Quotes About Delusions

The Enlightenment attacked religion - Christianity, mainly - for two reasons: that it was a set of ideological delusions, and that it was a system of institutional oppression, with immense powers of persecution and intolerance.

I am fascinated by people's flaws and delusions: all the messy bits of human nature we all try to pretend we don't have.

I seek the Will of the Spirit of God through, or in connection with, the Word of God. The Spirit and the Word must be combined. If I look to the Spirit alone without the Word, I lay myself open to great delusions also.

Not creating delusions is enlightenment.

While liberals are leery of religious fundamentalism in general, they consistently imagine that all religions at their core teach the same thing and teach it equally well. This is one of the many delusions borne of political correctness.

Love is at first a set of delusions, which, as time goes by, are discarded like training wheels, and you love truly.

The ground-root folly of this piteous philanthropy is thinking to distribute indivisibles, and make equality in things incommensurable: forged under such delusions, all Utopias are castles in the air or counsels of despair.

People who cling to their delusions find it difficult, if not impossible, to learn anything worth learning: A people under the necessity of creating themselves must examine everything, and soak up learning the way the roots of a tree soak up water. —James Baldwin

Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.

From what I can see of humans, you often destroy wonderful things in the pursuit of something that your delusions make you think is more wonderful.

The State (meaning the gov't and society) derives no inconsiderable advantage from the peoples instruction (in other words, education). The more they are instructed, the less liable they are to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition. . . . The expense of the institutions for education and religious instruction, is likewise, no doubt, beneficial to the whole society, and may, therefore, without injustice, be defrayed by the general contribution of society.

Delusions are not harmful in themselves, they only hurt when one is alone in believing in them, when one cannot create an environment in which they can be sustained.

Socrates The philosopher offered us a way out of two powerful delusions: that we should always or never listen to the dictates of public opinion. To follow his example, we will best be rewarded if we strive instead to listen to the dictates of reason

A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of green paper.

Schizoaffective disorder is a big mental mash-up of a disease. It combines just about every disorder, from depression, delusions, and paranoia to mania, schizophrenia and hallucinations. My mother bounced between all of these regularly while raising me alone in our Hollywood home.

Many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitudes.

One of society's absurd delusions is that the spending of money can cure something.

The [quantum] theory reminds me a little of the system of delusions of an exceedingly intelligent paranoiac.

And this is the mystery that I declare unto thee: that from the Crown itself spring the three great delusions; Aleph is madness, and Beth is falsehood, and Gimel is glamour. —The Cry of the 3rd Aethyr Which Is Called ZON

The best you can hope for in this life is that your delusions are benign and your compulsions have utility.

One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.

I suspect that lichens will endure. We could, too, if we listen to their teachings. If not, I imagine Umbilicaria will cover the rocky ruins of our time long after our delusions of separateness have relegated us to the fossil record, a ruffled green skin adorning the crumbling halls of power

that was the moment we understood that things can go terribly wrong in our world—not because life is unfair or moral progress impossible but because we have failed, generation after generation, to abolish the delusions and animosities of our ignorant ancestors.

I remember feeling the jolt of history when the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center. For many of us, that was the moment we understood that things can go terribly wrong in our world—not because life is unfair or moral progress impossible but because we have failed, generation after generation, to abolish the delusions and animosities of our ignorant ancestors.