Upon reflection, it is clear to see that the general themes found in the movie, "The Matrix" are not new or original. In fact, they are timeless subjects that have been touched upon in many medias and by countless people.

However, what is so remarkable about "The Matrix" is that the Wachowski Brothers were able to take these universal themes and weave them together in a way that was refreshing as well as mind-opening. Now, that is talent and genius at work!

On this page, I have started a list of famous quotations that I think may be of interest to many Matrix fans. Overall, they deal with the "Matrix philosophy"--which includes thoughts on sleep, faith, hope, truth, learning, the mind, dreams as well as other issues. (Who knows, maybe these very quotes were among the things that help inspire the Wachowski brothers!)

If there are other famous quotes that you feel should be added to this list, please send them to me via my feedback form. Please include the quote, its author, and the source (if you know it).

Please note that I have now created a random matrix quote generator using this list--it can be found on the main page of my web site.

Famous Quotes

"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."
--Edgar Allen Poe


"I'm afraid you deceive yourself. You are not by any means free. You are only looking out of the window of your prison, as you call it. The doors are locked, just the same." --Harold Frederick, The Damnation of Theron Ware


"You never find yourself until you face the truth."
--Pearl Bailey


"We walk by faith, not by sight."
--The Bible, II Corinthians. V.7


"Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
--William Jennings Bryan


"Man is what he believes."
--Anton Chelehov


"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."
--Oscar Wilde


"Let us have faith that right make might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."
--Abraham Lincoln


"I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?"
--Ernest Hemingway


"If I tell you the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
--Mark Twain


"I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."
--The Bible, II Timothy. IV. 7


"You can fool some of the people some of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."
--Abraham Lincoln


"I have always believed that all things depended upon Fortune, and nothing upon ourselves."
--Lord Byron


"The mind, once stretched by an empowering idea, can never fully shrink to its original dimensions."
--Unknown


"We are such stuff/As dreams are made on, an our little life/Is rounded with a sleep."
--Shakespeare, The Tempest. Act IV. Sc 1


"All great truths begin as blasphemies."
--George Bernard Shaw, Annajanska


"You will recognize your own path when you come upon it, because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need."
--Jerry Gillies


"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake."  
--Henry David Thoreau


"The only true reality is the one in which we perceive to be so."
--Unknown


"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of the dream."
--Eleanor Roosevelt


"One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be."
--Oscar Wilde, De Profundis


"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."
--Aldous Huxley


"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."  
--Mark Twain


"Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him."
--Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart


"If ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove."
--The Bible, Matthe 17:20


"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."  
--Edgar Allen Poe


"No matter what you believe, it doesn't change the facts."
--Al Kersha


"Thales was asked what was most difficult to man; he answered: "To know one's self."
--Diogenes
(Note: The quote "Know Thyself" is attributed to Socrates.)


"Your faith is what you believe, not what you know."
--John Lancaster


"And when man faces destiny, destiny ends and man comes into his own."
--André Malraux, The Voices of Silence


"Faith is the substance of things hope for, the evidence of things not seen."
--The Bible, Hebrews 11:1


"For hope is but the dream of those that wake."
--Matthew Prior (His inspiration for this quote was Aristotle's. See the quote below.)


"Hope is the dream of a waking man."--Aristotle
(This quote is also referred to as "Hope is a waking dream.")


"It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death."
--Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain.
(See also The Bible, Song Of Solomon VIII 6, which states "Love is strong as death; jealous is cruel as the grave.")


"It is certain because it is impossible."
--Tertullian, DeCarne Christi
(It is often quoted as "I believe because it is impossible.")


"Love conquers all things; let us too surrender to Love."
--Virgil, Eclogues


"Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves."
--Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile


"'Tis strange--but true; for truth is always strange,/Stranger than fiction."
--Bryron, Don Juan


"The Unexamined life is not worth living."
--Socrates, quoted in Plato's Apology.


