Reality Checks Quotes

One of life's joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks ... who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it. ~ David Brin

Life is a constant battle of fighting your own fears and not absorbing others. Don't fill the empty spaces of your heart with the fears of others in your life. It is the highly anxious person that will tell you that certain people and experiences need to be labeled and kept either close or at a distance. They go to great lengths to categorize things, in order to feel balance in their life because they are out of balance. Life to them is about control and making you believe that their perfect world is normal when there is nothing normal about it. Highly anxious people live through manipulating their world into what is easy and palatable to them and they can easily pull you into an unrealistic view of the world around them. You constantly have to reassess what is reasonable and what is over exaggerated because fear drives their every action. ~ Shannon L. Alder

In this,
journey,
of reaching,
to myself,
I have had,
many a,
thoroughfares,
goodbye affairs,
reality checks,
and,
lovely overwhelms. ~ Jasleen Kaur Gumber

Religion, by its very nature as an untestable belief in undetectable beings and an unknowable afterlife, disables our reality checks. It ends the conversation. It cuts off inquiry: not only factual inquiry, but moral inquiry. Because God's law trumps human law, people who think they're obeying God can easily get cut off from their own moral instincts.
And these moral contortions don't always lie in the realm of theological game-playing. They can have real-world consequences: from genocide to infanticide, from honor killings to abandoned gay children, from burned witches to battered wives to blown-up buildings. ~ Greta Christina

Mathematicians need proofs to keep them honest. All technical areas of human activity need reality checks. It is not enough to believe that something works, that it is a good way to proceed, or even that it is true. We need to know why it's true. Otherwise, we won't know anything at all. ~ Ian Stewart

Reality didn't come in a sudden burst of understanding; it was a slow dawn. ~ Alessandra Torre

The idea of polytheism is grounded in the view that reality (divine or otherwise) is multiple and diverse ... Polytheism has allowed a multitude of distinct groups to exist more or less in harmony, despite great divergence in beliefs and practices ... ~ Margot Adler

And what enriched me while reading Adorno, for example, lay not in what I read but in the perception of myself while I was reading. I was someone who read Adorno! And in this heavy, intricate, detailed, precise language whose aim was to elevate thought ever higher, and where every period was set like a mountaineer's cleat, there was something else, this particular approach to the mood of reality, the shadow of these sentences that could evoke in me a vague desire to use the language with this particular mood on something real, on something living. Not on an argument, but on a lynx, for example, or on a blackbird or a cement mixer. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

ABOUT SENTIMENTALITY IN LITERATURE:
"Sentimental fiction is a kind of pablum: Excessive amounts can spoil the appetite for reality, or at least for more fibrous forms of art. One reason, surely, why readers throw down books when they don't contain sufficiently "likable" characters is that their tolerance for any sort of moral challenge - for being asked, say, to sympathize with homeless little boys who are godless and truculent and a bit smelling - has been eroded by too many fairy tales masquerading as adult literature."~ wrote Zoe Heller for Bookends in the Sunday's NY Times Book Review interview ~ Alice Simpson

Welcome my new paranoia, if you are not my reality, so where the hell is the fucking reality!?!?! To be or not to be?! this is the paranoia of my sweet dreams. So you are more than welcome to my paradox, to my mind, to my existence. Consume from my brains flesh. There is no ending of this portion for you. My mind is the Prometheus of the time. Endless resource for paranoia. ~ Fereidoon Yazdi

Of Love
may God exalt you! -the first part is jesting, and the last part is right earnestness. So majestic are its diverse aspects, they are too subtle to be described; their reality can only be apprehended by personal experience. Love is neither disapproved by Religion, nor prohibited by the Law; for every heart is in God's hands. ~ Ibn Hazm

You may tell me that my hand and foot are only imaginary symbols of my existence. I could believe you, but you never, never can convince me that the I is not an eternal reality, and that the spiritual is not the true and real part of me. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

Reality is blocked by form and image. ~ Rumi

Because death is the only reality, and I'm a realist. ~ Shirow Masamune

There was a time when idealistic folksingers such as myself believed that Reality TV was a programming vogue that would peak and recede, leaving only its hardiest show-offs. Instead, it has metastasized like toxic mold, filling every nook and opening new crannies. ~ James Wolcott

If you do not love yourself to the depth of totality, you will never love love as a reality. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi

When perception and reality collide, we grow. ~ Keylee Dawn Austin

... knowing life is full of shit, and shitty people, but hoping if you keep that in mind, it doesn't hurt as bad when you're right about it all. ~ Rayne Havok

Rape culture is 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is not even talking about the reality that many women are sexually assaulted multiple times in their lives. Rape culture is the way in which the constant threat of sexual assault affects women's daily movements. Rape culture is telling girls and women to be careful about what you wear, how you wear it, how you carry yourself, where you walk, when you walk there, with whom you walk, whom you trust, what you do, where you do it, with whom you do it, what you drink, how much you drink, whether you make eye contact, if you're alone, if you're with a stranger, if you're in a group, if you're in a group of strangers, if it's dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if you're carrying something, how you carry it, what kind of shoes you're wearing in case you have to run, what kind of purse you carry, what jewelry you wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people you sleep with, what kind of people you sleep with, who your friends are, to whom you give your number, who's around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment where you can see who's at the door before they can see you, to check before you open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch your back always be aware of your surroundings and never let your guard down for a moment lest yo ~ Melissa McEwen

