Quotes About Illusion

These trumpeters of reality are bad musicians.

We have abolished the real world: what world is left? The apparent world perhaps? . . . But no! with the real world we have also abolished the apparent world.

Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion: that is the doctrine of Hamlet, not that cheap wisdom of Jack the Dreamer who reflects too much and, as it were, from an excess of possibilities does not get around to action. Not reflection, no—true knowledge, an insight into the horrible truth, outweighs any motive for action, both in Hamlet and in the Dionysian man.

If you could imagine dissonance assuming human form - and what else is man? - this dissonance would need, to be able to live, a magnificent illusion which would spread a veil of beauty over its own nature." Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, ed. R. Geuss & R. Speirs, Cambridge, 2007, 163. (p.154)

Why might not the world WHICH CONCERNS US—be a fiction?

They all want to get to the throne: this is their madness—as if happiness were sitting on the throne! Often it is mud that sits on the throne—and often the throne also sits on mud.

There is not enough love and kindness in the world to permit us to give any of it away to imaginary beings.

We have invented the concept "goal": in reality, goals are absent . . .

The way after all – it does not exist!

When I came to men, then found I them resting on an old infatuation: all of them thought they had long known what was good and bad for men.

Socrate considérait que c'est un mal qui n'est pas loin de la folie, de s'imaginer que l'on possède une vertu, alors qu'on ne la possède pas. Certes, une pareille illusion est plus dangereuse que l'illusion contraire qui consiste à croire que l'on souffre d'un défaut, d'un vice. Deuxième Considération intempestive, ch. 6

Lucrurile supreme trebuie s? aib? o alt? origine, una proprie lor, - ele nu ar putea lua naÅŸtere din aceast? lume efemer?, înÅŸel?toare, iluzorie ÅŸi mizer?, din aceast? harababur? de am?giri ÅŸi pofte!

where is the deceiver to be found?' – 'We've got it,' they cry in delight, 'it is the senses! These senses, which are so immoral as well, it is they which deceive us about the real world. Moral: escape from sense-deception, from becoming, from history, from falsehood – history is nothing but belief in the senses, belief in falsehood.

Wouldn't thinking have put over on us the biggest hoax yet?

The invention of the laws of number has as its basis the primordial and prior-prevailing delusion that many like things exist (although in point of fact there is no such thing is a duplicate), or that, at least, there are things (but there is no "thing"). The assumption of plurality always presupposes that something exists which manifests itself repeatedly, but just here is where the delusion prevails; in this very matter we feign realities, unities, that have no existence.

That mountain there! That cloud there! What is 'real' about those? Try taking away the phantasm and the entire human contribution, you sober realists! Yes, if only you could do that! If you could forget your heritage, your past, your training – your entire humanity and animality! For us there is no 'reality' – nor for you either, you sober ones.

the illusion of the artistic rendering of a nerve stimulus into images is, if not the mother, then at least the grandmother of every concept. In

a thing can only live through a pious illusion.

That idyllic shepherd of modern man is only a counterfeit, the totality of cultural illusions which he counts as nature.

without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live—that

In practice it is death that works so seductively behind the image of its brother, sleep

The Point of Honor in Deception.—In all great deceivers one thing is noteworthy, to which they owe their power. In the actual act of deception, with all their preparations, the dreadful voice, expression, and mien, in the midst of their effective scenery they are overcome by their belief in themselves; it is this, then, which speaks so wonderfully and persuasively to the spectators. The

Pascal is right to assert that if we had the same dream every night, we would be as engaged by it as we are by the things we see every day. "If an artisan were sure of dreaming every night a full twelve hours that he was king, I believe," says Pascal, "he would be just as happy as a king who dreamed every night for twelve hours that he was an artisan.

Towards the throne they all strive: it is their madness—as if happiness sat on the throne! Ofttimes sitteth filth on the throne.—and ofttimes also the throne on filth.