Delusion Quotes by Thomas Jefferson, Francis Bacon, Albert Einstein, Alasdair Gray, David Means, Swami Vivekananda and many others.
Resolved … that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism – free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence.
Libraries are as the shrine where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.
We are part of the whole which we call the universe, but it is an optical delusion of our mind that we think we are separate. This separateness is like a prison for us. Our job is to widen the circle of our compassion so we feel connected with all people and situations.
You suffer from the oldest delusion in politics. You think you can change the world by talking to a leader. Leaders are the effects, not the causes of changes.
Vietnam and Iraq are part of the same national trauma and delusion; we folded the war up when Reagan became president and unpacked it with Bush.
Go on saying, I am free. Never mind if the next moment delusion comes and says, I am bound. Dehypnotize the whole thing.
Like the mind-set that places men above women, whites above blacks, and rich above poor, the mentality that places humans above nature is a dysfunctional delusion.
Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitudes.
I don’t have any delusions. I don’t think I would make it through Navy SEAL training.
Delusion: belief said to be false by someone who does not share it.
Live on berries in a hollowed-out comet lit by artificial suns long enough, and you start to have delusions about achieving enlightenment.
As long as civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter, and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.
Practice is an ever-fresh, challenging flow of work and play in which we continually test and demolish our own delusions; therefore, it is sometimes painful.
Sincerity is not a test of truth. We must not make this mistake: He must be right; he’s so sincere. Because, it is possible to be sincerely wrong. We can only judge truth by truth and sincerity by sincerity.
Isn’t it sad how some people’s grip on their lives is so precarious that they’ll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?
I do not know whether this universe has an emperor; all I know is that this empire is in chaos; universal order is a big delusion.
We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.
Our everyday, traditional ideas of reality are delusions which we spend substantial parts of our daily lives shoring up, even at the considerable risk of trying to force facts to fit our definition of reality instead of vice versa.
So often, we believe we are alone in the privacy of our fantasies, but that is a delusion as well – and perhaps the most dangerous kind. For in letting ourselves forget about the common threads of our innermost wishes, we erode our foundations and lose the keystone of our souls.
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
All science is intelligent inference; excessive literalism is delusion, not a humble bowing to evidence.
Were we perfectly acquainted with the object, we should never passionately desire it.
Create delusion. Establish doubt. Feed paranoia.
It’s [Los Angeles] mostly full of nonsense and delusion and egomania. They think they’ll be young and beautiful forever, even though most of them aren’t even young and beautiful now.
Awakening is natural,delusion is not
How do I know that loving life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death I am not like a man who, having left home in his youth, has forgotten the way back?
A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of green paper.
Since it was there, Larkin got another bowl, spooned up stew for himself. “He fights with us. We’re an army.” “An army? Talk about delusions of grandeur. What are you?” she asked Glenna. “Witch.” “So, we’ve got a witch, a sorcerer, a couple of refugees from Geall and a vampire. Some army.
I flattered myself that I was rather empathetic, that I had rather good imaginative empathy. I’ve realized now that that was a complete self-delusion and that I didn’t really have any comprehension of what it was like to see your entire life go catastrophically wrong in a matter of moments.
All over the world, particularly in the newer nations, young men are coming to power–men who are not bound by the traditions of the past–men who are not blinded by the old fears and hates and rivalries– young men who can cast off the old slogans and delusions and suspicions.
Love is an obsessive delusion that is cured by marriage.
Every religion lies. Every moral precept is a delusion. Even the stars are a mirage. The truth is darkness, and the only thing that matters is making a statement before one enters it. Cutting the skin of the world and leaving a scar. That’s all history is, after all: scar tissue.
Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever; but, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure, that he may speak it the longer.
If the Story is not accurate to reality, it’s not any kind of truth at all. So it can never be ‘my truth’ or ‘your truth,’ even though we may believe it. It can only be our delusion or our mistake or our error, but it can never be our ‘truth.’
The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist, and the McGraths show why.
We’re under some gross misconception that we’re a good species, going somewhere important, and that at the last minute we’ll correct our errors and God will smile on us. It’s delusion.
We live and we die and anything else is just a delusion.
To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is entirely imaginary, which is its strength.
Don Quixote’s ‘Delusions’ is an excellent read – far better than my own forthcoming travel book, ‘Walking Backwards Across Tuscany.’
Praying which does not result in pure conduct is a delusion. We have missed the whole office and virtue of praying if it does not rectify conduct. It is in the very nature of things that we must quit praying, or quit bad conduct.
One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.
For Dostoevsky, Fourier is one of the industrious ant-hill engineers, busy, protected by the delusion that his goal, the will-ordered society, is the summation of all his desires.
Those who greatly enlighten delusion are buddhas; those who are greatly deluded about enlightenment are sentient beings.
There is a fine line between optimism and delusion. I cross it often.
To express himself well, the artist should be hidden. The trouble is that if an artist knows he has genius, he’s done for. The only salvation is to work like a labourer, and not have delusions of grandeur.
Rational people have better things to do than grant unwarranted credibility to every half-assed delusion.
It is the darling delusion of mankind that the world is progressive in religion, toleration, freedom, as it is progressive in machinery.
If aspects of the person remain undigested-cut off, denied, projected, rejected, indulged, or otherwise unassimilated-they become the points around which the core forces of greed, hatred and delusion attach themselves.
The greatest obstacle to enlightenment is getting past your delusion that you are not already enlightened.
There is no liberation to compare with freeing oneself from the illusions and delusions of the age in which one lives.
You who think of us: they lived only in delusion… Know that we the People of the Book, will never die!
If we once get above our Bibles and cease making the written Word of God our sole rule both as to faith and practice, we shall soon lie open to all manner of delusion and be in great danger of making shipwreck of faith and a good conscience.
Do not help the quick moneymakers who have delusions about taking possession of classics by smearing them with paint.
I’m trying to consciously evolve myself. I have no delusions of grandeur.
The resurrection of Christ is therefore emphatically a test question upon which depends the truth or falsehood of the Christian religion. It is either the greatest miracle or the greatest delusion which history records.
Faith is belief without evidence and reason; coincidentally that’s also the definition of delusion.
You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom.
I’ve worked very hard to transform my fearful delusions into loving beliefs, and I am committed to maintaining this way of being.
Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.
I’m not living under false delusions myself.
There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.
I think each family has a funhouse logic all its own, and in that distortion,in that delusion, all behavior can seem both perfectly normal and crazy.
The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion.
I don’t make art with grandiose delusions. I do know there are limits to what art is capable of. That makes it all the more appealing to me. And I can do as I will whenever I choose.
I maintain that to tell a person they are born again, while they are living in carelessness or sin, is a dangerous delusion.
The effect is delusion, and therefore the cause must be delusion.
Prayer is to the skeptic a delusion, a waste of time. To the believer it represents perhaps the most important use of time.
The human capacity for self-delusion is boundless, and the effects of belief are overpowering.
It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error.
If America ever passes out as a great nation, we ought to put on our tombstone: America died from a delusion she had Moral Leadership.
I’ve never had any delusions about being a leading man, and it’s not sour grapes to say that in the best films that I’ve always enjoyed, the cliched leading man type isn’t a part of the picture.
This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.
Chemistry, unlike other sciences, sprang originally from delusions and superstitions, and was at its commencement exactly on a par with magic and astrology.
Human beings do metamorphose. They change their identity constantly. However, each new identity thrives on the delusion that it was always in possession of the body it has just conquered.
