Quotes About Reality

Without man and his potential for moral progress, the whole of reality would be a mere wilderness, a thing in vain, and have no final purpose.

What might be said of things in themselves, separated from all relationship to our senses, remains for us absolutely unknown

Experience may teach us what is, but never that it cannot be otherwise.

P]hysics... [is] the philosophy of nature, so far as it is based on empirical laws.

Give me matter, and I will construct a world out of it!

what things may be in themselves, I know not, and need not know because a thing is never presented to me otherwise than as a phenomena.

For if we regard space and time as properties that must, as regards their possibility, be found in things in themselves, [...] then we really cannot blame the good Bishop Berkeley for degrading bodies to mere illusion. Nay, even our own existence, which would thus be made dependent on the self-subsistent reality of a non-entity such as time, would, along with this time, be changed into mere illusion - an absurdity of which hitherto no one has been guilty.

But freedom is a mere Idea, the objective reality of which can in no wise be shown according to the laws of nature, and consequently not in any possible experience; and for this reason it can never be comprehended or understood, because we cannot support it by any sort of example or analogy.

How things may be in themselves, without regard to the representations through which they affect us, is utterly beyond the sphere of our cognition.

I do not say that things in themselves possess a quantity, that their reality possesses a degree, their existence a connection of accidents in a substance, etc. This nobody can prove, because such a synthetic connection from mere concepts, without any reference to sensuous intuition on the one side or connection of such intuition in a possible experience on the other, is absolutely impossible.

Everything goes past like a river and the changing taste and the various shapes of men make the whole game uncertain and delusive. Where do I find fixed points in nature, which cannot be moved by man, and where I can indicate the markers by the shore to which he ought to adhere?

Gustavo Solivellas dice: Vemos las cosas, no como son, sino como somos nosotros (Kant)

The real is not given to us, but put to us by way of a riddle.

Gustavo Solivellas dice: La felicidad no brota de la razón sino de la imaginación (Immanuel Kant)

B626 Sein ist offenbar kein reales Prädikat, d.i. ein Begriff von irgend etwas, was zu dem Begriffe eines Dinges, oder gewisser Bestimmungen an sich selbst... B627 Und so enthält das Wirkliche nichts mehr, als das bloss Mögliche. Hundert wirkliche Thaler enthalten nicht das mindeste mehr, als hundert mögliche... Aber in meinem Vermögenszustande ist mehr bei hundert wirklichen Thalern, als bei dem blossen Begriffe derselben, ( d.i. ihrer Moeglichkeit ).

Things which we see are not by themselves what we see.

The crux of his new philosophy is this: What assurance do we have that our a priori (rational) thoughts have in reality a relation to objects that exist apart from us?

Space is an ineluctable modality of our perception (IMMANUEL KANT) …. Or perhaps is it, more essentially and explicitly than ever, ever-providing modalities? (Irene Doura-Kavadia)

From such crooked timber as humankind is made of nothing entirely straight can be made.

are—and yet refer to something permanent, which must, therefore, be distinct from all my representations and external to me, the existence

Was nicht ein Gegenstand der Erfahrung sein kann, dessen Erkenntniß wäre hyperphysisch, und mit dergleichen haben wir hier gar nicht zu thun, sondern mit der Naturerkenntniß, deren Realität durch Erfahrung bestätigt werden kann, on sie gleich a priori möglich ist und vor aller Erfahrung hervorgeht.

We know nothing but our manner of perceiving [objects], a manner which is peculiar to us, and not necessarily shared by every being, even though it must be shared by every human being.

What things may be in themselves we do not know, nor need we care to know, because, after all, a thing can never come before me otherwise than as an appearance.

Thus, if materialism is inadequate to explain my existence, then spiritualism is equally insufficient for this purpose.