Quotes about delusion
Leo Tolstoy - The Kreutzer Sonata
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
Lailah Gifty - Akita
To doubt the existence of God is the greatest delusion.
Shannon L. Alder -
My father taught me that you can you read a hundred books on wisdom and write a hundred books on wisdom, but unless you apply what you learned then its only words on a page. Life is not lived with intentions, but action.
Stefan Molyneux -
The greater the gap between self perception and reality, the more aggression is unleashed on those who point out the discrepancy.
Sunil Vidyarthi - Screams You Do Not Hear
O how we call each other namesYou call me schizophrenicI call you GodBut we do agree on oneDeluded are we both.
Criss Jami - Killosophy
What further helps to reveal reality is when our personal thinking ceases to take reality for granted.
Daniel Mackler - Toward truth: A psychological guide to enlightenment
When enough insane people scream in harmony that they really are healthy, they can actually start to believe themselves. Or put even more simply: people with overlapping delusions get along wonderfully.
Oliver Cromwell. -
I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.
Nema Al-Araby -
The possibility of truth has become a delusion to those who made their own disguise the truth.
Suzanne Finnamore - Split: A Memoir of Divorce
Delusion detests focus and romance provides the veil.
Steve Maraboli - Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
I'm not crying because of you you're not worth it. I'm crying because my delusion of who you were was shattered by the truth of who you are.
Carl Sagan - The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Stefan Molyneux -
You cannot connect with anyone except through reality.
Stefan Molyneux -
The world, viewed philosophically, remains a series of slave camps, where citizens – tax livestock – labor under the chains of illusion in the service of their masters.
Stefan Molyneux -
Knowledge is responsibility, which is why people resist knowledge.
Ambrose Bierce - The Collected Writings Of Ambrose Bierce
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
Suzy Kassem - Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
People reject what they do not understand because it makes them feel small. They would rather believe in some other reality, even if it is only an illusion, so long as it makes them feel bigger.
Shannon L. Alder -
Paradox /pera,daks/ noun1. Being told to wake up and come back to reality by your family and friends, while being dragged to church to hear a lesson on Jonah and the whale, followed by a sermon on believing in things you can't see without faith.
Calista Smith - Breaking Down
That was your delusion, not my reality.
Stefan Molyneux -
Facts do not fall in the face of discomfort.
Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch
I was deluded, and I knew it. Worse: my love for Pippa was muddied-up below the waterline with my mother, with my mother's death, with losing my mother and not being able to get her back. All that blind, infantile hunger to save and be saved, to repeat the past and make it different, had somehow attached itself, ravenously, to her. There was an instability in it, a sickness. I was seeing things that weren't there. I was only one step away from some trailer park loner stalking a girl he'd spotted
Stefan Molyneux -
Most people, if philosophy touches them, they shatter, they atomize, they turn to dust. It is win/lose between philosophy and delusion, and most people are almost entirely composed of delusion. They're only allowed as much reality as serves the masters. But they're not allowed any reality which disturbs their masters...
Tim Urban -
Gen-Ys are delusional; Most people are not special—otherwise “special” wouldn’t mean anything. Even right now, most of Gen-Ys reading this are thinking, “Good point. But I actually am one of the few special ones”—and this is the problem.
Criss Jami - Healology
Reality. It is sometimes brought through foreign eyes; because if you do not know any better, you cannot see the worse (and vice versa).
A.B. Shepherd - The Beacon
I no longer knew what was real and what wasn’t. The lines between reality and delusion had become so blurred.
Chirag Tulsiani -
And in that moment he realised that even though the dreams they’d seen together, hoped for and believed in had come true, it wasn’t enough. It was far from reality which was lonesome and woeful. And conceived that love had no lastingness, it was brief and momentary. It wasn’t the cherishable sensation spoken of in movies and written in books, rather a delusion inclined on ruining the very spirit, giving way to mournfulness and disappointment.
