Reality Check Quotes

When I was in the Navy, everyone fell under the purview of "navy gray". It is the military's way of reminding its enlisted personnel that they are all equal. Man or woman, black or white, young or old, everyone was navy gray. With God's grace I can proudly say a better understanding of this concept has helped me ameliorate disputes, mend fences that appeared hopeless and find light in the midst of darkness. ~ Carlos Wallace

Life is difficult. ~ M. Scott Peck

I needed to get a handle on this girlish exhilaration. This girlish exhilaration needed a reality check. Maybe even a bitch-slap. ~ L. H. Cosway

I do not want to sound cynical or condescending, but your lips are moving, your mind unbending. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

I'd like to think that the day I realize we will always be miserable will differ from every other. I hope it will so obnoxiously stand out from the monotonous cycle of my days, that I wouldn't forget that sorrowful moment of comprehension. But, when that breeze of reality comes by, it wont be a memorable hurricane, nor a momentous tornado. It will be the same, sad, soft wind that I felt the day before, and the day before that. Because the moment you understand your inevitable misery in life, may also be the day you see you are to always be dejected. ~ Temperance

Don't be about just any life. Be about the life you want to be about. ~ Elias Williams

A few lessons, and you think you're through? We've barely begun. You are still a fool, Elend Venture- you just don't look like one anymore. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Bullish or bearish are terms used by people who do not engage in practicing uncertainty, like the television commentators, or those who have no experience in handling risk. Alas, investors and businesses are not paid in probabilities; they are paid in dollars. Accordingly, it is not how likely an event is to happen that matters, it is how much is made when it happens that should be the consideration. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go round the
earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it
goes, and turning towards the sun in the course of each
twenty-four hours, not only Japan, and the Philippines,
and Sumatra where we now are, but Africa, and Europe,
and America, and many lands besides. The sun does not
shine for some one mountain, or for some one island,
or for some one sea, nor even for one earth alone, but
for other planets as well as our earth. If you would
only look up at the heavens, instead of at the ground
beneath your own feet, you might all understand this,
and would then no longer suppose that the sun shines
for you, or for your country alone. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I've learned through a series of trials and errors that the median space is actually what's missing in our daily walk. ~ Carlos Wallace

Conscience exists as a reality-check for intent, but it's not intent itself. Anyone who really plays, explores and celebrates life has the right intent. ~ Darrell Calkins

After Dynasty, I wanted a reality check. I wanted to get in touch with real life, you know? That kind of world is outrageous. ~ Linda Evans

Better to end this dream before it becomes a nightmare. ~ Rachel Cohn

If you knew your potential to feel good, you would ask no one to be different so that you can feel good. You would free yourself of all of that cumbersome impossibility of needing to control the world, or control your mate, or control your child. You are the only one who creates your reality. For no one else can think for you, no one else can do it. It is only you, every bit of it you. ~ Esther Hicks

America was not made by Americans but by the hard work of those who came to America ~ Levon Peter Poe

The reckoning is how we walk into our story; the rumble is where we own it. The goal of the rumble is to get honest about the stories we're making up about our struggles, to revisit, challenge, and reality-check these narratives. ~ Brene Brown

People who are overwhelmed with troubles never do look back. They know only too well that misfortune follows in their footsteps. ~ Victor Hugo

When I speak of family, I immediately think of a support system who can give you a reality check when you need it: a mirror reflection of myself. I believe that we are a result of our family - the people who encourage us and tell us the truth about who we are which helps us to grow through their advice and wisdom. ~ Tasha Smith

Never try to place STOP PAYMENT on a reality check! ~ Carlos Wallace

He turned and saw Becky, crying in the doorway of her house. What was he doing here? Turning back he saw flashing blue lights at the end of the road, and realised the ringing in his ears was the sound of approaching sirens. ~ R.D. Ronald

Religion is a belief in invisible beings, inaudible voices, intangible entities, undetectable forces, and events and judgments that happen after we die. It therefore has no reality check. And it is therefore uniquely armored against criticism, questioning, and self-correction. It is uniquely armored against anything that might stop it from spinning into extreme absurdity, extreme denial of reality ... and extreme, grotesque immorality. ~ Greta Christina

People don't suddenly just change, you just suddenly see the real them. ~ Michelle Blanchard

