Illusion Quotes - Page 13

• You are priests, not social or political leaders. Let us not be under the illusion that we are serving the Gospel through an exaggerated interest in the wide field of temporal problems.

  Pope John Paul II

  Leader, Political, Religion

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• Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.

  Steven Pinker

  Inspiring, Photography, Reality

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• Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its memory for vivid anecdotes rather than systematic statistics.

  Steven Pinker

  Memories, Psychology, Mind

  "Steven Pinker: fighting talk from the prophet of peace". Interview with John Naughton, www.theguardian.com. October 15, 2011.

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• Hollywood is an illusion. These intense workplaces, with very close relationships, a few months at a time - and then it ends.

  John C. Reilly

  Hollywood, Months, Workplace

  "John C. Reilly: this much I know". Interview with Emma John, www.theguardian.com. February 09, 2013.

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• Everybody sooner or later has to drop the luggage and the baggage of illusions.

  Carlos Santana

  Baggage, Sooner Or Later, Luggage

  "Carlos Santana: 'My daughter beat me at Guitar Hero'" by Peter Robinson, www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2012.

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• I have my dark side. You have your dark side. From the second that we have a brain, there are things that are not right - we are human beings with all these illusions and complexes and everything. That's attractive to me.

  Marjane Satrapi

  Dark, Brain, Sides

  "Marjane Satrapi: Superman is Boring, Batman is Hot, Dictators Are Clueless". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. August 13, 2012.

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• We have that illusion that we are 'deciding' what to make a character do, in order to 'convey our message' or something like that. But, at least in my experience, you are often more like a river-rafting guide who's been paid a bonus to purposely steer your clients into the roughest possible water.

  George Saunders

  Character, Order, Rivers

  "George Saunders’s Wild Ride" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. December 12, 2010.

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• I have lived too long to cherish many illusions about the essential high-mindedness of men when brought into stark confrontation with the issue of control over their security, and their property interests.

  Haile Selassie

  Men, Issues, Long

  Address to the United Nations General Assembly, delivered 6 October 1963

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• It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that siren until she allures us to our death.

  Gertrude Stein

  Eye, Indulge In, Sirens

  Gertrude Stein (1954). “The Yale Edition of the Unpublished Writings of Gertrude Stein: As fine as Melanctha, 1914-1930”

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• Friendship has its illusions no less than love.

  Stendhal

  Friendship

  Stendhal (2015). “Armance”, p.177, Booklassic

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• As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an expert in any of those areas. I have no illusions about that.

  Tom Stoppard

  Experts, Able, Playwright

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• When all is said and done, cheap gas is an illusion, because our reliance on gas creates a whole series of costs that aren't factored in to the pump price - among them congestion, pollution, and increased risk of accidents.

  James Surowiecki

  Risk, Cost, Done

  "Pump Pressure". www.newyorker.com. September 26, 2005.

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• Everything's fine today, that is our illusion.

  Voltaire

  Inspiring, Today, Fine

  "Voltaire: Poeme sur le desastre de Lisbonne". Book by Voltaire (translated), 1756.

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• I am under no illusion that I will ever be the greatest opera composer in the world, with Wagner and Verdi and Strauss before me. I think my work could fit very nicely into musicals, though.

  Rufus Wainwright

  Thinking, World, Opera

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• There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

  George Washington

  Real, 4th Of July, Pride

  George Washington (1833). “Declaration of Independence ... with the Names, Places of Residence, &c. of the Signers. Constitution of the United States ...: Also, Address of George Washington ... on Declining Being Considered a Candidate for Their Future Suffrages. September 17, 1796”, p.45

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• Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.

  Simone Weil

  Spiritual, Reality, Attachment

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• People may think I'm trying something new by telling stories, but they're just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That's what I do.

  Steven Wright

  Thinking, Trying Something New, Creating

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• I think e-mail petitions are an illusion. It gives people the illusion that they're participating in some meaningful political action.

  Howard Rheingold

  Meaningful, Thinking, People

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• In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We’re each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We’ve got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there is a lot of grey to work with. No one can live in the light all the time.

  Libba Bray

  Art, Pain, Regret

  Libba Bray (2010). “A Great and Terrible Beauty”, p.249, Simon and Schuster

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• There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Dream, Passion, Heart

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2016). “(The Great Gatsby)”, p.57, F. Scott Fitzgerald

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• You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it?

  John Steinbeck

  Ocean, Light, Dust

  John Steinbeck (2008). “Sweet Thursday”, p.110, Penguin

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• The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what is written can give the illusion that you are reading also what is not written.

  Italo Calvino

  Reading, Giving, Special

  Italo Calvino (2010). “If On A Winter's Night A Traveller”, p.203, Random House

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• Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life.

  Kate Chopin

  Suffering, Wake Up, Awakening

  The Awakening ch. 38 (1899)

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• ...boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson in your life--...the lesson of your utter insignificance. It is valuable to you, as well as to those you are to rub shoulders with. 'You are finite,' time tells you in a voice of boredom, 'and whatever you do is, from my point of view, futile.' As music to your ears, this, of course, may not count; yet the sense of futility, of limited significance even of your best, most ardent actions is better than the illusion of their consequence and the attendant self-satisfaction.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Voice, Self, Views

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• That's what living in their world is-a big lie. An illusion where everyone looks the other way and pretends that nothing unpleasant exists at all, no goblins of the dark, no ghosts of the soul.

  Libba Bray

  Lying, Dark, Soul

  Libba Bray (2010). “A Great and Terrible Beauty”, p.27, Simon and Schuster

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