Delusion Quotes - Page 33

• 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.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Passion, Errors, Self

  Sri Aurobindo (1995). “Essays on the Gita”, p.107, Lotus Press

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• 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.

  Eric S. Nylund

  Names, Perception, Unseen

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• 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.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Depressing, Destiny, Men

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• 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.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, Sleep, Thinking

  YouTube Channel "RodiAgnusDei"/"Richard Dawkins debates Rowan Williams", www.youtube.com. February 05, 2013.

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• Mythologies were the earliest dreams of mankind, and in the psychotic delusions of his patients, Jung believed he was encountering those dreams again. Freud, too, believed that the psyche retained archaic vestiges, remnants of our earlier mental world. But for Freud these were a burden we were forced to repress. Jung instead would see them as a reservoir of vital energy, a source of meaning and power from which, through the over-development of our rational minds, modern mankind has become divorced.

  Gary Valentine

  Dream, Mind, World

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• 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.

  Stephen Nachmanovitch

  Practice, Play, Challenges

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• Software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing industry

  Eric S. Raymond

  Software, Persistent, Service Industry

  Eric S. Raymond (2001). “The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary”, p.120, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

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• We live in a self-organizing and self-correcting universe. For every problem, there is a potentially miraculous solution. A closed heart deflects the miracle, while an open heart brings it forth....In every moment, we make a choice between the heavenly awareness of our connection to all living things, or the hell of the delusion that we are separate and alone. The mind will manufacture according to our choice; whichever we choose, we will seem to experience.

  Marianne Williamson

  Heart, Self, Choices

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• Paul Davies takes us on a logically and rhetorically compelling modern search for human agency. This outstanding analysis, well informed by naturalistic views of our evolved affective nature, is the kind of philosophical work that is essential for a field to move forward when ever-increasing findings from modern science are inconsistent with traditional philosophical arguments. This book is for all who wish to immerse themselves in the modern search for free will. It is steeped in the rich liqueur of current scientific and philosophical perspectives and delusions.

  Jaak Panksepp

  Moving, Book, Philosophical

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• 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.

  Marc Maron

  Thinking, Genius, Mediocrity

  Marc Maron (2013). “Attempting Normal”, p.204, Spiegel & Grau

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• The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion.

  Winston Churchill

  Belief, Throwing, States

  Winston Churchill (1986). “The Gathering Storm”, p.273, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• O poor, unthinking human heart! Error will not go away, logic and reason are slow to penetrate.We cling with both arms to false hope, refusing to believe in the weightiest proofs against it, embracing it with all our strength. In the end it escapes, ripping our veins and draining our heart's blood; until, regaining consciousness, we rush to fall into snares of delusion all over again

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Believe, Fall, Heart

  Rabindranath Tagore (1991). “Selected short stories”, Penguin Classics

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• 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.

  George Muller

  Looks, Scripture, Spirit

  George Muller (2013). “Answers to Prayer From George Müller's Narratives (Start Classics)”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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• We're all mad, the whole damned race. We're wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we're all mad and in solitary confinement.

  William Golding

  Race, Mad, Confusion

  WILLIAM GOLDING (1979). “DARKNESS VISIBLE”

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• 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.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Ends, Intrigue, Pursue

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, contin. Reports and opinions while Secretary of State”, p.238

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• Wretched men cringe before tyrants who have no power, the victims of their trivial hopes and fears. They do not realise that anger is hopeless, fear is pointless and desire all a delusion. He whose heart is fickle is not his own master, has thrown away his shield, deserted his post, and he forges the links of the chain that holds him.

  Boethius

  Heart, Men, Tyrants

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• 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; the trick to living alone up here, away from all agitating entanglements, allurements, and expectations, apart especially from one's own intensity, is to organize the silence, to think of its mountaintop plenitude as capital, silence as wealth exponentially increasing. The encircling silence as your chosen source of advantage and your only intimate.

  Philip Roth

  Pain, Thinking, People

  Philip Roth (2000). “The Human Stain: A Novel”, p.44, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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.

  Alice Walker

  Inspiring, Graduation, Children

  Alice Walker (2013). “The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm's Way”, p.51, New Press, The

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• "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."

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Europe, Two, Patriotism

  Robert Anton Wilson (1982). “The Earth Will Shake: A Novel”, J P Tarcher

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• Whoever despises the high wisdom of mathematics nourishes himself on delusion and will never still the sophistic sciences whose only product is an eternal uproar.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Wisdom, Math, Eternity

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• 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.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Stupid, People, Feelings

  graf Leo Tolstoy (1989). “I Cannot be Silent: Writings on Politics, Art and Religion by Leo Tolstoy”

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• This building we're in has doors and windows. If we close the doors and windows, we can't get out. People lock themselves inside a house of delusions. But they're only delusions. They can leave anytime. Actually there is no house to leave. There's not even any leaving. What we see are flowers in the sky, the moon in the water. As for the meditative powers of Zen masters like Hsu-yun, sometimes it's useful to meditate and sometimes it isn't.

  Bill Porter

  Flower, Moon, Doors

  Bill Porter (2009). “Zen Baggage: A Pilgrimage to China”, p.328, Counterpoint Press

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• We're constantly getting these messages to mind our own business and look the other way if we want to be well liked, to not tell the truth or speak our mind or say anything too intense. Well, I'm telling you here that this approach not only makes you party to other people's crimes against themselves but is a prescription for mediocrity and delusion

  Kelly Cutrone

  Party, People, Mind

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• 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?

  T. S. Eliot

  Loneliness, Thinking, Talking

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950”, p.369, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Outcomes, Violence, Belief

  Mahatma Gandhi (2005). “All Men Are Brothers”, p.78, A&C Black

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