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Quotes About Delusions

Misguided loyalty allows the delusions of the leader to grow and destroys the faith of the loyal.
~ Stephen Arterburn
Some wags surmised the Western powers refrained from unseating the Soviet regime to give socialists around the world more time to see the full folly of their delusions.)
~ Stephen Kotkin
The miracle of hindsight is how it transforms great military geniuses of the past into incompetent idiots, and incompetent idiots of the present into great military geniuses. There is the door, and be sure to take all your pompous second-guessing delusions with you…' Emperor Kellanved On the occasion of the conquest of Falari's Grand Council (the Trial of Crust)
~ Steven Erikson
the face of severe trauma, the brain could conjure entire worlds that didn't exist as a way of blocking out reality. Hallucinations of people and places. Delusions that the mind refused to give up.
~ Brian Freeman
In the face of severe trauma, the brain could conjure entire worlds that didn't exist as a way of blocking out reality. Hallucinations of people and places. Delusions that the mind refused to give up.
~ Brian Freeman
Every time I think I'm getting wiser, more in control of my actions, I go slamming into a situation that makes me excruciatingly aware that all I've succeeded in doing is swapping one set of delusions for a more elaborate, attractive set of delusions
~ Karen Marie Moning
Far away, I can hear Mouflon, our last sheep, bleating in the dark. I wonder if Annie is still out to protect her, still scouring the woods in barefoot pursuit of those dogs. I feel sorry for Annie, alone with a rabid pack of her own delusions. I feel sorrier for Mouflon. She's alone with Annie.
~ Karen Russell
Russell's point is not to assert his right to be left alone to his personal delusions, but that devising a theory that cannot be proved or disproved by observation is pointless in the sense that it teaches you nothing, irrespective of how passionately you may believe in it. You can invent any object or idea you like, but if there is no way of observing it or its consequences, you haven't made a contribution to the scientific understanding of the universe.
~ Brian Cox
Aristotle raped reason. He implanted in the dominant schools of philosophy the attractive belief that there can be discrete separation between mind and body. This led quite naturally to corollary delusions such as the one that power can be understood without applying it, or that joy is totally removable from unhappiness, that peace can exist in the total absence of war, or that life can be understood without death. —ERASMUS, Corrin Notes
~ Brian Herbert
17So with the wisdom given to me from the Lord I say: You should not live like the unbelievers around you who walk in their empty delusions.a
~ Brian Simmons
Human beings are inherently misled into subjective fantasies, but there's a saving grace. We all have different delusions. Other people don't necessarily share yours, and hence they will help you penetrate yours through the miracle of criticism!
~ David Brin
I'm not a comedian. I'm what you call a good, old-fashioned working actor who has had delusions of grandeur for my entire career and has known what I want to do.
~ Chris Diamantopoulos
It is the legacy of most intelligent beings to revel in slaughter for a time,' Haut replied. 'In this we play at being gods. In this, we lie to ourselves with delusions of omnipotence. There is but one measure to the wisdom of a people, and that is the staying hand. Fail in restraint and murder thrives in your eyes, and all your claims to civilization ring hollow.
~ Steven Erikson
Those of us who attempt to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening our own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. We will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of our own obsessions, our aggressivity, our ego-centered ambitions, our delusions about ends and means.
~ Thomas Merton
He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.
~ Thomas Merton
I mean what they and their hired psychiatrists call delusional systems. Needless to say, 'delusions' are always officially defined. We do not have to worry about questions of real or unreal. They only talk out of expediency. It's the system that matters. How the data arrange themselves inside it. Some are consistent, others fall apart.
~ Thomas Pynchon
To eat in a monastery refectory is an exercise in humility; daily, one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference. While consumer culture speaks only to preferences, treating even whims as needs to be granted (and the sooner the better), monastics sense that this pandering to delusions of self-importance weakens the true self, and diminishes our ability to distinguish desires from needs. It's a price they're not willing to pay.
~ Kathleen Norris
A prophet's task is to reveal the fault lines hidden beneath the comfortable surface of the worlds we invent for ourselves, the national myths as well as the little lies and delusions of control and security that get us through the day. And Jeremiah does this better than anyone.
~ Kathleen Norris
My aim was to show that delusions and hallucinations were not just specific symptoms of mental disease but also had a human meaning.
~ C.G. Jung
Moderns consider themselves wholly rational, unemotional, scientific, and atheistic. Where earlier humanity had realized its unconscious through religion, moderns dismiss both religion and the unconscious as prescientific delusions. Instead, moderns proudly identify themselves with their ego and thereby boast of their omnipotence: "nowadays most people identify themselves almost exclusively with their consciousness, and imagine that they
~ C.G. Jung
Just when people were congratulating themselves on having abolished [the belief in demons], it turned out that instead of haunting the attic or old ruins the [demons] were flitting about in the heads of apparently normal Europeans. Tyrannical, obsessive, intoxicating ideas and delusions were abroad everywhere, and people began to believe the most absurd things, just as the possessed do.
~ C.G. Jung
Disciples by their very nature are prone to misconceptions, projections, illusions, and delusions that prevent or delay a constructive relationship with the guru. Therefore the guru is primarily responsible for providing a viable avenue of self-transcending discipline for the disciple.
~ Georg Feuerstein
We were never under any delusions as to which was more important, an individual or humanity.
~ Isaac Asimov
Delusions are hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding insane people living in a backwards world.
~ Shannon L. Alder