Quotes About Reality

It is manifest that behind the so-called curtain which is supposed to conceal the inner world, there is nothing to be seen unless we go behind it ourselves, as much in order that we may see, as that there may be something behind there which can be seen.

The significance of that 'absolute commandment', know thyself — whether we look at it in itself or under the historical circumstances of its first utterance — is not to promote mere self-knowledge in respect of the particular capacities, character, propensities, and foibles of the single self. The knowledge it commands means that of man's genuine reality — of what is essentially and ultimately true and real — of spirit as the true and essential bein

Everything turns on grasping and expressing the True, not only as Substance, but equally as Subject.

is—it is necessary to come first to an understanding concerning knowledge, which is looked upon as the instrument by which to take possession of the Absolute, or as the means through which to get a sight of it.

To the philosopher, infinity, knowledge, movement, empirical laws, etc., are things just as familiar {as family relations}. And as her dead brother and uncle are present to the peasant woman, thus Plato, Spinoza, etc. are present to the philosopher. The one has as much reality as the other, but the latter are immortal.

what is rational is real and what is real is rational

In the case where the self is merely represented and ideally presented (vorgestellt), there it is not actual: where it is by proxy, it is not.

Aber die Philosophie soll keine Erzählung dessen sein, was geschieht, sondern eine Erkenntnis dessen, was wahr darin ist, und aus dem Wahren soll sie ferner das begreifen, was in der Erzählung als ein bloßes Geschehen erscheint.

Just as we often say of virtue that the greatest witness for its reality is the semblance that hypocrisy borrows from it, so Intellect cannot keep Reason off.

The real is the rational, and the rational is the real.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked awful, but I always look awful in the mirror. I keep myself going with the firm belief that my real face is much better looking.

Just 'cause the cat had her kittens in the oven don't make them biscuits.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

The only things we perceive are our perceptions.

truly my opinion is, that all our opinions are alike vain and uncertain. what we approve today, we condemn tomorrow. we keep a stir about knowledge, and spend our lives in the pursuit of it, when, alas! we know nothing all the while: nor do i think it possible for us to ever know anything in this life. our faculties are too narrow and too few. nature certainly never intended us for speculation.

What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.

Esse est percipi.

THE SECOND DIALOGUE

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.

The truth sticks in our throats with all the sauces it is served with: it will never go down until we take it without any sauce at all.

Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.

Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.