William James Quotes

I like illusion when it is so convincing that we might as well see reality this way - I like to present to our belief system something that is convincing, that 'we know not to be.'

Everyone has been a witness sometime - It doesn't change it if you don't believe.

The dead see what they believe they will see. So do the living. That is the secret.

It’s critical that we know what we believe, no matter what we feel...that we know what is true, no matter what we see.

The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we confuse our beliefs with reality.

An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in order to be true

Perception is reality, but it may not be actuality, and you have got to be able to keep the difference between that.

It is always hard when reality intrudes on belief.

We can't believe what we believe to be untrue, and we can't love what we believe to be unreal.

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

I don't want to fool people. If I wanted to do that, I would be working with virtual reality. I want to operate on the other level, the other end of the illusion spectrum. I want to create the worst possible illusions so it doesn't really fool people, but instead give people a measure of their own belief. It makes them aware of how much they need to be fooled in order to understand the world around them.

They say seeing is believing, but the opposite is true. Believing is seeing.

What people believe prevails over the truth.

Think of my movies as heightening our awareness, not confusing the difference between truth and fiction, but heightening our awareness of how confused we can become about what is real.

Why is it people who want the truth never believe it when they hear it?

Whether you are really right or not doesn't matter; it's the belief that counts.

We have a right to believe whatever we want, but not everything we believe is right.

We can't live in a state of perpetual doubt, so we make up the best story possible and we live as if the story were true.

Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

You don’t believe things because they make your life better, you believe them because they’re true.

Reality is the completion of experience.

Things may look different to you than they did before. I've had that experience myself. But don't let appearances fool you. There's only one reality.

Repeat, over and over again, in case anyone forgets it or believes the contrary, that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.