We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self-aware, yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind.
Whatever, crazy chick who maybe lives here and maybe also breaks into Michael’s house when they’re all gone. I’m out. Have a nice delusion. -Shayne
My delusion outweighs my talent by far and it always will, because if it doesn’t, then there’s no point in living.
Delusion about history is a serious matter; it can gravely affect the history that is waiting to be made.
Vision without execution is delusion. The joy is in the results
It took the real thing to show you the size of your delusions.
A woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his need of an amiable environment, his touching self-delusion.
But those who believe that what our people desire is big government are living in a state of delusion.
The grand delusion of contemporary liberals is that they have both the right and the ability to move their fellow creatures around like blocks of wood – and that the end results will be no different than if people had voluntarily chosen the same action
If I could give you only one advice, I would say: Don’t identify with anything. Be completely empty – no one. Be no-body and see if you lose anything but delusion.
The ignorant soul bride wanders in delusion, in the love of duality, she sits like a widow. She sits like a widow, in the love of duality, infatuated with Maya, she suffers in pain. She grows old, and her body withers away.
Discrepancy between theory and practice, which in sound physical and mechanical science is a delusion, has a real existence in the minds of men; and that fallacy, through rejected by their judgments, continues to exert and influence over their acts.
Worship means reverence and humility it means revering your real self and humbling delusions.
There are people who live under the delusion that simply because they will it to be so, it will be so.
All life is a delusion of the senses.
The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.
No matter how much I wanted all those things that I needed money to buy, there was some devilish current pushing me off in another direction — toward anarchy and poverty and craziness. That maddening delusion that a man can lead a decent life without hiring himself out as a Judas Goat.
Some `advanced thinkers’ are of the opinion that anyone who differs from the conventional opinion must be in the right. This is a delusion; if it were not, truth would be easier to come by than it is.
It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.
Not to identify oneself with something, or to associate things with the ‘me,’ and to see that the idea that there is a ‘me,’ which is distinct from things, is a delusion.
If you are delusional, sometimes the reality catches up with your delusion, and then all of a sudden you are a genius.
However tiresome to others, the most indefatigable orator is never tedious to himself. The sound of his own voice never loses its harmony to his own ear; and among the delusions, which self-love is ever assiduous in attempting to pass upon virtue, he fancies himself to be sounding the sweetest tones
A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence.
The attempt to redefine the family as a purely voluntary arrangement grows out of the modern delusion that people can keep all their options open all the time.
This solidity is not true. The apparent solidity is the delusion of the senses and of the self. Everything is made up of infinite, intelligent light.
Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) – neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice.
If we’re capable of conjuring up terrifying monsters in childhood, why shouldn’t some of us, at least on occasion, be able to fantasize something similar, something truly horrifying, a shared delusion, as adults?
The facile delusions which conceal from us our true situation all amount to this: that we are, or can be, wiser than the wisest men of the past. We are thus induced to play the part, not of attentive and docile listeners, but of impresarios and lion-tamers.
A man’s free will cannot cure him even of the toothache, or a sore finger; and yet he madly thinks it is in its power to cure his soul.
Not thinking about anything is zen. Once you know this, walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is zen. To know that the mind is empty is to see the buddha…. Using the mind to reality is delusion. Not using the mind to look for reality is awareness. Freeing oneself from words is liberation.
[T]here’s a difference between confident leadership and empty-headed delusion or cheerleading. And this is a difference that many CEOs miss.
man … thinks of himself as a creator instead of a user, and this delusion is robbing him, not only of his natural heritage, but perhaps of his future.
I think when you fall in love, like true love, it’s love for life. All the rest is just experiences and delusions.
advance money is really a delusion, that is to say, I get no more until it is paid out in sales, but still, living from hand to mouth and day to day as I do, a nickel in the hand is more useful than the same nickel next year. What do I know about next year? I’ve never been there. I don’t know any one who has.
Paranoia is the delusion that your enemies are organized.
You cannot reason with delusion.
I think that I feel that I have no choice but to operate under the illusion, which may be a delusion, that we can somehow get past the destruction that we have brought and that we are causing today.
That the will of the people can be established by voting for democrats is, of course, a delusion. Yet when considering a non-threatening system for deciding between diverse interests, then voting, of course, can be regarded as a humane and civilized process.
Propounding peace and love without practical or institutional engagement is delusion, not virtue.
Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself.
The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.
The only consistent hobby I’ve had is studying Spanish and French because of some delusion of grandeur to work around the world. I love sports but usually I’m looking for the next job.
Realize that the surface personality has no interest in anything which might disturb its darling delusions.
I believed in happily ever after as much as anyone, because Jane Austen, Prince Charming, and Hugh Grant promised me it could happen. But maybe that particular delusion was universal.
A hard Brexit would be so damaging to the true interests of the UK that what might follow – if we are lucky – is a great unmasking, not just of the political fantasists and chancers who peddled the great Brexit swindle, but of the historical delusion that empowered them.
The worst deluded are the self-deluded.
The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked.
Truth may sometimes hurt, but delusion harms.
If one has not influence to stem the torrent of popular delusion he is reduced to the melancholy part of a spectator in the midst of the ruin.
What delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me?
Politics, as hopeful men practise it in the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a change in substance.
I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
In a way, and I don’t like to use this word, but delusion can be a good thing, it can be a bad thing, but when you genuinely believe in something, if you’re putting in the effort to progress, you’re going to progress more than someone who doesn’t think they can do it.
The last great delusion is soon to open before us. Antichrist is to perform his marvelous works in our sight So closely will the counterfeit resemble the true that it will be impossible to distinguish between them except by the Holy Scriptures.
The aging process is totally minimizing. Life in general is pretty minimizing because you have a lot of big ideas, and you have to battle the mistaken delusions and instability that come with youth.
The world in general has meaning, deep meaning at times. This cannot be dismissed as a delusion, an artifact of chemicals.
Since I no longer expect anything from mankind except madness, meanness, and mendacity; egotism, cowardice, and self-delusion, I have stopped being a misanthrope.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single happy delusion that it can be done without a stop-over.
I have had to work long and hard to eradicate the dangerous delusion that, in a bad position, I could always, or nearly always, conjure up some unexpected combination to extricate me from my difficulties.
Delusions, errors and lies are like huge, gaudy vessels, the rafters of which are rotten and worm-eaten, and those who embark in them are fated to be shipwrecked.
The Devil’s strategy for our times is to trivialize human existence and isolate us from one another while creating the delusion that the reasons are time pressures, work demands or economic anxieties.
That the self advances and confirms the ten thousand things is called delusion; that the ten thousand things advance and confirm the self is called enlightenment.
The great thing about a culture of givers is that’s not a delusion – it’s reality.
If your senses are numbed with delusion and denial, you will stop looking for these true strengths and wind up living a second-rate version of someone’s life rather than a worldclass version of your own
I was naГЇve when I was young, I was sheltered. I had illusions about who I was going to be, delusions, and a little bit of pretentiousness. And I thought, “I’ll write the guy like that. It’ll allow me to make fun of everyone else if I make fun of myself.”
“Every national border in Europe,” El Eswad added ironically, “marks the place where two gangs of bandits got too exhausted to kill each other anymore and signed a treaty. Patriotism is the delusion that one of these gangs of bandits is better than all the others.”
In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.
