Great Throughts Treasury

"Without our knowing it, we see reality through glasses colored by the subconscious memory of previous experiences." - Thomas Merton

"Man creates God just as he creates himself, and he creates God in his own image, often as he aspires to be, often as he in reality is." -

"Thoughts held in mind reproduce after their kind. It’s the nature of thinking. What we hold in our mind reproduces itself in the reality of our life and our experience." - Mary Manin Morrissey

"Your desire is your prayer. Picture the fulfillment of your desire now and feel its reality and you will experience the joy of the answered prayer." - Joseph Murphy

"In the end, we must always return to our beliefs. From the mundane to the mystical, they inform us about reality and they shape our future lives. And if the ultimate reality remains a mystery, so much the better, for it is the questions that give us meaning, that drive us forward and fill us with transcendent awe." - Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman

"Transcendent, mystical, and spiritual experiences have a real biological component. The neurological changes that occur during meditation disrupt the normal processes of the brain – perceptually, emotionally, and linguistically – in ways that make the experience indescribable, awe-inspiring, unifying, and indelibly real. In fact, the intensity of such experiences often gives the practitioner a sense that a different or higher level of reality exists beyond our everyday perceptions of the world." - Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman

"Autobiographical memories are particularly prone to inaccuracy. Traumatic events embed memories in a powerful but somewhat fragmentary way. Neurological disorders and drugs can disrupt the brain’s ability to distinguish between true and false memories and beliefs. The brain perceives reality and transforms it into an extraordinary range of personal, ethical, and creative premises that we use to build meaning, value, spirituality, and truth into our lives." - Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman

"It turns out that our notions of what a “self” is and how it might feel fulfilled have no more objective status than most of the rest of reality. It seems we make ourselves up as we go alone." - Maureen O’Hara

"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated." -

"If all the records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. “Who controls the past,” ran the Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”… All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. “Reality control,” they called it; in Newspeak, “doublethink.”" -

"Theology is reflection upon the reality of worship and explication of it. As such it is a rational affair… faith seeking to understand." - Albert Cook Outler

"Today’s dogma holds that matter is eternal. The dogma comes from the intuitive belief of people who don’t want to accept the observational evidence that the universe was created – despite the fact that the creation of the universe is supported by all the observable data astronomy has produced so far. As a result, the people who reject the data can arguably be described as having a religious belief that matter must be eternal… Since scientists prefer to operate in the belief that the universe must be meaningless – that reality consists of nothing more than the sum of the world’s tangible constituents – they cannot confront the idea of creation easily, or take it lightly." - Arno Allan Penzias

"The world is not an illusion; it is not nothingness, for it is willed by God and therefore is real… The reality of the world is not in itself but it is in the thought and being of the Creator. It is what God thought and willed it to be before it was." - Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

"Neither power nor wealth, neither education nor ability, neither gifts of creativity nor stores of human energy can insure against the reality that suffering will be our companion at some time during our journey. It is a presence as inseparable from the human condition as food and oxygen are from human life. It is part of our legacy." - Paula Ripple, fully Paula Ripple Comin

"Eternity is another word for unity. In it, past and future are not apart; here is everywhere, and now goes on forever. The opposite of eternity is diffusion not time. Eternity does not begin when time is at its end. Time is eternity broken into space, like a ray of light refracted in the water… unity is a task, not a condition. The world lies in strife, in discord, in divergence. Unity is beyond not within reality." - Fritz A. Rothschild

"The relation of existence to time is characterized by two polar elements: temporality and uninterruptedness. Existence is evanescent and always faces the prospect of annihilation, of being thrown out of the stream of time, yet it also exhibits some degree of permanence as the continuous duration in time. Without an element of constancy there could be no permanence within temporality and no knowledge of reality, since our categories of reason are “mirrors, in which the things are reflected in the light of their constancy… Things perish within time, while time itself is everlasting… The present moment is not a terminal but a signal of beginning, an act of creation." - Fritz A. Rothschild

"The world of reality has its bounds. The world of imagination is boundless." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"And what is the education of mankind if not the passage from faith in authority to personal conviction and to the sustained practice of the intellectual duty to consent to no idea except by virtue of its recognized truth, to accept no fact until its reality has been, in one way or another, established." - Louis Auguste Sabatier

"He who sets out in search of Truth must leave Superstition forever and wander down into the land of Absolute Negation and Denial. He must then go… where the mountains of Stern Reality will rise before him. Beyond them lies Truth." - Olive Schreiner

"No one feels another's grief; no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by." - Franz Schubert, fully Franz Peter Schubert

"In a human context, love means sharing an experience, showing compassion, and helping one another. But our love of God is akin to reverent love. God is infinite life. Thus the most elementary ethical principle, when understood by the heart, means that out of reverence for the unfathomable, infinite, and living Reality we call God, we must never consider ourselves strangers toward any human being." - Albert Schweitzer

