Rene Descartes Quotes

Seeing is not always believing.

Nothing is real.

I often tend to think that things are not what they seem.

Not seeing is half-believing.

Society? Can we trust us? Doubt it. We're probably not even real, as was revealed in the popular documentary The Matrix. That bloke next door? Made of pixels. Your co-workers? Pixels. You? One pixel. One measly pixel. You haven't even got shoes, for Christ's sake.

Never believe your eyes

How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one's senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality.

Seeing is not believing - it is only seeing.

A lie was something that hadn't happened but might just as well have.

Nothing in this world is real

To hear is to doubt, to see is to be deceived, but to feel is to believe.

I'm not completely sure we aren't all living in a hallucination now.

In Shakespeare's world, characters cannot trust their senses. Is the ghost in Hamlet true and truthful, or is it a demon, tempting young Hamlet into murderous sin? Is Juliet dead or merely sleeping? Does Lear really stand at the edge of a great cliff? Or has the Fool deceived him to save his life?

I realize that nothing's as it seems.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?

Belief and seeing: They are both often wrong.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the universe is the merest illusion.

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.

We are led to believe a lie When we see not through the eye.

If we have no other reality beyond the illusion, you too must not count overmuch on your reality as you feel it today, since, like that of yesterday, it may prove an illusion for you tomorrow.

Did you ever think that maybe what you see isn't really what's true?

You’re here,” I continued. “At least you look as if you’re here. But maybe you aren’t. Maybe it’s just your shadow. The real you may be someplace else. Or maybe you already disappeared, a long, long time ago. I reach out my hand to see, but you’ve hidden yourself behind a cloud of probablys. Do you think we can go on like this forever?

The two principles of truth, reason and senses, are not only both not genuine, but are engaged in mutual deception. The senses deceive reason through false appearances, and the senses are disturbed by passions, which produce false impressions.

And nothing is, but what is not.