Gerhard Richter Quotes

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

The first man to see an illusion by which men have flourished for centuries surely stands in a lonely place.

The audience knows the truth, the world is simple. It's miserable, solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you got to see something really special.

Image is what people perceive my life to be. It's nothing like the truth.

Everything you see is not always real.

Pictures can be pretty deceptive.

...it's just as bad to live in a place where what you do see isn't there as it is to live in one where what you don't see is.

Seeing is not believing - it is only seeing.

The sun never sets. It is only an appearance due to the observer's limited perspective. And yet, what a sublime illusion it is.

Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them... there is nothing.

Everything is illusion. Even that last sentence.

What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real.

Appearance versus reality? Appearance is reality, God damn it!

Mirrors,' she said, 'are never to be trusted.

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?

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

Success has always been a great liar.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

I realize that nothing's as it seems.

Reality seems so simple. We just open our eyes and there it is. But that doesn't mean it is simple.

Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.

The difference between reality and unreality is that reality has so little to recommend it.

Sometimes my art is just an illusion - or is it?

I always see that there's a - from a philosophical point of view - there's the appearance of things that everybody wants you to think is happening, then there's the reality underneath it.

Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many.