Emilyann Girdner - The Labyrinth Wall
Delusional or not, maybe if I believe in a better world with enough conviction, and convince others to believe it as well, then it will be real.
Sreesha Divakaran - Those Imperfect Strokes
Vanity remains a feeble weaponThe delusional wearer of it considers herself strong
Michael Huemer -
If you're rational you don't get to believe whatever you want to believe.
David Simon - The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood
That's the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments. Parasites, criminals, dope fiends, dope peddlers, whores--when we can ride past them at Fayette and Monroe, car doors locked, our field of vision cautiously restricted to the road ahead, then the long journey into darkness is underway. Pale-skinned hillbillies and hard-faced yos, toothless white trash and gold-front gangsters--when we can glide on and feel only fear, we're well on the way. And if, after a time, we ca
Fyodor Dostoyevsky -
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying — to others and to yourself.
Joe Blow -
A faith so weak that it is not sufficient unto itself but requires that others tiptoe around it for fear of hurting it, knows deep down that it is a lie.
Shannon L. Alder -
We don’t yet have a body of scientific knowledge about evil to be called a facet of psychology. Therefore, religious reasoning for actions will always be at the discretion of the psychologist, thus making them the judge and jury over what is delusion and what is a spiritual experience that has to be sedated.
Stefan Molyneux -
Lies don't make you happy. They just make you lie about being happy.
Unknown or The Archictect from the Matrix reloaded movie -
Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and greatest weakness.
David McRaney - and 46 Other
J. E. Littlewood, a mathematician at Cambridge University, wrote about the law of truly large numbers in his 1986 book, "Littlewood's Miscellany." He said the average person is alert for about eight hours every day, and something happens to the average person about once a second. At this rate, you will experience 1 million events every thirty-five days. This means when you say the chances of something happening are one in a million, it also means about once a month. The monthly miracle is called
Chris Hedges - Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
Women, porn assets, whether they know it or not, are objects They are whores. These whores deserve to be dominated and abused. And once men have had their way with them, these whores are to be discarded. Porn glorifies the cruelty and domination of sexual exploitation in the same way popular culture, as Jensen points out, glorifies the domination and cruelty of war. It is the same disease. It is the belief that “because I have the ability to use force and control to make others do as I please, I
Saul Bellow - Herzog
Well, there is a piece of famous advice, grand advice even if it is German, to forget what you can't bear. The strong can forget, can shut out history. Very good. Even if it is self-flattery to speak of strength--these aesthetic philosophers, they take a posture, but power sweeps postures away. Still, it's true you can't go on transposing one nightmare into another, Nietzsche was certainly right about that. The tender-minded must harden themselves. Is this world nothing but a barren lump of coke
Duane Hewitt -
In dream, delusion, and fantasy, exist man’s next best reality: that place where he is the creator of his own worlds; where he builds, learns, discovers and entertains; is master of all outcomes, his own god of destiny, and thus the student of his own evolving and ever uncertain truth.
Shannon L. Alder -
If your love for another person doesn’t include loving yourself then your love is incomplete.
Todd Vickers - The Relevance of Kabir
Our sexual fantasies are often redundant and intense, like many other ideas involving ourselves. Most people approach sexuality limited to the idea that they should imitate other people, art (e.g., romantic literature) or movies (e.g., pornography). In this way, vicarious events and even fictions become a point of reference that we can actually feel. We judge actual people in our real lives against fictional events and unrealistic concepts. As such, real lovers seem inferior as a result.
Criss Jami - Killosophy
People don't care about being duped as long as they're happy, which is the shortest form of happiness; hence 'self-duprication' becomes a habit.
Criss Jami - Healology
It is so easy at times for a lonely individual to begin fantasizing about what the people outside are saying about him and, in result, irrationally and fearfully, and sometimes angrily, fancy himself a villain.
Erik Pevernagie -
Some people live disconnected, in a world of their own. Their wishful thinking represents their sole veracity. But when the mirror smashes the reflection of their delusion, it will not falter to talk back. ( "The day the mirror was talking back" )
Jonathan Harnisch - Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography
No, Ben. What I’m asking is: Are you the vehicle, and Georgie rides around in you? That is why Ben’s the driver, right?
