Delusion Quotes - Page 17

• In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.

  George Orwell

  Intelligent, Understanding, Sane

  George Orwell (1961). “1984”

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• Every time I think I’m getting wiser, more in control of my actions, I go slamming into a situation that makes me excruciatingly aware that all I’ve succeeded in doing is swapping one set of delusions for a more elaborate, attractive set of delusions

  Karen Marie Moning

  Thinking, Swapping, Action

  Karen Marie Moning (2016). “The Fever Series 7-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever, Iced, Burned”, p.979, Dell

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• All religions are branches of one big tree. It doesn't matter what you call Him just as long as you call. Just as cinematic images appear to be real but are only combinations of light and shade, so is the universal variety a delusion. The planetary spheres, with their countless forms of life, are naught but figures in a cosmic motion picture. One's values are profoundly changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast motion picture and that not in, but beyond, lies his own ultimate reality.

  George Harrison

  Real, Lying, Light

  "Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead". Book by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, 1970.

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• The Devil's strategy for our times is to trivialize human existence and isolate us from one another while creating the delusion that the reasons are time pressures, work demands or economic anxieties.

  Philip Zimbardo

  Fear, Creating, Anxiety

  "Best of the Century" by Albert Ellis, www.psychologytoday.com. November 1, 1999.

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• Our two-party system is a fraud, a sham, a delusion. On foreign policy, trade, immigration, Big Government, we have one-party government, one party press; and conservatives are being played for suckers.

  Pat Buchanan

  Party, Government, Two

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• But when you think you're supposed to do something with it and imagine that you're the doer, that's pure delusion. Just follow your passion. Do what you love. Inquire, and have a happy life while you're doing it.

  Byron Katie

  Passion, Happy Life, Thinking

  Byron Katie (2010). “Question Your Thinking, Change the World”, p.140, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• If, after a rigid examination, it be found an imposition, it should be extensively published to the world as such; the evidences and arguments on which the imposture was detected, should be clearly and logically stated, that those who have been sincerely yet unfortunately deceived, may perceive the nature of the deception and be reclaimed, and that those who continue to publish the delusion, may be exposed and silenced.

  Orson Pratt

  Honesty, Deception, World

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• To start from the self and try to understand all things is delusion. To let the self be awakened by all things is enlightenment.

  Dogen

  Spiritual, Self, Enlightenment

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• The black man in North America was economically sick and that was evident in one simple fact: as a consumer, he got less than his share, and as a producer gave least. The black American today shows us the perfect parasite image - the black tick under the delusion that he is progressing because he rides on the udder of the fat, three-stomached cow that is white America.

  Malcolm X

  Simple, Men, White

  Malcolm X (2015). “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, p.321, Ballantine Books

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• The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion.

  Samuel Johnson

  Happiness, Yield, Joy

  Samuel Johnson (1800). “The Idler: With Additional Essays”, p.63

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• Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.

  W. H. Auden

  Thinking, Style, Suffering

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• Praying which does not result in pure conduct is a delusion. We have missed the whole office and virtue of praying if it does not rectify conduct. It is in the very nature of things that we must quit praying, or quit bad conduct.

  Edward McKendree Bounds

  Prayer, Office, Doe

  Edward McKendree Bounds (1920). “Purpose in Prayer”, p.76, CCEL

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• Oh son, watch the illusory spectacle! All birth and death is projected by delusion, not existing in reality. I am beyond coming and going.

  Dzongsar Khyentse Chokyi Lodro

  Buddhist, Son, Reality

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• There are a lot of myths which make the human race cruel and barbarous and unkind. Good and Evil, Sin and Crime, Free Will and the like delusions made to excuse God for damning men and to excuse men for crucifying each other.

  Clarence Darrow

  Men, Race, Evil

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• "Chaunt in his ear delusions magical,
  That he may fight the horses of the sea."
  The Druids took them to their mystery,
  And chaunted for three days.

  William Butler Yeats

  Horse, Fighting, Sea

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.11, Simon and Schuster

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• What, indeed, is an atheist? He is one who destroys delusions which are harmful to humanity in order to lead men back to nature, to reality, to reason. He is a thinker who, having reflected on the nature of matter, its energy, properties and ways of acting, has no need of idealized powers or imaginary intelligences to explain the phenomena of the universe and the operations of nature.

  Baron d'Holbach

  Atheist, Reality, Men

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• The great paradox of determinism and free will, which has held the attention of the wisest of philosophers and psychologists for generations, can be phrased in more biological terms as follows: If our genes are inherited, and our environment is a train of physical events set in motion before we were born, how can there be a truly independent agent within the brain? The agent itself is created by the interaction of the genes and the environment. It would appear that our freedom is only a self delusion.

  E. O. Wilson

  Independent, Self, Brain

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• Unless a writer lives with a periodic delusion of his greatness, he will not continue writing. He must believe, against all reason and evidence, that the public will experience a catastrophic loss if he does not complete his novel. The public is just clamoring to give him his fame. From the book Dare to be a Great Writer: 329 Keys to Powerful Fiction by

  Leonard Bishop

  Powerful, Believe, Book

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• Where is the delusion when truth is known? Where is the disease when the mind is clear? Where is death when the Breath is controlled? Therefore surrender to Yoga.

  Tirumalai Krishnamacharya

  Yoga, Mind, Disease

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• I believed in happily ever after as much as anyone, because Jane Austen, Prince Charming, and Hugh Grant promised me it could happen. But maybe that particular delusion was universal.

  Robin Wasserman

  Ever After, Charming, Austen

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• And so, onwards... along a path of wisdom, with a hearty tread, a hearty confidence.. however you may be, be your own source of experience. Throw off your discontent about your nature. Forgive yourself your own self. You have it in your power to merge everything you have lived through- false starts, errors, delusions, passions, your loves and your hopes- into your goal, with nothing left over.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Passion, Errors, Self

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• In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water, the need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts.

  Alain de Botton

  Love, Princess, Men

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.52, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.

  Dan Simmons

  Mean, Reality, Thinking

  Dan Simmons (2014). “The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle: Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion”, p.236, Spectra

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• I think when you fall in love, like true love, it’s love for life. All the rest is just experiences and delusions.

  J.A. Redmerski

  Falling In Love, Love Life, Thinking

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• Almost all Christians being wretchedly enslaved to blindness and ignorance, which the priests are so far from preventing or removing, that they blacken the darkness, and promote the delusion: wisely foreseeing that the people (like cows, which never give down their milk so well as when they are gently stroked), would part with less if they knew more.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Christian, Ignorance, People

  Desiderius Erasmus (2016). “In Praise of Folly”, p.43, Desiderius Erasmus

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