Not Accepting Reality Quotes & Sayings

OK, I say again, not really understanding what it is I am agreeing to, what it is precisely I am accepting. But I am accepting something. The truth of my circumstances? The reality I have until now avoided? It's much worse than I imagined and also somehow better. — Bill Clegg

Those [old] days are gone ... accept the reality and do it. — Ava DuVernay

People need to stop accepting the evidence of reality, and start questioning it. — Lionel Suggs

We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even the unprecedented, must be possible within it. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values. — Abraham Maslow

We have become a nation incapable of living within our
means. We seem incapable of accepting the reality that owning a
home is not and never was intended to be a right. It is a reward for
working hard and saving up enough money to not only purchase a
property, but to maintain and improve it. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

You can accept reality, or you can persist in your purpose until reality accepts you. — Robert Breault

In positive terms, we can state that psychological maturity entails finding greater satisfaction in giving than in receiving; having a capacity to form satisfying and permanent loyalties; being primarily a creative, contributing person; having learned to profit from experience; having a freedom from fear (anxiety) with a resulting true serenity and not a pseudo absence of tension; and accepting and making the most of unchangeable reality when it confronts one. — William C. Menninger

We have this distinctly human concept of good and bad. Nature doesn't have that. It just is. I'm not comfortable with that. I'm not accepting of the fact that we live in a profoundly brutal world. I don't fully approve of the way nature works. This lifetime of study has left me disappointed by the brutality of it all.
It has also made me more sympathetic to the human condition and the many unbearable circumstances we find ourselves in. You and I are lucky in this part of the world not to experience the sort of wretched life that is a reality for so many. — Joe Hutto

Way back when the Sam Peckinpah film The Wild Bunch premiered, a woman journalist raised her hand at the press conference and asked the following: "Why in the world do you have to show so much blood all over the place?" She was pretty worked up about it. One of the actors, Ernest Borgnine, looked a bit perplexed and fielded the question. "Lady, did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?" This film came out at the height of the Vietnam War.
I love that line. That's gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way. And bleeding. Shooting and bleeding. — Haruki Murakami

And I find a happiness in the fact of accepting -
In the sublimely scientific and difficult fact of accepting the inevitable natural. — Alberto Caeiro

I am prepared to accept from others their own version of reality. I think it is a basic freedom really, to create one's own reality from whatever truths are available. — Josephine Hart

Once we came to accept the photographic image as reality, the way to its future simulation was open. — Lev Manovich

Love is wanting to be with someone all the time.It is accepting the other person with all good qualities and bad and not wanting to change any of them. It is wanting to give affection and approval and comfort and everything that is oneself,demanding nothing in return. It is - love is very difficult, Julia. It is an ideal, rarely achieved in reality because we are all selfish and imperfect beings. It is a dream, a goal, something to be aimed for. — Mary Balogh

The key to happiness is accepting one unpleasant reality every day. — Bertrand Russell

You shouldn't be afraid of science. Accepting the reality of nature makes life more exciting and even more precious. — Lawrence M. Krauss

Surrendering: The act of giving yourself entirely to a new self, and then let go of your personal freedom for the achievement of something greater than you had before, a new you, a new self, envisioned and designed by yourself. Surrendering, to a God or to a Dream, or to both, is the ultimate act of designing your new future and then letting go the present reality to live that dream. It is, indeed, the creation of a virtual reality in which one will find himself present, after detaching from the previous reality, which will then become virtual by default. Because, as one cannot surrender without accepting, one cannot get without letting go. And so, when one surrenders entirely, he becomes entirely new. — Robin Sacredfire

All pain in life comes from wishing things were different than they are. Conversely, peace and happiness must come from accepting life as it is and breaking through the barriers of illusion to do so ... All things that we label good or bad often hold in them surprises if we stay open. Each of us has choice in how we interpret life's events and in this way we are each responsible for our own reality. — Kristine Carlson

Zen is all-inclusive. It never denies, it never says no to anything; it accepts everything and transforms it into a higher reality. — Rajneesh

Dying is like diving into a deep lake on a hot day. There's the shock of that sharp, cold change, the pain of it for a second, and then accepting is a swim in reality. But after so many times, even the shock wears off. — Richard Bach

I don't know whether this is the best of times or the worst of times, but I assure you it's the only time you've got. You can either sit on your expletive deleted or pick a daisy. — Art Buchwald

Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice. — Karen Armstrong

Accept that you are that - you are the matchless, eternal reality. That's true seeing, true humility. — Frederick Lenz

