Delusion Quotes - Page 10

• 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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• We're under some gross misconception that we're a good species, going somewhere important, and that at the last minute we'll correct our errors and God will smile on us. It's delusion.

  Farley Mowat

  Errors, Important, Lasts

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• Little praying is a kind of make believe, a salve for the conscience, a farce and a delusion.

  Edward McKendree Bounds

  Prayer, Believe, Farce

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Jerry Kilgore offers denial and delusion, ... Mr. Kaine Delusion and deceit. That means nothing happens.

  Russ Potts

  Lying, Mean, Deceit

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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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• 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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• Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.

  Alan Barth

  Criticism, Indispensable, Dissent

  "The Loyalty of Free Men". Book by Alan Barth, 1951.

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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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• 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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• We should realize that our deadliest enemies are anger and other delusions. Since these delusions are deeply ingrained mental habits, working to overcome them is not always easy.

  Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

  Enemy, Overcoming, Realizing

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• ...the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Dark, Self, Age

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.5, David R. Godine Publisher

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• You don't come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn't a strong aspect of your personality. A reality shaped around your own desires - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.

  Zadie Smith

  Strong, New York, Ambition

  "Zadie Smith On Manhattan’s ‘Sociopathic’ Ambition" By Carolyn Gregoire, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 10, 2014.

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• Objectivity is a subject's delusion that observing can be done without him.

  Heinz von Foerster

  Objectivity, Done, Insight

  "The Certainty of Uncertainty: Dialogues Introducing Constructivis" by Bernhard Poerksen, (p. 3), 2004.

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• Little mirrors were attached to the front of their cars, at which they glanced to see where they had been; then they stared ahead again. I had thought that only beetles had this delusion of Progress.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Science, Mirrors, Car

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• So often, we believe we are alone in the privacy of our fantasies, but that is a delusion as well - and perhaps the most dangerous kind. For in letting ourselves forget about the common threads of our innermost wishes, we erode our foundations and lose the keystone of our souls.

  Tiffany Baker

  Believe, Common Threads, Soul

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• I knew each person's delusion, the places their records had scratched, where the sounds repeated.

  Louise Erdrich

  Sound, Records, Persons

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• Peoples lives, in Jubilee as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, unfathomable-deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum. . . . What I wanted [to write down] was every last thing, every layer of speech and thought, stroke of light on bark or walls, every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delusion, held still and held together-radiant, everlasting.

  Alice Munro

  Wall, Pain, Writing

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• The Constitution is a delusion and a snare if the weakest and humblest man in the land cannot be defended in his right to speak and his right to think as much as the strongest in the land.

  Clarence Darrow

  Men, Thinking, Land

  Clarence Darrow (2012). “Attorney for the Damned: Clarence Darrow in the Courtroom”, p.128, University of Chicago Press

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• We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles...bot h of our own making and imposed by the natural world. And the first step is to recover from the mass delusion that is positive thinking.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Struggle, Positive Thinking, Firsts

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