Be compassionate to everyone. Don’t just search for whatever it is that annoys and frightens you-see beyond those things to the basic human being. Especially see the child in the man or woman. Even if they are destroying you, allow a moment to see how lost in their own delusion and suffering they are.
Religious mysticism is intellectual garbage. It’s a vestige of the old superstitious Dark Ages when nobody knew anything…It is one of those delusions that isn’t called insane only because there are so many people involved.
I never met another man I’d rather be. And even if that’s a delusion, it’s a lucky one.
Americans live under the delusion that enterprise here is both private and free. It may be nominally private, but it’s anything but free. Unfortunately, most people don’t know what freedom is. So they are unfazed when they hear that before you can do anything of a commercial nature, you need government permission.
The pain of losing a loved one by the horrible act of murder is not lessened by the horrible murder of another, not even when it is cloaked as ‘justice’ and state-sanctioned. It is only a delusion to believe that one’s pain is ended by making someone else feel pain.
One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.
Knowing one was comprised of recycled matter only and that selfhood was a delusion did not take away the aching of the heart.
From the Zen view all beings are in the grip of the three poisons, greed, anger and delusion (ignorance).
A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and the truth in front of patriotic passion.
For artists, there’s a very fine line between delusion and belief.
Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth.
Happy indeed are the arahants! No craving can be found in them. Cut off is the conceit ‘I am,’ Burst asunder is delusion’s net.
I’ve often thought that there isn’t any “I” at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion.
I think most people’s careers in theater are based on delusion. It’s just that mine started early.
You don’t have to wait for something ‘meaningful’ to come into your life so that you can finally enjoy what you do. There is more meaning in joy than you will ever need. The ‘waiting to start living’ syndrome is one of the most common delusions of the unconscious state.
I don’t have any delusions of grandeur. I just want to make music that doesn’t make me bored.
The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter – perfect in its bud as in its bloom – with no reason to explain its presence – no mission to fulfill – a joy to the artist, a delusion to the philanthropist – a puzzle to the botanist – an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man.
My brother used to say some people have an “inferiority simplex.” It’s not that they’re under the delusion that they’re inferior; they actually are inferior and they secretly know it.
First get rid of the delusion “I am the body,” then only will we want real knowledge.
A certain degree of physical harmony and comfort is necessary, but above a certain level it becomes a hindrance instead of a help. Therefore the ideal of creating an unlimited number of wants and satisfying them seems to be a delusion and a snare.
Self-confidence should be applied to wholesome actions,
Overcoming of delusions and my ability to overcome them.
Thinking, ‘I alone shall do it’
Is the self-confidence of action.
Overcoming of delusions and my ability to overcome them.
Thinking, ‘I alone shall do it’
Is the self-confidence of action.
Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Providence has so ordained it, that only two women have a true interest in the happiness of a man–his own mother, and the mother of his children. Besides these two legitimate kinds of love, there is nothing between the two creatures except vain excitement, painful and vain delusion.
It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
I think it’s fairly common for writers to be afflicted with two simultaneous yet contradictory delusions, the burning certainty that we’re unique geniuses, and the constant fear that we’re witless frauds who are speeding toward epic failure.
I have never been able to soothe myself with the sugary delusions of religion; for these things stand convicted of the utmost absurdity in light of modern scientific knowledge.
Learning a language represents training in the delusions of that language.
All psychedelic explorers should be aware of the concept of what is called a cognitive hallucination. The is a much more insidious phenomenon. This is, quite simply, an out-and-out delusion.
The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.
Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.
If we had a populist president who didn’t alienate so many persuadable voters, who took full advantage of a strong economy, and who had the political cunning displayed by Modi or Benjamin Netanyahu or Viktor Orban, the liberal belief in a hidden left-of-center mandate might be exposed as a fond delusion.
When you hate someone intensely, 80% of what you think is delusion.
The delusions of self-love cannot be prevented, but intellectual misconceptions as to the means of achieving success may be corrected.
Let no Christian parents fall into the delusion that Sunday School is intended to ease them of their personal duties. The first and most natural condition of things is for Christian parents to train up their own children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion.
Truth is always a delusion.
Either Trump only talks to those who play up to his delusion, or he simply doesn’t listen to those who might burst his bubble. Either way, that is a cause for worry.
We are squandering our wealth. In many respects, to the extent that we persist in our imperial delusions, we’re also going to squander our freedom…
“Yes, the Gorgon has dried your tears,” he said. “Well, she opened my eyes too; it’s a delusion to say that she blinds people. What she does is just the contrary — she fastens their eyelids open, so that they’re never again in the blessed darkness.”
Reminding people what in reality it is all about, giving them a theme on which to ponder, creating a shock within them, pulling them out of the delusion of non authenticity, enabling them to become aware of their true possibilities.
Without His Resurrection the death of Christ would be of no avail, and His grave would be the grave of all our hopes. A gospel of a dead Savior would be a miserable failure and delusion. The Resurrection is the victory of righteousness and life over sin an death.
There’s part of me that’s grateful for the delusion, because it takes a very hard shell to get started as an actor, and I don’t have a very hard shell.
The often heard lament, ‘I have so little time,’ gives the lie to the
delusion that the daily is of little significance.
delusion that the daily is of little significance.
I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.
Gain is delusion; loss is enlightenment.
…the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge.
justice itself is a chimera, a delusion. Justice is not a flat yardstick, applied in equal measure to an equal situation.
Some are masters of illusions, some are ministers of trade, all under the same delusion, all their beds unmade.
What I’ve found in my research is that realism and self-honesty are the antidote to ego, hubris, and delusion.
The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to trurh.
The superabundance alludes to the myth that is ensuring our demise but it’s also the space around and possibly the void that we enter into, beyond that delusion.
All delusions begin in the mind. All delusions are based on various ways we’re talking to ourselves and then believing what we are saying.
Delusion will vanish as the light becomes more and more effulgent, load after load of ignorance will vanish, and then will come a time when all else has disappeared and the sun alone shines.
Ideation without execution is delusion
Worship means reverence and humility. It means revering your real self and humbling delusions. If you can wipe out evil desires and harbor good thoughts, even if nothing shows, it’s worship. Such form is its real form.
Who knows when the end is reached? Death may be the beginning of life. How do I know that love of life is not a delusion after all? How do I know that he who dreads to die is as a child who has lost the way and cannot find his way home? How do I know that the dead repent of having previously clung to life?
Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer.
It is possible to live only as long as life intoxicates us; once we are sober we cannot help seeing that it is all a delusion, a stupid delusion.
Why does everybody have to be with somebody? It’s a stupid delusion and a really pathetic way of thinking.
In short, the world abounds with simple delusions which we may call “happiness”, if we be but able to entertain them.
The secret to living in the rush of the world with a minimum of pain is to get as many people as possible to string along with your delusions.
Men, unlike mockingbirds, have the capacity for systematic self-delusion. We echo each other with equal precision, equal eloquence, equal assurance.
Despite our very recent appearance on the planet, humanity combines arrogance with increasing material demands, even as we become more numerous. Our toughness is a delusion. Have we the intelligence and discipline to vigilantly guard against our tendency to grow without limit?
I’m busy doing my job, and being a loudmouth doesn’t appeal to me as much as when I was younger and had the youthful delusion that I was smarter than everybody else.
It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness.
The belief that one’s own view of reality is the only reality is the most dangerous of all delusions.
