William James Quotes

There is only one reality - the reality knowable to reason. And if man does not choose to perceive it, there is nothing else for him to perceive; if it is not of this world that he is conscious, then he is not conscious at all

People and nations act on the basis of what they feel rather than what is real.

Our perceptions are limited. Our brains distort the truth. So do we ever know what is real? That is the mission of science. To probe deep into the massive puzzle box of nature to find its ultimate truths.

The information is there, you may not perceive it, but it does affect the lower orders. There are places where it just peaks out. It is like the color spectrum, it just simply goes beyond where you can perceive it any more but it is still going on. If you decide that the invisible continuation of the color spectrum is important to your sense of what reality is about, then you would want to extend it. Extend it as far as you could, as an aesthetic.

The world consists of images on a screen, and consciousness is the steady light that emanates from the projector.

The conception of objective reality ... has thus evaporated ... into the transparent clarity of mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior.

One way of saying that is that there is an objective reality beyond our mind. A way to think of this in a philosophic sense is to look between the two great extremes: the idealist philosophy that says mind and consciousness is the only thing and that matter is simply an illusion, or a Maya, the product of mind; and the other extreme, a strict materialist determinism, which says that mind and consciousness is a secondary phenomenon of the collision of matter.

People at large are becoming more aware that there is much more to reality and to themselves than what meets the eye.

There is always a divergence between our perception and what actually exists.

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.

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.

Each of us lives in multi-dimensions. We can choose where to focus our attention, and wherever that focus goes, a new reality opens up. When I speak of other dimensions, I'm referring to domains of consciousness.

Our beliefs and our attention are the same fact.

Existence has no personality. No question of personalities, it simply is whatsoever it is. To experience existence as it is, is to know the truth.

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.

You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Paty, which is collective and immortal.

It is the bane and the balm of individual perception that 'objective' reality is seen through the filter of each person's temperament.

Physics is an attempt conceptually to grasp reality as something that is considered to be independent of its being observed. In this sense one speaks of physical reality.

One must speak for a struggle for a new culture, that is, for a new moral life that cannot but be intimately connected to a new intuition of life, until it becomes a new way of feeling and seeing reality

An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true

Our perceiving self is nowhere to be found in the world-picture, because it itself is the world-picture.

Those who tell you that man is unable to perceive a reality undistorted by his senses, mean that they are unwilling to perceive a reality undistorted by their feelings. "Things as they are" are things as perceived by your mind; divorce them from reason and they become "things as perceived by your wishes.

Consciousness does not just passively reflect the objective material world; it plays an active role in creating reality itself.

An independant reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor to the agencies of observation.

Poetry increases the feeling for reality.