Illusory Quotes - Page 5

• Although the events we appear to perceive in dreams are illusory, our feelings in response to dream content are real. Indeed, most of the events we experience in dreams are real; when we experience feelings, say, anxiety or ecstasy, in dreams, we really do feel anxious or ecstatic at the time.

  Stephen LaBerge

  Dream, Real, Anxiety

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• The future is usually imagined as either better or worse than the present. If the imagined future is better, it gives you hope or pleasurable anticipation. If it is worse, it creates anxiety. Both are illusory.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Giving, Anxiety, Anticipation

  Eckhart Tolle (2001). “Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises from the Power of Now”, p.34, New World Library

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• Hasn't knowledge only crippled me from seeing truth? Is knowledge itself illusory?

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Knowledge, Truth Is, Crippled

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• Now, more than ever, I realize just how illusory my undeserved success has been. I still hold out some hope of doing better, but age and unhappiness have sapped my strength.

  Claude Monet

  Success, Age, Realizing

  Claude Monet (1999). “Monet by himself: paintings, drawings, pastels, letters”

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• We ourselves are not an illusory part of Reality; rather are we Reality itself illusorily conceived.

  Wei Wu Wei

  Reality

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• Continental thinkers have been obsessed with bourgeois man as representing the worst and most contemptible failure of modernity, which must at all costs be overcome. Nihilism in its most palpable sense means that the bourgeois has won, that the future, all foreseeable futures, belong to him, that all heights above him and all depths beneath him are illusory and that life is not worth living on these terms.

  Allan Bloom

  Mean, Men, Nihilism

  "The Closing of the American Mind". Book by Allan Bloom, pp. 157-158, 1987.

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• But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind it, lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Lying, Two, Dwelling

  Thomas Carlyle, G. B. Tennyson (1984). “Carlyle Reader”, p.304, CUP Archive

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• Feuerbach ... recognizes ... "even love, in itself the truest, most inward sentiment, becomes an obscure, illusory one through religiousness, since religious love loves man only for God's sake, therefore loves man only apparently, but in truth God only." Is this different with moral love? Does it love the man, this man for this man's sake, or for morality's sake, for Man's sake, and so-for homo homini Deus-for God's sake?

  Max Stirner

  Religious, Men, Sake

  "The Ego and Its Own (1844)". Book by Max Stirner. Cambridge edition, p. 55, 1995.

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• The belief that happiness has to be deserved has led to centuries of pain, guilt, and deception. So firmly have we clung to this single, illusory belief that we've almost forgotten the real truth about happiness. So busy are we trying to deserve happiness that we no longer have much time for ideas such as: Happiness is natural, happiness is a birthright, happiness is free, happiness is a choice, happiness is within, and happiness is being. The moment you believe that happiness has to be deserved, you must toil forevermore.

  Robert Holden

  Pain, Real, Believe

  Robert Holden (2011). “Happiness Now!: Timeless Wisdom for Feeling Good Fast”, p.100, Hay House, Inc

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• We become obsessed with 'truth' when discussing statements, just as we become obsessed with 'freedom' when discussing conduct...Like freedom, truth is a bare minimum or an illusory ideal.

  J. L. Austin

  Truth Is, Obsessed, Minimum

  "Philosophical Papers" by J. L. Austin, James Opie Urmson, Geoffrey James Warnock, 3rd ed., New York: Oxford, (p. 130), 1979.

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• In the products of the culture industry human beings get into trouble only so that they can be rescued unharmed, usually by representatives of a benevolent collective; and then, in illusory harmony, they are reconciled with the general interest whose demands they had initially experienced as irreconcilable with their own.

  Theodor Adorno

  Culture, Demand, Trouble

  "Culture Industry Reconsidered". Book by Theodor Adorno, 1963.

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• Life is there ahead of you and either one tests oneself in its challenges or huddles in the valleys of a dreamless day-to-day existence whose only purpose is the preservation of a illusory security and safety. The latter is what the vast majority of people choose to do, fearing the adventure into the known.

  Saul Alinsky

  Life, Adventure, People

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”, p.22, Vintage

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• Online gambling is very seductive and very illusory. It can seem like a really good idea. It can seem like what people told you to work hard and get ahead, but when someone shows you something and it's too good to be true, it probably is.

  Ben Affleck

  Hard Work, Gambling, Ideas

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• God alone is truth, everything else is transitory and illusory.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  God, Transitory

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• And one has to remember that no photography can pretend to show the truth. A picture only shows a given situation under a very specific perspective, consciously or not, openly or not, relevantly or not. Photographers have to accept they can just convey fragments of illusory realities and relate their own intimate experience of the world. In this process of fictionalising an unreachable truth, it's up to them to impose their doubts about any photographic truth, or accept being impotent pawns in the mediatic game.

  Antoine D'Agata

  Photography, Reality, Games

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• I played with the image, because I think image is temporary. It's a projection. It's illusory.

  Annie Lennox

  Thinking, Projection, Temporary

  "The Look: Annie Lennox". Interview with Harry Brant, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 23, 2014.

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• Those who have overcome self-will and become instruments to do God's work can accomplish tasks which are seemingly impossible, but they experience no feeling of self achievement. I now know myself to be a part of the infinite cosmos, not separate from other souls or God. My illusory self is dead; the real self controls the garment of clay and uses it for God's work.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Real, Self, Achievement

  Peace Pilgrim (1992). “Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words”, p.128, Friends of Peace PIlgrim

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• I have written a book called 'In the Wonderland of Numbers.' It's about a young girl, Neha, who is very poor in mathematics, but in a series of illusory experiences, she becomes a great mathematician.

  Shakuntala Devi

  Girl, Book, Numbers

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• There is an untroubled harmony in everything, a full consonance in nature; only in our illusory freedom do we feel at variance with it.

  Fyodor Tyutchev

  Freedom, Harmony, Feels

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• ...in any society, Law is an illusory concept that works only when everyone voluntarily agrees to live by it.

  Massad Ayoob

  Law, Live By, Agree

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• Religion is but a desperate attempt to find an escape from the truly dreadful situation in which we find ourselves. Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance. No wonder then that many people feel the need for some belief that gives them a sense of security, and no wonder that they become very angry with people like me who say that this is illusory.

  Fred Hoyle

  Real, People, Giving

  Fred Hoyle (1960). “The nature of the universe”

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• Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth... Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves... Nevertheless... such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction... and any deeper meaning is illusory...

  Michael Ruse

  Thinking, Hands, Feet

  "The Darwinian Paradigm: Essays on Its History, Philosophy and Religious Implications (Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics)". Book by Michael Ruse, 1989.

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• Sydney Smith playfully says that common sense was invented by Socrates, that philosopher having been one of its most conspicuous exemplars in conducting the contest of practical sagacity against stupid prejudice and illusory beliefs.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Stupid, Common Sense, Prejudice

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1875). “Success and Its Conditions”, p.284

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• After generations of living under medical tutelage, which provides us with protection (albeit illusory) against "dangerous drugs", we have failed to cultivate the self-reliance and self-discipline we must possess as competent adults surrounded by the fruits of our pharmacological-technological age.

  Thomas Szasz

  Self, Discipline, Drug

  Thomas Szasz (1996). “Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market”, p.24, Syracuse University Press

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• I urge people to be a scientist about what they want and ask themselves why they want it so badly. Perhaps they are chasing an illusory dream. But if you want to learn, to expand, to be of service, you will find a way.

  Agapi Stassinopoulos

  Dream, People, Want

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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