Delusion Quotes

Hope – or perhaps delusion – was a flame that had stayed lit, even though its scorching light would hurt. It had refused to go out.

~ Dianna Hardy

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.

~ Michael R. Fletcher

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.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Once the entrancement (Infatuation; Deluded state), in material objects, is gone; the loss in spirituality stops!

~ Dada Bhagwan

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, that good people are fictitious and that goodness has lost its definition altogether. But such is not true because there are still people who are virtuous, unselfish, willing to help and possessing the ability of restoring our faith in humanity, to disregard them, their presence would be as heinous as the deeds of the people who are unlike them. The times might be unpleasant, repulsive but we’ll come out it, unharmed and liberated.

~ Chirag Tulsiani

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 torment for years and years, even decades, as it slowly, stone by stone, builds a mound over a grave; as it moves towards the apprehension of eternal loss and bows down before reality.

~ Vasily Grossman

Mental –ill health is delusion.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

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 —

~ Emily Dickinson

Chasing a man is not winning. The only thing you win is the loss of your dignity. Confidence is knowing your value, instead of expecting a man’s love to provide you with value.

~ Shannon L. Alder

I find it strange how some men simply give up their soul to a woman, and act in obedience to their will. I find it stranger that those same women, are ignorant to the belief that this isn't his real face. Most women don't know what their man looks like when he's not in-love with them. But when that mystical spell is broken, it's like a person seeing the true face of God; only realizing that you simply never understood...their real self.

~ Lionel Suggs

If you keep looking at your business wishes as delusional dreams you will end up running just another one of them. If you get inspired by your business wishes then plan to find a way and people to make it happen, you will end up mastering a second to none organization.

~ Sameh Elsayed

It's one fucking illusion in this fucking delusion... you don't want to be in my dream, do ya?

~ Deyth Banger

Seven billion who need to be kept happy, and docile, until the end. How do you do that? What's the best way to calm down a scared kid, get them to go back to sleep? Tell them a story. Some shit about Jesus or whatever.

~ Neal Stephenson

Faith without action is delusion. Faith does not wait for miracles but produces them. If you think you can or if you think you can't, you are right.

~ Henry Ford

Any self-defense situation has the potential to quickly become A 'life and death' situation, therefore your practice of martial arts should be undertaken, as if your very life depends on it . . .

~ Soke Behzad Ahmadi

Wondering and writing constitute positive madness.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

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. Example: the Chinese pictogram for ‘integrity’ is a two-part symbol of a man literally standing next to his word. So far, so good. But what does the Late English word ‘honesty’ mean? Or ‘Motherland’? Or ‘progress’? Or ‘democracy’? Or ‘beauty’? But even in our self-deception, we become gods.

~ Dan Simmons

The notion of loving oneself has gotten an undeservedly bad rap, which goes something like this: self-love is narcissistic, selfish, self-indulgent, the supreme delusion of a runaway ego looking out for “number one.” In fact, just the opposite is true.

~ Sharon Salzberg

To commit the act of felo-de-se is a form of delusion. You see, my love, to leave one's life unfinished implies the possibility of success. What is left unlived may contain the potential truth one always seeks. Those who kill themselves do so with the conviction that they would have reached that truth eventually had they lived to the proper end. They die in the illusion of hope which in a way keeps the rest of us alive. Reason, therefore, for not committing suicide.

~ Raymond Federman

Men who believe that the way to the mind is not by way of ice picks through the brain or large dosages of dangerous medicine but through an honest reckoning of the self.

~ Dennis Lehane

Doubt grew only in the fertile darkness of solitude

~ Michael R. Fletcher

It is probable that the most inhuman monsters, even the Himmlers and the Mengeles, convince themselves that they are engaged in noble and courageous acts.

~ Noam Chomsky

Humans are in delusion by default, and those who conquer their delusion can understand good and evil. Morality is an arbitrary abstract, it is not good or evil and those who provoke morality a righteous act, are still at the sideways of delusion and conquer.

~ M.f. Moonzajer

Evil originates not in the absence of guilt, but in our effort to escape it.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Understanding what it means to die, to sever oneself of the foolish hope for immortality, is what allows human beings the capability to appreciate simple pleasures and endure whatever hardships living a full life requires. Eternity is beautiful whereas time is unredeemable and problematic. Our faith, our hopes, and our love exist only in points of time. We discover eternity by avoiding the snares of prejudice and mental delusion, using the memory of whole civilizations to understand the past, and employing human consciousness to transcend fluctuations in time.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work, and perhaps that is why we see in the increasing complexity of our mental constructs a means for greater understanding, even while intuitively we know that we shall never be able to fathom the imponderables that govern our course through life.

~ W.g. Sebald

We are nothing without them, our scars and our blemishes. Take away our delusional smiles if you must, snatch away our illusory happiness if you must, but please leave us our flaws for we do not wish to exist without them.

~ Shruti Upadhaya

deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.

~ Carl Sagan

Sin is the delusion of our feelings, while crime is the delusion of our actions.

~ M.f. Moonzajer

I’d rather know how you feel than hope and wonder and delude myself for weeks on end…

~ Dan Wells

The borders of man, defined by politics, war, and faith - all three manifestations of delusion - meant even more to gods.

~ Michael R. Fletcher

Delusions, carefully implanted, are difficult to correct.

~ Joost A.m. Meerloo

Religion, by its very nature as an untestable belief in undetectable beings and an unknowable afterlife, disables our reality checks. It ends the conversation. It cuts off inquiry: not only factual inquiry, but moral inquiry. Because God's law trumps human law, people who think they're obeying God can easily get cut off from their own moral instincts. And these moral contortions don't always lie in the realm of theological game-playing. They can have real-world consequences: from genocide to infanticide, from honor killings to abandoned gay children, from burned witches to battered wives to blown-up buildings.

~ Greta Christina

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.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Do what helps others. Refrain from harming others. Transcend your own ignorance, clinging, hate, fear and delusion. This and only this is the dispensation of all the Buddhas.

~ Paul R. Fleischman

People often mistake their imagination for their heart, & so often are convinced they are converted as soon as they start thinking of becoming converted.

~ Blaise Pascal

It seems sometimes that people take a deliberately myopic and fill their eyes with things seen microscopically in order not to see macrosopically.

~ Marilyn Frye

Today's truth will be tomorrow's lie and you will be left questioning your own sanity.

~ Michael R. Fletcher

The mirror ever lies.

~ Michael R. Fletcher

Personal discontent and lost illusion is the catalysis and the principal theme for every book ever written. The sign of maturity is when a person finally realizes that they would rather live truthfully than persist indulging his or her comforting delusions.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster