Robert Wilson Quotes

I call myself a naturalist as opposed to an atheist, but there are different styles. Some people just like to be close to nature. And some people actually worship nature, which is too wishy-washy because - like a lot of religious believers - they don't depend on facts.

Naturalism is a counterpart to theism. Theism says there's the physical world and God. Naturalism says there's only the natural world. There are no spirits, no deities, or anything else.

Monotheism makes me grouchy. I don't trust any religion that makes God look like one of the ruling class. I guess I'm a pagan or an animist.

It is on the acceptance or rejection of the theory of the Unity of all in Nature, in its ultimate Essence, that mainly rests the belief or unbelief in the existence around us of other conscious beings besides the Spirits of the Dead.

I was supposed to be the antithesis of Frank.

Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart.

Transcendentalists like Emerson were searching for unity in nature, but resisted what seemed to them the blinkered reliance on deductive reasoning and empirical research enforced by encroaching science.

I am an undiplomatic diplomat.

You get these Satanists types that don't believe in God. OK, so you realize you don't get Satan if you don't get God, right? Or atheists that want to believe in ghosts. Wait, wait, wait. You can't have a two-way go on that. You want to be agnostic, be an atheist, fine. But you don't bring ghosts along with you.

I didn't know you were Catholic.

The "paradox" is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality "ought to be."

I am, indeed, an absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence in any form of supernaturalism—religion, spiritualism, transcendentalism, metempsychosis, or immortality.

Bhuta ia, dewa ia. (Bali expression meaning Man is a demon, man is a god.)

That's why I always question this sense. The feeling of home really requires a lot of trust. It requires you to identify with it, which I always find myself very contradictory to.

It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written.

Everyone is going to see things differently - and that's the way it should be.

Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious.

That's an interesting way to put it: an expectation of who you should be. More often than not, it's described as an expectation of who you are.

Excuse me, I said. I thought you were a trout stream. I'm not, she said.

People want to change everything and, at the same time, want it all to remain the same.

I keep saying, 'Don't change. Be who you are,' but society is really strong in their opinions.

With gymnastics, I know I was making some people in that world mad because they thought that I wasn't focused on gymnastics. They were like, 'Ugh, she won't get off social media, she's always tweeting.' They wanted me to be America's sweetheart. And I think I've never fit into that cookie cutter person.

In order to realize our true self we must be willing to live without being dependent upon the opinion of others.

Intolerance is natural and logical, for in every dissenting opinion lies an assumption of superior wisdom.

You can't say you want things to be simple and then in the next breath ask me to be honest.