David Hume Quotes

There is always a divergence between our perception and what actually exists.

What is reality if it isn't how we feel about things?

Every character sees the world through a framework of education and experience that they're proud experts about. To write a character, find out what they know best, and THEN you'll know how they'll describe a "hot day." Or a "pretty girl."

Everything I've seen becomes real once it becomes memory. The films I've seen are interchangeable with things that have really happened to me.

One will meet, for example, the virtual assumption that what is relative to thought cannot be real. But why not, exactly? Red is relative to sight, but the fact that this or that is in that relation to vision that we call being red is not itself relative to sight; it is a real fact.

I soon discovered, after I became chairman of the NEH, that, for a number of academics, the truth was not merely irrelevant - it no longer existed.

Each person does see the world in a different way. There is not a single, unifying, objective truth. We're all limited by our perspective.

I feel like we want to compartmentalise things and say, 'Well, that's emotional, artistic and subjective, while this is intellectual, objective and measured.' I have difficulty thinking that's the way we experience things.

I am always at a loss at how much to believe of my own stories.

I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

One is certain of nothing but the truth of one's own emotions.

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls... saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

Reality: What a concept!

A feeling is not a fact.

How can the writer know reality if it is that which gets into him and sweeps him away, forever onto the sidelines.

What is truth? What is a true story? Who is telling the truth, and what is truth in this world today?

I think what happens is when we start to look at the facts, everybody has their impression of what truth is.

If I read an article and believed everything a guy said about me, I'd believe I was the best person in the world or the worst person in the world, so I can't go off what some guy says about me. I only go off what happens to me.

We think we receive all that we perceive, but in fact, we actually give the sky its colour.

When a fact begins to resemble whatever you feel is true, it becomes very difficult for anyone to tell the difference between facts that are true and 'facts' that are not.

Truth is splintered.

Perception and reality are two different things.

Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.

You can disagree with another person's opinions. You can disagree with their doctrines. You can't disagree with their experience.