Delusion Quotes - Page 22

• 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.

  Antoinette Bosco

  Pain, Believe, Losing A Loved One

  Antoinette Bosco (2001). “Choosing Mercy: A Mother of Murder Victims Pleads to End the Death Penalty”

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• Most people are shaped to the form of their culture because of the enormous malleability of their original endowment. They are plastic to the moulding force of the society into which they are born. It does not matter whether, with the Northwest Coast, it requires delusions of self-reference, or with our own civilization the amassing of possessions. In any case the great mass of individuals take quite readily the form that is presented to them.

  Ruth Benedict

  Self, Civilization, People

  Ruth Benedict (1973). “Patterns of Culture”, p.279, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We [on the left] have to be used to being a minority -- a small minority -- for some time to come. The odd thing is that the right, even when it is in power, likes to think of itself as an embattled minority against this elite that somehow runs everything. Whereas the left, even when it has no power at all, likes to imagine it somehow represents the majority of people. These are mirror-image delusions.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Running, Thinking, Mirrors

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• Sometimes a happy delusion is better than grim reality.

  James Patterson

  Reality, Sometimes, Grim

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• 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.

  Andrew Jackson

  Blessed, Fall, Hands

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• 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.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Future, Hands, Years

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.370, Atlantic Monthly Press

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• When this delusion of utter separateness underlies and governs whatever I think, say, and do, what kind of world do I create?

  Eckhart Tolle

  Spiritual, Thinking, World

  Eckhart Tolle (2006). “A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose”, p.28, Penguin

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• Hope is a delusion; no hand can grasp a wave or a shadow.

  Victor Hugo

  Hands, Honor, Shadow

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• Why will any man be so impertinently officious as to tell me all prospect of a future state is only fancy and delusion? Is there any merit in being the messenger of ill news. If it is a dream, let me enjoy it, since it makes me both the happier and better man.

  Joseph Addison

  Dream, Future, Men

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator”, p.463

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• Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.

  Joan Didion

  Likes, Innocence, Ends

  1961 'On Self Respect', collected in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968).

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• I like money. That is, it is my preferred means of completing pecuniary transactions. I'm not particularly keen on handing over wads of currency of the realm, but at least one knows where one is, whereas the chequebook is a snare and a delusion, containing misleading numbers of blank cheques when none of the money that the bank contains is rightfully one's own. ... I think banks owe their customers a lot by way of compensation for the aggravation they cause them.

  Alice Thomas Ellis

  Mean, Thinking, Aggravation

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• justice itself is a chimera, a delusion. Justice is not a flat yardstick, applied in equal measure to an equal situation.

  Carson McCullers

  Justice, Yardsticks, Chimera

  Carson McCullers (1998). “Clock Without Hands”, p.50, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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.

  African Spir

  Destiny, Men, Errors

  "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 60), 1937.

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• I feel as if one would only discover on one's death-bed what one ought to have lived for, and realise too late that one's life has been wasted. Any passionate and courageous life seems good in itself, yet one feels that some element of delusion is involved in giving so much passion to any humanly attainable object. And so irony creeps into the very springs of one's being.

  Bertrand Russell

  Spring, Passion, Giving

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.232, Routledge

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• 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.

  Helen Van Slyke

  Pride, Vanity, Self

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• 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.

  Sherman Alexie

  Lying, Writing, Epic

  Interview with Joelle Fraser, ir.uiowa.edu. 2000.

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• Socialists do not merely want a welfare state, they absolutely must have one. They must have a grovelling dependent class from which to obtain their daily opiate: an hallucinogenic euphoria which comes from the delusion of being superior to and more altruistic than all others. They must have 'the poor, huddled masses' in much the same manner as vampires must have the blood of their victims.

  Edward Britton

  Blood, Class, Vampire

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• 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.

  Christa Wolf

  Running, War, Mean

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• Writing is the perfect balance between self-confidence and self-doubt, with a bit of self-delusion thrown in.

  Judith Kelman

  Writing, Self Confidence, Perfect

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• We live and we die and anything else is just a delusion.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Dies

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• There is always Joker to see through the delusion. Generation succeeds generation, but there is a fool walking the earth who is never ravaged by time.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Generations, Earth, Fool

  Jostein Gaarder (1997). “The Solitaire Mystery”, Berkley Publishing Group

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• Dispel not, the happy delusions of children.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children

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• 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.

  Camille Paglia

  Believe, Gay, Men

  "Vamps and Tramps". Book by Camille Paglia, 1994.

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• Whether a belief is considered to be a delusion or not depends partly upon the intensity with which it is defended, and partly upon the numbers of people subscribing to it.

  Anthony Storr

  Numbers, People, Belief

  Anthony Storr (1997). “Feet Of Clay”, p.199, Simon and Schuster

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• Prepare yourself for the coming astral journey of death by daily riding in the balloon of God-perception. Through delusion you are perceiving yourself as a bundle of flesh and bones, which at best is a nest of troubles. Meditate unceasingly, that you may quickly behold yourself as the Infinite Essence, free from every form of misery. Cease being a prisoner of the body; using the secret key of KRIYA, learn to escape into Spirit.

  Lahiri Mahasaya

  Journey, Keys, Essence

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