Figments Quotes - Page 2

• While about one-third of Americans believe in ghosts, you won't find many exhibits on these spooky beings down at the local science museum. Why? Well, one explanation that you might consider, ghosts are just figments of our highly fertile imaginations!

  Seth Shostak

  Believe, Museums, Imagination

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• Only if God can say things that make you struggle will you know that you have met a real God and not a figment of your imagination.

  Timothy Keller

  Real, Struggle, Imagination

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• This is the eternal origin of art that a human being confronts a form that wants to become a work through him. Not a figment of his soul but something that appears to the soul and demands the soul's creative power. What is required is a deed that a man does with his whole being.

  Martin Buber

  Art, Men, Creative

  Martin Buber (2013). “I and Thou”, p.78, eBookIt.com

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• There is a philosophy that says that if something is unobservable -- unobservable in principle -- it is not part of science. If there is no way to falsify or confirm a hypothesis, it belongs to the realm of metaphysical speculation, together with astrology and spiritualism. By that standard, most of the universe has no scientific reality -- it's just a figment of our imaginations.

  Leonard Susskind

  Philosophy, Science, Reality

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• We perceive and interpret the outer world through a set of incredibly fine internal receptors. But we are incapable, by ourselves, of grasping or tweezing out any permanent, sharable figment of it. Practically speaking, we ritually verify what is there, and are disposed to call it reality. But, with photographs, we have concrete proof that we have not been hallucinating all our lives.

  Max Kozloff

  Reality, World, Photograph

  Max Kozloff (1979). “Photography & Fascination: Essays”

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• No one can mock your meagre achievements or inability to accomplish the simplest of tasks, if they remain figments of your imagination. You can revel, again and again, in the glory of a fairy tale doomed never to appear in reality.

  Chris Murray

  Reality, Imagination, Achievement

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• Equilibrium is a figment of the human imagination.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Imagination, Equilibrium, Humans

  Kenneth E. Boulding (1985). “Collected Papers: Toward the Twenty-First Century : Political Economy, Social Systems, and World Peace”, University Press of Colorado

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• I'm a figment of your imagination. You're only imagining that I'm sitting here eating with you. Because I'm just so freaking awesome that people daydream about being seen with me.

  Jennifer Estep

  People, Imagination, Sitting

  Jennifer Estep (2012). “Mythos Academy Bundle: First Frost, Touch of Frost, Kiss of Frost & Dark Frost”, p.187, Kensington Publishing Corp.

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• Some years ago I wrote a book called The House on Eccles Street. To write this book I had to think my way into the existence of Marion Bloom...Marion Bloom was a figment of James Joyce's imagination. If I can think my way into the existence of a being who has never existed, then I can think my way into the existence of a bat or a chimpanzee or an oyster, any being with whom I share the substrate of life.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• Vain vision! when the changing world each day Sees some such lordly pleasance pass away; When the mere stripling knows my symbols all Worn tokes, heaven hypothetical, Nature indifferent, and the dreams of men Figments of longing which we must condemn. Yet keep these plants, O Man! a kinder time May yet be moved by them to better rhyme, Or moved, like me, to place his pleasure low, On the firm Earth, whence Men and Blossoms grow.

  Ruth Pitter

  Death, Dream, Men

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• My manic depression was ravaging my life, but because nobody could see it, many people thought it was a figment of my imagination.

  Andy Behrman

  People, Imagination, Manic Depression

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• I would like to be a figment of my own imagination, but belly and bowels will not permit.

  Mason Cooley

  Imagination, Permit, Bowels

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• The secular Jew is a figment; when a Jew becomes a secular person he is no longer a Jew.

  Cynthia Ozick

  Jew, Secular, Persons

  Cynthia Ozick (1983). “Art & ardor: essays”, Alfred A. Knopf

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• Religions have been universal in the sense that all the people we know anything about have had a religion. But the differences among them are so great and so shocking that any common element that can be extracted is meaningless.... The older apologists for Christianity seem to have been better advised than some modern ones in condemning every religion but one as an impostor, as at bottom some kind of demon worship or at any rate a superstitious figment.

  John Dewey

  Differences, People, Atheism

  John Dewey, Larry Hickman, Thomas M. Alexander (1998). “The Essential Dewey: Pragmatism, education, democracy”, p.403, Indiana University Press

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• "You ask me how I know he lives?" asks the revival chorus. "He lives within my heart." Exactly! A figment.

  Robert M. Price

  Heart, Atheism, Revival

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• Artists are... stubborn egomaniacs who are mysteriously - and sometimes correctly - certain that the world needs to know all about the figments of their imaginations and who gear their lives to getting those figments into circulation.

  Jon Pareles

  Artist, Imagination, Ego

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• I believe that ideas such as absolute certitude, absolute exactness, final truth, etc. are figments of the imagination which should not be admissible in any field of science... This loosening of thinking seems to me to be the greatest blessing which modern science has given to us. For the belief in a single truth and in being the possessor thereof is the root cause of all evil in the world.

  Max Born

  Believe, Thinking, Blessing

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• [Math is] not at all like science. There's no experiment I can do with test tubes and equipment and whatnot that will tell me the truth about a figment of my imagination. The only way to get at the truth about our imaginations is to use our imaginations.

  Paul Lockhart

  Math, Imagination, Use

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• Anger or revolt that does not get into the muscles remains a figment of the imagination.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Imagination, Political, Doe

  Simone de Beauvoir (1953). “The second sex”, Vintage

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• I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.

  Tahereh Mafi

  Character, Imagination, Fiction

  Tahereh Mafi (2014). “Shatter Me Complete Collection: Shatter Me, Destroy Me, Unravel Me, Fracture Me, Ignite Me”, p.38, Harper Collins

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• I believe this notion of separation of church and state was the figment of some infidel's imagination.

  W. A. Criswell

  Believe, Imagination, Religion

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• I felt no shame in these activities, because I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment of the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in a park. In fact, there may have been no difference at all.

  Jennifer Egan

  Glasses, Differences, Imagination

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• Maybe it's because we as writers are alone so often, are so attuned to listening to the run of our own thoughts, that we find it more natural to write down the thoughts rather than the deeds of our characters. But speaking as a teacher who has spent some twenty years slogging through manuscripts where thoughts and exposition pile up as thick as the aftermath of a California mudslide, I can attest to the power of the evocative detail, gesture, or figment of speech.

  Les Standiford

  Running, Teacher, Character

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• The Dude just pounded his way in a straight line, convinced that the lion was a figment of his imagination and that the vampire ahead of him was just Grendel's deformed mutant brother.

  Ilona Andrews

  Brother, Imagination, Vampire

  Ilona Andrews (2015). “Magic Gifts: A Kate Daniels Novella”, p.44, Penguin

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• Space and time are figments of you're imagination, unless the guy you're flying next to won't shut up.

  Dov Davidoff

  Space, Imagination, Guy

  FaceBook post by Dov Davidoff from Feb 10, 2012

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