Charles Sanders Peirce Quotes

What is reality, anyway? Just a collective hunch.

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

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls... saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

Imagination comes from yourself and can deceive you, but vision is a gift from outside yourself - like light striking on your closed eyelids and lifting them to see what's really there.

All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right; because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, to wit, real matter of fact; and are not always conformable to that standard.

[D]oes the real world have any more substance than visions and hallucinations when we're having them? At any given moment, what's happening in our minds is all and everything that happens.

This is not remarkable, for, as we know, reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events. We seem here to have a paradox: that the reality of an event, which is not real in itself, arises from the other events which, likewise, in themselves are not real. But this only affirms what we must affirm: that direction is all. And only as we realize this do we live, for our own identity is dependent upon this principal.

To the critical intelligence, nothing is left of absolute reality.

We never see a tree except through the image that we have of it, the concept of that tree; but the concept, the knowledge, the experience, is entirely different from the actual tree. Look at a tree and you will find how extraordinarily difficult it is to see it completely, so that no image, no screen, comes between the seeing and the actual fact. By completely I mean with the totality of your mind and heart, not a fragment of it.

If life wasn't real it would be the craziest psychedelic trip ever

The world is a dream, you say, and it’s lovely, sometimes. Sunset. Clouds. Sky.” “No. The image is a dream. The beauty is real. Can you see the difference?

A hundred years from now, people will look back on us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer better fantasies... And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else.

I mean what they and their hired psychiatrists call delusional systems. Needless to say, ‘delusions’ are always officially defined. We do not have to worry about questions of real or unreal. They only talk out of expediency. It’s the system that matters. How the data arrange themselves inside it. Some are consistent, others fall apart.

'Tell me one last thing,' said Harry. 'Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?' Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry's ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure. 'Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?'

He thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

Dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.

Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal

What is reality if it isn't how we feel about things?

People assume that they perceive reality as it is, that our senses accurately record the outside world. Yet the science suggests that, in important ways, people experience reality not as it is, but as they expect it to be.

What is life without incompatible realities?

Reality became for me a problem after my experience with LSD. Before, I had believed there was only one reality, the reality of everyday life. Just one true reality and the rest was imagination and was not real. But under the influence of LSD, I entered into realities which were as real and even more real than the one of everyday. And I thought about the nature of reality and I got some deeper insights.

Contact with reality is not an all-or-nothing condition.

The Good was not a form of reality. It was reality itself, ever-changing, ultimately unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way.

How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real?

Every human being relies on and is bounded by his knowledge and experience to live. This is what we call “reality”. However, knowledge and experience are ambiguous, thus reality can become illusion. Is it not possible to think that, all human beings are living in their assumptions?