Quotes About Reality

Ahora se daba cuenta de que el genio de aquellos que habían redactado la Constitución consistía en prevenir la debilidad de carácter del hombre y la presencia constante del mal en el mundo y convertir la libertad individual en la realidad legal a la que el país tenía que volver una y otra vez.

Finally we are being told the truth: life isn't always easy and pleasant. We already know this to be true, but somehow we tend to go through life thinking that there is something wrong with us when we experience sadness, grief, and physical and emotional pain. The first truth points out that this is just the way it is. There is nothing wrong with you: you have just been born into a realm where pain is a given.

In mathematics, in physics, people are concerned with what you say, not with your certification. But in order to speak about social reality, you must have the proper credentials, particularly if you depart from the accepted framework of thinking. Generally speaking, it seems fair to say that the richer the intellectual substance of a field, the less there is a concern for credentials, and the greater is concern for content.

Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.

I mean, you can pretend up to a certain point that the world has infinite resources and that it's an infinite wastebasket-but at some point you're going to run into the reality, which is that that isn't true.

The picture of the world that's presented to the public has only the remotest relation to reality. The truth of the matter is buried under edifice after edifice of lies upon lies. It's all been a marvellous success from the point of view in deterring the threat of democracy, achieved under conditions of freedom, which is extremely interesting.

The term physical is just kinda like an honorific word, kinda like the word 'real' when we say 'the real truth'. It doesn't add anything, it just says 'this is serious truth'. So to say that something is 'physical' today just means 'you gotta take this seriously'.

Si nos tomamos la molestia de distinguir realidad y doctrina en el sistema neoliberal, encontramos, en suma, que los principios políticos y económicos vigentes en la realidad son muy diferentes a los que se proclaman.

La realtà è diversa, ma sgradita, e dunque poco raccontata.

It's also important here to distinguish between what's possible to know and understand firsthand from information that must be delivered second-, third-, fourth-hand by a various media; that is, mediated information, which is more and more the case. I mean, we know less and less about the world firsthand than we do through other sources of information.

truisms at least have the merit of being true, which distinguishes them from a good deal of political discourse. And

lo que debemos hacer es tratar de entender la verdad acerca del mundo. Y la verdad acerca del mundo es generalmente bastante fea.

The most ominous danger we face comes from the marginalization and destruction of institutions, including the courts, academia, legislative bodies, cultural organizations and the press that once ensured that civil discourse was rooted in reality and fact, helped us distinguish lies from truth, and facilitated justice" (2017).

Then he quotes Hannah Arendt from her book The Origins of Totalitarianism: "The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies with factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed" (quoted in Hedges 2017).

You always think that a bolt of lightning is going to strike and your parents will magically change into the people you wish they were, or back into the people they used to be.

We know in one part of our brains that we are all going to die, but on some level we don't quite believe it.

checked out the mirror to see if I looked older, or sadder, or wiser. I didn't; I just looked tired.

Death doesn't really feel eventual or inevitable. It still feels... avoidable somehow. But it's not. We know in one part of our brains that we are all going to die, but on some level we don't quite believe it.

I can't understand why anyone would write fiction when what actually happens is so amazing.

There are many problems that come with owning a restaurant, not the least of which is that you have to eat there all the time. Giving up the fantasy that you want to own a restaurant is probably the last Piaget stage.

According to my dermatologist, the neck starts to go at forty-three, and that's that...The neck is a dead give-away. Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth. You have to cut open a redwood tree to see how old it is, but you wouldn't have to if it had a neck.

Now I know that there's no such thing as the truth. That people are constantly misquoted. That news organizations are full of conspiracy (and that, in any case, ineptness is a kind of conspiracy). That emotional detachment and cynicism get you only so far.

I'm old. I am sixty-nine years old. I'm not really old, of course. Really old is eighty. But if you are young, you would definitely think that I'm old.

Or, as E. L. Doctorow once wrote, far more succinctly "I am led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction; there is only narrative.