Delusion Quotes - Page 7

• Our everyday, traditional ideas of reality are delusions which we spend substantial parts of our daily lives shoring up, even at the considerable risk of trying to force facts to fit our definition of reality instead of vice versa.

  Paul Watzlawick

  Reality, Ideas, Risk

  "How real is real?: Confusion, disinformation, communication".

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• From the viewpoint of absolute truth, what we feel and experience in our ordinary daily life is all delusion. Of all the various delusions, the sense of discrimination between oneself and others is the worst form, as it creates nothing but unpleasantness for both sides. If we can realize and meditate on ultimate truth, it will cleanse our impurities of mind and thus eradicate the sense of discrimination. This will help to create true love for one another. The search for ultimate truth is, therefore, vitally important.

  Dalai Lama

  Mind, Important, Ordinary

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• We may say that hysteria is a caricature of an artistic creation, a compulsion neurosis a caricature of a religion, and a paranoiac delusion a caricature of a philosophic system.

  Sigmund Freud

  Hysteria, Artistic Creation, May

  Sigmund Freud (2009). “Totem and Taboo”, p.96, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion - in the long run, these are the only people who count.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Running, Thinking, Self

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• When people call me a photographer, I always feel like something of a charlatan—at least in Japanese. The word shashin, for photograph, combines the characters sha, meaning to reflect or copy, and shin, meaning truth, hence the photographer seems to entertain grand delusions of portraying truth.

  Hiroshi Sugimoto

  Character, People, Photographer

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• As always, the illusion of self-transcendence is far more facile and available than self-transcendence itself: in the vast majority of cases what human consciousness opens up to is merely a more encompassing form of finitude (another captivating illusion or delusion).

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Self, Majority

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• The military superiority of Europe to Asia is not an eternal law of nature, as we are tempted to think, and our superiority in civilization is a mere delusion.

  Bertrand Russell

  Military, Thinking, Europe

  Bertrand Russell (2007). “The Problem of China”, p.27, Cosimo, Inc.

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• When I was 24, I was full of life. I was that ham who wanted to be famous, a movie star, all that stuff. I think it's cool. But it was not what I was searching for, really. It was more a delusion.

  Jean-Claude Van Damme

  Stars, Thinking, Ham

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• Self-confidence should be applied to wholesome actions,
  Overcoming of delusions and my ability to overcome them.
  Thinking, 'I alone shall do it'
  Is the self-confidence of action.

  Shantideva

  Self Esteem, Self Confidence, Thinking

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• I support, defend, and admire prostitutes, gay or straight. They do important and necessary work, whether moralists of the Left and Right like it or not. Feminists who think they can abolish the sex trade are in a state of massive delusion. Only a ruthless, fascist regime of vast scale could eradicate the rogue sex impulse that is indistinguishable from the life force. Simply in the Western world, pagan sexuality has survived 2000 years of Judaeo-Christian persecution and is hardly going to be defeated by a few feminists whacking at it with their brooms.

  Camille Paglia

  Christian, Sex, Gay

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• I'd actually love to think that I could trust Kerry on national security. But the only way I could do that, at this point, would be via self-delusion.

  Glenn Reynolds

  Thinking, Self, Would Be

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• [C]lass consciousness is not one of our national diseases; we suffer, indeed, from its opposite-the delusion that class barriers are not real. That delusion reveals itself in many forms, some of them as beautiful as a glass eye. One is the Liberal doctrine that a prairie demagogue promoted to the United States Senate will instantly show all the sagacity of a Metternich ... another is the doctrine that a moronrun through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will cease thereby to be a moron.

  H. L. Mencken

  Beautiful, Real, Eye

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• Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people; they fix too for the people the principles of their political creed.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Passion, People, Political

  Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, contin”, p.441

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• One of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which men and nations can be subjected is that of imagining themselves special instruments of the Divine Will.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Interesting, Ego

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.146, Routledge

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• A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single happy delusion that it can be done without a stop-over.

  Robert Breault

  Journey, Done, Miles

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• Love is at first a set of delusions, which, as time goes by, are discarded like training wheels, and you love truly.

  Robert Breault

  Love Is, Training, Firsts

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• Some are able and humane men and some are low-grade individuals with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur.

  Raymond Chandler

  Integrity, Men, Hollywood

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.120, Univ of California Press

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• To know how little one knows is to have genuine knowledge. Not to know how little one knows is to be deluded. Only those who know when they are deluded can free themselves from such delusion. The intelligent people are not deluded, because they know and accept their ignorance as ignorance, and thereby have genuine knowledge.

  Laozi

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Intelligent

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• When a man suffers from delusions he is described as mad but when a million do so they belong to a world religion

  Anthony Storr

  Inspirational, Men, World Religions

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• 'My dear friend, that must be a delusion, what can a circle have to do with the number of people alive at a given time?'

  W. W. Rouse Ball

  Science, Circles, Numbers

  W. W. Rouse Ball (2012). “A Short Account of the History of Mathematics”, p.395, Courier Corporation

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• Men, unlike mockingbirds, have the capacity for systematic self-delusion. We echo each other with equal precision, equal eloquence, equal assurance.

  Robert Ardrey

  Men, Echoes, Self

  Robert Ardrey (1966). “The Territorial Imperative”

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• The doctor will persist in laboring under the delusion that patients want common sense instead of magic.

  Rae Foley

  Doctors, Common Sense, Magic

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• De Morgan was explaining to an actuary what was the chance that a certain proportion of some group of people would at the end of a given time be alive; and quoted the actuarial formula, involving p [pi], which, in answer to a question, he explained stood for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. His acquaintance, who had so far listened to the explanation with interest, interrupted him and exclaimed, 'My dear friend, that must be a delusion, what can a circle have to do with the number of people alive at a given time?'

  W. W. Rouse Ball

  Death, Science, Circles

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• Some are masters of illusions, some are ministers of trade, all under the same delusion, all their beds unmade.

  Bob Dylan

  Art, Media, Bed

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• The film has succeeded in transforming subjects so indistinguishably into social functions, that those wholly encompassed, no longer aware of any conflict, enjoy their own dehumanization as something human, as the joy of warmth. The total interconnectedness of the culture industry, omitting nothing, is one with total social delusion.

  Theodor Adorno

  Joy, Culture, Conflict

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.206, Verso

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