Humility means accepting reality with no attempt to outsmart it. — David Richo

The first step to change,... is accepting your reality right now. Honoring your process. Compassionate self-awareness leads to change; harsh self-criticism only holds the pattern in place, creating a stubborn and defensive Basic Self. Be gentle with yourself as you would with a child. Be gentle but firm. Give yourself the space to grow. But remember that the timing is in god's hands, not yours. page~147 — Dan Millman

Accept not a mediocre effort but any end result of a super effort — Manoj Arora

That's gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way. — Haruki Murakami

In his mother's honor, vowing not to commit the "fashionable stupidity" of ignoring things he didn't understand, Max performed a brave act of nonconformity by accepting the possibility that his dreams might be exactly what they seemed: real. — Sol Luckman

It is one thing to be understanding of human weakness and the complexities of life, and another to accept ideologies that attempt to sunder what are inseparable aspects of reality. Let us not fall into the sin of trying to replace the Creator. We are creatures, and not omnipotent. Creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created. — Pope Francis

Well, it's sort of funny to try and get that balance between just accepting the reality of my friend [co-star Satya Bhabha] flying in from the ceiling of the theatre and like starting to do a dance with demon hipster chicks. It's like, so how do we react when he throws fireballs? Are we surprised? Does this happen a lot? — Alison Pill

Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we let go of seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives. — Mike Yaconelli

Some theists in evolutionary science acquiesce to these tacit rules and retain a personal faith while accepting a thoroughly naturalistic picture of physical reality. — Phillip E. Johnson

People withhold their forgiveness, thinking that it makes them badass. But really, the unwillingness to forgive is merely the wishing that things were better. You wish that you had better, you wish that someone else were better so they could have treated you better ... it's you making wishes. And that's not badass. To forgive is to be able to look at the person and say "I accept that you weren't any better than what you were", "I accept what you were you and couldn't have been what I wished you to be", "I accept that things were the way they were and weren't any better." The ability to forgive is intertwined with the ability to accept the reality of the way things are/ the way a person is or was. You stop wishing things and you just accept. And hope is what says to you: "One day you'll have what's better. — C. JoyBell C.

The Victorians did not have some secret formula, since lost, about how to expect the best of marriage and still put up with the worst. Rather, they were much more accepting than we are today of a huge gap between rhetoric and reality, expectation and actual experience. In large part, this was because they had no other choice. — Stephanie Coontz

The power of the creative imagination is not only merely content with observing the world as it is, accepting a given reality, but is capable of creating a new reality by transforming the inner as well as the outer world — Anagarika Govinda

My doctor told me I was going to be marginal at this test and he'd given me some hope that maybe I was going to be OK. But when I went in and did it I realized I wasn't going to be able to pass it so I've been working on accepting reality. — Doug MacDonald

Try to meditate as you would engage in a good conversation: maintain a sense of openness, without judgment or anticipating what is going to be said next. As I already noted (but almost can't emphasize too much), having an agenda prevents you from observing objectively and accepting things as they are. When you first sit down to meditate, briefly check in with yourself. Don't engage in a long monologue about your state of mind; just see how you feel, literally. There's a good chance, especially if you're new to this, you'll find an uneasiness that comes from wanting to do something else or from hoping you'll get some kind of payoff from meditating. Observe what that wanting feels like without trying to change it. Just accept that this feeling or feelings is reality for you at this moment, and that's okay - this too will pass. If you're finding you're having a lot of difficulty concentrating, it can be helpful to check in this way again. — Marshall Glickman

Ushikawa always saw himself as a realist, and he actually was. Metaphysical speculation wasn't his thing. If something really existed you, had to except it as a reality whether or not it made sense or was logical. That was his basic way of thinking. Principles Logic didn't give birth to a reality. Reality came first and the principles of logic followed. So, he decided, he would have to begin by accepting this reality: that there were two moons in the sky. — Haruki Murakami

By 'coming to terms with life' I mean: the reality of death has become a definite part of my life; my life has, so to speak, been extended by death, by my looking death in the eye and accepting it, by accepting destruction as part of life and no longer wasting my energies on fear of death or the refusal to acknowledge its inevitability. It sounds paradoxical: by excluding death from our life we cannot live a full life, and by admitting death into our life we enlarge and enrich it. — Etty Hillesum

Oh, this yearning to be white, this yearning to have straight hair, this lifelong striving to be different from the way one is created this great difficulty in accepting oneself, I knew it and saw only my own longing from outside, saw the absurdity of our yearning to be different from what we are ... — Max Frisch

