Collective Reality Quotes

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

In a crisis the true facts are whatever other people say they are.

The Chinese began with the assumption that the group is the fundamental unit of reality. Individuals? Sure, we can factor them out from their groups, but let us not think that they as individuals have any viability apart from their group.

We live within this reality we create, and we're quite unaware of how we create the reality.

The universe bursts into existence from life, not the other way around as we have been taught. For each life there is a universe, its own universe. We generate spheres of reality, individual bubbles of existence. Our planet is comprised of billions of spheres of reality, generated by each individual human and perhaps even by each animal.

Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal.

If your neighbor's reality changes, yours will change as well.

There is but one world common for those who are awake, but when men are asleep, each turns away into a world of his own.

The presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us of the reality of the world and ourselves.

Life and Reality are not things you can have for yourself unless you accord them to all others. They do not belong to particular persons any more than the sun, moon and stars.

But in order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The seas, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death--these are things that unite us all. We resemble one another in what we see together, in what we suffer together. Dreams change from individual, but the reality of the world is common to us all. Striving towards realism is therefore legitimate, for it is basically related to the artistic adventure.

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.

The universe is in the experience. It's not just out there. What's out there, we don't know. But for humans it's an experience just like the universe for a dolphin or an insect with 100 eyes is a different experience. Our universe is a human universe experienced in human consciousness and, unless we understand how consciousness operates, we will never actually be able to participate in the creation of our personal and collective reality.

Consensual reality is both fragile and elastic, and it heals like the skin of a bubble.

When we dream alone it is only a dream, but when many dream together it is the beginning of a new reality.

We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by.

In the last analysis, then, we believe that we all know and think about and talk about the same world because we believe our PERCEPTS are possessed by us in common

And 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. But things that many see may have no taste or moment in them at all, and things that are shown only to one may be spears and water-spouts of truth from the very depth of truth.

You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Paty, which is collective and immortal.

When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis.