David Friedrich Strauss Quotes

If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.

It is not important whether or not the interpretation is correct-- if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.

The world is such-and-such or so-and-so only because we tell ourselves that that is the way it is.

The relationship between the imagined and the real is more complicated than people imagine.

What is reality, anyway? Just a collective hunch.

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

I don't really believe that documentary is objective reality and fiction is all illusion.

If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they're real for you whether they're real or not.

Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.

Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction.

Surely one of the most visible lessons taught by the twentieth century has been the existence, not so much of a number of different realities, but of a number of different lenses with which to see the same reality.

Whatever people think, is.

Whoever defines the word, defines the world.

Remember that my view, the only true view I can see with, is through the black eyes that I have.

Reality is mind-made.

We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it.

The only way we know it's true is that we both dreamed it. That's what reality is. It's a dream everyone has together.

We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be. And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of these assumptions.

Now that's a concept that's always fascinated me: the real world. Only a very specific subset of people use the term, have you noticed? To me, it seems self-evident that everyone lives in the real world - we all breathe real oxygen, eat real food, the earth under our feet feels equally solid to all of us. But clearly these people have a far more tightly circumscribed definition of reality, one that I find deeply mysterious, and an almost pathologically intense need to bring others into line with that definition.

As for all I can tell, the only difference is that what many see we call a real thing, and what only one sees we call a dream.

Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so.

The poets are almost always wrong about the facts... That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth...

I always really curious to see how people interpret things. I know my version, and I'm kind of bored with my version so I want to see their version.

Remember that all is opinion. For what was said by the Cynic Monimus is manifest: and manifest too is the use of what was said, if a man receives what may be got out of it as far as it is true.

Truth is a matter of the imagination.