Sunday, October 16, 2011 – Being Realistic
Cynical realism – it is the intelligent man’s best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation. ~ Aldous Huxley, “Time Must Have a Stop”
A democracy, the realistic observer is forced to conclude, is likely to be idealistic in its feelings about itself, but imperialistic about its practice. ~ Irving Babbitt
Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business. ~ Tom Robbins
If someone tells you he is going to make a “realistic decision,” you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad. ~ Mary McCarthy
Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil. ~ Albert Camus
Ostensibly rigorous and realistic, contemporary conservatism is an ideology of denial. Its symbol is a smile button. ~ Christopher Lasch
Realism is a bad word. In a sense everything is realistic. I see no line between the imaginary and the real. ~ Federico Fellini
We have to be realistic. If we don’t win, life will continue. ~ Hayden Fry
Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out. ~ Dawn Powell
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. ~ William Arthur Ward
Reality is a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs. ~ Lily Tomlin
Everything is a dangerous drug except reality, which is unendurable. ~ Cyril Connolly
No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability. ~ Samuel Johnson
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. ~ Philip K. Dick
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. ~ Albert Einstein
The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces. ~ Sigmund Freud
Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. ~ John Lennon
Humankind cannot bear very much reality. ~ T. S. Eliot
Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion. ~ Democritus
It must be hard to be a model, because you’d want to be like the photograph of you, and you can’t ever look that way. ~ Andy Warhol
I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything. ~ John Steinbeck
Some photographers take reality… and impose the domination of their own thought and spirit. Others come before reality more tenderly and a photograph to them is an instrument of love and revelation. ~ Ansel Adams
The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own. ~ Susan Sontag
I paint and sculpt to get a grip on reality… to protect myself. ~ Alberto Giacometti
Better reality than a dream: if something is real, then it’s real and you’re not to blame. ~ Umberto Eco
Few people have the imagination for reality. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith
The formula “two and two make five” is not without its attractions. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground
There’s something beautifully soothing about a fact – even (or perhaps especially) if we’re not sure what it means. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin
Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it. ~ Jane Wagner
To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine. ~ Arthur Eddington
I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal. ~ Groucho Marx
I like reality. It tastes like bread. ~ Jean Anouilh
Reality is the name we give to our disappointments. ~ Mason Cooley
I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality. ~ Salvador Dali
Reality in our century is not something to be faced. ~ Graham Greene
Reality is a sliding door. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Reality means you live until you die. The real truth is nobody wants reality. ~ Chuck Palahniuk
Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye, and deny it. ~ Garrison Keillor
It’s not denial. I’m just selective about the reality I accept. ~ Bill Watterson
There is no real reality to a really imagined life any more. ~ Gertrude Stein
Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. ~ Joseph Conrad
I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it. ~ Slavoj Zizek
Just Above Sunset 