Illusory Quotes - Page 3

• No matter how physically faint, a photograph involuntarily whisper of something exquisitely carnal. The weeks, the years, whatever stretches of time separating our present from the photographs retire into the transparence of the shot and seem erased by it. We almost have to shake ourselves to overcome the feeling that we peer out at the other place, in that different age. Yet we are always aware of this illusory dislocation, for such is the ambiguity, in principle, that seduces us over and over again in the photographic experience.

  Max Kozloff

  Years, Feelings, Age

  4 Copy quote

• Regulation - which is based on force and fear - undermines the moral base of business dealings. It becomes cheaper to bribe a building inspector than to meet his standards of construction. Protection of the consumer by regulation is thus illusory.

  Alan Greenspan

  Regulation, Moral, Protection

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.111, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Petraeus-Crocker testimony is the kind of short-lived event on which the Administration has relied to shore up support for the war: the 'Mission Accomplished' declaration, the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam's capture, the transfer of sovereignty, the three rounds of voting, the Plan for Victory, the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Every new milestone, however illusory, allows the Administration to avoid thinking ahead, to the years when the mistakes of Iraq will continue to haunt the U.S.

  George Packer

  War, Mistake, Thinking

  "Planning for Defeat" by George Packer, www.newyorker.com. September 17, 2007.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The people who seem to have a lock on power get swept out in a couple of years. So it's naïve to keep swinging at the same targets over and over. It took me a long time to realize, but most of the shackles that I flailed against were just illusory.

  George Meyer

  Couple, Years, Long

  Source: www.ericspitznagel.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• More than anything, I think everything about appearance is illusory. People see you, and they think they understand what you're projecting, but actually, they have their own interpretation of it, or they put a label on you.

  Annie Lennox

  Thinking, People, Labels

  4 Copy quote

• I had a number of different labels. A lot of people assumed I was gay because I was wearing a man's suit, and one had to learn that it's OK, people will do that, and you don't always have to explain it one hundred percent, because they're never going to accept what your own interpretation is. It's all illusory.

  Annie Lennox

  Gay, Men, Numbers

  4 Copy quote

• Everything is illusory. You cannot label something and feel that that is the beginning, middle, and end of it.

  Annie Lennox

  Labels, Beginning Middle And End, Ends

  "Annie Lennox: Music + Passion + Freedom". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fantasy plunders the well of our deepest selves for existent truth instead of creating new truths out of the illusory fabric of recent events or the flow of society.

  Vera Nazarian

  Self, Creating, Events

  Source: fantasyworlds.wordpress.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lust is as it were desire and desire, will which extends beyond the natural will, passionate, not governed by the law and moderation. There are thus many forms of lust, like the many forms of sin ... Lust does not approach the soul in the form of a warlike enemy, but in the form of a friend or a pleasant servant. It suggests some sort of pleasure or illusory good. But this is only a trick by which the malicious angler strives to lead astray and catch the poor soul. Remember this when you are tempted by lust.

  Patriarch Philaret of Moscow

  Inspirational, Christian, Religious

  6 Copy quote

• Those who have overcome self-will and become instruments to do God's work can accomplish tasks which are seemingly impossible, but they experience no feeling of self achievement. I now know myself to be a part of the infinite cosmos, not separate from other souls or God. My illusory self is dead; the real self controls the garment of clay and uses it for God's work.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Real, Self, Achievement

  Peace Pilgrim (1992). “Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words”, p.128, Friends of Peace PIlgrim

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• And one has to remember that no photography can pretend to show the truth. A picture only shows a given situation under a very specific perspective, consciously or not, openly or not, relevantly or not. Photographers have to accept they can just convey fragments of illusory realities and relate their own intimate experience of the world. In this process of fictionalising an unreachable truth, it's up to them to impose their doubts about any photographic truth, or accept being impotent pawns in the mediatic game.