[..] being the most attractive rarely meant being the most beautiful ~ Alice Walsh

Nothing makes you appreciate life more then when you wake up from a nightmare and realize it was just that. It's a good reality check. ~ P.T. Michelle

I have blogged previously about the dangerous and deadly effects of science denialism, from the innocent babies unnecessarily exposed to deadly diseases by other kids whose parents are anti-vaxxers, to the frequent examples of how acceptance of evolution helps us stop diseases and pests (and in the case of Baby Fae, rejection of evolution was fatal), to the long-term effects of climate denial to the future of the planet we all depend upon. But one of the strangest forms of denialism is the weird coalition of people who refuse to accept the medical fact that the HIV virus causes AIDS. What the heck? Didn't we resolve this issue in the 1980s when the AIDS condition first became epidemic and the HIV virus was discovered and linked to AIDS? Yes, we did - but for people who want to deny scientific reality, it doesn't matter how many studies have been done, or how strong the scientific consensus is. There are a significant number of people out there (especially among countries and communities with high rates of AIDS infections) that refuse to accept medical reality. I described all of these at greater length in my new book Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten our Future. ~ Donald R. Prothero

But persistent name calling? that prolongs hurt. It stretches out. Each nasty word stretches the rubber band further away until finally, one day, it snaps back at you with maximum impact ~ Randa Abdel-Fattah

No one ever gets anywhere seeing both sides. ~ Margaret Mitchell

When you're gone and people remember you, what will they say about you? That you were happy, generous and kind? That you loved big? Or that you were the drunken singer in a rock band? ~ Sarah Grimm

Staring down the reality of war, far from home, asleep among strangers, that familiarity, those memories, those ties kept us going; gave us a reason to persevere; toughened us up. ~ Carlos Wallace

-You give her a three, he said ...
-That three was entirely fitting, I said. It was complete garbage. Not the kind of thing I expect the
students to hand in ... In addition to the Second World War, I also deal with a large part of the history that came afterwards,' I interrupted again. Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, the Middle East and Israel, the Six-Day
War, the Yom Kippur War, the Palestinians. I deal with all of that during my classes. So then you
can't expect to turn in a paper about the state of Israel in which people mostly pick oranges and dance
in sandals around a campfire. Cheerful, happy people everywhere, and all that horseshit about the
desert where flowers blossom again. I mean, people are shot and killed there every day, buses are
blown up. What's this all about?
-She came in here crying, Paul.
-I'd cry too if I turned in garbage like that. ~ Herman Koch

Empowered Women 101: Everyone wants to be a princess, but you weren't the first princess in his life. They scrubbed his floors, washed his workout clothes, picked up his dirty socks and dealt with his issues. Always remember that history leaves a pattern of what to expect. A real woman knows that the bible is a motivator, but the real instruction manual is observing the last woman's struggle. ~ Shannon L. Alder

People who've been hurt like hurting others [..] ~ Alice Walsh

Let us be absolutely truthful for once in our life. We human beings are basically assholes. As time goes by, some of us become a little better - a rascal. But most of us live and die as we were, and are. Plain-simply, assholes. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

The reality is a reality check is an oxymoron ~ Tom Schafer

Do you know how many people would give anything for what you have? Not the fame or wealth - the opportunity to wake up tomorrow healthy, pain free and with a future stretching out before them? ~ Sarah Grimm

Ah, the boo. The boo is the most maligned, gossiped about, ridiculed figure in the pantheon of prison characters. Boo, which is short for the street term "booty call," is the casual girlfriend, the cheap feel in the sally port, the temporary object of someone's affections (although most boos don't realize the impermanence of their positions). ~ Erin George

If your heart tells you something but your mind tells you something else, which do you believe? Both are just as apt to lie. In fact, they play at deceit all the time. Mostly they balance each other, giving us that crucial reality check. But what happens on the rare occasions when they conspire together? ~ Neal Shusterman

You can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors. You know, eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

Look, you've been really sweet since you stepped through that door. Well, apart from telling Mal about me puking on you. That was unnecessary. But in the preceding twenty-four hours you dumped me alone in a room, went off with a groupie, accused me of trying to get it on with your brother and sicced your posse of lawyers onto me. [Evelyn] ~ Kylie Scott

Reality is not wild or chaos. It is a grand artwork of the existence. Compassion is harmonizing our soul with the grand melody of the existence. ~ Amit Ray

Talk is cheap, but actions are priceless. ~ Green Monk

You can choose daily to brace up and face the harsh realities of life . . .
Or while away the days that come by daydreaming . . .
Better still, you can make your dreams your realities. ~ Ufuoma Apoki

Getting no message is a message ~ Aena

According to Benedict's scheme, the community reads through ... the entire book of Psalms every week. The monks are therefore exposed ... to all the despairing, doubtful, bitter, vindictive, jingoistic, nationalistic, and seemingly racist passages in the Psalter. It is not that every sentiment expressed by a psalmist is admirable, but that in praying the Psalms, we confront ourselves as we really are. The Psalms are a reality check to keep prayer from becoming sentimental, superficial, or detached from the real world. ~ Richard H. Schmidt

The tranquility of mind lies in its reconciliation with the realities life. ~ B.S. Murthy

It should never be your job to pick up the pieces of a broken man or to housebreak one. There are far better things you can do with your time. ~ Alice Walsh

The body is extremely important for Inner Work, because it is a reliable reality check in ways that our minds and emotions (the other two centers) cannot be. This is because, as we mentioned earlier, the body is always here, in the present moment. Our minds or feelings can be anyplace - imagining the future, dwelling on the past, or ruminating on a fantasy - but our body is always here and now. It cannot be anywhere else. Therefore, if we are aware of the sensations of our bodies, it is a solid piece of evidence that we are present. ~ Don Richard Riso

You will curse your blessings by not being grateful for what is already yours. ~ Germany Kent

Of all the crap we carry around self-pity is probably the easiest one to let go.

You do not have the right to make your misery everyone else's problem. You do not have license to go out into the world and be an asshole. You do not have the right to hurt others because you are hurting inside.

Get over yourself. ~ Max Patrick

Viruses have no morality, no sense of good and evil, the deserving or the undeserving ... AIDS is not the swift sword with which the Lord punishes the evil practitioners of male homosexuality and intravenous drug use. It is simply an opportunistic virus that does what it has to do to stay alive. ~ Chris Crutcher

Where some saw a cold-hearted calculating slut, there was actually a girl who had done a lot of growing up to realise she should only get something of equal or greater value for everything she gave. ~ Alice Walsh

How to get and keep men interested in you (A Guide for the Modern Woman): Put them in the "friend" or "fuck" zone. Leave them there. ~ Alice Walsh

And how is your head? Better?" he asked.
"Very much. Sometimes it hurts." Right now it was throbbing. "But every day I am much improved."
"Where did you hit it? Are you bruised?"
I put a hand to the back of my head, a little to the left, where I had landed with such jarring force. "Here," I said. "It's still a little tender."
And leaning forward, he touched my hair right where I had just laid my hand. Such was he glamour that attended him that I expected the ache to instantly melt away, healed by his royal caress. But in fact, I felt a sudden leap in my heart that made the pain briefly more intense. ~ Sharon Shinn

Your time is your life. ~ Elizabeth Grace Saunders

Humans are mostly kind only to their own-self, and their own. To another being, they're mostly indifferent, if not inhumane. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

Dismantle your friend to see how he behaves. If he smiles with a beautiful grin, then take him back, he's worthy to be called a friend. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

To be in love at my age would mean not to have learnt anything at all. ~ Alice Walsh

We spend much of our lives going about completely blind to reality, and yet we still have the gall to act victimized when it invariably catches up to us. ~ Nenia Campbell

A lot of independent films offer a harsh reality check. ~ Aubrey Plaza

Contraception leads to more babies being born out of wedlock, like fire extinguishers lead to more fires. ~ Stephen Colbert

Living is a constant process of debunking our romantic notions of how our personal life will unfold. Reality oftentimes fails to meet a person's glamorous expectations. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The thought of being whoever I want is a terrifying thing, because I have only ever been who everyone has wanted me to be. ~ Dianna Hardy

Reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette. First, it delivers the fatal bullet rather infrequently, like a revolver that would have hundreds, even thousands of chambers instead of six. After a few dozen tries, one forgets about the existence of a bullet, under a numbing false sense of security. Second, unlike a well-defined precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality. One is capable of unwittingly playing Russian roulette - and calling it by some alternative "low risk" game. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Today, people are inclined to think that the sincerity and fervency of one's beliefs are more important than the content. As long as we believe something honestly and strongly, we are told, then that is all that really matters. Reality is basically indifferent to how sincerely we believe something. ~ J.P. Moreland

I like to work late because I don't like to work early - and I have to work sometime. ~ Rainbow Rowell

All our emotions are real, but one has to be quite cautious with what supports their reality. ~ Aleksandra Ninkovic

Somebody once told me that I need a reality check, I told them that I'll accept money from any source. ~ Neil Leckman

It's horrible. We had an eight-game win streak going. We were all high and happy and everything is good. It's kind of a reality check. We have to get back and start working again ... We just didn't bring it tonight. ~ Jared Jordan

If you have to tell people on your social media profiles you're an "influencer" you are probably not. Reality check. ~ Rebecca Aguilar

Tears rolled down my face. When did this happen? Then I realized, they didn't changed, I changed. It happened when I lifted the veil clouding my mind and saw the truth surrounding me. ~ L.M. Fields

America is still AmeriKKKa. rather we like it or not ~ Fee Scott

Prenups are so unromantic - a sign of distrust, not love. Time for a reality check, my friends. First, drawing up a prenuptial agreement together is a sign of incredible trust and financial openness - you're fooling yourself if you think you can achieve complete intimacy without it. ~ Suze Orman

We are constantly reminding them that they are in a competition. I had a word with all my contestants and I know Kelly Rowland had a word with hers. It's reality check time. ~ Gary Barlow

Testing the wrong person can prove a massive failure for the antagonist. ~ Carlos Wallace

Some of us are looking at the stars, but all of us are living in the gutter. ~ Vann Chow

Hip - Someone who knows the score. Someone who understands "jive talk." Someone who is "with it." The expression is not subject to definition because, if you don't "dig" what it means, no one can ever tell you. ~ William S. Burroughs

You don't get to become someone's hero unless you are already another's monster. ~ Adhish Mazumder

Sometimes, we can't see our progress. We live our lives every day and can't see how much has changed. I think we all need a piece of reality every once in a while, some item to show us how far we have come from our past to our present. We get so lost in trying to get gratification for our work right away that we forget our small progressive steps. And then, we get a reality check, we see a piece of our past that shows us that everything we've done thus far has been worth it. Maybe you see a piece of writing that you wrote a few years ago, a sketch from the past, or even, like me, you try on a pair of pants that you haven't worn in a few months. And suddenly, everything has become worth it. Your struggle becomes your success. All those days you felt like giving up but you didn't mark the pathway to your future. So keep trying, day after day and look back to the past with a smile. ~ Avina Celeste

Carpe Diem

By Edna Stewart

Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman did it, why can't I?

The words of Horace, his laconic phrase. Does it amuse me or frighten me?

Does it rub salt in an old wound? Horace, Shakespeare, Robert Frost and Walt Whitman my loves,

we've all had a taste of the devils carpe of forbidden food.

My belly is full of mourning over life mishaps of should have's, missed pleasure, and why was I ever born?

The leaf falls from the trees from which it was born in and cascade down like a feather that tumbles and toil in the wind.

One gush! It blows away. It's trampled, raked, burned and finally turns to ashes which fades away like the leaves of grass.

Did Horace get it right? Trust in nothing?

The shortness of Life is seventy years, Robert Frost and Whitman bared more, but Shakespeare did not.

Butterflies of Curiosities allures me more.

Man is mortal, the fruit is ripe. Seize more my darling!

Enjoy the day. ~ Edna Stewart

A library is a place to go for a reality check, a bracing dose of literature, or a "true reflection of our history," whether it's a brick-and-mortar building constructed a century ago or a fanciful arrangement of computer codes. The librarian is the organizer, the animating spirit behind it, and the navigator. Her job is to create order out of the confusion of the past, even as she enables us to blast into the future. ~ Marilyn Johnson

At 40 years of age, I thought I knew everything. I got a reality check with this class. Kenny (Winston) has become like a big brother to me. We've learned to agree to disagree. I hope and pray that this program continues and we all keep in touch. I'm a st ~ Robert Hughes

One of the biggest challenge in life is to see things for what they are instead of what you want them to be. ~ Saahil Prem

