Quotes About Reality

Sometimes paranoids have enemies, and conspiracies are only laughable when they fail to materialize.

Baron Humboldt asked Jefferson, 'Why are these libels allowed? Why is not this libelous journal suppressed, or its editor at least, fined and imprisoned?' The question gave Jefferson a perfect opening. 'Put that paper in your pocket, Baron, and should you hear the reality of our liberty, the freedom of our press, questioned, show this paper, and tell where you found it.

A politician's task was to bring reality and policy into the greatest possible account with the ideal and the principled.

The service--a moved Roosevelt called it the keynote of his meeting with Churchill--was working a kind of magic, which is one of the points of liturgy and theater: to use the dramatic to convince people of a reality they cannot see.

imperfection is the rule, not the exception.

A politician's task was to bring reality and policy into the greatest possible accord with the ideal and the principled.

He was seeking the presidency of a country riven not only by competing interests but by incompatible understandings of reality.

The lesson of Lewis was that sustained personal witness to injustice, borne in the public arena where opinions are shaped, laws enacted, and reality changed, is vital. "John's

The colonization proposals underscored a tragic reality. One could—and many white Americans did—oppose slavery while failing to engage the prospective creation of a multiracial democracy.

The question gave Jefferson a perfect opening. "Put that paper in your pocket, Baron, and should you hear the reality of our liberty, the freedom of our press, questioned, show this paper, and tell where you found it."29

Baron Humboldt asked Jefferson, Why are these libels allowed? Why is not this libelous journal suppressed, or its editor at least, fined and imprisoned? The question gave Jefferson a perfect opening. Put that paper in your pocket, Baron, and should you hear the reality of our liberty, the freedom of our press, questioned, show this paper, and tell where you found it.

In a twenty-first-century hour when the presidency has more in common with reality television or professional wrestling, it's useful to recall how the most consequential of our past presidents have unified and inspired with conscious dignity and conscientious efficiency.

One point of this book is to remind us that imperfection is the rule, not the exception.

He dreamed big but understood that dreams become reality only when their champions are strong enough and wily enough to bend history to their purposes. Broadly put, philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson's genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.

I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?

Practically every prime-time program is populated by people who are just the right sort of mad, and I now knew what the formula was. The right sort of mad are people who are a bit madder than we fear we're becoming, and in a recognizable way. We might be anxious but we aren't as anxious as they are. We might be paranoid but we aren't as paranoid as they are. We are entertained by them, and comforted that we're not as mad as they are.

TV is just troubled people being booed these days.

How you feed your family is not how we feed our family. For real. We're not out here just for the fun and just for the show-and-tell. This is real life." I am finding myself ostentatiously nodding at everything the crack dealers are saying, I suppose in the hope that if the shooting starts they'll remember my nods and make the effort to shoot around me.

It is an awful lot harder, Tony told me, to convince people you're sane than it is to convince them you're crazy. "I

Fiction seemed all about harnessing infinity. In fiction, when you walk into a restaurant and you sit down, there's nobody there and the restaurant doesn't exist. The restaurant is a horrific, never-ending nothingness. So you make scattershot decisions about what the restaurant might look like and the person you might be sitting with.

Tony faking his brain going wrong was a sign that his brain had gone wrong.

madness that didn't involve mania or depression or psychosis. He called it 'manie sans delire' – insanity without delusions.

It is an awful lot harder, Tony told me, to convince people you're sane than it is to convince them you're crazy.

Great sleep dreams seduce and sometimes torture. The best ones can almost break our heart when we awaken from them and find ourselves back…here.