When reality becomes unbearable, the mind must withdraw from it and create a world of artificial perfection. Plato’s world of pure Ideas and Forms, which alone is to be considered as real, whereas the world of nature which we perceive is merely its cheap Woolworth copy, is a flight into delusion.
It took less than half a second for me to realize that, as long as I was truly insane now, I might as well enjoy the delusions while they were pleasant.
Womankind suffers from three delusions: marriage will reform a man, a rejected lover is heartbroken for life, and if the other women were only out of the way, he would come back.
From attachment comes longing, and longing breeds anger. From anger comes delusion, and from delusion, confused memory. From confused memory comes the ruin of discrimination; and from the ruin of discrimination, a man perishes.
Good intentions are wicked! As far as I can see, all they lead to are lies and delusions.
Today give up false mental attachments and beliefs! Free yourself from the delusion that anything external can fulfill the hunger of your soul for God-Consciousness.
As priestcraft was always the enemy of knowledge, because priestcraft supports itself by keeping people in delusion and ignorance, it was consistent with its policy to make the acquisition of knowledge a real sin.
President Obama has begun a three-state bus tour. I believe the three states are: Confusion, Delusion, and Desperation.
The more one is absorbed in so-called philosophy, the greater one’s delusion and blindness.
There is only one true purpose in life: to wake up from the delusion that you are separate from everything else.
Delusion means mortality. And awareness means Buddhahood.
Unless we take care to clear the first principles of knowledge from the incumbrance and delusion of words, we may make infinite reasonings upon them to no purpose. We may deduce consequences, and never be the wiser.
Vaccination is a barbarous practice and one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time. Conscientious objectors to vaccination should stand alone, if need be, against the whole world, in defense of their conviction.
Where is the delusion when truth is known? Where is the disease when the mind is clear? Where is death when the Breath is controlled? Therefore surrender to Yoga.
Error is certainty’s constant companion. Error is the corollary of evidence. And anything said about truth may equally well be said about error: the delusion will be no greater.
The illusion that we are separate from one another is an optical delusion of our consciousness.
Belief and delusion are incestuous siblings.
Life is the path. Can the path be seen? Observe the path and you are far from it. Without observation how can one know they are on the path? The path cannot be seen, nor can it not be unseen. Perception is delusion; abstraction is nonsensical. Your path is freedom. Name it and it vanishes.
I’m not Shakespeare. I have no delusions of who I am, as a writer. I wrote a simply beautiful script that’s a fun-filled, joyous fantasy, and I was fine with making changes for the actors that made them comfortable.
When told that man lives in delusion everyone thinks of himself as the exception; hence his delusion.
Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority. Their one comfort is the assurance that, even though it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man.
We may say that hysteria is a caricature of an artistic creation, a compulsion neurosis a caricature of a religion, and a paranoiac delusion a caricature of a philosophic system.
I used to think I was a singer; I had my own delusions about it.
I knew each person’s delusion, the places their records had scratched, where the sounds repeated.
Do not hold the delusion that your advancement is accomplished by crushing others.
The military superiority of Europe to Asia is not an eternal law of nature, as we are tempted to think, and our superiority in civilization is a mere delusion.
It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.
It’s only before realities set in that we can treasure our delusions.
You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion.
That you carry yourself forward and experience the myriad things is delusion. That the myriad things come forward and experience themselves is awakening
Every interview with a public figure should include the question “What have you been wrong about, and how did that change your views?” The answer will tell us if the person is intellectually honest or a tale spinner with delusions of infallibility.
I don’t pretend to any exemption from the general lot of parental delusion-I mean that like most other parents I see my child through an atmosphere which illuminates, magnifies, and at the same time refines the object to a degree that amounts to a delusion.
Maybe science is just magic with delusions of lack of grandeur.
Greed is an imperfection that defiles the mind; hate is an imperfection that defiles the mind; delusion is an imperfection that defiles the mind.
Whatever you think is delusion.
The concept of the “good ol’ days” must be one of our society’s biggest delusions, top reasons for depression, as well as most often used excuse for lack of success.
There is no such thing as real happiness in life. The justest definition that was ever given of it was “a tranquil acquiescence under an agreeable delusion”–I forget where.
If the idea of having to change ourselves makes us uncomfortable, we can remain as we are. We can choose rest over labour, entertainment over education, delusion over truth, and doubt over confidence. The choices are ours to make, but while we curse the effect, we continue to nourish the cause
One of the most persistent of all delusions is the conviction that the source of our dissatisfaction lies outside ourselves.
I felt compelled to blow the whistle on the penal system, under the delusion that doing so might result in some change, or at least save a few women from the same fate. Eternally naГЇve, that’s me.
People have this delusion that everything has to be for everybody at all times. Every album must be liked by everybody, and every TV show must be liked by everybody, and every movie must be liked by everybody. Everything then becomes bland.
Personally I like going places where I don’t speak the language, don’t know anybody, don’t know my way around and don’t have any delusions that I’m in control. Disoriented, even frightened, I feel alive, awake in ways I never am at home.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.
Irrational beliefs are culturally accepted delusions.
I lived so completely in my mind – a place of unchecked delusion and complete fantasy!
Love is the self-delusion we manufacture to justify the trouble we take to have sex.
The European reaction to Obama is a European delusion.
…for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions.
Little praying is a kind of make believe, a salve for the conscience, a farce and a delusion.
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
I am trying to change hip-hop music because I do feel there are places people can go with production and the structure of an album that they haven’t gone yet. But, like I said, I don’t have any delusions of grandeur. I just want to make music that doesn’t make me bored.
Though many schizophrenics become curiously attached to their delusions, the fading of the nondelusional world puts them in loneliness beyond all reckoning, a fixed residence on a noxious private planet they can never leave, and where they can receive no visitors.
We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And, indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again.” ~Fiddler, pg. 558
No matter what the delusions are, parents do not really know their children
Human beings have an almost unlimited capacity for self-delusion. We can justify any amount of sadness if it fits our own particular standard of reality.
The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here (pointing to himself) and you are out there.
One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.
Anger is one of the most common and destructive delusions, and it afflicts our mind almost every day. To solve the problem of anger, we first need to recognize the anger within our mind, acknowledge how it harms both ourself and others, and appreciate the benefits of being patient in the face of difficulties.
I wanted to become a model out of delusion. It was always something that I wanted to do, I just never thought that I would have the opportunity.
But when you think you’re supposed to do something with it and imagine that you’re the doer, that’s pure delusion. Just follow your passion. Do what you love. Inquire, and have a happy life while you’re doing it.
I don’t love the business. I never wanted to be a part of it. I don’t think any actor does. Most of the time, I’ve been really fortunate to work with people who are really fun to work with. It doesn’t mean we don’t take it seriously, but no one is under the delusion (that we’re) bringing world peace.
One of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which men and nations can be subjected is that of imagining themselves special instruments of the Divine Will.
There are a lot of people who are doing wonderful things, quietly, with no motive of greed, or hostility toward other people, or delusions of superiority.
A delusion held by one person is a mental illness, held by a few is a cult, held by many is a religion.
It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.
To start from the self and try to understand all things is delusion. To let the self be awakened by all things is enlightenment.
When I played pool I was like a good psychiatrist. I cured em of all their daydreams and delusions.
Just as we should never balance the budget on the backs of the poor, so it is an economic delusion to think you can balance it only on the wallets of the rich.
Not complete inaction, which is an error, a confusion, a self-delusion, an impossibility, but action full and
free done without subjection to sense and passion, desireless and unattached works, are the first secret of perfection.
free done without subjection to sense and passion, desireless and unattached works, are the first secret of perfection.
