George Santayana Quotes

Seeing is not believing - it is only seeing.

Some guys-a lot of guys-don't believe what they are seeing, especially if it gets in the way of what they want to eat or drink or believe. Me, I don't believe in God. But if i saw him, I would. I wouldn't just go around saying, "Jesus, that was a great special effect." The definition of an asshole is a guy who doesn't believe what he's seeing.

There are only two types of people in the world. There are the people who understand that this is a matrix, and then there are the people who buy it lock, stock and barrel.

Why understand when you can believe?

Scientists are the easiest to fool. ... They think in straight, predictable, directable, and therefore misdirectable, lines. The only world they know is the one where everything has a logical explanation and things are what they appear to be. Children and conjurors-they terrify me. Scientists are no problem; against them I feel quite confident.

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.

Many people believe everything others say, even though what they see with their own eyes, should be enough to tell them otherwise.

You must see first before you can believe.

I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.

Credulity without enquiry is a sure way to deceive oneself.

You have to keep your mind as wide-open as your eyes, because almost nothing is what it seems.

The first lesson about trusting your senses is: don't. Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know it's true, that doesn't mean it is true.

Imagination comes from yourself and can deceive you, but vision is a gift from outside yourself - like light striking on your closed eyelids and lifting them to see what's really there.

Seeing-is-believing is a blind spot in man's vision.

Nothing is so easy as to deceive oneself; for what we wish, we readily believe.

If you search for truthfulness, you might as well be blind.

Those who think their intellect will keep them from deception are already deceived.

What people believe prevails over the truth.

People are stupid... They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they're afraid it might be true.

Every human being relies on and is bounded by his knowledge and experience to live. This is what we call “reality”. However, knowledge and experience are ambiguous, thus reality can become illusion. Is it not possible to think that, all human beings are living in their assumptions?

I don't want them to believe me, I just want them to think.

If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world.

People think that they see, but they don't.

All you know is what you think you know, but that isn't always what's real.