really the core of the incredibly personal comedy of Louis C.K. or Marc Maron or whatever. And look - I find it fascinating that I'm sitting here talking about some of these things, and not to low tones, and my kids are in the other room. I have to trust that if they hear what I'm saying and they have questions about it, I'll be able to answer it, and that's fine. But that's part of the scariness of it - the reality of opening up my own life and my own feelings.

The reality is that if you want to be in a reality-based community, you've got to respect reality and that means calling it bad when you see the past ahead and it doesn't look good and acknowledging when it's going to work.

Reality, while generally probable, is not always interesting.

I think the political reality for the Democratic Party is, you know, there are two sides. There's one side saying that we weren't liberal enough and another side saying we're too liberal. I think they're both right.

He is obviously an American hero. John McCain is a vanishing breed. He is an iconoclast, he is in his own mind and often in reality a maverick. And I think, you know, you having spent the time that you spent in the Senate know that this is true.

What is reality? Is it not merely a term for the philosopher to conjure with, behind which he may craftily conceal his ignorance?