No, I don’t think you’re paranoid. I think you’re the opposite of paranoid. I think you walk around with the insane delusion that people like you.
It has been lately urged in a very respectable quarter that it is the mission of this country to spread civil and religious liberty all over the globe, and especially over this continent – even by force, if necessary. It is a sad delusion.
I have no delusions that I’m the only source of improving people’s lives or that I’m even the right source. My style is intense, and it’s not going to be right for everybody.
He that is warm for truth, and fearless in its defense, performs one of the duties of a good man; he strenghtens his own conviction, and guards others from delusion; but steadiness of belief, and boldness of profession, are yet only part of the form of godliness.
In a sense, you’re always mythologizing your life; it’s always an effort to make yourself epic. At least in fiction you can lie and sort of justify your delusion about your “epicness.” But when you’re writing a memoir, you’re trying to make your life epic and it’s not – nobody’s life is.
I want to run for the Senate from Tennessee. Not now, but when I’m 50, when music dies down a little bit. I know lots of artists and actors have those delusions of grandeur, but ever since I was a kid, it’s been of interest to me.
Much as I like and admire Richard Dawkins, I do think that to call a book ‘The God Delusion’ is very worrying because the title implies that if you don’t believe in what I believe then you are ‘deluded.’ That, I think, is a dangerous concept and one that is unlikely to win hearts and minds.
Through our senses the world appears. Through our reactions we create delusions.Without reactions the world becomes clear.
Yet I pity the poor wretch, though he’s my enemy. He’s yoked to an evil delusion, but the same fate could be mine. I see clearly: we who live are all phantoms, fleeing shadows.
Expecting a novel to bear the weight of our whole disturbed society—to help solve our contemporary problems—seems to me a peculiarly American delusion. To write sentences of such authenticity that refuge can be taken in them: isn’t this enough? Isn’t it a lot?
In Kamby Bolongo Mean River damage and delusion walk hand in hand, and everything we think we know is gradually called into question. Reading like a cross between Samuel Beckett’s ‘The Calmative’ and Gordon Lish’s Dear Mr. Capote, Robert Lopez’s new novel gets under your skin and latches on.
Some American delusions: 1) That there is no class-consciousness in the country. 2) That American coffee is good. 3) That Americans are business-like. 4) That Americans are highly-sexed and that redheads are more highly sexed than others.
Is our desire for partnership just an evolutionary remainder, a Togetherness Delusion, where millions of women only think they need a relationship to be truly happy? Maybe. But you know what? That’s fine with me.
Everyone’s alone – or so it seems to me. They make noises, and think they are talking to each other; They make faces, and think they understand each other. And I’m sure they don’t. Is that a delusion?
Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of the multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper.
A blind determination to save the prestige of personal existence, rather than, through an impartial disdain for its impotence and entanglement, at least to detach it from the background of universal delusion, is triumphing almost everywhere.
A person experiences life as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. Our task must be to free ourselves from this self-imposed prison, and through compassion, to find the reality of Oneness.
What have we to offer the world beside the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment?
Our part is to pursue with steadiness what is right, turning neither to right nor left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day, assured that the public approbation will in the end be with us.
The most common reason we stumble into the delusion of powerlessness is that we’re afraid of what other people would do or say or feel if we were to act as we wanted.
I guess a little bit of delusion can go a long way.
Nothing is fixed or foolproof; I have no delusion about that.
Storytelling, mythology and film provide a lot of hope but, on the flip side, can also create delusion.
The God of the Old testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.
Not creating delusions is enlightenment.
Again and again, faith in a possible satisfaction of the human race breaks through at the very moments of most zealous discord because humankind will never be able to live and work without this consoling delusion of its ascent into morality, without this dream of final and ultimate accord.
I don’t have any delusions. I’m not a novelist – I’m a comedian who writes. I love doing the stand-up and the touring and the albums and all that, but it’s pretty amazing to go into a library and see your book there.
Should this my firm persuasion of the soul’s immortality prove to be a mere delusion, it is at least a pleasing delusion, and I will cherish it to my last breath.
Let no man in the world live in delusion. Without a Guru none can cross over to the other shore.
A man who fails is funny… if my sketches teach anything, it is that, for the male, sex is a snare and a delusion. What’s so corrupting about that?
Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell.
Confidence is 10 percent hard work and 90 percent delusion.
Little mirrors were attached to the front of their cars, at which they glanced to see where they had been; then they stared ahead again. I had thought that only beetles had this delusion of Progress.
Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes.
The Greeks… labored under the delusion that their democracy was a guarantee of peace and plenty, not realizing that unrestrained majority rule always destroys freedom, puts the minority at the mercy of the mob, and works at cross-purposes to the effective use of human energy and individual initiative.
A lot of gay men are in delusion if they think they’re super macho.
I need to learn not to bend over backwards to be nice to faith-heads. Give these people an inch and they take a league. I think, as I did when I wrote The God Delusion, that the Roman Catholic Church is a disgusting institution, the second most evil religion in the world.
The form of my poem rises out of a past that so overwhelms the present with its worth and vision that I’m at a loss to explain my delusion that there exist any real links between that past and a future worthy of it.
Confidence is 10 percent hard work and 90 percent delusion, just thinking foolishly that you will be able to do what you want to do
People in love, it is well known, suffer extreme conceptual delusions, the most common of these being that other people find your condition as thrilling and eye-watering as you do yourselves.
Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.
All the holy words you read and all the holy words you speak are as nothing if you do not act upon them.В Even if you read little and say little but live the right way, forsaking craving, hatred and delusion, you will know the truth and find calmness and will show others the path.
Freedom without the strength to support it and, if need be, defend it, would be a cruel delusion. And the strength to defend freedom can itself only come from widespread industrialisation and the infusion of modern science and technology into the country’s economic life.
…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?
It is a great delusion in those whose understanding has been darkened by self-love, to think that there is any obedience in the subject who tries to draw the superior to what he wishes.
I was suffering from the delusion that it’s the thought that counts.
In my view, if you want to get ahead and build wealth, you have to get over your delusion that something only has value if you can measure it.
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
I believe that the shocking toll of AIDS on gay men in the West was partly due to their Seventies delusions that a world without women was possible. All-male energies, unbalanced and ravenous, literally tore the body apart.
I have a million career weaknesses, and although it’s uncomfortable, I believe that authentically acknowledging and working through your vulnerability is more powerful than the delusion of perfection.
I suffer from the delusion that every product of my imagination is not only possible, but always on the cusp of becoming real.
History is delusional. Not just an illusion, it’s a delusion. America is this giant country, so it has these big delusions, and history is where delusions play out.
I’m not a comedian. I’m what you call a good, old-fashioned working actor who has had delusions of grandeur for my entire career and has known what I want to do.
The most foreign fighters in Iraq are wearing British and American uniforms. The level of self-delusion is bordering frankly on the racist. The vast majority of the people of Iraq are against the occupation of Iraq by the American and British forces.
Perhaps one day we will do “everything that we can to protect our people and the timeless values that we stand for.” But today, we won’t even honestly describe the motivations of our enemies. And in the act of lying to ourselves, we continue to pay lip service to the very delusions that empower them.
The delusions of the past seem fond and foolish. The delusions of the present seem subtle and sane.
This is no world. It is God Himself. In delusion we call it world.
