We’re making it up. The world, the universe, life, reality. Especially reality.

delusion life reality world universe

About Tom Robbins

Portrait of Tom Robbins

Thomas Eugene Robbins (July 22, 1932 – February 9, 2025) was an American novelist. His most notable works are "seriocomedies" (also known as "comedy dramas"). His 1976 novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was adapted into the 1993 film version by Gus Van Sant. His last work, published in 2014,...

More quotations from Tom Robbins

It doesn’t matter how sensitive you are or how damn smart and educated you are, if you’re not both at the same time, if your heart and your brain aren’t connected, aren’t working together harmoniously, well, you’re just hopping through life on one leg.

education intelligence sensitivity brain hear harmony

“You’re better equipped for this world than I am,” she said. “I’m always trying to change the world. You know how to live in it.”

acceptance change world live

Don’t trust anybody who’d rather be grammatically correct than have a good time.

trust language grammar

The only authority I respect is the one that causes butterflies to fly south in fall and north in springtime.

power authority belief nature

Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don’t be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked.

life power control

More quotations tagged with “universe”

The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.

—Andre Malraux

wonder mystery prison universe stars

For monkeys to speak of truth is hubris of the highest degree. Where is it writ large that talking monkeys should be able to model the cosmos? If a sea urchin or a raccoon were to propose to you that it had a viable truth about the universe, the absurdity of that assertion would be self-evident, but in our case we make an exception.

—Terence McKenna

wonder truth universe hubris cosmos absurdity

The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you’re unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.

—Tom Robbins in Jitterbug Perfume

happiness universe self-centeredness attitude unhappiness

Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

—Carl Sagan in Cosmos

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The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

—Steven Weinberg

humanity life universe tragedy grace

History

3 Mar 2014 Added