Illusion Quotes - Page 25

• What pushes the masses into the camp of socialism is, even more than the illusion that socialism will make them richer, the expectation that it will curb all those who are better than they themselves are.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Envy, Expectations, Socialism

  Ludwig Von Mises (1962). “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method”

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• The inward persuasion that we are free to do, or not to do a thing, is but a mere illusion. If we trace the true principle of our actions, we shall find, that they are always necessary consequences of our volitions and desires, which are never in our power. You think yourself free, because you do what you will; but are you free to will, or not to will; to desire, or not to desire? Are not your volitions and desires necessarily excited by objects or qualities totally independent of you?

  Baron d'Holbach

  Independent, Thinking, Desire

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• If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.

  Albert Einstein

  Taken, Moon, Men

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• The afternoon is bright, with spring in the air, a mild March afternoon, with the breath of April stirring, I am alone in the quiet patio looking for some old untried illusion - some shadow on the whiteness of the wall some memory asleep on the stone rim of the fountain, perhaps in the air the light swish of some trailing gown.

  Antonio Machado

  Wall, Memories, Spring

  Antonio Machado, Alan S. Trueblood (1982). “Antonio Machado”, p.75, Harvard University Press

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• In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Mother, Lonely, Teacher

  Daniel J. Boorstin (1962). “The Image or What Happened to the American Dream”

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• Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view. Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning.

  Richard Dawkins

  Atheist, Views, Design

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.31, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Reality is an illusion created by a lack of alcohol.

  N. F. Simpson

  Drinking, Food, Reality

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• Think hard about the reasons for believing and not believing, what your religion teaches you and demands so inexorably that you believe. I am convinced that if you follow closely the natural light of your spirit, you will see ... that all the religions in the world are only human inventions and that everything your religion teaches you and forces you to believe as supernatural and divine is at heart only error, lie, illusion and trickery.

  Jean Meslier

  Atheist, Lying, Believe

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• Unlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence. The mounting of this illusion defines the purpose and accounts for the immense wealth of American sports. It is the ceremony of innocence that the fans pay to see - not the game or the match or the bout, but the ritual portrayal of a world in which time stops and all hope remains plausible, in which everybody present can recover the blameless expectations of a child, where the forces of light always triumph over the powers of darkness.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Sports, Business, Children

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• Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control.

  Jack Kornfield

  Meditation, Illusion Of Control, Surrender

  Twitter post from Jan 26, 2015

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• There is an illusion of central position, justifying one's own purposes as right and everybody else¹s as wrong, and providing a proper degree of paranoia. Righteous ends, thus approved, absolve of guilt the most violent means.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Mean, Justice, Guilt

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• Even strong as they are today, rich countries should have no illusion: nobody is safe in aworld of injustices.War will never bring security.War can only generate monsters: bitterness, intolerance, fundamentalism, and the damaging denial of current hegemonies.The poor must be given reasons to live, not to kill or die.

  Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

  Country, Strong, War

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• You can't learn anything from saguaro cactus, from ocotillo. They are just passing through; their roots, their much heralded dormancy in the dry season, these are only illusions of permanence. They know even less than you do.

  Barry Lopez

  Education, Time, Learning

  Barry Lopez (2013). “Desert Notes and River Notes”, p.6, Open Road Media

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• The greatest architectural illusion is not Baroque fancy or Victorian flamboyant, but minimalism.

  Kevin McCloud

  Badass, Bad Ass, Fancy

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• We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy. And so from social networks to sociable robots, we're designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.

  Sherry Turkle

  Lonely, Motivation, Inspiration

  "Are We Plugged-In, Connected, But Alone?". 'TED Radio Hour' with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. February 26, 2013.

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• Cause I rely on my illusions, to keep me warm at night. I've denied in my capacity to love, and I am willing to give up this fight

  Sarah McLachlan

  Giving Up, Fighting, Night

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• Love is supposed to bring you peace and happiness. If you are not feeling this in a relationship, you are living an illusion.

  Leon Brown

  Life, Love Is, Feelings

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• The flowers of life are but illusions. How many fade away and leave no trace.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Flower, Fade Away, Fades

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, David E. Wellbery (1988). “The Sorrows of Young Werther ; Elective Affinities ; Novella”, p.38, Princeton University Press

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• Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Happiness, Reality, May

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• False greatness is unsociable and remote: conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is. True greatness is free, kind, familiar and popular; it lets itself be touched and handled, it loses nothing by being seen at close quarters; the better one knows it, the more one admires it.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Greatness, Political, Politics

  "Of Personal Merit". "Characters", Book by Jean De La Bruyère, www.ourcivilisation.com. 1688.

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• The most dangerous thing is illusion.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Danger, Dangerous, Dangerous Things

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• I've looked at life from both sides now...from win and lose, and still somehow it's life's illusions I recall I really don't know life at all.

  Joni Mitchell

  Love, Life, Positive

  "Both Sides Now" (song) (1967)

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• All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth, and none, or almost none for the disenchantment of age.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Age, Youth, Made

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• One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive one.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Innovation, Life Is, Hours

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• An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.

  Arthur Miller

  Dream, Eras, Exhausted

  "The Year it Came Apart". New York magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1, p. 30, December 30, 1974 - January 6, 1975.

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