He that expects to quantify in dollars the gains that will accrue to a company year by year for a program for improvement of quality expounded in [Out of the Crisis] will suffer delusion. He should know before he starts that he will be able to quantify only a trivial part of the gain.
I’d actually love to think that I could trust Kerry on national security. But the only way I could do that, at this point, would be via self-delusion.
You don’t come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn’t a strong aspect of your personality. A reality shaped around your own desires – there is something sociopathic in that ambition.
Only meaning can make a difference and we all know there’s no meaning. All stories express a desire for meaning, not meaning itself. Therefore any difference knowing the story makes is a delusion.
The average person suffers from three delusions: 1) That he is a good driver 2) That he has a good sense of humor and 3) That he is a good listener.
The preserve of ambition and folly in pursuit of illusion, or delusion.
Enter into the plane of mental development. Start to increase your personal power level. Your life will become quite wonderful and very happy. You move beyond delusion.
Never be frightened! Be fearless! There is no room for fear. Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is adharma and fear is disloyalty. All delusions emanate from this evil called fear.
Paranoia is a state of heightened awareness. Most people are persecuted beyond their wildest delusions.
Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
Well,’ said Ransom, ‘if it is a delusion, it’s a pretty stubborn one.
Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur.
The sense that my world is stable and stationary, that change will never come and that all will go on continuously as it is, is the nature of all delusion.
It’s hard to differentiate between a vision and a delusion – both cause you to see things that no one else sees.
The fundamental delusion of human beings is the belief that we exist separately and independently from the rest of the universe.
If it is the great delusion of moralists to suppose that all previous ages were less sinful than their own, then it is the great delusion of intellectuals to suppose that all previous ages were less sick.
That’s kind of what trust is, isn’t it? A willful self-delusion.
The atheist view is correspondingly life-affirming and life-enhancing, while at the same time never being tainted with self-delusion, wishful thinking, or the whingeing self-pity of those who feel that life owes them something.
Love is at first a set of delusions, which, as time goes by, are discarded like training wheels, and you love truly.
I gave up on the delusion that these players enjoy soccer as much as I do, that they play for the love of the game.
Space enthusiasts are the most susceptible demographic to delusion that I have ever seen.
You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion.
And long shall timorous fancy see The painted chief, and pointed spear, And Reason’s self shall bow the knee To shadows and delusions here.
I have never made it a consideration whether the subject was popular or unpopular, but whether it was right or wrong; for that which is right will become popular, and that which is wrong, though by mistake it may obtain the cry or fashion of the day, will soon lose the power of delusion, and sink into disesteem.
With my writing, I generally just pretend that no one’s reading it. I allow myself that delusion so that I can write the things that I write.
It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion
…what is romance, but a mutual pact of delusion? When the pact ends , there’s nothing left.
God could easily appear and clear up the global religious chaos and confusion. But a delusion can never appear in reality.
There is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual
Don’t think of 60 as ten years older than 50.
Think of it as only 1 year older than 59
Go ahead, as it’s your birthday
Delusion, today, is just fine
Think of it as only 1 year older than 59
Go ahead, as it’s your birthday
Delusion, today, is just fine
At every sunrise I renounce the doubts of night and greet the new
day of a most precious delusion.
day of a most precious delusion.
Many people have delusions of grandeur but you’re deluded by triviality.
Daydreams are the delusions of the devil.
Keeping kids safe is sometimes a delusion. The world is a perilous place. Sometimes the kitchen is a perilous place.
Chemically induced hallucinations, delusions and raptures may be frightening or wonderfully gratifying; in either case they are in the nature of confidence tricks played on one’s own nervous system.
I’ll settle for successful during my lifetime because at least I can be conscious of the delusion that it means something.
Delusions are states of mind which, when they arise within our mental continuum, leave us disturbed, confused and unhappy. Therefore, those states of mind which delude or afflict us are called ‘delusions.’
Well, delusions are a wonderful thing, and they keep you company, too.
There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory
I was suffering from my chronic delusion that one good share is safer than ten bad ones, and I am always forgetting that hardly anyone else shares this particular delusion.
I don’t know what people want. I have delusions of grandeur, but I’m not sitting here talking to you and thinking that I’m the goddamn President. I want to know everything, but I just can’t.
An industrial system predicated on the delusion of limitless expansion will, in time, consume its own basis of support.
Being grateful is the bridge between the world of nightmares and the world where we are free to say no. It’s the bridge between the world of delusions and the world of creativity.
It’s the power that brings death back to life, the power that turns poverty to wealth and anger to compassion.
It’s the power that brings death back to life, the power that turns poverty to wealth and anger to compassion.
Premature success gives one an almost mystical conception of destiny as opposed to will power-at its worst the Napoleonic delusion.
One man’s faith is another man’s delusion
The Constitution is a delusion and a snare if the weakest and humblest man in the land cannot be defended in his right to speak and his right to think as much as the strongest in the land.
Dispel not, the happy delusions of children.
To enter by reason means to realize the essence through instruction and to believe that all living things share the same true nature, which isn’t apparent because it’s shrouded by sensation and delusion.
The first-person viewpoint is more enjoyable to write, because it lets me meander more freely, and it can reveal more of the character’s self-delusions. Really all the advantages are with first-person, so I’m sorry I don’t get to pick and choose.
The current memoir craze has fostered the belief that confession is therapeutic, that therapy is redemptive and that redemption equals art, and it has encouraged the delusion that candor, daring and shamelessness are substitutes for craft, that the exposed life is the same thing as an examined one.
And what is happy? It is a going always on. There is something better to be done than I have done, and spurred by the fair delusion of progress, I will seek to progress, to whip myself on, to more and more- to learning. Always.
Our two-party system is a fraud, a sham, a delusion. On foreign policy, trade, immigration, Big Government, we have one-party government, one party press; and conservatives are being played for suckers.
A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.
A man’s ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Oh yes, I have learned much from Tremorlor, and so assume a like strategy. Silence, a faint mocking smile suggesting I know more than I do, an air of mystery, yes, and fell knowledge. None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions!
I famously stole tons of VHS tapes from a video store I worked in. It was detailed in my special, Laboring Under Delusions. I worked at Tower Video and stole a bunch of videotapes from them, and then got caught and had to return the videotapes. It was a mortifying experience.
If in madness of delusion, anyone shall lift his parricidal hand against this blessed union, the arms of thousands will be raised to save it, and the curse of millions will fall upon the head which may have plotted its destruction.
I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. I’m not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Democrat! If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone ‘America died from a delusion that she had moral leadership.’
One of society’s absurd delusions is that the spending of money can cure something.
If the influence of luck is a delusion, then all I can say is that the delusion is virtually universal.
Life being full of harsh realities, we seek relief from them in a variety of pleasing delusions.
A direct statement about yourself is considered objective only if it is negative. If it’s positive, it is considered subjective. And ‘objective’ means it is accurate, and ‘subjective’ means it is conceited self-delusion.
In exchange for our humility and willingness to accept the charity of God, we are given a kingdom. And a beggar’s kingdom is better than a proud man’s delusion.
… We brush aside all scales not our own, as if they were follies or delusions.
“Chaunt in his ear delusions magical,
That he may fight the horses of the sea.”
The Druids took them to their mystery,
And chaunted for three days.
That he may fight the horses of the sea.”
The Druids took them to their mystery,
And chaunted for three days.
