Olafur Eliasson Quotes

The senses don't just make sense of life in bold or subtle acts of clarity, they tear reality apart into vibrant morsels and reassemble them into a meaningful pattern.

The layman always means, when he says "reality" that he is speaking of something self-evidently known; whereas to me it seems the most important and exceedingly difficult task of our time is to work on the construction of a new idea of reality.

Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it.

Reality! But what does this word mean? Each has his own reality. I draw upon my personal reality upon the dark side of myself, my unconscious.

There are certain concepts, which exist in English, and are unthinkable, untranslatable into Hebrew and vice versa. Hebrew has a system of tenses, which is, in a big way, different from the English system of tenses, probably different than any European system of tenses, which means a different sense of reality, which means a different concept of time. So, things can be translated, but they become different.

We are taught what reality is in all kinds of ways.

The world is not made of anti-mu mesons, quarks, and photons, and electromagnetic fields. Reality is made of words.

A reality completely independent of the spirit that conceives it, sees it, or feels it, is an impossibility. A world so external as that, even if it existed, would be forever inaccessible to us.

Unconscious means identified totally with thought. You reduce reality to a conceptual reality.

That's just how I see things on a base level: there's so much going on. Or at least I like to have that feeling. It's part of being interested in notions of reality apart from storytelling. I don't know if it has something to do with having an art school education, which makes you aware of the way visuals speak, or makes you trust them more.

The world is mental in some way that we do not yet understand, but that which we're edging toward understanding. And the world is made of language. I can't say that enough. Whenever we get into these discussions about reality, or effects in space and time, we are operating outside this assumption that the world is made of language.

Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

The practice of photography is no longer a means for recording reality. Instead, it has become reality itself

Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras.

Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought. . . . life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence.

The whole universe is composed of name and form. Whatever we see is either a compound of name and form, or simply name with form which is a mental image.

Harry Potter isn’t real? Oh no! Wait, wait, what do you mean by real? Is this video blog real? Am I real if you can see me and hear me, but only through the internet? Are you real if I can read your comment but I don’t know who you are or what your name is or where you’re from or what you look like or how old you are? I know all of those things about Harry Potter. Maybe Harry Potter’s real and you’re not.

Your mind doesn't know the difference between reality and fantasy. Your mindacts on what you feed it. Feed it good thoughts.

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

All art is a vision penetrating the illusions of reality, and photography is one form of this vision and revelation.

Hebrew has a system of tenses, which is, in a big way, different from the English system of tenses, probably different than any European system of tenses, which means a different sense of reality, which means a different concept of time.

The part of my brain that was responsible for creating the world I lived and moved in and for taking the raw data that came in through my senses and fashioning it into a meaningful universe: that part of my brain was down, and out. And yet despite all of this, I had been alive, and aware, truly aware, in a universe characterized above all by love, consciousness, and reality. There was, for me, simply no arguing this fact. I knew it so completely that I ached.

abstract art is not the creation of another reality but the true vision of reality.

The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always in the past and therefore is always unreal. Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality.

World views are social constructions and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully.