Quotes & Sayings About Solipsism

My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Was everyone else really as alive as she was? ... If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone's thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone's claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. — Ian McEwan

A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Beware of solipsism
Funny word. Sounds like it means "love of melons" or something. I looked it up. It means believing that "the self is the only reality."
Am I solipsist? — Jerry Spinelli

The mind is not forced to believe in the existence of anything (subjectivism, absolute idealism, solipsism, skepticism: c.f. the Upanishads, the Taoists and Plato, who, all of them, adopt this philosophical attitude by way of purification). That is why the only organ of contact with existence is acceptance, love. That is why beauty and reality are identical. That is why joy and the sense of reality are identical. — Simone Weil

A bird named Vlad the Impaler, who spent the bulk of his life hissing and looking at himself in a little mirror hanging[ ... ] in the iron cage, a mirror so dull and cloudy with Vlad the Impaler's bird-spit that Vlad the Impaler could not possibly have seen anything more than a vague yellowish blob behind a pane of mist[ ... ] A bird that not infrequently literally bit the hand that fed it, before returning to dance in front of its own shapeless reflection, straining and contorting always for a better view of itself. — David Foster Wallace

A strange thing happens when you are very rich, even when one's wealth is as artificial as in our society. You develop a solipsism of sorts. The world yields itself to your will. Everything becomes your reflection, and after a while looking into your own eyes is dull. — Hannu Rajaniemi

solipsism of adolescence with its wild enthusiasms, — P. J. O'Rourke

Everyone sees only their own reflection in the mirror of thought. — Marty Rubin

Is this narcissism? Solipsism? Idiocy (from the Greek word idios, for self)? Would Turing acknowledge it as a proof of human behavior? Well, perhaps. They drove Turing to suicide too. — Kim Stanley Robinson

I had to get out. Move.
I ran through neighborhoods, other lives, other worlds. Solipsism. A man on his lawn mower. Green and yellow. A high-school kid with earphones, washing his car, suds creeping down the driveway. High in the bright blue sky the moon showed like a fading fingerprint. It seemed so weak, so out of place, as if it stumbled into broad daylight by mistake. Unseen protons dying by the billions. — Jerry Spinelli

Sometimes I think I am going mad. I live for days in the mystery and tears of things so that the commonest object, the most familiar face- even my own- become ghostly, unreal, enigmatic. I get into an attitude of almost total scepticism, nescience, solipsism, in a world of dumb, sphinx-like things that cannot explain themselves. The discovery of how I am situated- a sentient being on a globe in space overshadows me. I wish I were just nothing. — W.N.P. Barbellion

We all have our little solipsistic delusions, ghastly intuitions of utter singularity: that we are the only one in the house who ever fills the ice-cube tray, who unloads the clean dishwasher, who occasionally pees in the shower, whose eyelid twitches on first dates; that only we take casualness terribly seriously; that only we fashion supplication into courtesy; that only we hear the whiny pathos in a dog's yawn, the timeless sigh in the opening of the hermetically-sealed jar, the splattered laugh in the frying egg, the minor-D lament in the vacuum's scream; that only we feel the panic at sunset the rookie kindergartner feels at his mother's retreat. That only we love the only-we. That only we need the only-we. Solipsism binds us together, J.D. knows. That we feel lonely in a crowd; stop not to dwell on what's brought the crowd into being. That we are, always, faces in a crowd. — David Foster Wallace

He may actually have been existing in the past and approximating a conceivable future, which brought even the assumption of his immediate perceptions as being in the present into doubt. And thus, he couldn't - beyond a hint of skepticism - say that he truly existed right now and in this moment, but instead it seemed more rational to assume that he simply existed and nothing more. — Ashim Shanker

Mike did not seem to grasp the idea of Creation itself. Well, Jubal wasn't sure that he did, either
he had long ago made a pact with himself to postulate a Created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days
since each hypothesis, while equally paradoxical, neatly avoided the paradoxes of the other
with, of course, a day off each year for sheer solipsist debauchery. — Robert A. Heinlein

Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans ... If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it's as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication ... and there is the real illness. — Philip K. Dick

[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's. — Samuel Butler

I don't believe in solipsism, but I also believe that if I am not existing - nothing exists for me. — Debasish Mridha

Investigations "eliminated solipsism but not the horror." The only difference between this new predicament and that of the Tractatus was that rather than being trapped alone in our private thoughts, we were trapped together, with other people, in the institution of language. — James Ryerson

The stumbling block will turn out to be the traditional one for students of consciousness: the flashlight is incapable of shining on itself, so we can't trust what its light reveals. — Jonathan Lethem

But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure?
Answer: Of himself.
Well, so I will talk about myself. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

All religious and spiritual practices lead to one deep realisation: We Are One. All is One. — Anita B. Sulser PhD

But to demand that a work be "relatable" expresses a different expectation: that the work itself be somehow accommodating to, or reflective of, the experience of the reader or viewer. The reader or viewer remains passive in the face of the book or movie or play: she expects the work to be done for her. If the concept of identification suggested that an individual experiences a work as a mirror in which he might recognize himself, the notion of relatability implies that the work in question serves like a selfie: a flattering confirmation of an individual's solipsism. — Rebecca Mead

The worst mockery God can make of a moralist is that He compels him to be a
solipsist. — Kedar Joshi

People think that I've committed myself to idealism, to solipsism, or to doctrines of the cabala, because I've used them in my tales. But really I was only trying to see what could be done with them. On the other hand, it might be argued that if I use them it's because I was feeling an affinity to them. Of course, that's true. — Jorge Luis Borges

But the young educated adults of the 90s
who were, of course, the children of the same impassioned infidelities and divorces Mr. Updike wrote about so
beautifully
got to watch all this brave new individualism and self-expression and sexual freedom deteriorate into the joyless and anomic self-indulgence of the Me Generation. Today's sub-40s have different horrors, prominent among which are anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without once having loved something more than yourself. — David Foster Wallace

But music is, at the very minimum, inflammatory, exclusionary, divisive, encouraging of snobbery and solipsism. — Arthur Phillips

There still remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking. — Christopher Hitchens

The first conversation began awkwardly, although Espinoza had been expecting Pelletier's call, as if both men found it difficult to say what sooner or later the would have to say. The first twenty minutes were tragic in tone, with the word fate used ten times and the word friendship twenty-four times. Liz Norton's name was spoken fifty times, nine of them in vain. The word Paris was said seven times, Madrid, eight. The word love was spoken twice, once by each man. The word horror was spoken six times and the word happiness once (by Espinoza). The word solution was said twelve times. The word solipsism seven times. The world euphemism ten times. The word category, in the singular and the plural, nine times. The word structuralism once (Pelletier). The term American literature three times. The words dinner or eating or breakfast or sandwich nineteen times. The words eyes or hands or hair fourteen times. The the conversation proceeded more smoothly. — Roberto Bolano

Despite popular opinion, there are no important parallels between Madonna and Monroe, who was a virtuoso comedienne but who was in secure, depressive, passive-aggressive, and infuriatingly obstructionist in her career habits. Madonna is manic, perfectionist, workaholic. Monroe abused alcohol and drugs, while Madonna shuns them. Monroe had a tentative, melting, dreamy solipsism; Madonna has Judy Holliday's wisecracking smart mouth and Joan Crawford's steel will and bossy, circus master managerial competence. — Camille Paglia

Solipsism. According to solipsism, reality exists only inside — Karen Joy Fowler

The assumption that you everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism. — David Foster Wallace

It seemed to him [Otto Kugelblitz] obvious that the human life span runs through the varieties of mental disorder as understood in his day - the solipsism of infancy, the sexual hysterias of adolescence and entry-level adulthood, the paranoia of middle age, the dementia of late life ... all working up to death, which at last turns out to be sanity. — Thomas Pynchon

Any theory which causes solipsism to seem just as likely an explanation for the phenomena it seeks to describe ought to be held in the utmost suspicion. — Iain M. Banks

Religion fosters servility and solipsism. — Christopher Hitchens

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, I refute it thus. — James Boswell

In my mind I lead a phantom's life. My neighbor makes me real. — Marty Rubin

I obviously invented Solipsism — Dean Cavanagh

Solipsism may be logically consistent with present Quantum Mechanics, Monism in the sense of Materialism is not. — Eugene Wigner

Don't rupture another's illusion unless you're positive the alternative you offer is more worthwhile than that from which you're wrenching them. Interrogate your solipsism: Does it offer any better a home than the delusions you're reaching to shatter? — Jonathan Lethem

Anyone who truly wants to escape human solipsism should not seek out empty places. Instead of fleeing to desert, where they will be thrown back into their own thoughts, they will d better to seek out the company of other animals.

A zoo is a better window from which to look out of the human world than a monastery. — John N. Gray

I particularly scorn my fondness for paradox. I despise pessimism, narcissism, solipsism, truculence, word-play, and pusillanimity, my chiefer inclinations; loathe self-loathers ergo me; have no pity for self-pity and so am free of that sweet baseness. I doubt I am. Being me's no joke. — John Barth

A good critic is trying to tell you what she has learned about herself from the reading of a particular piece of literature. A bad reviewer is often trying to tell you how smart he is by declaring whether or not he liked a particular book. If he liked the book, then this is the kind of book a superior person likes, and vice versa. He might try to explain why he didn't like it, but the review is really just a tautology. "I didn't like this book because it is bad," is equivalent to "This book is bad because I didn't like it. — Kevin Guilfoile

There is a certain solipsism to serious illness which claims all of one's attention as certainly as an astronomical black hole seizes anything unlucky enough to fall within its critical radius. — Dan Simmons

For if any man thinks that he is alone is wise--that in speech, or in mind, he hath no peer--such a soul, when laid open, is ever found empty. — Sophocles

How miserable a solipsist is! It is rather senseless for him to even assert his belief in solipsism, for, on the one hand, if his belief is false it is like committing intellectual suicide, and, on the other hand, if his belief is true it is an act of intellectual insanity. — Kedar Joshi

Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

And on my fourth morning in Naples, I woke up alone. There was a note on the table with the breakfast that Cinzia had quietly prepared for me. It read, "It could never be. But that's why it will always be - perfectly divine. Cinzia"
City Solipsism: A Short Story — Zack Love

I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me. — Christopher Hitchens

When a solipsist dies ... everything goes with him. — David Foster Wallace

One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism. — David Foster Wallace

In the holy solipsism
of the young
Now I can't walk thru a city
street w/out eying each
single pedestrian. I feel
thier vibe thru my
skin, the hair on my neck
it rises. — Jim Morrison

As against solipsism it is to be said, in the first place, that it is psychologically impossible to believe, and is rejected in fact even by those who mean to accept it. I once received a letter from an eminent logician, Mrs. Christine Ladd-Franklin, saying that she was a solipsist, and was surprised that there were no others. Coming from a logician and a solipsist, her surprise surprised me. — Bertrand Russell

If you ask me to tell you anything about the nature of what lies beyond the phaneron ... my answer is "How should I know?" ... I am not dismayed by ultimate mysteries ... I can no more grasp what is behind such questions as my cat can understand what is behind the clatter I make while I type this paragraph. — Martin Gardner

The subways, to my eyes, are a godsend: efficient, they get me where I want to go pretty quickly, they provide entertainment, sometimes via musicians who perform at station platforms, sometimes through the singing panhandlers who traipse through the cars, and most important, they are a stay against solipsism, proof positive that I am not alone in the universe. — Sari Botton

What feminists refer to as microaggressions, the rest of us sane adults call life....The concept of microaggressions encourages women to think that every single thing in the world is, or should be, about them. It encourages breathless levels of narcissism, solipsism and just plain delusion....Feminism encourages women to believe that they have the same reasoning and coping abilities as toddlers. No thanks. — Janet Bloomfield

Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

In every story of solipsism, there is always a conspiracy. Why? Because there is always a background involved in every perception. — Douglas Lain

And since today's all there is for now, that's everything.
Who knows if I'll be dead the day after tomorrow?
If I'm dead the day after tomorrow, the thunderstorm day after tomorrow
Will be another thunderstorm than if I hadn't died.
Of course I know thunderstorms don't fall because I see them,
But if I weren't in the world,
The world would be different -
There would be me the less -
And the thunderstorm would fall on a different world and would be another thunderstorm.
No matter what happens, what's falling is what'll be falling when it falls.

(7/10/1930) — Alberto Caeiro

To argue that, in a universe in which there seems to be no purpose, our existence is without meaning or value is unparalleled solipsism, as it suggests that without us the universe is worthless. The greatest gift that science can give us is to allow us to overcome our need to be the center of existence even as we learn to appreciate the wonder of the accident we are privileged to witness. — Lawrence M. Krauss