M.F. Moonzajer -
The mind is just a delusion not a reality. If the materials are perception of our mind, then why we cannot turn into handsome guys and beautiful ladies without putting a hundred grams of makeup powder?
Haroutioun Bochnakian - The Human Consensus and The Ultimate Project Of Humanity
Only man’s misdirected abstract mind can delude its own desire to know by creating contradicting belief systems using self-contradicting myths, and then make itself believe that these “revealed” belief systems are in fact the only “truths”, Then kill and die FOR them, Instead of saving each other FROM them.
Munia Khan -
Mind hates to seep in delusion soaking faintly discolored obsession.
Christopher Hitchens -
As he once wrote of Kipling, his own enduring influence can be measured by a number of terms and phrases—doublethink, thought police, 'Some animals are more equal than others'—that he embedded in our language and in our minds. In Orwell's own mind there was an inextricable connection between language and truth, a conviction that by using plain and unambiguous words one could forbid oneself the comfort of certain falsehoods and delusions. Every time you hear a piece of psychobabble or propaganda—
Casey Renee Kiser - Swan Wreck
Daddy is jive talkingand showering the stripperMommy is sleepwalkingwhile changing baby's diaper
Kilroy J. Oldster - Dead Toad Scrolls
We cannot achieve personal enlightenment – a clarification of our souls – until we cease deluding ourselves. We must accept that life includes witnessing and personally experiencing pain.
Maurice Maeterlinck - The Treasure of the humble
We believe we have dived down to the most unfathomable depths, and when we reappear on the surface, the drop of water that glistens on our trembling finger-tips no longer resembles the sea from which it came. We believe we have discovered a grotto that is stored with bewildering treasure; we come back to the light of day, and the gems we have brought are false – mere pieces of glass – and yet does the treasure shine on, unceasingly, in the darkness!
Abhijit Naskar -
Beliefs are a quintessential part of the human psyche, but they can be both healthy and harmful. And the beliefs of the fundamentalist Australopithecines are particularly harmful. These beliefs are what we call "delusions". Except unlike in a neuropsychological ailment, the delusion of the fundamentalists is not just harmful for the individuals suffering from it, but more importantly it is the greatest threat to peace, progress and wellbeing of the entire human species.
Jawaharlal Nehru -
I wish to declare with all earnestness that I do not want any religious ceremonies performed for me after my death. I do not believe in such ceremonies, and to submit to them, even as a matter of form, would be hypocrisy and an attempt to delude ourselves and others.
Chirag Tulsiani -
The times might be unpleasant, repulsive. The ghastly chaos, the abhorrent uncivility might be intolerable, might force us into argument or leave us panic-stricken.On such occasions people build within themselves a conviction, that the world outside is diabolical. The whimsical insults test our level of endurance causing us to plead for mercy, wanting us to be pitied than exploited and victimized. Often this grief and shame form a delusion within us that there no longer exists good in this world
Vasily Grossman - Life and Fate
The people in the hospital had been struck by her calm and the number of questions she had asked. They hadn't appreciated her inability to understand something quite obvious – that Tolya was no longer among the living. Her love was so strong that Tolya's death was unable to affect it: to her, he was still alive.She was mad, but no one had noticed. Now, at last, she had found Tolya. Her joy was like that of a mother-cat when she finds her dead kitten and licks it all over.A soul can live in torme
Farid F. Ibrahim -
Artists are not in delusion, they only recreate the hidden side
Dianna Hardy - Broken Lights
Hope – or perhaps delusion – was a flame that had stayed lit, even though its scorching light would hurt. It had refused to go out.
Thomm Quackenbush - Pagan Standard Times: Essays on the Craft
We want our delusions and will violently defend these when confronted. We want to believe that the job that is slowly choking us is good, because the effort it would take to change is too terrifying to contemplate. We never want to hear how badly we are being treated in a relationship because we are strong and how dare you suggest we don't know better.
