Solipsism Quotes

• 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

  Real, Artist, Horrible

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

  Eugene Wigner

  May, Materialism, Mechanic

  Eugene Paul Wigner (2012). “Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses”, p.252, Springer Science & Business Media

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• 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

  Inspirational, Stupid, Equality

  Ursula K. Le Guin (1996). “Unlocking the Air and Other Stories”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• 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

  Attitude, Thinking, Space

  W. N. P. Barbellion (1919). “The Journal of a Disappointed Man”

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• 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

  Suicide, Hands, Insanity

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• The subject does not belong to the world; rather, it is a limit of the world.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Self, Doe, World

  Ludwig Wittgenstein, David Francis Pears, Brian McGuinness (2001). “Tractatus Logico-philosophicus”, p.69, Psychology Press

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• 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

  Depression, Smart, Careers

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• I obviously invented Solipsism

  Dean Cavanagh

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• 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

  Language, Repeats, Lays

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958). “Philosophical Investigations”

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• 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

  Believe, Mean, Reality

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• ...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

  Home, Doe, Alternatives

  Jonathan Lethem (2010). “Chronic City”, p.341, Faber & Faber

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• When a solipsist dies ... everything goes with him.

  David Foster Wallace

  Dies

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• 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

  Sweet, Self, Play

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• Religion fosters servility and solipsism.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Religion, Atheism, Servility

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

  Arthur Phillips

  Music Is, Minimum, Snobbery

  Arthur Phillips (2009). “The Song Is You: A Novel”, p.42, Random House

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• 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

  Hair, Cities, Skins

  Jim Morrison (1989). “Wilderness”, Vintage

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• 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

  Fall, Serious Illness, Black

  Dan Simmons (2014). “The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle: Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion”, p.1125, Spectra

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• 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 Banks

  Causes, Theory, Suspicion

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• Domesticity has been a challenge for me but painful as it's been, engaging with family has been a school for reducing solipsism and increasing my understanding of people's different reactions to stress.

  Phillip Lopate

  Stress, School, People

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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

  Kedar Joshi

  Worst, Mockery, Moralist

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• 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

  Children, Loneliness, Divorce

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• 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

  Thinking, Hands, People

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• 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

  Book, Play, Mirrors

  "The Scourge of 'Relatability'". www.newyorker.com. August 1, 2014.

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• 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

  World, Disease, Assumption

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