William Gibson Quotes

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

People b'lief the world is built so an tellin em it ain't so caves the roofs on their heads'n'maybe yours.

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

You think you know someone. But mostly you just know what you want to know.

If you have it and you know you have it, then you have it. If you have it and don't know you have it, you don't have it. If you don't have it but you think you have it, then you have it.

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.

There's so many different types of illusions; our lives are an illusion in a sense.

Generally, a lot of the things people think are made up are real, a lot of the things people think are real are made up, a lot of the things people think are spontaneous are cleverly faked, and a lot of the things people think are fake are spontaneous.

An error becomes an error when born as truth.

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.

If you can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves. The recognition of illusion is also its ending. Its survival depends on your mistaking it for reality.

Illusions are the truths we live by until we know better.

The world isn't what you think it is.

Everyone tries to create a world he can live in, and what he can't use he often can't see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn't correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn't try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than what we invent.

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

Reality is what trips you up when you walk around with your eyes closed.

That which is cannot be true.

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

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.

The world we live in is vastly different from the world we think we live in.

It is fun to try figure out the things that really are real and the things that aren't.

What difference is there, do you think, between those in Plato's cave who can only marvel at the shadows and images of various objects, provided they are content and don't know what they miss, and the philosopher who has emerged from the cave and sees the real things?

Belief and seeing: They are both often wrong.

I often wonder which is best, to be honest about what you know in this world, or to continue to deny you know it and thereby fool yourself into believing that it does not exist!

I like illusion when it is so convincing that we might as well see reality this way - I like to present to our belief system something that is convincing, that 'we know not to be.'