Illusory Quotes

• Deconstruction insists not that truth is illusory but that it is institutional.

  Terry Eagleton

  Truth Is, Deconstruction

  "Frère Jacques: The Politics of Deconstruction". Book by Terry Eagleton, 1984.

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  People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

  Albert Einstein

  Witty, Attitude, Freedom

  "Disturbing the Universe" by Freeman Dyson, Ch. 17, (p. 193), 1979.

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• The minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Stronger, Majority, Minorities

  "The Diary of Soren Kierkegaard" by Soren Kierkegaard, pt. 5, sct. 3, no 128, 1850.

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• At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.

  Albert Camus

  Life, Beauty, Lying

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.14, Vintage

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• Do not be proud of wealth, people, relations and friends, or youth. All these are snatched by time in the blink of an eye. Giving up this illusory world, know and attain the Supreme.

  Adi Shankara

  Giving Up, Eye, People

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• Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?

  Marquis de Sade

  Devil, Conviction, Insufficiency

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• In truth there is only one freedom - the holy freedom of Christ, whereby He freed us from sin, from evil, from the devil. It binds us to God. All other freedoms are illusory, false, that is to say, they are all, in fact, slavery.

  Justin Popovic

  Inspirational, Christian, Religious

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• Everything we see is an illusion. Even our perceptions of truth are illusory, illusory in the sense they're not complete.

  Frederick Lenz

  Inspirational, Buddhism, Perception

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• Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great. For our own idea of greatness is illusory, and if we pay too much attention to it we will be lured out of the peace and stability of the being God gave us, and seek to live in a myth we have created for ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are.

  Thomas Merton

  Christian, Wisdom, Greatness

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.128, Shambhala Publications

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• Because our goals are not lofty but illusory, our problems are not difficult, but nonsensical.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Goal, Problem, Nonsensical

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• This ´world´ began to forget it was Oneness, like a dream forgetting it is the dreamer. With this amnesia came the phenomenon we call fear, an expression of All Possibility that cannot manifest within the balance of Oneness. Fear only comes with the illusion of division and separation when consciousness perceives itself as part and not the whole. Fear is the shadow of illusory disconnection.

  David Icke

  Dream, Expression, Oneness

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• The search "Who am I"...ends in the annihilation of the illusory "I" and the Self which remains over will be as clear as a gooseberry in the palm of one's hand.

  Ramana Maharshi

  Self, Hands, Annihilation

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• Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves round man as long as he does not revolve round himself.

  Karl Marx

  Men, Long, Doe

  Karl Marx (2001). “Marxism, Socialism and Religion”, p.20, Resistance Books

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• A happy life, a life making full use of all our potential is and must be a balanced life. The obstacles to it are mainly illusory; most of our limitations are self-imposed.

  Louis Tice

  Inspiring, Success, Business

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• Hasn't knowledge only crippled me from seeing truth? Is knowledge itself illusory?

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Knowledge, Truth Is, Crippled

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• The future is usually imagined as either better or worse than the present. If the imagined future is better, it gives you hope or pleasurable anticipation. If it is worse, it creates anxiety. Both are illusory.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Giving, Anxiety, Anticipation

  Eckhart Tolle (2001). “Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises from the Power of Now”, p.34, New World Library

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• Now, more than ever, I realize just how illusory my undeserved success has been. I still hold out some hope of doing better, but age and unhappiness have sapped my strength.

  Claude Monet

  Success, Age, Realizing

  Claude Monet (1999). “Monet by himself: paintings, drawings, pastels, letters”

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• Life is there ahead of you and either one tests oneself in its challenges or huddles in the valleys of a dreamless day-to-day existence whose only purpose is the preservation of a illusory security and safety. The latter is what the vast majority of people choose to do, fearing the adventure into the known.

  Saul Alinsky

  Life, Adventure, People

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”, p.22, Vintage

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• In the products of the culture industry human beings get into trouble only so that they can be rescued unharmed, usually by representatives of a benevolent collective; and then, in illusory harmony, they are reconciled with the general interest whose demands they had initially experienced as irreconcilable with their own.

  Theodor Adorno

  Culture, Demand, Trouble

  "Culture Industry Reconsidered". Book by Theodor Adorno, 1963.

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• We become obsessed with 'truth' when discussing statements, just as we become obsessed with 'freedom' when discussing conduct...Like freedom, truth is a bare minimum or an illusory ideal.

  J. L. Austin

  Truth Is, Obsessed, Minimum

  "Philosophical Papers" by J. L. Austin, James Opie Urmson, Geoffrey James Warnock, 3rd ed., New York: Oxford, (p. 130), 1979.

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• The belief that happiness has to be deserved has led to centuries of pain, guilt, and deception. So firmly have we clung to this single, illusory belief that we've almost forgotten the real truth about happiness. So busy are we trying to deserve happiness that we no longer have much time for ideas such as: Happiness is natural, happiness is a birthright, happiness is free, happiness is a choice, happiness is within, and happiness is being. The moment you believe that happiness has to be deserved, you must toil forevermore.

  Robert Holden

  Pain, Real, Believe

  Robert Holden (2011). “Happiness Now!: Timeless Wisdom for Feeling Good Fast”, p.100, Hay House, Inc

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• Feuerbach ... recognizes ... "even love, in itself the truest, most inward sentiment, becomes an obscure, illusory one through religiousness, since religious love loves man only for God's sake, therefore loves man only apparently, but in truth God only." Is this different with moral love? Does it love the man, this man for this man's sake, or for morality's sake, for Man's sake, and so-for homo homini Deus-for God's sake?

  Max Stirner

  Religious, Men, Sake

  "The Ego and Its Own (1844)". Book by Max Stirner. Cambridge edition, p. 55, 1995.

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• But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind it, lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Lying, Two, Dwelling

  Thomas Carlyle, G. B. Tennyson (1984). “Carlyle Reader”, p.304, CUP Archive

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• Continental thinkers have been obsessed with bourgeois man as representing the worst and most contemptible failure of modernity, which must at all costs be overcome. Nihilism in its most palpable sense means that the bourgeois has won, that the future, all foreseeable futures, belong to him, that all heights above him and all depths beneath him are illusory and that life is not worth living on these terms.

  Allan Bloom

  Mean, Men, Nihilism

  "The Closing of the American Mind". Book by Allan Bloom, pp. 157-158, 1987.

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• We ourselves are not an illusory part of Reality; rather are we Reality itself illusorily conceived.

  Wei Wu Wei

  Reality

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