Quotes About Illusion

Recent decades have taught us that physics is a magic window. It shows us the illusion that lies behind reality—and the reality that lies behind illusion. Its scope is immensely greater than we one realized. We are no longer satisfied with insights only into particles, or fields of force, or geometry, or even space and time. Today we demand of physics some understanding of existence itself.

As Parmigianino did it, the right handBigger than the head, thrust at the viewerAnd swerving easily away, as though to protectWhat it advertises.

Our capacity for self-delusion appears almost infinite.

All its dimensions with their projected geometries are those of an unrealisible dream.

The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.

No place for illusions here. The beat doesn't stop solitude, it doesn't cure pain, you can't telephone it - it's simply a reminder that you belong to a shared story.

The collaboration which sometimes follows is seldom based on good will: usually on desire, rage, fear, pity or longing. The modern illusion concerning painting (which post-modernism has done nothing to correct) is that the artist is the creator. Rather he is a reciever. What seems like creaton is the act of giving form to what he has recieved.

Clouds gather visibility, and then disperse into invisibility. All appearances are of the nature of clouds.

The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.

[M]ovie-making is the process of turning money into light. All they have at the end of the day is images flickering on a wall.

But the measuring up came first, not the love--don't marry for money, but marry where money is. Did men think like this? No, they didn't. They fell in love; then imagined that because they were in love, the girl would automatically measure up to their requirements too. They couldn't really love someone just as they were. And then when they found out that they hadn't got the person they had wanted--which was little wonder, since she'd never existed--the trouble started.

It's an illusion to believe that you can be happy when no one else is. Or that other people will not be affected by your unhappiness.

We can speak, think, refer to ourselves as agents, and so build up the false idea of a persisting self that has consciousness and free will.

Our brains trick us into thinking that we have Moral Truth on our side when in fact we don't, and blind us to important truths that our brains were not designed to appreciate.

drowning in two inches of water

The graphical desktop guides useful behavior and hides what is true but not useful.

We live in the shadow of a great lie, and by the time we figure out that it is a lie we are closing in on death and have become irrelevant consumers, and a new generation of young and relevant consumers takes our place in the great chain of shopping.

So I awoke, and behold it was a dream.

The trick and the beauty of language is that it seems to order the whole universe, misleading us into believing that we live in sight of a rational space, a possible harmony.

Betrug und Schönheit der Sprache bestehen darin, dass sie das ganze Universum zu ordnen scheint und uns zu der Annahme verführt, wir lebten in Anbetracht eines rationalen Raumes, einer möglichen Harmonie. Doch da Wörter uns von der Gegenwart distanzieren, weshalb wir niemals ganz der Realität der Dinge habhaft werden, machen sie die Vergangenheit zur absoluten Fiktion.

While illusion (the momentary prices we pay for stocks) often loses touch with reality (the intrinsic values of our corporations), it is reality that rules in the long run.

As I say at the beginning of my workshops, 'Everything I say here is a lie -- bullshit, in other words -- because anything that you put in words is not experience, is not the experiment. It's a representation -- a misrepresentation.

Vrys' First Law: If you deny reality, you must invent a fantasy.

They are not one whit disaccommodated by the fact the sun they follow with such effort is a false one.