Optical Illusions Quotes

• There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Transcendentalism, Illusion, Persons

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.229, Harvard University Press

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• Our perceptions are fallible. We sometimes see what isn't there. We are prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we hallucinate. We are error-prone.

  Carl Sagan

  Errors, Perception, Sometimes

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.43, Ballantine Books

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• People who have realized that this is a dream imagine that it is easy to wake up, and are angry with those who continue sleeping, not considering that the whole world that environs them does not permit them to wake. Life proceeds as a series of optical illusions, artificial needs and imaginary sensations.

  Alexander Herzen

  Dream, Sleep, People

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• Time is an optical illusion- never quite as soild or strong as we think it is

  Jodi Picoult

  Strong, Thinking, Illusion

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• Our separation from each other is an optical illusion.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Relationship, Spiritual

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• There are optical illusions in time as well as space.

  Marcel Proust

  Space, Illusion, Wells

  Marcel Proust (2003). “The prisoner and the fugitive”, ePenguin

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• The boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion

  Donna J. Haraway

  Reality, Fiction, Boundaries

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• We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Nature

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.15, St. Martin's Press

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• 

  A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Beauty, Spiritual

  Letter of 1950, as quoted in "The New York Times", March 29, 1972.

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• The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.

  Victor Hugo

  Men, Lines, Ruins

  Victor Hugo (2010). “The Works of Victor Hugo”, p.1969, BookCaps Study Guides

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• Love is an optical illusion that makes you believe the object of your affection is the most beautiful person in the world.

  Tom Holt

  Beautiful, Believe, Love Is

  Tom Holt (2008). “In Your Dreams”, p.91, Hachette UK

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• Beauty is the result of clarity and system and not of optical illusion.

  Henry van de Velde

  Clarity, Illusion, Results

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• If a man proves too clearly and convincingly to himself...that a tiger is an optical illusion--well, he will find out he is wrong. The tiger will himself intervene in the discussion, in a manner which will be in every sense conclusive.

  Lord Byron

  Men, Imagination, Wells

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• There’s no cure for ugly, but you can make yourself into a human optical illusion.

  Jenna Marbles

  Ugly, Cures, Humans

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• I've never really had a waist. Even when I was at my slimmest, my silhouette was very straight up, straight down. But I have learnt how to give myself a bit of waist by optical illusion. For this, bring on the belts.

  Twiggy

  Giving, Silhouettes, Straight Up

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• The mistakes we make when we try to imagine our personal futures are also lawful, regular, and systematic. They, too, have a pattern that tells us about the powers and limits of foresight in much the same way that optical illusions tell us about the powers and limits of eyesight.

  Daniel Gilbert

  Mistake, Trying, Patterns

  Daniel Gilbert (2006). “Stumbling on Happiness”, p.16, Vintage

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• While we only look at Nature it is fair to say that Autumn is the end of the year; but it is still more true that Autumn is the beginning of the year.... Autumn is the time when in fact the leaves bud. Leaves wither because winter begins; but they also wither because spring is already beginning, because new buds are being made, as tiny as percussion caps out of which the spring will crack.... It is only an optical illusion that my flowers die in autumn; for in reality they are born.

  Karel Capek

  Spring, Flower, Autumn

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• We're left with so little to go on. Only the present is full enough to seem complete, and even that is an optical illusion. The moment is bleeding off the page. We live on the precipice of our perceptions. At the edge of every living instant, the world shears away like a cliff of ice into the sea of what is forgotten.

  Ivan Vladislavic

  Ice, Sea, Perception

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• History, insofar as it accustoms human beings to comprehend the whole of the past and to hasten forward with its conclusions into the far future, conceals the boundaries of birth and death, which enclose the life of the human being so narrowly and oppressively, and with a kind of optical illusion, expands his short existence into endless space, leading the individual imperceptibly over into humanity.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Past, Space, History

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• I looked across the river to Manhattan. It was a great view. When Sadie and I had first arrived at Brooklyn House, Amos had told us that magicians tried to stay out of Manhattan. He said Manhattan had other problems--whatever that meant. And sometimes when I looked across the water, I could swear I was seeing things. Sadie laughed about it, but once I thought I saw a flying horse. Probably just the mansion's magic barriers causing optical illusions, but still, it was weird.

  Rick Riordan

  Horse, Views, Rivers

  4 Copy quote