A Quote by Sam Harris
Unlike statements of fact, which require no further work on our part, lies must be continually protected from collisions with reality.
Related Quotes
The percept is the reality. It is not in propositional form. But the most immediate judgment concerning it is abstract. It is therefore essentially unlike the reality, although it must be accepted as true to that reality. Its truth consists in the fact that it is impossible to correct it, and in the fact that it only professes to consider one aspect of the percept.
Like legend and myth, magic fades when it is unused - hence all the old tales of elfin kingdoms moving further and further away from our world, or that magical beings require our faith, our belief in their existence, to survive. That is a lie. All they require is our recognition.
Our business is to wake up. We have to find ways in which to detect the whole of reality in the one illusory part which our self-centered consciousness permits us to see. We must not live thoughtlessly, taking our illusion for the complete reality, but at the same time we must not live too thoughtfully in the sense of trying to escape from the dream state. We must be continuously on watch for ways in which we may enlarge our consciousness.
What I want to show in my work is the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality. I am seeking for the bridge which leans from the visible to the invisible through reality. It may sound paradoxical, but it is in fact reality which forms the mystery of our existence.
Lies 1: There is only the present and nothing to remember. Lies 2: Time is a straight line. Lies 3: The difference between the past and the futures is that one has happened while the other has not. Lies 4: We can only be in one place at a time. Lies 5: Any proposition that contains the word 'finite' (the world, the universe, experience, ourselves...) Lies 6: Reality as something which can be agreed upon. Lies 7: Reality is truth.
We depend on our words... Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous character... We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly.
Those who know in their hearts that they are not really necessary -- and are entirely replaceable-- must inevitably be tempted to misrepresent the nature of their work and build up a false notion of its importance. A further alienation from truth takes place, a further loss of contact with reality. And one thing we can be sure of is that self-deception, whether on the level of the wind and the rain or on that of spiritual reality, must always come up against the real sooner or later, and that its destruction is very painful.
There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet.
The fact is that pictures which are unlike reality ought not be approved, and even if they are technically fine, this is no reason why they should offhand be judged to be correct, if their subject is lacking in the principles of reality carried out with no violations.
That's the nature of the intelligence business. You have to work with what you can get your hands on, but it is.. and in fact it's more an art form than it is a science, and you have to continually work the problem, continually try.
One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.
The lens, that allegedly impartial eye, permits all possible distortions of reality... The importance of photography lies not only in the fact that it is a creation, but above all in the fact that it is one of the most effective means of shaping our ideas and influencing our behavior.
... knowledge must continually be renewed by ceaseless effort, if it is not to be lost. It resembles a statue of marble which stands in the desert and is continually threatened with burial by the shifting sand. The hands of service must ever be at work, in order that the marble continue to lastingly shine in the sun. To these serving hands mine shall also belong.
The demands of our reality function require that we adapt to reality, that we constitute ourselves as a reality and that we manufacture works which are realities. But doesn't reverie, by its very essence, liberate us from the reality function? From the moment it is considered in all its simplicity, it is perfectly evident that reverie bears witness to a normal useful irreality function which keeps the human psyche on the fringe of all the brutality of a hostile and foreign non-self.
Let us always keep before our eyes the fact that here on earth we are on a battlefield and that in paradise we shall receive the crown of victory; that this is a testing-ground and the
prize will be awarded up above; that we are now in a land of exile while our true homeland is Heaven to which we must continually aspire.
I had come to the conclusion a long time ago that there was no escape from the labyrinth of contradictions in which we live except by an entirely new road, unlike anything hitherto known or used by us. But where this new or forgotten road began I was unable to say. I already knew then as an undoubted fact that beyond the thin film of false reality there existed another reality from which, for some reason, something separated us. The 'miraculous' was a penetration into this unknown reality.
Related Authors
Brian Tracy Quotes
American
Author
Cassandra Clare Quotes
American
Author
Frederick Lenz Quotes
American
Author
Henry David Thoreau Quotes
American
Author
J. K. Rowling Quotes
English
Author
Jodi Picoult Quotes
American
Author
John Green Quotes
American
Author
Joyce Meyer Quotes
American
Author
Marianne Williamson Quotes
American
Author
Neil Gaiman Quotes
British
Author
Richelle Mead Quotes
American
Author
Rick Riordan Quotes
American
Author
Robert Kiyosaki Quotes
American
Author
Stephen King Quotes
American
Author
Terry Pratchett Quotes
English
Author
Virginia Woolf Quotes
British
Author