  Antoine D'Agata

  Photography, Reality, Games

  10 Copy quote

• Sydney Smith playfully says that common sense was invented by Socrates, that philosopher having been one of its most conspicuous exemplars in conducting the contest of practical sagacity against stupid prejudice and illusory beliefs.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Stupid, Common Sense, Prejudice

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1875). “Success and Its Conditions”, p.284

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You can never get rid of all of your fears. Some are necessary and a part of life. But most of our fears are illusory, based on risks or threats that exist only in our minds. Such fears constrain and make you miserable. The feeling of moving past a particular fear is one of liberation and freedom.

  Robert Greene

  Moving, Past, Feelings

  Source: www.sonshi.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• In Lucretius, sexual desire is considered real and genuine, whereas love is illusory. Venus, the goddess who represents the power of sexual desire, is the font of love. She merely mocks lovers with mental images. Try as they might, lovers cannot satisfy themselves by gazing nor by rubbing against one another because the madness of love will always return; hence Lucretius' prescription to flee the mental images, that is, to ward off what feeds love, turning the mind elsewhere.

  Paul Ludwig Landsberg

  Real, Love Is, Mind

  8 Copy quote

• Language is the only chimera whose illusory power is endless, the inexhaustibility which keeps life from being impoverished. Let men learn to serve language.

  Karl Kraus

  Men, Language, Endless

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Life is so messy that the temptation to straighten it up is very strong. And the results always illusory.

  Anna Quindlen

  Life, Strong, Temptation

  4 Copy quote

• I have written a book called 'In the Wonderland of Numbers.' It's about a young girl, Neha, who is very poor in mathematics, but in a series of illusory experiences, she becomes a great mathematician.

  Shakuntala Devi

  Girl, Book, Numbers

  34 Copy quote

• There is an untroubled harmony in everything, a full consonance in nature; only in our illusory freedom do we feel at variance with it.

  Fyodor Tyutchev

  Freedom, Harmony, Feels

  13 Copy quote

• ...in any society, Law is an illusory concept that works only when everyone voluntarily agrees to live by it.

  Massad Ayoob

  Law, Live By, Agree

  22 Copy quote

• People are distracted by objects of desire, and afterwards repent of the lust they've indulged, because they have indulged with a phantom and are left even farther from Reality than before. Your desire for the illusory is a wing, by means of which a seeker might ascend to Reality. When you have indulged a lust, your wing drops off; you become lame and that fantasy flees. Preserve the wing and don't indulge such lust, so that the wing of desire may bear you to Paradise. People fancy they are enjoying themselves, but they are really tearing out their wings for the sake of an illusion.

  Rumi

  Mean, Reality, Wings

  Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi (2008). “The Pocket Rumi”, p.171, Shambhala Publications

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pain, sorrow, ignorance are all illusory; they cannot live. Bliss, joy, knowledge are true; they cannot die.

  Sivananda

  Pain, Ignorance, Joy

  12 Copy quote

• It's good to remember often, every day, that you are not a physical creature in a physical universe; but a non-physical consciousness vibrating at a certain frequency. You are Consciousness having a state of being, that's it. Everything else you perceive is simply an illusory crystallization of your chosen vibration. You are the Creator of your life, in this way.

  Bentinho

  Way, Vibrations, Remember

  18 Copy quote

• The people who benefit from this state of affairs have been at pains to convince us that the agricultural practices and policies that have almost annihilated the farming population have greatly benefited the population of food consumers. But more and more consumers are now becoming aware that our supposed abundance of cheap and healthful food is to a considerable extent illusory.

  Wendell Berry

  Pain, Practice, Convince Us

  4 Copy quote

• Online gambling is very seductive and very illusory. It can seem like a really good idea. It can seem like what people told you to work hard and get ahead, but when someone shows you something and it's too good to be true, it probably is.

  Ben Affleck

  Hard Work, Gambling, Ideas

  4 Copy quote

• God alone is truth, everything else is transitory and illusory.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  God, Transitory

  4 Copy quote