He continued with a laugh, "And for highly motivated people, there are few more frustrating situations than realizing that the goals you've set will require a shift in the basic laws of time and space. ~ Eric C. Sinoway

If you know how much reality is getting in, then you know a great deal about what a person sees to be true. ~ David J. Lieberman

The point is that as soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged. And, as I have pointed out already, the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when "our" side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified -- still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function. ~ George Orwell

Don't base reality on what you have seen when you have seen very little. ~ Scott Sigler

There were times when their eyes would meet, and they would stand gazing at each other as though neither could believe the reality of the other being so close to them. The years of waiting for each other offered an anticipation factor still in an immensely high status. At these moments, there was no one else in the world but the two of them and their hearts were bonding for eternity. ~ D. S. Mixell, Lady Ettrick

Don't fall for the ones who say, I am always yours. They are liars, unfortunately humans too ~ Rushabh Patel

Music is reflection of self
We just explain it, and then we get our checks in the mail
It's fucked up, ain't it?
How we can come from practically nothin
To bein able to have any f*ckin thing that we wanted
That's why we sing for these kids who don't have a thing
Except for a dream and a f*ckin rap magazine
Who post pin-up pictures on they walls all day long
Idolize they favorite rappers and know all they songs
Or for anyone who's ever been through shit in they lives
So they sit and they cry, at night, wishin they'd die
Til they throw on a rap record and they sit and they vibe
We're nothin to you, but we're the f*ckin sh*t in they eyes
That's why we seize the moment
Try to freeze it and own it, squeeze it and hold it
Cause we consider these minutes golden
And maybe they'll admit it when we're gone
Just let our spirits live on
Through our lyrics that you hear in our songs, and we can… ~ Eminem

Imagination is a reality for the heart. ~ Debasish Mridha

Religion can make it worse. Are you supposing that if people were encouraged to believe in a transcendent reality, and to be encouraged by grand rituals and music and preaching, to love their neighbors, then they would put jealousy and frustration aside? ~ Mary Douglas

I do try to write in ways that reflect reality, and I think that reality is rarely simple. ~ Rebecca Stead

Reality is when you pay the rent. Get caught in traffic or your car breaks down. Really it's an AM/FM sort of thing. You've got reality and then there's the miraculous and the transcendent. And once you start, time stops. ~ Carolyn See

Pity is a sense of our own misfortunes in those of another man; it is a sort of foresight of the disasters which may befall ourselves. We assist others,, in order that they may assist us on like occasions; so that the services we offer to the unfortunate are in reality so many anticipated kindnesses to ourselves. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A word is a bridge. It is a wave of light and sound that spans the perceived distance between one thing and another. ~ Thomas Lloyd Qualls

The effect of that is to poison the flow of information to the President himself and to create a situation where a President can be almost, to use a metaphor, psychotically divorced from the realities in which he is acting ... ~ Daniel Ellsberg

Even without being killed a man can experience death, he can conquer, he can realize the culmination characteristic of a 'super-life'. From a higher point of view, Paradise, the Kingdom of Heaven, Valhalla, the Island of the Heroes, etc., are only symbolic figurations forged for the masses, figurations that in reality designate transcendent states of consciousness, beyond life and death. The ancient Aryan tradition used the term jivan-mukti to indicate such a realization while still in the mortal body. ~ Julius Evola

I mean, you can pretend up to a certain point that the world has infinite resources and that it's an infinite wastebasket-but at some point you're going to run into the reality, which is that that isn't true. ~ Noam Chomsky

When people start liking people, that's when someone has the ability to get hurt. ~ Lauren Barnholdt

The object of knowledge is what exists and its function to know about reality. ~ Plato

Reality crashed into my brain: I'd never see my black tiger again.
P. 420, Kelsey ~ Colleen Houck

(From FORTUNE'S SON)
Philip had long ago begun drinking to excess, simply to obliterate the reality that he was half a man, living half a life. He had a title without the fortune, a wife that was no lover, and a lover, the only light in his darkened existence, who could never be his wife; thus, he drank ... drink and despair had made him reckless and rash. He'd gambled and he'd lost. Sunk in self-denigration, the cycle began anew; he drank.
Though aspiring for oblivion, he had only achieved piss-faced, when Lady Hastings had arrived after the race. The inevitable row had ensued, and then the world had retracted into blessed blackness. ~ Emery Lee

That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior ... I think Obama gets up every morning with a worldview that is fundamentally wrong about reality ... If you look at the continuous denial of reality, there has got to be a point where someone stands up and says that this is just factually insane. ~ Newt Gingrich

Ignoring our emotions is turning our back on reality. Listening to our emotions ushers us into reality. And reality is where we meet God. . . . Emotions are the language of the soul. They are the cry that gives the heart a voice. . . ~ Peter Scazzero

The first thing I understand is pain. ~ Ellis Adler

It is very easy for us to make choices in life but the most difficult part is to follow those choices through ". ~ Abdulazeez Henry Musa

The fire alarm is not the fire. ~ Marty Rubin

The president is out there today trying to talk about health care, and the reality is nobody cares about what he's saying on health care because this news is consuming everything. No president could tolerate that or should tolerate it. ~ Leon Panetta

If there is no ultimate reality, it's pointless to think about how we might get there. ~ Alister E. McGrath