Quotes & Sayings About Realities

Foreign policy is all about a universe of bad decisions, imperfect decisions; every situation is different. The dynamics, the atmospherics, the people, the pressures, the geopolitical realities shift. — Chuck Hagel

Julia and her family, like many others in the GDR, trod this line between seeing things for what they were in the GDR, and ignoring those realities in order to stay sane. — Anna Funder

Symbols are powerful because they are the visible signs of invisible realities. — Saint Augustine

Faith and daily life, faith and work-these are not separate things. They are one and the same. To think of them as separate-that faith is faith, and work is work-is theoretical faith. Based on the recognition that work and faith are one and the same, we should put one hundred percent of our energy into our jobs and one hundred percent into our faith, too. When we resolve to do this, we enter the path of victory in life. Faith means to show irrefutable proof of victory amid the realities of society and in our own daily lives. — Daisaku Ikeda

Teaching which ignores the realities of children will be rejected as surely as any graft which attempts to ignore the body's immune system. — Howard Gardner

Nature introduces children to the idea - to the knowing - that they are not alone in this world, and that realities and dimensions exist alongside their own. — Richard Louv

Particularly at those moments when we have the sorest need of grasping the sharp realities of life do the threads of thought snap off in the brain. — Victor Hugo

Today, Wilberforce University welcomes many of America's poorest and most underserved populations and transforms their educational dreams into realities. — Eric Metaxas

Certain realities of life we only see through eyes cleansed by our tears. — Pope Francis

realities are more important than ideas — Morgan Godfery

No Russians tell me they cheat to create drama. They say they long for heart-stopping, tear-off-your-clothes romance. I hear about a man who left an entire lilac tree on the doorstep of the woman he was courting. Given the grim realities of life in Russia, this fairy-tale passion might be sustainable only in extramarital affairs. — Pamela Druckerman

As long as man was small in numbers and limited in technology, he could realistically regard the earth as an infinite reservoir, an infinite source of inputs and an infinite cesspool for outputs. Today we can no longer make this assumption. Earth has become a space ship, not only in our imagination but also in the hard realities of the social, biological, and physical system in which man is enmeshed. — Kenneth E. Boulding

And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains.
I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me.
My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company.
O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward! — Charles Dickens

One may also inhabit the limen, the place in between realities, a gap 'between and betwixt' universes of sense that construe social life and persons differently, an interstice from where one can most clearly stand critically toward different structures. — Maria Lugones

The influence of prayer on the human mind and body is as demonstrable as that of secreting glands. Its results can be measured in terms of increased physical buoyancy, greater intellectual vigor, moral stamina, and a deeper understanding of the realities underlying human relationship. — Alexis Carrel

SK: What causes a person to be transgender?

MS: I think the question should be flipped around: What's the cause for assuming that one's gender identity has to be the one that you are born with? When I first came into this job, I was much more comfortable about people's sexuality than I was with people's gender identity. But when you hear the same stories over and over again, from people from all over the world, you start realizing that transgender is not an anomaly. It's a part of the spectrum of people's realities. Then you stop wondering about the cause and you start realizing it's a part of reality. — Susan Kuklin

Our Oneness exists in infinite multiple realities and infinite time periods simultaneously. At our core we are pure energy that cannot be created or destroyed and that transcends space and time. — Russell Anthony Gibbs

The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything. — Thomas Merton

The kiss happened because they couldn't help it, and it was so sweet and so right that Damen felt a kind of ache. He pulled back. The realities of the outside world seemed to press at him. "I"-he couldn't say it.
"No. Listen to me." He felt Laurent's hand firm on the back of his neck. "I'm not going to let my uncle hurt you." Laurent's blue gaze was calm and steady, as if he had mad a decision and wanted Damen to know it. "It's what I came here last night to say. I'm going to take care of it."
"Promise me," Damen heard himself say. "Promise me we won't let him-"
"I promise. — C.S. Pacat

It is chiefly at the moment when there is the greatest need for attaching them to the painful realities of life, that the threads of thought snap within the brain. — Victor Hugo

The only realities in life are that you are born, and that you die. We always think we are going to live forever. The dying aspect we will never accept. The one thing about having this kind of warning is how you appreciate every single day of life. — Oscar De La Renta

All governments, Books, customs, buildings, railways, ships, and all the stark realities that men have made, Are but imagination's utterances. — Henry Abbey

Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though in truth his dreaming must be not out of proportion to his waking. — Margaret Fuller

Markets are nimble and efficient, gathering the collective but disbursed intelligence of the economy's players and communicating up-to-the-minute realities of prices, product availability, etc. Government is typically cumbersome, plodding, and slow. — Joel Miller

There's no rule book or game plan when it comes to the grim realities of our lives. — Simone Elkeles

He is so used to living a purely spiritual life that he cannot reconcile himself to realities, and, after all, Varenka is a reality! — Leo Tolstoy

The truth that there is an infinite, eternal, and personal mind behind the realities of the universe that can be detected through human reflection is the most transformative Christian apologetics idea in history. Christianity's explosive explanatory power and scope extends to such human enterprises as philosophy, psychology, science, religion, the arts, history, law, education, labor, economics, and medicine. — Kenneth Samples

Macbeth is contending with the realities of this world, Hamlet with those of the next. — Jones Very

I'm kind of the boss. I could fire myself if I ever got out of line, and I can hire myself too which is a good thing. It gives me a responsibility to the financial realities. — Tony Krantz

We all have something about ourselves that we'd change if we could in a perfect world, be it our body image, our financial status, our relationship, whatever. I wanted to talk about how nobody's exempted from the realities of life and all those things. — Keri Hilson

People do go back, but they don't survive, because two realities are claiming them at the same time. Such things are too much. You can salt your heart, or kill your heart, or you can choose between the two realities. There is much pain here. Some people think you can have your cake and eat it. The cake goes mouldy and they choke on what's left. Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different. — Jeanette Winterson

Heavenly realities are found in the presence of God — Sunday Adelaja

The New Age movement, for all the validity of its protest and the value of some of its recommendations, is in truth a very old blind alley. There is a very long history to remind us of what happens when nature is our ultimate point of reference ... Nature knows no ethics. There is no right and wrong in nature; the controlling realities are power and fertility. — Lesslie Newbigin

We are falling back into allegory," said the Captain, interrupting him. "If you mean by all that that the body is the most solid of realities, then say so."
"No, not exactly," Zeno explained. "This body, our kingdom, sometimes seems to me to be made of a fabric as loosely woven and as evanescent as a shadow. I should hardly be more astonished to see my mother again (who is dead) than to come upon you around a corner as I did, your face grown older and its substance recomposed more than once in twenty years' time, with its color altered by the seasons and its form somewhat changed, but your mouth still knowing my name. Think of the grain that has grown and the creatures that have lived and died in order to sustain that Henry who is and is not the one I knew twenty years ago. — Marguerite Yourcenar

People who like to fume about the manner in which Disney changed beloved classics are often ignorant of history, not to mention the realities of show business. — Kage Baker

Reasonable ideas which find their sanction in the conscience of the righteous do not die; they are consequently realities and active forces, but they are so only to the extent that those who profess them know how to turn them to account. — Ernesto Teodoro Moneta

All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter's ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age. — Herman Melville

Make an effort with tenacity to make real impact that works and don't just create an impression with deception — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The man visited by ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for realities is an enthusiast; the man who supports his madness with murder is a fanatic. — Voltaire

We are all in search of feeling more connected to reality - to other people, the times we live in, the natural world, our character, and our own uniqueness. Our culture increasingly tends to separate us from these realities in various ways. We indulge in drugs or alcohol, or engage in dangerous sports or risky behavior, just to wake ourselves up from the sleep of our daily existence and feel a heightened sense of connection to reality. In the end, however, the most satisfying and powerful way to feel this connection is through creative activity. Engaged in the creative process we feel more alive than ever, because we are making something and not merely consuming, Masters of the small reality we create. In doing this work, we are in fact creating ourselves. — Robert Greene

If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Trust arises from the mind's instinctive feeling after fixed realities, after the substance of every shadow, the base of all appearance, the everlasting amid change. — James Martineau

Human minds are not equipped to face the realities of nonmaterial existence on this sphere. It is too much for any mortal to bear for long." Again — Terry Brooks

Love has a way of making us stupid, Will Henry. It blinds us to certain blatant realities, in this case the spectacularly high mortality rate among monstrumologists. Rarely do we live past forty - my father and von Helrung being the exceptions. — Rick Yancey

While researching my first book, I discovered so many fascinating tidbits that I wanted to share them with readers to remind them that while the book was fiction, the situations were based on historical realities - some of which were pretty hard to believe. — Julie Klassen