Living with contradiction may be nothing new to humans, but acknowledging it, and accepting it are. Even the dictionary has trouble accepting a paradox, calling it 'two things that seem to be contradictory but may possibly be true.' But that's not a real paradox
a real paradox IS contradictory and IS true. So I don't even call them paradoxes anymore, I call them 'contradictory co-existing realities,' both in direct opposition to each other, both true at the same time. — Shellen Lubin

Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good. — Elizabeth Edwards

Out of evil, much good has come to me. By keeping quiet, repressing nothing, remaining attentive, and by accepting reality - taking things as they are, and not as I wanted them to be - by doing all this, unusual knowledge has come to me, and unusual powers as well, such as I could never have imagined before.
I always thought that when we accepted things they overpowered us in some way or other. This turns out not to be true at all, and it is only by accepting them that one can assume and attitude towards them.
So now I intend to play the game of life, being receptive to whatever comes to me, good and bad, sun and shadow forever alternating, and, in this way, also accepting my own nature with its positive and negative sides. Thus everything becomes more alive to me.
What a fool I was! How I tried to force everything to go according to way I thought it ought to.
an ex patient of C. G. Jung (Alchemical Studies, pg 47) — C. G. Jung

Accepting the reality of our sinfulness means accepting our authentic self. Judas could not face his shadow; Peter could. The latter befriended the impostor within; the former raged against him. — Brennan Manning

The reality is that while heliocentrism was discussed and often accepted within Catholic circles - it was effectively the only place where it could be - the more traditional view of the solar system still prevailed even among leading scientists. So it's hardly surprising that Galileo's Catholic judges had difficulty accepting his views, especially when they saw themselves as defending scientific orthodoxy and were supported in this by the scientific establishment. — Michael Coren

Because the reality of death has not yet penetrated awareness, survivors can appear to be quite accepting of the loss. — Joan Didion

The reality of the Good, represented by the Sophists, and the reality of the True, represented by the dialecticians, were engaged in a huge struggle for the future mind of man. Truth won, the Good lost, and that is why today we have so little difficulty accepting the reality of truth and so much difficulty accepting the reality of Quality, even though there is no more agreement in one area than in the other. — Robert M. Pirsig

When you are so ashamed of your actions, thoughts, or intentions, you lie rather than accepting yourself for who you really are - or, in this case, pretend something happened when it didn't. The idea of how others see you becomes more important than the reality of you. — Michael J. Sullivan

Grief is accepting the reality of what is. That is grief's job and purpose-to allow us to come to terms with the way things really are, so that we can move on. Grief is a gift of God. Without it, we would all be condemned to a life of continually denying reality, arguing or protesting against reality, and never growing from the realities we experience. — Henry Cloud

The only way for the market to accept this reality is if fares are advanced slowly and cautiously, and the very low fares do still appear from time-to-time in the market to allow those who will not travel without them to have access to our service. — Clive Beddoe

Accepting the reality of change gives rise to equanimity. — Allan Lokos

To accept reality is only to encourage it. — Robert Breault

The recovery task for this stage is to take hold of yourself one moment at a time, to recognize that you are a separate person, a fully capable adult, responsible for your own self-care. It is no one else's responsibility to meet your emotional needs; only you can do that. Emotional self-reliance involves accepting the intense feelings of the experience, taking stock of your present reality, and assuring yourself that you will survive. — Susan Anderson

Transmit your vision emotionally by gaining credibility, demonstrating passion, establishing relationships and communicating a felt need. Transmit it logically by confronting reality, formulating strategy, accepting responsibility, celebrating victory and learning from defeat. — John C. Maxwell

Recovery is a resumption of the work that was not completed when the woman was a girl. It is a coming into her own. It is an opportunity to resume the normal process of development that was sidetracked, perhaps first by constrained roles, perhaps by trauma, and then multiplied many times by hiding in the addiction. Her development was sidetracked by not accepting her needs as legitimate and not finding healthy ways to meet them, by not even knowing her needs. And so this is what recovery is: a developmental process of finding and building a new self. Recovery is a process of radical growth and change. When you are in recovery, you give birth to a new self. [...] Many women initially think that recovery means a move from bad to good. They think that being addicted is evidence of shameful neediness, of deep and lasting failures. Recovery is not a move from bad to good, but from false to real. [...] It is reality, being real, that now guides her rather than her efforts to be good or bad. — Stephanie Brown

