Quotes About Delusion

But here's the biggest head-scratcher of all: Not only are atheists destroying our country, they're completely deluding themselves. There's simply no way to prove that there is no God. If I didn't hate them so much, I'd feel bad for these folks. Imagine going through life completely duped into thinking that there's no invisible, omniscient higher power guiding every action on Earth. It's just so arbitrary! Can't they see?

We fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living.

Every religion lies. Every moral precept is a delusion. Even the stars are a mirage. The truth is darkness, and the only thing that matters is making a statement before one enters it. Cutting the skin of the world and leaving a scar. That's all history is, after all: scar tissue.

Creemos que sabemos mucho, pero en realidad no sabemos más que una rata en una trampa, una rata con la espalda rota que aún cree que quiere vivir.

Some people have remarkably sturdy illusions.

Strategy without execution is hallucination.

You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom.

It is difficult to see ourselves as we are. Sometimes we are fortunate enough to have good friends, lovers or others who will do us the good service of telling us the truth about ourselves. When we don't, we can so easily delude ourselves, lose a sense of truth about ourselves, and our conscience loses power and purpose. Mostly, we tell ourselves what we would like to hear. We lose our way.

Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines delusion as "a false conception and persistent belief unconquerable by reason in something that has no existence in fact."45 As an intuitionist, I'd say that the worship of reason is itself an illustration of one of the most long-lived delusions in Western history: the rationalist delusion.

Western philosophy has been worshipping reason and distrusting the passions for thousands of years.4 There's a direct line running from Plato through Immanuel Kant to Lawrence Kohlberg. I'll refer to this worshipful attitude throughout this book as the rationalist delusion.

We are well-armed for battle in a Machiavellian world of reputation manipulation, and one of our most important weapons is the delusion that we are non-combatants.

Because like all psychopaths he was grandiose, and convinced of his own personal magnetism, assumed worship on the part of others.

My inner chemistry had been hijacked by a mad scientist, who poured the fizzy, volatile contents of my heart from a test tube marked SOBER REALITY into another labeled SUNNY DELUSION, and back again, faster and faster, until the floor of my life was slick with spillage.

Don't rupture another's illusion unless you're positive the alternative you offer is more worthwhile than that from which you're wrenching them. Interrogate your solipsism: Does it offer any better a home than the delusions you're reaching to shatter?

algo que me ha llamado últimamente la atención: que haya tantos narradores que se crean preparados para escribir una novela; se sienten tan increíblemente preparados que en su inagotable vanidad están convencidos de que la harán y la harán muy bien

We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.

But forgive me if I cannot help expressing my fear that you are nevertheless deluding yourself into principles which have but too much tendency to counteract your own object, and to render your virtues and your talents useless both to yourself and mankind.

an idiot with delusions of military adequacy, but I expected better from the Guards. Not much, but a little.

It seemed to him that delusion was the most natural of human states; it was honesty that was the aberration.

All of us insist on our illusions, upon substituting dreams and distorted memories for the real thing...It seemed to him that delusion was the most natural of human states; it was honesty that was the aberration.

In soft deluding lies let fools delight. A shadow marks our days, which end in Night.

Every male in the world thinks he's an excellent driver. Every copper who's ever had to pick an eyeball out of a puddle knows that most of them are kidding themselves.

a Hungarian girl with a completely unjustified belief in her own genius.

Capgras delusion is a psychiatric disorder in which a person holds a delusion that a friend, spouse, parent, or other close family member (or pet) has been replaced by an identical impostor.