I'm so glad you're here, Anne,' said Miss Lavendar, nibbling at her candy. 'If you weren't I should be blue ... very blue ... almost navy blue. Dreams and make-believes are all very well in the daytime and the sunshine, but when dark and storm come they fail to satisfy. One wants real things then. But you don't know this ... seventeen never knows it. At seventeen dreams do satisfy because you think the realities are waiting for you further on. — L.M. Montgomery

There is a popular notion about prayer that assumes that the thing asked for ought to be the object of faith - "Lord, give me this or that," wherefore "this" and "that" become the realities. No. The Bible states the absolutes that we can be certain of: the character of God, His love, His will that we be conformed to His Son's likeness, His sovereign control of all the universe. When faith latches on to those realities that we do not see with our eyes, it can never be confounded. If it makes the thing asked for its object, faith itself will dissolve if the Lord's answer is no, not yet or wait. In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust: let me never be put to confusion (Ps. 71:1, KJV). D — Elisabeth Elliot

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities. — Maya Angelou

He saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder if I've missed this, what else have I failed to see? — John Steinbeck

Love is, without a doubt, the basis of everything. Not some abstract, hard-to-fathom kind of love but the day-to-day kind that everyone knows-the kind of love we feel when we look at our spouse and our children, or even our animals. In its purest and most powerful form, this love is not jealous or selfish, but unconditional. This is the reality of realities, the incomprehensibly glorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or will ever exist, and no remotely accurate understanding of who and what we are can be achieved by anyone who does not know it, and embody it in all of their actions. — Eben Alexander

Ancient boundaries are meaningless, except for political purposes; old divisions of clan and tribe are sentimental remnants of the pre-atomic age; neither creed nor color nor place of origin is relevant to the realities of modern power to utterly seek and destroy. — Sydney J. Harris

This complete ignorance of the realities, this innocent view of mankind, is what, in my opinion, constitutes the truly aristocratic. For — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I do not mean to say that I viewed those desires of mine that deviated from accepted standards as normal and orthodox; nor do I mean that I labored under the mistaken impression that my friends possessed the same desires. Surprisingly enough, I was so engrossed in tales of romance that I devoted all my elegant dreams to thoughts of love between man and maid, and to marriage, exactly as though I were a young girl who knew nothing of the world. I tossed my love for Omi onto the rubbish heap of neglected riddles, never once searching deeply for its meaning. Now when I write the word love, when I write affection, my meaning is totally different from my understanding of the words at that time. I never even dreamed that such desires as I had felt toward Omi might have a significant connection with the realities of my life. — Yukio Mishima

The more distant and distinct the relationship between two realities that are brought together, the more powerful the image. — Pierre Reverdy

The greatest nations are those who try to change the unalterable realities! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Life is full of what-ifs, many of which could easily have been realities, had just a few things been different. — Julian Baggini

Show is not substance; realities govern wise men. — William Penn

Political leaders in Illinois kicked the can down the road, raised taxes, and ignored fiscal realities. Now, they're realizing the consequences of their actions: credit downgrades and negative outlooks. — Scott Walker

Universities should be safe havens where ruthless examination of realities will not be distorted by the aim to please or inhibited by the risk of displeasure. — Kingman Brewster Jr.

In this hour of all-but-universal darkness one cheering gleam appears: within the fold of conservative Christianity there are to be found increasing numbers of persons whose religious lives are marked by a growing hunger after God Himself. They are eager for spiritual realities and will not be put off with words, nor will they be content with correct "interpretations" of truth. They are athirst for God, and they will not be satisfied till they have drunk deep at the Fountain of Living Water. — A.W. Tozer

Why is our free-enterprise system so strong?- Not because it stands still, frozen in the past, but because it has always adapted to changing realities — Lee Iacocca

Although the world places a premium on the latest things, some realities are discovered by looking into the past. — Max Anders

A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives- our skin color, the land or concrete we grew up on, our sexual longings- all fuse to create a politic born out of necessity. Here, we attempt to bridge the contradictions in our experience:
We are the colored in a white feminist movement.
We are the feminists among the people of our culture.
We are often the lesbians among the straight.
We do this bridging by naming our selves and by telling our stories in our own words. — Michelle Cliff

I am anxious that the world should be inclined to look to painters for information about painting. I hope to show that ours is a regularly taught profession; that it is scientific as well as poetic; that imagination alone never did, and never can, produce works that are to stand by a comparison with realities. — John Constable

The emphasis on technology over an understanding of the realities of war and conflict reflect[s] the ahistoricism not only of too much of the U.S. military officer corps, but of the American educational system as well. Our mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan were the result of a pervasive failure to understand the historical framework within which insurgencies take place, to appreciate the cultural and political factors of other nations and people, and to encourage the learning of foreign languages. In other words, in Afghanistan and Iraq we managed to repeat many of the mistakes we made in Vietnam, because America's political and military leaders managed to forget nearly every lesson of that conflict. — Peter R. Mansoor

Space is still filled with the noise of destruction and annihilation, the shouts of self-assurance and arrogance, the weeping of despair and helplessness. But round about the horizon the eternal realities stand silent in their age-old longing. There shines on them already the first mild light of the radiant fulfillment to come. From afar sound the first notes as of pipes and voices, not yet discernable as a song or melody. It is all far off still, and only just announced and foretold. But it is happening, today. — Alfred Delp

(an apocalypse is a vision of heavenly secrets that can make sense of earthly realities), — Bart D. Ehrman

Depending on where The Great Filter occurs, we're left with three possible realities: We're rare, we're first, or we're fucked. — Tim Urban

As a matter of fact, no one is more tiresome than the person who can understand only realism in art. It shows a rather low artistic mentality never to believe anything you see unless it appears to be real. One must be willing to allow that symbolic things also mirror realities and sometimes provide greater esthetic pleasure than the merely realistic. — Aaron Copland

At seventeen dreams DO satisfy because you think the realities are waiting for you farther on. — L.M. Montgomery

Our mere anticipations of life outrun its realities. — Aesop

The demands of our reality function require that we adapt to reality, that we constitute ourselves as a reality and that we manufacture works which are realities. But doesn't reverie, by its very essence, liberate us from the reality function? From the moment it is considered in all its simplicity, it is perfectly evident that reverie bears witness to a normal useful irreality function which keeps the human psyche on the fringe of all the brutality of a hostile and foreign non-self. — Gaston Bachelard

In science fiction, you can also test out your own realities. — Theodore Sturgeon

Greed is not a defect in the gold that is desired but in the man who loves it perversely by falling from justice which he ought to esteem as incomparably superior to gold; nor is lust a defect in bodies which are beautiful and pleasing: it is a sin in the soul of the one who loves corporal pleasures perversely, that is, by abandoning that temperance which joins us in spiritual and unblemishable union with realities far more beautiful and pleasing; nor is boastfulness a blemish in words of praise: it is a failing in the soul of one who is so perversely in love with other peoples' applause that he despises the voice of his own conscience; nor is pride a vice in the one who delegates power, still less a flaw in the power itself: it is a passion in the soul of the one who loves his own power so perversely as to condemn the authority of one who is still more powerful. — Augustine Of Hippo

Projects can take years to exhibit proof-of-concept and a few more years to be converted into commercial realities. — Dilip Shanghvi

Stadiums fill up with people to see what's going to happen between the lines. But life isn't only about visible realities. There are invisible and unseen nuances ... things that shape us into who we are. — Orel Hershiser

One wants never to give up this crystalline perspective. One wants to keep counterpositioning home with what one knows of alternative realities, as they exist in Tunis or Hyderabad. One wants never to forget that nothing here is normal, that the streets are different in Wisebaden, and Louyang, that this is just one of many possible worlds. — Alain De Botton

When you set aside mere names & come down to realities, you find that we are ruled by a King just as other absolute monarchies are. His name is The Majority. He is mighty in bulk & strength... He rules by the right of possessing less money & less brains & more ignorance than the other competitor for the throne, The Minority. Ours is an Absolute Monarchy. — Arthur L. Scott

Perfection is an illusion which often prevents us from accepting the realities of life. — Sandeep Sharma

No one must say that they cannot be close to the poor because their own lifestyle demands more attention to other areas. This is an excuse commonly heard in academic, business or professional, and even ecclesial circles. While it is quite true that the essential vocation and mission of the lay faithful is to strive that earthly realities and all human activity may be transformed by the Gospel, none of us can think we are exempt from concern for the poor and for social justice — Pope Francis

Anger does not make history. Power does. And power may be supplemented by anger, but it derives from more fundamental realities; geography, demographics, technology, and culture. — George Friedman

A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Human beings have an extraordinary capacity to imagine possibilities and then turn those possibilities into realities. Evident in the gifts of civilization - in our arts, languages, sciences, technologies, businesses, governments, and so on - it is clear that we are a profoundly creative species. Yet many of us only access a smidgen of our creativity. — Scott Edmund Miller

Among the types of thoughts that affect action, none is more central or pervasive than people's judgments of their capabilities to deal effectively with different realities — Albert Bandura

Men do oppress women. People are hurt by rigid sexist role patterns. These two realities coexist. Male oppression of women cannot be excused by the recognition that there are ways men are hurt by rigid sexist roles. Feminist activists should acknowledge that hurt, and work to change it - it exists. It does not erase or lessen male responsibility for supporting and perpetuating their power under patriarchy to exploit and oppress women in a manner far more grievous than the serious psychological stress and emotional pain caused by male conformity to rigid sexist role patterns. — Bell Hooks

I believe in the power that not only allows the sun to rise but turns seeds into flowers and dreams into realities. — Oprah Winfrey

It's not enough to dream. It's not enough to try. It's not enough to set goals or climb ladders. It's not enough to value. The effort has to be based on practical realities that produce the result. Only then can we dream, set goals, and work to achieve them with confidence. — Stephen R. Covey

The things Nas' Illmatic was saying were sometimes hard realities but it was done on such a high level, I felt I could point to him as a representative. Someone who put my struggle and my worldview into poetry. — Erik Parker

The author of this text did not write to provoke, but merely to express a truth as he conceives it. Your own theologians have tied logic in knots to advance a doctrine addressing this very same point. What is the Virgin Birth, after all, but the fumbling of minds striving to deal with the indelicate realities of the body? We Jews are merely more forthright about such matters. — Geraldine Brooks

Your fantastic anticipations make me discern all the more forcibly what a wretched, unsubstantial scheme is this, on which we have wasted a precious summer of our lives. Do you seriously imagine that any such realities as you, and many others here, have dreamed of, will ever be brought to pass? — Nathaniel Hawthorne

We must distinguish between the kind of structural transformation that would leave in place (even increase) the realities of the exploitation of labor, and one that would undo this kind of exploitation or at least radically reduce it — Immanuel Wallerstein

When we meditate to expand our consciousness, we perceive reality from an evolved perspective. The yogic mindset is able to create the miraculous magic of each moment at all times. Even when doing mundane chores, a yogi is able to tap into the flow of inspiration. Holding unwavering focus, the mind of consciousness is efficient and effective in dealing with every day realities by being. The vast void mind of awareness is aligned to the world of all enlightened beings of the past as in the moment of now- alight as a Lamp.The magic of Now is consciousness. — Nandhiji

The turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed; and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities, the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things. The really religious person is accordingly unshakable and full of equanimity, and calmly ready for any duty that the day may bring forth — William James

Everyone, both big and small, can pull their weight, and ensure that the hopes and dreams of every child become realities. — Alma Powell

An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth
truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing ... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations ... — Saul Alinsky

Black America "isn't just as fissured as white America; it is more so," wrote Gates. And the mounting intraracial disparities mean that the realities of race no longer affect all blacks in the same way. There have been perverse consequences: in part to assuage our sense of survivor's guilt, we often cloak these differences in a romantic black nationalism - something that has become the veritable socialism of the black bourgeoisie.32 — Jason L. Riley

Buddhism is the study of the way the mind works. One has to be able to hold a large number of relational concepts simultaneously in the mind. It is necessary to grid, to literally unlock realities and dimensions with the power of your mind. — Frederick Lenz

We often behave as though Jesus is only interested in saving and loving a romanticized version of ourselves, or an idealized version of our mess of a world, and so we offer to him a version of our best selves. With our Sunday school shoes on, we sing songs about kings and drummers at his birth, perhaps so we can escape the Herod in ourselves and in the world around us. But we've lost the plot if we use religion as the place where we escape from difficult realities instead of as the place where those difficult realities are given meaning. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

When we understand who we are, and how our realities work, we can choose more consciously to shape our lives in an optimal way.
Knowledge of oneself is the very key to a happy life. Happiness is not something outside of our own consciousness that needs to be earned, and achieved. It is a choice that needs to be supported by positive actions. It is not enough to say that we want to be happy. Our desire of happiness, love and peace, needs to be supported by our state of being. — Raphael Zernoff

We have ignored this cancer for so long that the romance of environmental concern is already fading in the shadow of the grim realities of lakes, rivers and bays where all forms of life have been smothered by untreated wastes, and oceans which no longer provide us with food. — Edmund Muskie