Rockwell Kent Quotes

Americans see the world as they want it to be rather than the way it is.

If only we can give them faith that mountains can be moved, they will accept the illusion that mountains are moveable, and thus an illusion may become reality.

The age of credulity is every age the world has ever known. Men have always turned from the ascertained, which is limited and discouraging, to the dubious, which is unlimited and full of hope for everybody.

The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.

The truths that seem most truthful, if you look at them from all sides, if you look at them close up, turn out to be either half truths or lies.

While it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.

What looks large from a distance, close up ain’t never that big.

gravity, n. I imagine you saved my life. And then I wonder if I'm just imagining it.

Things don't always look as they seem.

The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.

I want to see everything. I guess the positive version of not seeing or not knowing would be preservation of fantasy.

A thing can only live through a pious illusion.

When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.

I've also learned from [Dalai Lama] that we make the world by how we choose to look at it. In any situation you can make it constructive or dismaying, depending on that powerful computer we call the mind.

Hope clouds observation.

Life is more or less a lie, but then again, that's exactly the way we want it to be.

Life becomes fully understandable only the moment we realise that we are all mad.

Like the actor, authority has faith in its false whiskers. But its deepest faith is in the human illusion. People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as life itself.

I had been taught to look for monsters and devils and I found ordinary people.

What appears is good; what is good appears.

If a person is fearful, it is a fearful time. If a person is hopeful, it's a hopeful time. If you look at world events one way, fear is reasonable. If you look at the world another way, hope is justified.

Fairy's side note: Even people who don't believe in magic really do.

Things may look different to you than they did before. I've had that experience myself. But don't let appearances fool you. There's only one reality.

To philosophize with open eyes is to philosophize in the dark. Only the blind can look straight at the sun.

Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality.