"If we knew the truth, we'd see it; all else is system and outskirts."

Fernando Pessoa Literature See all quotes by Fernando Pessoa →

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More by Fernando Pessoa

“Some sensations are sleeps that take up all the extent of the mind like a fog, don't let us think, don't let us act, don't let us be clearly.”

“We’ve been devastated by the severest and deadliest drought in history – that of our profound awareness of the futility of all effort and the vanity of all plans.”

“I'm going to end a life that I thought could contain every kind of greatness but that in fact consisted only of my incapacity to really want to be great. Whenever I arrived at a certainty, I remembered that those with the greatest certainties are lunatics.”

“Smell is a strange sight. It evokes sentimental landscapes through a sudden sketching of the subconscious.”

“And let our despite go to those who work and fight and our hate to those who hope and trust.”

“Wasting time has an esthetics to it.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie."

— Franz Kafka

Literature1894–1924

#truth

"We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq, quite honestly."

— Vladimir Putin

Politics1911–1999

#truth

"We must now try to sum up, to draw together the threads of what has been said above on the subject of imperialism. Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental cha…"

— Vladimir Lenin

Politics1870–1924

#freedom

"Anti-Modi sentiment continues to be orchestrated by the media as the definitive truth, irrespective of of what the people of Gujarat or courts say. Positive developments about Gujarat are never covere…"

— Zafar Sareshwala

Politics1962

#time