Quotes About Delusion

I always have a rough outline, but I'm shocked at how little I actually follow it. Those characters keep doing things that I never expected. I think if I crept up to my keyboard and peeked, they'd be talking about things behind my back. Okay, that's a little paranoid and delusional... but just a little.

vision is an idle dream at best and a cynical delusion at worst - but not an achievable end

We delude ourselves that we want to implant honesty in our children: what we really want is to imbue them with our particular kind of dishonesty, with our culture's dishonesty. —Sidney Harris

The risks involved in the pursuit of magic are--put simply--either getting frightened by unpleasant perceptions or becoming deluded. Unfortunately it is possible to suffer from both symptoms at the same time.

Can you imagine how much of existence would be impossible if people didn't believe in a certain amount of luck in the face of all evidence to the contrary? The true essence of human life is delusion. That's what we've got in here. And it's been that way ever since the first Roman soldier blew on a handful of dice. It's simple human nature to believe your luck is going to turn.

It is just as if some phenzy-struck person supposed himself to be grappling with an imaginary combatant, and then, having with great efforts thrown himself down, thought that it was his foe who was lying there;

Illusions of grandeur are not the same as visions of greatness.

If we had a populist president who didn't alienate so many persuadable voters, who took full advantage of a strong economy, and who had the political cunning displayed by Modi or Benjamin Netanyahu or Viktor Orban, the liberal belief in a hidden left-of-center mandate might be exposed as a fond delusion.

I can't bear the idea that I might be in any way deluded about myself.

That's always been really funny to me - someone who really stridently believes that they're right when they're so wrong in, like, the worst way. Not only do they believe that they're right, but they believe that everyone thinks that they're right, and are comfortable with that.

All this can dissolve in a moment, when awareness apprehends what is actually unfolding … like the soap bubble being touched by the finger. Liberation from suffering in that very moment. Liberation from greed, hatred, and delusion. Now for the next moment, which, of course, is this one.

Too often our unexamined and deluded story-lines become self-fulfilling prophecies. We can always marshal any evidence we want in support of a particular view, and then believe it even if it is patently not true. This is delusion.

Whether a belief is considered to be a delusion or not depends partly upon the intensity with which it is defended, and partly upon the numbers of people subscribing to it.* ANTHONY STORR, FEET OF CLAY

Science and delusion had no ground in common.

I think the first reading of a poem is a true one, and after that we delude ourselves into the belief that the sensation the impression, is repeated. But, as I say, it may be mere loyalty,a mere trick of memory a mere confusion we once felt,thus it may be said that poetry is a new experience every time,every time I read a poem the experience happns to occur and that is poetry

The greater fool is actually an economic term. It's a patsy. For the rest of us to profit, we need a greater fool— someone who will buy long and sell short. Most people spend their life trying not to be the greater fool; we toss him the hot potato, we dive for his seat when the music stops. The greater fool is someone with the perfect blend of self-delusion and ego to think that he can succeed where others have failed. This whole country was made by greater fools.

Like Ingrid Bergman in the film Gaslight, whose husband has convinced her that she's delusional when all along he's set her up, the victims often lose faith in their ability to determine what's real and what isn't. ("Gaslight" has since become a psychological term, meaning to deliberately manipulate someone.) Being duped contaminates your entire sense of self.

Maybe I'm delusional but I'm usually funny. It's not 100% but I have a pretty good batting average.

Whiteness did not preserve any woman from ownership by men; it did bestow a skin-deep privilege that could delude her as to her fundamental object-status as woman, unenfranchised and dominated.

We had a military and political leadership at that period which was genuinely deluded.

It is for the good of states that men should be deluded by religion.

Ah! How we all love to be deluded! We have a secret dread of being thought ignorant. And we end by being ignorant after all, only we have done it in a long and roundabout way.

Trumpeting the importance of voting deludes people into thinking that they have a leash on the government.

If you are delusional, sometimes the reality catches up with your delusion, and then all of a sudden you are a genius.