Powerful men in particular suffer from the delusion that human beings have no memories. I would go so far as to say that the distinguishing trait of powerful men is the psychotic certainty that people forget acts of infamy as easily as their parents birth
I’m sure that you psychotic necro-wannabes with delusions of godhood are all about sharing with your fellow maniacs.
This sounds so bleak when I say it, but we need some delusions to keep us going. And the people who successfully delude themselves seem happier than the people who can’t.
Affliction by that falsehood is the act of dying. To be free from that delusion is to attain Immortality.
Everything appears to me to be authored, in some strange way. And I wonder if this is not the spreading assumption of the psychedelic illusion/delusion/revelation that life is in fact art.
When people start using science to argue for their specific beliefs and delusions, to try to claim that they’re supported by science, then scientists at least have to speak up and say, You re welcome to your delusions, but don’t say that they’re supported by science.
To know who you are without any delusions or sympathy is a moment of revelation that no one experiences unscathed.
The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we are all prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge.” – James Baldwin, “The Creative Process
Change that does not lead to liberation from fear, greed and delusion is not wholesome.В Furthermore, any change that does not yield more compassion and loving-kindness for yourself and others is a waste of precious life energy.
The Spirit and the Word must be combined. If I look to the Spirit alone without the Word, I lay myself open to great delusions also. If the Holy Ghost guides us at all, He will do it according to the Scriptures and never contrary to them.
There is such a delusion as evinces itself in cool vehemence; and it is the most dangerous of all expressions of fanaticism.
All things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion; life is warfare, and a visit to a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion.
No one should suffer from the great delusion that any form of communism or socialism which promotes the dictatorship of the few instead of the initiative of the millions can produce a happier or more prosperous society.
We cannot move casually into a better future. We cannot casually pursue the goal we have set for ourselves. A goal that is casually pursued is not a goal; at best it is a wish, and wishes are little more than self-delusion.
Do mortal fools still measure the increments leading to their deaths, wagering pleasures against costs, persisting in the delusion that deeds have value, that the world and all the gods sit in judgment over every decision made or not made?
Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.
Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
The best you can hope for in this life is that your delusions are benign and your compulsions have utility.
I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self-delusion, so it’s no problem for me to believe that I’m somebody else.
It was my delusion and naivety that brought me here.
Im busy doing my job, and being a loudmouth doesnt appeal to me as much as when I was younger and had the youthful delusion that I was smarter than everybody else.
In their confusion and delusion, men hate the womb that gives them birth. Not all men, certainly , but enough men to run the world.
I’m so incredibly tired of giving respect to a lot of delusions and crazy ideas just because they are regarded as religions.
Everyone knows that when you look at a television ad, you do not expect to get information. You expect to see delusion and imagery.
When this delusion of utter separateness underlies and governs whatever I think, say, and do, what kind of world do I create?
‘My dear friend, that must be a delusion, what can a circle have to do with the number of people alive at a given time?’
Realization is to get rid of the delusion that you have not realized.
The ideal may seem remote of execution, but the democratic ideal of education is a farcical yet tragic delusion except as the ideal more and more dominates our public system of education.
When I was really young, I wanted to grow up and be the sun. Which shows an early penchant for ambition or narcissism or grandiosity or delusion – all of which are bellwethers for becoming a writer.
Never underestimate the human capacity for delusion.
Death happens to the body with which it is associated, with which it mixes. The delusion that the body is the core, that the body is real, that verily is the death.
A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.
Practically all the relationships I know are based on a foundation of lies and mutually accepted delusion.
Buddhism talks about the possibility of transforming greed, hatred, and delusion. But sometimes need turns into greed.
I like to think ‘The God Delusion’ is a humorous book. I think, actually, it’s full of laughs. And people who describe it as a polarizing book or as an aggressive book, it’s just that very often they haven’t read it.
There are those who would love each other if once they were to speak to each other; when they spoke they would discover their souls were separated by phantoms and delusions
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
The best any human can do is to pick a delusion that helps him get through the day. This is why people of different religions can generally live in peace. At some level, we all suspect that other people don’t believe their own religion any more than we believe ours.
The whole idea of civilization as an understandable narrative is a bit nuts. It’s the most problematic of delusions.
Build your life brick upon brick,
Live a life of truth,
And you will look back on a life of truth.
Live a life of fantasy,
And you will look back on delusion.
Live a life of truth,
And you will look back on a life of truth.
Live a life of fantasy,
And you will look back on delusion.
There is nothing more deceptive, more grandeur, than the delusion of a single man.
How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?
As long as humankind recklessly proceeds in the fateful delusion of being biologically fated for triumph, nothing essential will change.
Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life.
Their [the new atheists] treatment of the religious viewpoint is pathetic to the point of non-being. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course. Proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing.
Peace purchased at the cost of any part of our national integrity is fit only for slaves, and even when purchased for such a price it is a delusion, for it cannot last.
Delusion gives you more happiness than truth gives to me. For injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavour of them may last longer.
The religions of mankind must be classed among the mass-delusions of this kind. No one, needless to say, who shares a delusion ever recognizes it as such.
It is a very solemn delusion when ministers think they are prospering, and yet do not hear of conversions.
Well, love is insanity. The ancient Greeks knew that. It is the taking over of a rational and lucid mind by delusion and self-destruction. You lose yourself, you have no power over yourself, you can’t even think straight.
If the prosecution of crime is to be conducted with so little regard for that protection which centuries of English law have given to the individual, we are indeed at the dawn of a new era; and much that we have deemed vital to our liberties, is a delusion.
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and his feelings as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of consciousness.
Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas. It is true that every dogma crumbles sooner or later, because reality will eventually disclose its falseness; however, unless the basic delusion of it is seen for what it is, it will be replaced by others.
What do I actually mean when I say ‘delusion’? I mean the absurdity of the claim that the excessive atomic armament of both sides creates a ‘balance of terror’ that reduces the danger of war; that in the long run it even offers a minimum of security. … Hence the cynical saying: He who strikes first will die second.
For thousands of years, human beings have been obsessed with beauty, truth, love, honor, altruism, courage, social relationships, art, and God. They all go together as subjective experiences, and it’s a straw man to set God up as the delusion. If he is, then so is truth itself or beauty itself.
A lover is never a completely self-reliant person viewing the world through his own eyes, but a hostage to a certain delusion.
Nick’s right, you are psychotic. (Talon) The correct term is sociopathic and yes, I am. But at least I have no delusions about myself. (Zarek) Meaning? (Talon) Take your meaning wherever you can find it. (Zarek)
Forms of energy from nature gave my father trouble. He refused to believe he was going to die. He had these weird delusions. It’s amazing. Along with all the great thoughts, he had all this funny stuff.
The delusion of entertainment is devoid of meaning. It may amuse us for a bit, but after the initial hit we are left with the dark feeling of desolation.
The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion.
Anything which is a hindrance to the fight of the soul is a delusion and a snare, even like the body which often does hinder you in the path of salvation.
Nondistraction means not being lost in subtle undercurrents of delusion or indifferent stupor.
Such delusions of grandeur to think that a God with a hundred billion galaxies on his mind would give a tuppenny damn who you sleep with, or indeed whether you believe in him.
Alienation between the content and form happens frequently in my poems because I obstinately carry on dismantling my body, an act you can also call “dismantling delusion.” I think that after I dismantle my female body, I can finally dismantle established lyric poems.
