Norman Mailer Quotes

What, concretely, is Enlightenment ?" "Seeing Reality as it is," said the Master. "Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?" "Oh, no! Most people see it as they think it is." "What's the difference?" "The difference between thinking you are drowning in a stormy sea and knowing you cannot drown because there isn't any water in sight for miles around.

Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth.

It is no advantage to be near the light if the eyes are closed.

Comes a Time when the blind man takes your hand says DON'T YOU SEE?

Not creating delusions is enlightenment.

The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.

In complete darkness we are all the same, it is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.

You ask 'Are you a man or a demon?' Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are sleeping, and that is the only difference between us.

Only fools imagine they are already awake. How clearly they understand everything! How easily they distinguish this deception from that reality!

It's you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that I'd ceased to see them.

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

Once you realize something, then you can't pretend you don't know it any more.

That which you know, know not; and that which you see, see not.

You know more about me than I do about myself, that's probably true.

Scientology is the study of knowingness. It increases one's knowingness, but if a man were totally aware of what was going on around him, he would find it relatively simple to handle any outnesses in that.

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

We are enslaved by anything we do not consciously see. We are freed by conscious perception.

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.

It is impossible to make people understand their ignorance, for it requires knowledge to perceive it; and, therefore, he that can perceive it hath it not.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.