George Berkeley Quotes

[D]oes the real world have any more substance than visions and hallucinations when we're having them? At any given moment, what's happening in our minds is all and everything that happens.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth - in a word, all those bodies which compose the frame of the world - have not any subsistence without a mind.

Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.

For Berkeley (normal) vision is a language whereby God tells us about the tangible world. But prior to having experience of the tangible world, the visual language would be as meaningless as an utterly alien language. It would convey no meaning to the sighted mind.

Thought is the measure of life.

If I use the word consciousness, in our lab, in our institute, what we mean is the special quality of mind, the special features that exist in the mind, that permit us to know, for example, that we, ourselves, exist, and that things exist around us.

The table I write on I say exists ... meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it.

The material universe exists only in the mind.

The world is chiefly a mental fact. From mind it receives the forms of time and space, the principle of casuality[sic], color, warmth, and beauty. Were there no mind, there would be no world.

'Tell me one last thing,' said Harry. 'Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?' Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry's ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure. 'Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?'

The physical universe that you see is all in your mind. When you turn your mind off, or become unconscious, the physical universe, for you, disappears. Then, when you awaken your consciousness, the universe reappears magically. Quite simple really - no thoughts on your part, no physical world. As Walt Whitman succinctly stated: "The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual - namely to You." Without your mind to process it, the universe simply disappears into nothingness.

This whole world is mind's world, the product of the mind.

The world in your mind is as real as the world outside of it.

You say they create their own reality," said Veronika, "but what is reality?

The self... is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.

All this had always been and he had never seen it; he was never present. Now he was present and belonged to it. Through his eyes he saw light and shadows; through his mind he was aware of moon and stars.

Time and space are just projections of your consciousness.

I don't think the world objectively exists the way we think it exists. There's a constant sort of storytelling process.

Our life is a creation of our mind.

How much of what we call 'reality' is actually out there or rather within our own head?

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, doesn't it just lie there and rot?

The physical body is conceived and constructed in consciousness as are time and space. All happens within our self.

Clearly I know, the mind is mountains, rivers, and the great earth; sun, moon, and stars.