Delusion Quotes - Page 15

• 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.

  Stefan Zweig

  Faith, Dream, Peace

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• 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.

  Myrtle Reed

  Heartbroken, Men, Dating

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• 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.

  Ellen Sturgis Hooper

  Nature, Men, Thinking

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• love, which is a madness, and a scourge, and a fever, and a delusion, and a snare, is also a mystery, and very imperfectly understood by everyone except the individual sufferer who writhes under its tortures.

  Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Fever, Mystery, Madness

  Mary Elizabeth Braddon (2009). “Lady Audley's Secret”, p.594, The Floating Press

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• But if they did really refer to some kind of a "personal relationship," it would in effect be a case of channeling. I suspect this is why fundamentalists who condemn New Age channelers do not dismiss it as a fraud..., but instead think that Ramtha and the others are channeling demons. If they said it was sheer delusion, they know where the other four fingers would wind up pointing!

  Robert M. Price

  Thinking, Wind, Age

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• As I have already said, the belief that one's own view of reality is the only reality is the most dangerous or all delusions. It becomes still more dangerous if it is coupled with the missionary zeal to enlighten the rest of the world, whether the rest of the world wishes to be enlightened or not. To refuse to embrace wholeheartedly a particular definition of reality, to dare to see the world differently can become a "think crime" in a truly Orwellian sense as we get steadily closer to 1984.

  Paul Watzlawick

  Reality, Thinking, Views

  Paul Watzlawick (1977). “How real is real?: Confusion, disinformation, communication”, Vintage

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• You don't have to be Dave Halberstam to see that the American role in both conflicts [the Iraq war and the Vietnam conflict] is characterized by arrogance, ignorance and self-delusion at the highest levels of government.

  Jonathan Yardley

  War, Ignorance, Government

  "David Halberstam". Live chat, www.washingtonpost.com. April 24, 2007.

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• As the places where Americans dwell become evermore depressing and impossible, Disneyworld is where they escape to worship the nation in the abstract, a cartoon capital of a cartoon republic enshrining the falsehoods, half-truths, and delusions that prop up the squishy thing the national character has become--for instance, that we are a nation of families; that we care about our fellow citizens; that history matters; that there is a place called home.

  James Howard Kunstler

  Depressing, Home, Character

  James Howard Kunstler (1993). “The geography of nowhere: the rise and decline of America's man-made landscape”

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• 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.

  Arthur Koestler

  May, Hallucinations, Nervous

  Arthur Koestler (1981). “Kaleidoscope: essays from Drinkers of infinity, and The heel of Achilles and later pieces and stories”, Vintage

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• The New York Times reports that Moammar Gadhafi spent his last days hovering between defiance and delusion, surviving on rice and pasta. In other words, Gadhafi spent his last days as a sophomore in college. That's what I did.

  Conan O'Brien

  New York, College, Hovering

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• 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

  John Quincy Adams

  Love Is, Voice, Self

  John Quincy Adams (1810). “Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory: Delivered to the Classes of Senior and Junior Sophisters in Harvard University”, p.102

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• We should treat children as God does us, who makes us happiest when He leaves us under the influence of innocent delusions.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Childhood, Doe

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• Men educate each other in reason by contact or collision, and keep each other sane by the very conflict of their separate hobbies. Society as a whole is the deadly enemy of the particular crotchet of each, and solitude is almost the only condition in which the acorn of conceit can grow to the oak of perfect self-delusion.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Men, Self, Perfect

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• One-half of life is admitted by us to be passed in sleep, in which, however, it may appear otherwise, we have no perception of truth, and all our feelings are delusions; who knows but the other half of life, in which we think we are awake, is a sleep also, but in some respects different from the other, and from which we wake when we, as we call it, sleep. As a man dreams often that he is dreaming, crowding one dreamy delusion on another.

  Blaise Pascal

  Dream, Sleep, Men

  Blaise Pascal (1829). “Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects”, p.96

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• 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.

  Edmund Burke

  Truth, Exercise, Men

  Edmund Burke (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Edmund Burke (Illustrated)”, p.3863, Delphi Classics

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• The delusions of the past seem fond and foolish. The delusions of the present seem subtle and sane.

  Agnes Repplier

  Past, Foolish, Subtle

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• One of the most persistent of all delusions is the conviction that the source of our dissatisfaction lies outside ourselves.

  B. Alan Wallace

  Lying, Conviction, Source

  B. Alan Wallace (2014). “Mind in the Balance: Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity”, p.41, Columbia University Press

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• 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.

  Barbara Sher

  Mean, Conceited, Self

  Barbara Sher (1979). “Wishcraft: How to Get what You Really Want”

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• Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer.

  Heinz von Foerster

  Objectivity, Made, Observation

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• For artists, there's a very fine line between delusion and belief.

  Brian Koppelman

  Artist, Lines, Belief

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• Correct becomes defect. Good becomes ominous. People's delusions have certainly lasted long.

  Laozi

  Knowledge, Long, People

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• 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.

  Richard Dawkins

  Nice, Thinking, People

  "Divine dispatches: a religion roundup" Riazat Butt, www.theguardian.com. April 28, 2011.

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• My inner chemistry had been hijacked by a mad scientist, who poured the fizzy, volatile contents of my heart from a test tube marked SOBER REALITY into another labeled SUNNY DELUSION, and back again, faster and faster, until the floor of my life was slick with spillage.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Heart, Reality, Mad

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• 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!

  Steven Erikson

  Air, Confusion, Silence

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• The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.

  Stephen Greenblatt

  Pain, Obstacles, Pleasure

  Stephen Greenblatt (2011). “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern”, p.177, W. W. Norton & Company

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