There’s a whole lot of people in trouble tonight From the disease of conceit Whole lot of people seeing double tonight From the disease of conceit Give ya delusions of grandeur And a evil eye Give you the idea that You’re too good to die Then they bury you from your head to your feet From the disease of conceit
Vanity, wounded pride, rejection, self-delusion. I could recite a litany of little pinpricks that finally produce a gaping wound. That’s how marriages and friendships come apart.
Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.
Too many Americans have twisted the sensible right to pursue happiness into the delusion that we are entitled to a guarantee of happiness. If we don’t get exactly what we want, we assume someone must be violating our rights. We’re no longer willing to write off some of life’s disappointments to simple bad luck.
If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.
There are many kinds of delusion.
If we aim for what is no longer possible, we will achieve only delusion and frustration. But if we aim for genuinely worthwhile goals that can be attained, then even if we have less energy at our command and fewer material goods available, we might nevertheless still increase our satisfaction in life.
Strong delusions travel like
cold germs on a sneeze.
cold germs on a sneeze.
The goal of a life free of dysphoria is a snare and a delusion. A better goal is of good commerce with the world. Authentic happiness, astonishingly, can occur even in the presence of authentic sadness.
There are a lot of myths which make the human race cruel and barbarous and unkind. Good and Evil, Sin and Crime, Free Will and the like delusions made to excuse God for damning men and to excuse men for crucifying each other.
As gold purified in a furnace loses its impurities and achieves its own true nature, the mind gets rid of the impurities of the attributes of delusion, attachment and purity through meditation and attains Reality.
Software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing industry
Only in the last moment in history has the delusion arisen that people can flourish apart from the rest of the living world.
There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.
Delusion and the awakening – both can come and go slowly or suddenly.
My inner chemistry had been hijacked by a mad scientist, who poured the fizzy, volatile contents of my heart from a testВ tube markedВ SOBER REALITYВ into another labeledВ SUNNY DELUSION, and back again, faster and faster, until the floor of my life was slick with spillage.
Those desiring to escape from suffering hasten right toward suffering. With the very desire for happiness, out of delusion they destroy their own happiness as if it were an enemy
Oh son, watch the illusory spectacle! All birth and death is projected by delusion, not existing in reality. I am beyond coming and going.
We still live with this unbelievable threat over our heads of nuclear war. I mean, are we stupid? Do we think that the nuclear threat has gone, that the nuclear destruction of the planet is not imminent? It’s a delusion to think it’s gone away.
Each time we make this shift and choose happiness, we experience a miracle. Our mind shifts from fearful delusions and reconnects to our truth, which is love. Creating these shifts requires a dedicated commitment to choosing love.
With mania, is it dangerous to ride that euphoric feeling. You feel very animated and creative; I would fill journals with drawings. It feels good and you want it to last, but it can lead to being delusional. The delusions can be as real as you thinking you can fly.
The doctor will persist in laboring under the delusion that patients want common sense instead of magic.
All political spendings for purposes beyond the protection of life and property are a snare and a delusion.
When fortune has been abolished, when every profession is open to everyone, an ambitious man may think it is easy to launch himself on a great career and feel that he has been called to no common destiny. But this is a delusion which experience quickly corrects.
Love is an obsessive delusion that is cured by marriage.
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
We all need a bit of self-delusion. It gets us over the difficult spots.
We are vulnerable to fear only when we leave the present. If I drift into the past, my regrets surge up, my memories of failing and forsaking. If I shift into the future, I meet with doubt and delusion, fear of what’s to come, what I’m not capable of controlling. It’s in the present moment that I belong.
Doubt is the big machine. It grinds up the delusions of women and men.
Some of you may be perfectly happy with mediocrity. Some of you will get nothing but heartbreak. Some of you will be heralded as geniuses and become huge. Of course, all of you think that one describes you…hence the delusion necessary to push on.
The delusion that one’s sexual pattern is The Only Right Way To Be is probably the single most common sexual-psychosis syndrome of this era, and it is virtually almost always the victim’s fault. You cannot acquire this delusion by observing reality.
The average person is still under the aberrant delusion that food should be somebody else’s responsibility until I’m ready to eat it.
To know how little one knows is to have genuine knowledge. Not to know how little one knows is to be deluded. Only those who know when they are deluded can free themselves from such delusion. The intelligent people are not deluded, because they know and accept their ignorance as ignorance, and thereby have genuine knowledge.
When you are free from delusion, you can enjoy illusion. Enjoy the dream but enjoy the dream being free.
We should treat children as God does us, who makes us happiest when He leaves us under the influence of innocent delusions.
I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.
…a beggar’s kingdom is better than a proud man’s delusion.
We shot ‘Delusion’ in the middle of the desert and outside of Las Vegas where they did those underground nuclear bomb testings. So I only ate oysters and drank coffee because I didn’t want to turn into a mutant.
Delusion and denial does not equal an apology.
We chart delusions through collective agreement.
When I was 24, I was full of life. I was that ham who wanted to be famous, a movie star, all that stuff. I think it’s cool. But it was not what I was searching for, really. It was more a delusion.
There’s always an element of self delusion among people who believe they ought to be President. There’s an underestimation of your opponent and an overestimation of your own abilities. This is compatible with being rich and powerful, the idea that we were blessed by God because we deserve to be blessed.
Although millions of Americans purr with pastel delusions of Mohandas K. Gandhi, those who actually live in the scrawny crank’s homeland struggle to throw off the painful aftermath of his quackery.
The idea that we’re going to replace oil and natural gas with solar and wind, and nothing else, is a hallucinatory delusion.
Chronically dysfunctioning families are also delusional. Delusion is sincere denial.
There is a common British delusion that we ‘understand’ America. We don’t. Watching ‘Friends’ listening to Bruce Springsteen, eating at McDonald’s and visiting Disneyland does not do it.
A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.
I’m so grateful for my endless delusion.
It would, therefore, seem obvious that patriotism as a feeling is bad and harmful, and as a doctrine is stupid. For it is clear that if each people and each State considers itself the best of peoples and States, they all live in a gross and harmful delusion.
The best any human can do is to pick a delusion that helps him get through the day
I think people need fantasy, but I think they also need to know that they’re not being lied to. I think sometimes the fantasy can betray people and become more difficult for people’s lives than just truth. I can’t stand delusion. Delusion makes me sick.
As long as men will not be freed from their errors and delusions, humanity will not be able to go towards (“marcher vers”, Fr.) the accomplishment of its true destinies.
Experience convinces me that permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth & violence. Even if my belief is a fond delusion, it will be admitted that it is a fascinating delusion.
No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life.
When people call me a photographer, I always feel like something of a charlatan—at least in Japanese. The word shashin, for photograph, combines the characters sha, meaning to reflect or copy, and shin, meaning truth, hence the photographer seems to entertain grand delusions of portraying truth.
Enlightenment after all is to overcome delusion, by way of sensitizing practitioners to complexities and problems of the human situation.
Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people; they fix too for the people the principles of their political creed.
Multiplicity is a delusion. Unity is the Reality.
Inflamed by greed, incensed by hate, confused by delusion, overcome by them, obsessed by mind, a man chooses for his own affliction, for others’ affliction, for the affliction of both and experiences pain and grief.
To ignore the religious nature of the terrorist threat is to succumb to politically correct delusion.
I don’t have the delusion that I’m the best or have the right answer. Whenever someone is out there pissed at you or me, they don’t even know you or I. What they are really pissed at is themselves. You might have total respect for them but they don’t respect themselves.
