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Quotes About Delusion

The greatest of all human delusions is that there is a tangible goal, and not just direction towards an ideal aim. The idea that a goal can be attained perpetually frustrates human beings, who are disappointed at never getting there, never being able to stop.
~ Stephen Spender
Powerful men in particular suffer from the delusion that human beings have no memories. I would go so far as to say that the distinguishing trait of powerful men is the psychotic certainty that people forget acts of infamy as easily as their parents birth
~ Stephen Vizinczey
Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.
~ Steve Martin
We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And, indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again." ~Fiddler, pg. 558
~ Steven Erikson
None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions! A mantle of marble hiding a crumbling core of sandstone. See how they stare at me, wondering, all wondering, at my secret wellspring of wisdom...' Let's kill him,' Crokus muttered, 'if only to put him out of our misery.
~ Steven Erikson
What is there left to understand? Choice is an illusion. Freedom is conceit. The hands that reach out to guide your every step, your every thought, come not from the gods, for they are no less deluded than we - no, my friends, those hands come to each of us... from each of us.
~ Steven Erikson
Oh yes, I have learned much from Tremorlor, and so assume a like strategy. Silence, a faint mocking smile suggesting I know more than I do, an air of mystery, yes, and fell knowledge. None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions!
~ Steven Erikson
A man does not marry a girl, nor a woman. He marries a promise, and it shines with a bright purity that is ageless. It shines, in other words, with the glory of lies. The deception is self inflicted. The promise was simple in its form, as befitted the thick-headedness of young men, and in its essence it offered the delusion that the present moment was eternal; that nothing would change; not the fires of desire, not the flesh itself, not the intense look in the eye.
~ Steven Erikson
It's the ignorant who find a cause and cling to it, for within that is the illusion of significance.
~ Steven Erikson
People who are stone-cold immovably delusional are probably people that didn't have great relationships and feel slighted.
~ Paul Walter Hauser
A man who fails is funny... if my sketches teach anything, it is that, for the male, sex is a snare and a delusion. What's so corrupting about that?
~ Benny Hill
The fact that....you categorize everything as either sexist, or racist, or homophobic, whether it is or not, and therefore harmful to you and you just can't take it, is a kind of mania, a delusion, a psychosis that we have been coddling, encouraging people to think that life should be a smooth utopia built only for them and their fragile sensibility.
~ Bret Easton Ellis
American Psycho was about what it meant to be a person in a society you disagreed with and what happened when you attempted to accept and live with its values even if you knew they were wrong. Delusion and anxiety were the focal points.
~ Bret Easton Ellis
The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves into thinking they have done "the right thing." —RAYNA BUTLER, sermons on Salusa Secundus
~ Brian Herbert
Power and deceit are tools of statecraft, yes. But remember that power deludes the ones who wield it—making them believe it can overcome the defects of their ignorance. —COUNT FLAMBERT MUTELLI, early speech in Landsraad Hall of Oratory
~ Brian Herbert
Maybe all these desperate clashing feelings I'm feeling are just random brain activity, maybe I'm just delusional. But there are things that I miss, and things that I feel like I should be seeing and feeling every time I turn around, and I just keep turning and turning and turning, and there's nothing.
~ Bryan Lee O'Malley
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged (...) Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
~ Carl Sagan
We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling. HENRI POINCARÉ (1854–1912)
~ Carl Sagan
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
~ Carl Sagan
Nietzsche mourns the loss of "man's belief in his dignity, his uniqueness, his irreplace-ability in the scheme of existence." For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan
If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits? For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan
Honey, you're not operating on the realistic level anymore than I am.
~ Tennessee Williams
True or False? The delusion that doing well in school will win me love has disfigured my life. Discuss in 5-7 pages.
~ Terry Castle
Not everyone is willing to embrace liberty; liberty requires not just effort, but risk. Some people choose to delude themselves and see their chains as protective armor.
~ Terry Goodkind