Italo Calvino Quotes

I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.

From the perspective of mere representation, the external world always remains only a phenomenon.

I think that reality exists and that it's knowable.

There may not be one Truth - there may be several truths - but saying that is not to say that reality doesn't exist.

Truth is the summit of being.

Nothing is more abstract than reality.

The spirit of Plato dies hard. We have been unable to escape the philosophical tradition that what we can see and measure in the world is merely the superficial and imperfect representation of an underlying reality.

Man is the measure of all things, of the reality of those which are, and of the unreality of those which are not.

Let us affirm what seems to be the truth, that, whether one is or is not, one and the others in relation to themselves and one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, and appear to be and appear not to be.

My major preoccupation is the question, 'What is reality?'

Language is the house of the truth of Being.

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

The world is real. Consciousness is the illusion.

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

Whoever says he is starting from a given in nature may be right, and so is he who says he is starting from nothing!

Einstein said, if everything exists as a substance of qualities, and qualities exist only in mind, then all is mind.

To every object there correspond an ideally closed system of truths that are true of it and, on the other hand, an ideal system of possible cognitive processes by virtue of which the object and the truths about it would be given to any cognitive subject.

First, philosophy concerns itself with all kinds of issues that don't get much airtime in day-to-day life. What's the nature of reality? Can we ever truly know anything, and if so, how? What does it mean to be a moral agent? And while we're at it, is there any such thing as agency anyway?

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

The existence of inherent limits of experience in no way settles the question about the subordination of facts of the human world to our knowledge of matter.

Since Plato, we have been considering the nature of knowledge, the meaning of meaning and the status of the physical world.

The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

The two basic topics which fascinate me are 'What is reality?' and 'What constitutes the authentic human being?'

What is the truth? Is it what you experience? Is it what I experience? Or is there some objective truth in between?