Michael R. Fletcher - Beyond Redemption
For all Wichtig spoke of trust, he trusted no one. For all he spoke of wisdom, he learned nothing. Every word he uttered was done so with an eye toward manipulation.
Dada Bhagwan -
Once the entrancement (Infatuation; Deluded state), in material objects, is gone; the loss in spirituality stops!
Saurabh Sharma -
There are only two profound ways to reach enlightenment: Laugh by yourself, or get tickled.
Justin K. McFarlane Beau -
The seething rage that accompanies the truly despondent, effaces the delusional that mock from the safety of their shared illusion.
Lailah Gifty Akita -
Mental –ill health is delusion.
Emily Dickinson - Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson's Poems
We dream — it is good we are dreaming —It would hurt us — were we awake —But since it is playing — kill us,And we are playing — shriek —What harm? Men die — externally —It is a truth — of Blood —But we — are dying in Drama —And Drama — is never dead —Cautious — We jar each other —And either — open the eyes —Lest the Phantasm — prove the Mistake —And the livid SurpriseCool us to Shafts of Granite —With just an Age — and Name —And perhaps a phrase in Egyptian —It's prudenter — to dream —
Suzanne Finnamore - Split: A Memoir of Divorce
I saw my reflection in their eyes, but not the men themselves, not clearly. This preserved the idea that all intelligent and even vaguely attractive men were essentially good. Delusion detest focus and romance provides the veil.
Mark Leyner - The Sugar Frosted Nutsack
I tend to interpret that whole 'everyone's wife is a Mossad agent' thing in a more sort of metaphorical way--that people you're intimate with might be, like, 'double agents,' y'know? It's a weird kind of paranoia you get about people you love--that they might turn out to be completely different from who you think they are, that it's all been some sort of diabolically patient plot against you. I think that's a pretty normal fear you have in any serious relationship. And that's why it's such a pop
Lailah Gifty Akita -
Doubt is a delusion.
Gary L. Francione -
People need to be educated so that they can make intelligent moral choices
Steve Maraboli - Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
If I told you to wish for good health, you would think I'm ridiculous; but when I exchange the word "wish" for the word "pray", you believe it can work. That is the disempowering delusion religions have brought us.
Friedrich Nietzsche - Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
The drive to knowledge has become too strong for us to be able to want happiness without knowledge or of a strong, firmly rooted delusion; even to imaginesuch a state of things is painful to us! Restless discovering and divining has such an attraction for us, and has grown as indispensable to us as is to the lover his unrequited love, which he would at no price relinquish for a state of indifference – perhaps,indeed, we too are unrequited lovers.
Lailah Gifty Akita -
Whoever doubt is in state of delusion.
Sam Harris - and the Future of Reason
[I]t is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions.
James Baldwin - The Fire Next Time
Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.
Debasish Mridha -
Love is not an obsession or a delusion. Love exists in longing and appreciation.
Dada Bhagwan -
Religion means researching the true Eternal thing with Deluded world view (with wrong belief) and ‘this’ (akram vignan) is a science itself.
Dada Bhagwan -
The worldly life (sansar) is the thing created through delusion [wrong belief]. Therefore when you come to know about this wrong belief, it will go away.
Saul Bellow - Herzog
And this is the unwritten history of man, his unseen, negative accomplishment, his power to do without gratification for himself provided there is something great, something into which his being, and all beings can go. He does not need meaning as long as such intensity has scope. Because then it is self-evident; it is meaning.
John Gower - Confessio Amantis
There is no deception on the part of the woman, where a man bewilders himself: if he deludes his own wits, I can certainly acquit the women. Whatever man allows his mind to dwell upon the imprint his imagination has foolishly taken of women, is fanning the flames within himself -- and, since the woman knows nothing about it, she is not to blame. For if a man incites himself to drown, and will not restrain himself, it is not the water's fault.