It doesn't count if your swing is going the highest if you're getting pushed. — Cynthia Lewis

The only philosophical problem with accepting the existence of Wonderland is that it means that our reality could actually be a figment of our imagination, — Cameron Jace

The threat to men of great dignity, privilege and pretense is
not from the radicals they revile; it is from accepting their own myth.
Exposure to reality remains the nemesis of the great
a little understood
thing. — John Kenneth Galbraith

If moral statements are about something, then the universe is not quite as science suggests it is, since physical theories, having said nothing about God, say nothing about right or wrong, good or bad. To admit this would force philosophers to confront the possibility that the physical sciences offer a grossly inadequate view of reality. And since philosophers very much wish to think of themselves as scientists, this would offer them an unattractive choice between changing their allegiances or accepting their irrelevance. — David Berlinski

One new reality is global interconnectivity and the fact that all challenges must be addressed on the basis of 'togetherness.' Thus the most crucial factor in accepting the new reality and confronting its opportunities and risks is our willingness to develop shared norms on all levels. — Klaus Schwab

Sleeping on it didn't make accepting it any easier. It seemed like a really bad dream. — Abbi Glines

There is point in your life when you come face to face with the reality that you cannot take another step on your own. For me, I had never experienced that point, but depression brought me there. I have slowly, painfully and continually been confronted by my brokenness. Coming to terms with the fact that I am broken has been at the center of my accepting my being loved.
For me, now, there exists a sense of desperate need for what God brings to my spiritual and mental self. Without His voice I cannot cope with the darkness, but with His whisper of "you are My beloved", I can take a step each day away from the chasm. I am broken but not beyond mending, not beyond love.
It has been this desperation that has opened a crevice in which I am seeing Him for the first time. He is why my soul can find some peace even when my mind is dark and numb. It is this love that continually has brought me back from the edge of the impostor to the honesty of my broken, inner self — David Hulon Hood

You will never let go of the past by ignoring the most painful thing the person you loved has done to you. When you begin to minimize it, second guess yourself and others, ignore it or even pretend it didn't happen you cheat yourself out of healing. Naturally, your mind would rather believe the lies you are telling it, rather than accept the truth. The soul has a way of protecting itself from trauma, but if left in denial there is no growth or change. Healing requires going to that place you avoid and asking yourself why you are so afraid to accept the reality of what happened to you? Why have you minimized it like this person has wanted you to? What is it about your self esteem that allows you to continue being a doormat? — Shannon L. Alder

The more one engages in conscious action to understand and transform the world -- one's reality -- through the interplay between reflection and action, the more fully human we become, that is, we have greater control over our destinies. If we just accept the world as set by others, we allow ourselves to become dehumanized -- an object shaped and made by others rather than expressing our uniquely human potential to be involved actively in creating what we become. As human beings, our shared vocation is to become active individual subjects engaged on an equal basis with others in the process of creating (or naming) the world. We should create history and culture rather than exist merely as passive objects accepting reality and the world as ready-made by other people. In creating history and culture, we create our own beings in the process. — Marie Emmit

The process of leniency involves accepting the reality of the current situation and finding a satisfying meaning therein, as opposed to misconstruing or denying the facts of the situation. — Sandra L. Schneider

Accepting a situation doesn't mean you have to be okay with it. You can take steps to change things, but then you need to detach from the outcome & accept how things turn out. You keep doing your best & accept reality. If you keep getting upset over things you have no control over, you have no peace — Brenda Wilhelmson

No one spoke much, as if to speak was to affirm reality. To remain silent was to accommodate the possibility that it all was merely a nightmare. The silence reached up to the cathedral ceiling and cluttered there, echoing sadness an unseen mayhem, as if too many souls were rising at once. We were existing somewhere between life and death, with neithe accepting us fully. — Susan Abulhawa

I hear, 'But why do poor people make such bad decisions?' But actually, their decision-making can be far more complex than that of the better-off in many ways. They're not financially illiterate: they're constantly weighing up choices based on the reality of poverty. Somehow the international development community has resisted accepting this. — Ann Cotton

The language we're exchanging, the fillings in our teeth, the pavement on the road outside, everywhere you look, for better or for worse, you're going to see evidence that accepting reality is not a human's tendency, and not what we're good at, and not, in my speculation, what God or Natural Selection hired us to do. We've been hired, by this universe, to dream, to aspire, to make things that weren't real real - and because that involves a lot of failure, we're damn good at doing that, too. — Dan Harmon