All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.

Just as the soul fills the body, so God fills the world. Just as the soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is not seen. Just as the soul feeds the body, so God gives food to the world.

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.

It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

I’m not really concerned with portraying this tough warrior – I mean, that’s part of my job and I take that very seriously. But I don’t have anything to hide, and I’m not concerned with what people think.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

I’m an idealist without illusions.

Half a truth is often a great lie.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive – that you can touch the miracle of being alive – then that is a kind of enlightenment.

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don’t they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It’s obvious I’ve got big ones and if people want to assume they’re not mine, then let them.

If you can feel that Mother Earth is in you, and you are Mother Earth, then you are not any longer afraid to die because the earth is not dying. Like a wave appears and disappears and appears again.

A reader can never tell if it’s a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you’re reading it, they’re the same. It’s a thimble. It’s in the book.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

The lawyer’s truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful: they are found because it was possible to find them.

Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

The truth is often terrifying, which I think is one of the motifs of Larry and Andrew’s cinema. The cost of knowledge is an important theme. In the second and third films, they explore the consequences of Neo’s choice to know the truth. It’s a beautiful, beautiful story.

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.

I’ve always felt like there was a lot of hype around me even when there wasn’t. I felt like everyone was talking about me even when no one was talking about me.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

People always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

We misjudge risk if we feel we have some control over it, even if it’s an illusory sense of control.

The unnatural, that too is natural.

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.

There’s no way to remove the observer – us – from our perceptions of the world.

If my mother knew I did this for a living, she’d kill me. She thinks I’m selling dope.

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.

The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

Frankly, I think that the news industry is critically important because it points out things and surfaces truths that can often be uncomfortable. I think that that’s working, and the spotlight has been pointed on things that we have a responsibility to do better, and I accept that.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.