Noam Chomsky -
The European reaction to Obama is a European delusion.
Christian Hunt - The Dawn of Grace
How blind is the delusion that the greatness of a man is measured by his living; rather, it’s always by his giving.
Shannon L. Alder -
The only people that can't handle the truth are those that suffer so much anxiety that they will live in denial, in order to prevent their illusion from being destroyed and feeling more anxiety.
Chad Almadani -
I love our judicial system It's where Trump's fanciful delusions go to die.
Wayne Gerard Trotman -
Do not delude yourself, tomorrow is not guaranteed; and even if good fortune brings you your tomorrow, there is no guarantee those you love will be a part of it. Do not squander your precious, limited time. Value what love you have in your life - nothing is more valuable. Make it known to those who matter.
Sunday Adelaja -
Christians are called to set people free from the delusion of the world and from the devil’s deceit
Erik Pevernagie -
The grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence. Many politicians promise green, green grass by blending niceties with delusion and by using alluring confidence tricks. They voice attractive tales and tell things, people like to hear. But the post-factual grassland often appears to be parched and barren. ("The grass was greener over there")
Christopher Hitchens - and the Left
The 'pre-emption' versus 'prevention' debate may be a distinction without much difference. The important thing is to have it understood that the United States is absolutely serious. The jihadists have in the past bragged that America is too feeble and corrupt to fight. A lot is involved in disproving that delusion on their part.
Steven Erikson - Fall of Light
The nature of conspiracy, which among those who both feared and named it, seemed to always possess at its core a misguided belief in the competence of others, as weighed against the incapacities, real or imagined, of the believer. Therefore, he concluded, the belief in conspiracy was an announcement of the believer's own sense of utter helplessness in the face of forces both mysterious and fatally efficient.
Jeremy Bentham - Constitutional Code; For the Use All Nations and All Governments Professing Liberal Opinions Volume 1
. . . in no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption, and delusion, for the support of depredation and oppression in the hands of governments.
Rachel Caine - Ghost Town
Whatever, crazy chick who maybe lives here and maybe also breaks into Michael's house when they're all gone. I'm out. Have a nice delusion. -Shayne
Robert Higgs -
In the natural sciences, some checks exist on the prolonged acceptance of nutty ideas, which do not hold up well under experimental and observational tests and cannot readily be shown to give rise to useful working technologies. But in economics and the other social studies, nutty ideas may hang around for centuries. Today, leading presidential candidates and tens of millions of voters in the USA embrace ideas that might have been drawn from a 17th-century book on the theory and practice of merc
Larken Rose -
When enough people understand reality, tyrants can literally be ignored out of existence. They can't ever be voted out of existence.
Larken Rose -
I'm not scared of the Maos and the Stalins and the Hitlers. I'm scared of the thousands of millions of people that hallucinate them to be "authority", and so do their bidding, and pay for their empires, and carry out their orders. I don't care if there's one looney with a stupid moustache. He's not a threat if the people do not believe in "authority".
Shannon L. Alder -
When you don’t have honesty in love then there is no communication. Honesty is improvisation of the heart anything less is a well thought out and rehearsed script.
M.F. Moonzajer -
Sin is the delusion of our feelings while crime is the delusion of our actions.
Shannon L. Alder -
Evil originates not in the absence of guilt but in our effort to escape it.
Stefan Molyneux -
To connect is to dissolve the imaginary pyramids of artificial privilege.
Kilroy J. Oldster - Dead Toad Scrolls
All people express a fondness for truth and sincerity, yet many people prefer to live with their illusions and delusions. A person’s sincere desire to believe only what is true oftentimes does not trump their ingrained resistance to truths that fail to coincide with their deeply held desires. People reject truth because it undercuts what they wish was true and despise or discredit anyone whom offers a different version of truth than they are prepared to accept.
Rebecca Serle - When You Were Mine
It's not that girls are delusional, per se. It's just that they have this subtle ability to warp actual circumstances into something different.