Who am I to take away another person's choices? ~ Akiah Watts

As the inevitable discussion proceeds in the months ahead, this memo should provide both perspective and a reality check. President Bush's approval numbers will again fall back to more realistic levels fairly quickly. All were quite successful on Election Day. ~ Matthew Dowd

That's what siblings are: a reality check. Try to become someone you're not - affect an accent, or start quoting the temperature in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit- and they're the ones who smack you upside the head. Siblings are like potters; they try you by fire, glaze you with taunts, finish you with well-aimed jibes. If you emerge from that kiln without cracking, you can survive the world. ~ Lisa Takeuchi Cullen

It's hard to spend years at a time working in total solitude with no reality-check. ~ Russell Banks

You are on your knees," I said. "We are not negotiating. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Reality Check
His lying is not contigent on who you are or what you do. His lying is not your fault. Lying is his choice and his problem, and if he makes that choice with you, he will make it with any other woman he's with. That doesn't mean you're an angel and he's the devil. It does mean that if he doesn't like certain things about you, he has many ways to address them besides lying. If there are sexual problems between you, there are many resources available to help you. Nothing can change until you hold him responsible and accountable for lying and stop blaming yourself.

The lies we tell ourselves to keep from seeing the truth about our lovers don't feel like lies. They feel comfortable, familiar, and true. We repeat them like a mantra and cling to them like security blankets, hoping to calm ourselves and regain our sense that the world works the way we believe it ought to.
Self-lies are false friends we look to for comfort and protection - and for a short time they may make us feel better. But we can only keep the truth at bay for so long. Our self-lies can't erase his lies, and as we'll see, the longer we try to pretend they can, the more we deepen the hurt. ~ Susan Forward

It's a reality check. These other countries took it seriously. You have to realize that other countries play the game and that anything can happen in a three-game series. It's do, or die. ~ Eduardo Perez

It's one thing to see someone with cognitive trouble for a few days as a guest in your home or at quick, chaotic family celebrations. Actually living with him in his home is a whole other plane of reality check. ~ Paula Spencer Scott

We must realize that people do not have to conform to one another. We are after all, ultimately beholden to ourselves. ~ Carlos Wallace

Generalization is impossible. It is an insult. ~ Anneli Rufus

Larry's short list for doing better: Stop complaining about your results. (No one really cares, anyway.) Whining about the problem only prolongs the problem. Take a realistic look at your results and think about what you have done or not done in the past that contributed to them. Go to the closest mirror, look yourself in the eye, and say, "This is all my fault." Take responsibility. Do a reality check and admit that change has been going on for a good long while and you survived. You will survive this, too. Make a list of what you are going to do differently in the future to change your results. Doing better is the result of deciding to do better and then taking action on that decision. Get ~ Larry Winget

Concentrate. Level the sight. Breathe in.
Ease the trigger. And relax?
BLAP! The can somersaulted across the sand.

Pride swelled till I thought I'd burst.
But my pride slipped at Dad's reality check.
Not bad. Pretty good, in fact. For a girl. ~ Ellen Hopkins

Calm down, Ephraim. You seem really certain of what's possible and what's impossible, for a guy who's trying to convince me he has a magic wishing coin. ~ E.C. Myers

But like all moments trapped in time, that moment would end and Joey Boldt, as all the greats before him did, would begin to understand that clinging too tightly to anything results in Time and Fate shaking you until you can't hold on any longer. And then, when you are knocked for a six and lose your grip, they allow you to spiral into a freefall where men are broken and legends are made. ~ Melodie Ramone

The Poets say you can live on love alone, but if that were true their books would be free. ~ Betsy Talbot

Here's what girlfriends do for you: they provide the reality check. They are the ones who tell you when you have spinach between your teeth or when your ass looks fat in a pair of jeans or when you're being a bitch. They tell you, and there's no drama or agenda, like there would be if the message had come from your husband. They tell you the truth because you need to hear it, but it doesn't alter the bond between you. ~ Jodi Picoult

It's one thing to feel confident of your knowledge; it's something else to demonstrate mastery. Testing is not only a powerful learning strategy, it is a potent reality check on the accuracy of your own judgment of what you know how to do. When confidence is based on repeated performance, demonstrated through testing that simulates real-world conditions, you can lean into it. ~ Peter C. Brown

If you have one friend in the end, it better be yourself. ~ Benjamin Aubrey Myers