George Orwell Quotes

Reality is mind-made.

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

Where conscious subjectivity is concerned, there is no distinction between the observation and the thing observed.

We think we receive all that we perceive, but in fact, we actually give the sky its colour.

We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull.

Reality is what we want it to be or what we do not want it to be, but it is not our wanting or our not wanting that makes it so.

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.

'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?'

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

The world in your mind is as real as the world outside of it.

You say they create their own reality," said Veronika, "but what is reality?

Reality is a question of perspective.

Reality is a creation of our excesses.

How much of what we call 'reality' is actually out there or rather within our own head?

Reality is fabricated out of desire.

Life does not consist mainly - or even largely - of facts and happenings.

[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.

I wonder if memory is true, and I know that it cannot be, but that one lives by memory nevertheless and not by truth.

Truth, like time, is an idea arising from, and dependent upon, human intercourse.

You see, if you make believe hard enough that something is true, then it is true for you.

Who is to say what is real and what is not?'Real' is a distinction of a naïve mind.

Is the earth in our head? Or do we stand on the earth?

By convention sweet is sweet, by convention bitter is bitter, by convention hot is hot, by convention cold is cold, by convention color is color. But in reality there are atoms and the void. That is, the objects of sense are supposed to be real and it is customary to regard them as such, but in truth they are not. Only the atoms and the void are real.

Art exists because reality is neither real nor significant.

The problem is one of opposition between subjective and objective points of view. There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. But often what appears to a more subjective point of view cannot be accounted for in this way. So either the objective conception of the world is incomplete, or the subjective involves illusions that should be rejected.