Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes

Men seek for vocabularies that are reflections of reality. To this end, they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality. And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as a deflection of reality.

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

Reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into.

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.

What we think about Paris is a part of how we feel about it. Our idea of Paris is our idea and we don't know that that's not necessarily the way it really is. It feels so real.

Reality doesn't bite, rather our perception of reality bites.

Men substitute words for reality and then argue about the words.

There's so many different types of illusions; our lives are an illusion in a sense.

Perception is not always reality.

Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?

Life is rarely about what happened; it's mostly about what we think happened.

The reality we live in is selected by our conceptual definitions. You and I may be in the same physical space, but each of us will see it as entirely different.

The reality we can put into words is never reality itself.

A thing is a thing, not what is said of a thing

All representations of a thing are inherently abstract.

As soon as we put something into words, we devalue it in a strange way. We think we have plunged into the depths of the abyss, and when we return to the surface the drop of water on our pale fingertips no longer resembles the sea from which it comes. We delude ourselves that we have discovered a wonderful treasure trove, and when we return to the light of day we find that we have brought back only false stones and shards of glass; and yet the treasure goes on glimmering in the dark, unaltered.

The images of things are not the things in themselves.

People seen by the mind are exactly different to things seen by the eye. They grow smaller and smaller as you come nearer down to them, whereas things become bigger.

We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him we compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principal place.

As soon as you see something, you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is no longer what you saw.

The concept, the label, is perpetually hiding from us all the nature of the real.

I'm trying to get more into other things, where reality is nothing but each individual's way of thinking.

Thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it.

Isn't telling about something-using words, English or Japanese-already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention?

We feel in one world, we think and name in another. Between the two we can set up a system of references, but we cannot fill in the gap.