"You have not converted a man because you have silenced him."
--John Morley, On Compromise


"The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future."
--Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness


"That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood your whole life, but in a new way."
--Doris Lessing, The Four-Gated City


"To live is to dream and to die is to awaken."
--Unknown


"Facts are stubborn things."
--Ebenezer Elliott, Field Husbandry


"We know what we are, but know not what we may be."
--Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act IV. Sc. 5


"Yes, I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world."
--Oscar Wilde


"It never rains but it pours."--
English Proverb


"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
--The Bible, John. VIII 32


"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
--Aldous Huxley, Time Must Have A Stop


"It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power."
--Alan Cohen


"A lie can travel around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
--Mark Twain


"The impossible is often the untried."
--Jim Goodwin


"Only that day dawns to which we are awake."
--Henry David Thoreau, Walden


"When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen: There will be something solid for us to stand on or we will be taught to fly."
--Patrick Overton


"Always question. Always analyze. But in the end, suspend judgment until you've been there. Live it to learn it."
--Mark McClinchie


"Yes, you can be a dreamer and a doer too, if you will remove one word from your vocabularly: impossible."
--Robert H. Schuller


"What is most real for me are the illusions I create with my paintings. Everything else is quicksand."
--Eugene Delacroix


"Everything's in the mind. That's where it all starts. Knowing what you want is the first step toward getting it."
--Mae West


"What a man thinks of himself--that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate."
--Henry David Thoreau


"We have to believe in free will. We've got no choice."
--Bashevis Singer


"Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will."
--James Stephens


"Almost anything is easier to get into than to get out of."
--Agnes Allen


"Fate leads the willing and drags along the unwilling."
--Seneca


"Man is only a subject full of error, natural and ineffaceable, without grace. Nothing shows him the truth. Everything deceives him. These two soures of truth, reason and the senses, besides being both wanting in sincerity, deceive each other in turn."
--Blaise Pascal


"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurence of the improbable."
--H.L. Mencken


"Whatever one believes to be true either is true or becomes true in one's mind."
--John C. Lilly


"A true knowledge of ourselves is knowledge of our power."
--Mark Rutherford


"Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved."
--W.J. Bryant


"To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe."
--Anatole France


"Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them."
--Umberto Eco


"Half the work that is done in this world is to make things appear what they are not."
--E. R. Beadle


"You brain shall be your servant instead of your master. You will rule it instead of allowing it to rule you."
--Charles E. Popplestone


"You are everything that is, your thoughts, your life, your dreams come true. You are everything you choose to be. You are as unlimited as the endless universe."
--Shad Helmstetter


"Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden."
--Phaedrus


"There are always two choices. Two paths to take. One is easy. And its only reward is that it's easy."
--Anonymous


"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend."
--Henri L. Bergson


"Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear."
--Dinah Mulock Craik


"Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate."
--Chuang Tzu


"The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."
--Abraham Lincoln


"One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better."
--Blaise Pascal


"Please don't lie to me, unless you're absolutely sure I'll never find out the truth."
--Ashleigh Brilliant


"You are in charge. You have the ability to master your destiny."
--Michael J. Mccarthy


"You can lay down and die, or you can get up and fight, but that's it -- there's no turning back."
--Jon English


"You have powers you never dreamed of. You can do things you never thought you could do. there are no limitations in what you can do except the limitations of your own mind."
--Darwin P. Kingsley


"The self is only that which it is in the process of becoming."
--Kirkegaard


"Life is a series of awakenings."
--Sivananda


"All things are filled of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another."
--Plotinus


"There is for each man, perfect self-expression. There is a place which he is to fill and no one else can fill, something which he is to do, which no one else can do; it is his destiny!"
--Florence Scovel Shinn


"At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want."
--Lao-Tzu


"It isn't true that everybody should follow one path. Listen to your own truth."
--Ram Dass


"When something seems to change in the world...it is really you that is changing."
--Deepak Chopkra


"Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly."
--St. Francis de Sales


"Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life."
--Buddha


"You often meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it."
--French proverb


"Love is the most powerful and still the most unknown energy of the world."
--Pierre Teilhard de Chardin


"Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path....This is what I must do, this is what I've got to have. This is who I am."
--James Hillman


"When the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear."
--Zen saying


"Start by doing what's necessary, then what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible." --St. Francis of Assisi


"The mind is everything; what you think, you become."
--Buddha


"You must unlearn what you have learned." --Yoda


"Just throw away all thoughts of imaginary things, and stand firm in that which you are." --Kabir


"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." --Oliver Wendell Holmes


"What is needed is to learn afresh, to observe, and to discover for ourselves, the meaing of wholeness." --David Bohm, Wholenss and the Implicate Order


"Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe." --Lao-Tzu, Tao-te-Ching


"The attainment of wholeness requires one to stake one's whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises." --C.G. Jung


"And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." --T.S. Eliot


"May you live all the days of your life." --Jonathan Swift


"There is no try, only do." --Yoda, "The Empire Strikes Back"

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