"The most elementary ethical principle, when understood by the heart, means that out of reverence for the unfathomable, infinite, and living Reality we call God, we must never consider ourselves strangers toward any human being. Rather, we must bind ourselves to the task of sharing his experiences and try being of help to him." - Albert Schweitzer

"Our fears are more numerous than our dangers, and we suffer much more in apprehension than in reality." - Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL

"It’s not about positional power; it’s not about accomplishments; it’s ultimately not even about what we do. Leadership is about creating a domain in which human beings continually deepen their understanding of reality and become more capable of participating in the unfolding of the world. Ultimately, leadership is about creating new realities." - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge

"I should like to persuade religious people that some of us who reject their faith, nevertheless do have an experience which is at least very much like their essential religious experience. We feel, sometimes with remarkable intensity and clarity, our `at-oneness’ with something which might be the fundamental reality behind appearances." - Olaf Stapledon, fully William Olaf Stapledon

"Ultimate Reality must be at least personal, or perhaps better said, Supra-personal or trans-personal – but not less than personal, and therefore not just non-personal." - Leonard Swindler

"A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of themselves and the world around them." -

"To speak of the love for humanity is meaningless. There is no such thing as humanity. What we call humanity has a name, was born, lives on a street, gets hungry, needs all the particular things we need. As an abstract, it has no reality whatsoever." -

"Knowledge of reality has never the certainty of complete evidence… Every knowledge of reality by the human mind has the character of higher or lower probability." -

"To seek pleasure for the sake of pleasure is to avoid reality, the reality of other beings and the reality of ourselves. But only the fulfillment of what we really are can give us joy. Joy is nothing else than the awareness of our being fulfilled in our true being, in our personal center. And this fulfillment is possible only if we unite ourselves with what others really are. It is reality that gives joy, and reality alone..." -

"Most people don’t inhabit a living reality, but a conceptualized one." - Eckhart Tolle, born Ulrich Leonard Tolle

"Mysticism is the art of union with Reality." - Evelyn Underhill

"In the heart of all things, of whatever there is in the universe, dwells the Lord. He alone is the reality." - Isavasya Upanishad

"By means of higher knowledge, the wise behold every where the changeless Reality – which transcends the senses, which is uncaused, which is indefinable, which is all pervading and subtler than the subtlest, which is everlasting and is the source of all things and beings." - Mundaka Upanishad, or or the Mundakopanishad

"Attachment is a manufacturer of illusions and whoever wants reality ought to be detached." - Simone Weil

"Belief in the intrinsic unity of knowledge – the reality of the labyrinth – rides ultimately on the hypothesis that every mental process has a physical grounding and is consistent with the natural sciences." -

"It's often uncomfortable, but in the long run it makes more sense to deal with reality." - Michael Abrash

"The more specific your vision is, the better your chances of making it a reality." - Fred D. Anderson

"The hero is the man dedicated to the creation and / or defense of reality-conforming, life-promoting values." - Andrew Bernstein

"The reality of life is that your perceptions -- right or wrong -- influence everything else you do. When you get a proper perspective of your perceptions, you may be surprised how many other things fall into place." - Roger Birkman

"An independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor to the agencies of observation." - Niels Bohr, fully Neils Henrik David Bohr

"Hold on to your dreams for they are, in a sense, the stuff of which reality is made. It is through our dreams that we maintain the possibility of a better, more meaningful life." -

"Being aware of what your mind thinks, believes, and remembers gives you the chance to change your reality. As on the inside, so on the outside." - David Dibble

"I think that a particle must have a separate reality independent of the measurements. That is an electron has spin, location and so forth even when it is not being measured. I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it." - Albert Einstein

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein

"There is no such thing as ethical truth. However, those committed to humane-egalitarian ideals can make a truth-claim rare and precious: they can look reality and the truths of science in the face and find nothing that makes them flinch." - James R. Flynn, aka Jim Flynn

"The average person's consciousness is mainly "false consciousness," consisting of fictions and illusion, while precisely what he is not aware of is reality." -

"To become conscious of what is unconscious and thus to enlarge one's consciousness means to get in touch with reality, and - in this sense - with truth (intellect-ually and affectively). To enlarge consciousness means to wake up, to lift a veil, to leave the cave, to bring light into the darkness. Could this be the same experience Zen Buddhists call "enlightenment?"" -

"The 6 o'clock news is a reality-based entertainment devised to titillate more than educate, a cheap confection designed to aggregate eyeballs for advertisers." - Jay Harris

"Human reason exhausts itself ceaselessly to explain the inexplicable. Explanation itself is high comedy, as preposterous as trying to see the back of one's own head, but the vanity of the ego is boundless, and it becomes even more overblown by this very attempt to make sense of nonsense. The mind, in its identity with the ego, cannot by definition, comprehend reality; if it could, it would instantly dissolve itself upon recognizing its own illusory nature. It's only beyond the paradox of mind transcending ego that what Is stands forth, self-evident and dazzling in its infinite Absoluteness. And then all of these words are useless." -