Delusion Quotes - Page 19

• We women have lived too much with closure: "If he notices me, if I marry him, if I get into college, if I get this work accepted, if I get this job" -- there always seems to loom the possibility of something being over, settled, sweeping clear the way for contentment. This is the delusion of a passive life. When the hope for closure is abandoned, when there is an end to fantasy, adventure for women will begin.

  Carolyn Heilbrun

  Jobs, Adventure, College

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• What is man? He's just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Chemicals, Delusions Of Grandeur

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.1087, Penguin

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• ...for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions.

  Henri Matisse

  Feelings, Want, Opinion

  Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.43, Univ of California Press

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• Space enthusiasts are the most susceptible demographic to delusion that I have ever seen.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Space, Demographics, Susceptible

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• Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we're someone else, disrupting the delusion that we're permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we're saved!) other people are real again, and we're fond of them.

  George Saunders

  Prayer, Real, Reading

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• I mean what they and their hired psychiatrists call delusional systems. Needless to say, ‘delusions’ are always officially defined. We do not have to worry about questions of real or unreal. They only talk out of expediency. It’s the system that matters. How the data arrange themselves inside it. Some are consistent, others fall apart.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Real, Fall, Mean

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• Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached "reality"; but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya [illusion].

  H. P. Blavatsky

  Reality, Ideas, Ego

  H P Blavatsky (2015). “An Abridgement of the Secret Doctrine”, p.39, Quest Books

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• “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.”

  Edith Wharton

  Blessed, Eye, People

  "Literary Love: 5 Wild and Wanton Classics".

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• 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.

  Petra Kelly

  Men, Mind, Rich

  Petra Karin Kelly (1994). “Thinking green!: essays on environmentalism, feminism, and nonviolence”, Parallax Pr

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• None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions! A mantle of marble hiding a crumbling core of sandstone. See how they stare at me, wondering, all wondering, at my secret wellspring of wisdom...' Let's kill him,' Crokus muttered, 'if only to put him out of our misery.

  Steven Erikson

  Confusion, Secret, Crumbling

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• ...what is romance, but a mutual pact of delusion? When the pact ends , there's nothing left.

  Zoë Heller

  Romance, Ends, Pact

  Zoë Heller (2007). “Notes on a Scandal”, p.161, Penguin UK

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• The European reaction to Obama is a European delusion.

  Noam Chomsky

  Reactions

  "The United States Has Essentially a One-Party System". Interview with Gabor Steingart, www.spiegel.de. October 10, 2008.

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• I'm sure that you psychotic necro-wannabes with delusions of godhood are all about sharing with your fellow maniacs.

  Jim Butcher

  Harry Dresden, Psychotic, Wannabes

  Jim Butcher (2006). “Dead Beat: A Novel of The Dresden Files”, p.213, Penguin

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• Atheism Explained is a gem. It is clear, informative, well-argued, provocative, often witty, and unfailingly interesting. David Ramsay Steele ranges over so many issues that I should be surprised if he were right about everything, but it makes for a most stimulating read. The book is in a different league from Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, and deserves much greater success.

  Jeremy Shearmur

  Witty, Book, Issues

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• Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.

  Alan Barth

  Criticism, Indispensable, Dissent

  "The Loyalty of Free Men". Book by Alan Barth, 1951.

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• 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.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Long, Insane, Half

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• 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

  James A. Baldwin

  Artist, Creative, Suffering

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• The United States were a 35-year-old man, I think he'd be in a mental institution. Violent tendencies - delusions of grandeur - medicate heavily.

  Rick Mercer

  Men, Thinking, Years

  "This Hour Has 22 Minutes". Comedy, (1992– ).

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• It's only before realities set in that we can treasure our delusions.

  Anna Quindlen

  Reality, Treasure

  Anna Quindlen (2010). “Every Last One: A Novel”, p.121, Random House

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• Little praying is a kind of make believe, a salve for the conscience, a farce and a delusion.

  Edward McKendree Bounds

  Prayer, Believe, Farce

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• 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?

  Bill Watterson

  People, Faces, Life Is

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• Remember, it is not your weakness that will get in the way of God's working through you, but your delusions of strength. His strength is made perfect in our weakness! Point to His strength by being willing to admit your weakness.

  Paul David Tripp

  Strength, Christian, Perfect

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• The promise of learning is a delusion.... Tomorrow would alter the sense of what had already been learned, that the learning process is extended in this way, so that from this standpoint none of us ever graduates from college, for time is an emulsion, and probably thinking not to grow up is the brightest kind of maturity for us, right now at any rate.

  John Ashbery

  Growing Up, Maturity, College

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”, Penguin Group USA

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• 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

  Shantideva

  Enemy, Suffering, Desire

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• Ruthven surmised that he had hit upon some of the central deceptions which had wrecked him and reduced him and so many of his colleagues to this condition. To surmise was not to conquer, of course; he was as helpless as ever but there was a dim liberation in seeing how he had been lied to, and he felt that at least he could take one thing from the terrible years through which he had come: he was free of self-delusion.

  Barry N. Malzberg

  Years, Self, Deception

  Barry N. Malzberg (2007). “Breakfast in the Ruins”, p.207, Baen Publishing Enterprises

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