Quotes About Illusion

Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains.... But it can put mountains where there are none.

Ceux qui reprochent à nos ancêtres d'avoir été sottement crédules oublient, d'abord qu'on peut également être sottement incrédule, et ensuite qu'en fait de crédulité, il n'y a rien de tel que les illusions dont vivent les soi-disant destructeurs d'illusions ; car on peut remplacer une crédulité simple par une crédulité compliquée [...]

Those who reproach our ancestors with having been stupidly credulous forget in the first place that one can also be stupidly incredulous, and in the second place that the self-styled destroyers of illusion live on illusions that exemplify a credulity second to none. For a simple credulity can be replaced by a complex one [...]

You can't function in society if you don't involve yourself in the fictions society accepts about time. But you do so with the understanding that you're playing a game.

Real wisdom is the ability to understand the incredible extent to which you bullshit yourself every single moment of every day.

As for enlightenment, that's just for people who can't face reality.

The very idea of higher states of consciousness is absurd. Comparing one state of consciousness to another and saying one is "higher" and the other is "mundane" is like eating a banana and complaining it's not a very good apple.

The pain of having your dreams come true appears vividly when you realize that even if your dreams really come true, they never really come true. From birth to death it's just like this

Water, foam, and flame are mind. Flowers in the spring and the moon in the autumn are also mind. Each moment is mind. And yet mind can never be destroyed. That's why everything that's real is mind, and the Buddhas along with other Buddhas are mind.

The downfall is that we humans think about a lot of stuff that's not actually real. We crave certainty in areas where there can never be any. That's when we start in with believing the crazy stuff.

Religions say that spirit/mind is real while matter is negligible. Materialistic philosophies, such as classical science, say that mind is just an illusion caused by the interactions of material objects and processes. Contemporary physics is starting to dimly comprehend that this distinction is false, but it will probably take a long time before this view becomes widely accepted. This is much more than just a dry philosophical debate. People get killed over this stuff.

Chasing after fantasies is always a bad idea. Stick with reality. Reality's all you've got. But here's the real secret, the real miracle: it's enough.

We think we're doing our jobs for the paycheck, but Dogen says that's an illusion. The underlying, original reason we work is to give to others. The payment you receive is a kind of karmic payback for the service you give.

he was less fearful around the dead than the living...It was that he and the dead shared the same secret, which was that the fearful illusion of mortality - and immortality, as well - is lifted like a veil to reveal something simpler and more profound, without fear. Only the dead see one another, and themselves, for what they truly were, or are. The terrifying idea of time did not apply at all.

There they go, off to Mars, just for the ride, thinking that they will find a planet like a seer's crystal, in which to read a miraculous future. What they'll find, instead, is the somewhat shopworn image of themselves. Mars is a mirror, not a crystal.

The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.

The Internet is a big distraction. It's distracting, it's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere.

I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats.

Climbing that ladder of social hierarchy is an illusion that deludes any sense of happiness or truth.

You act as if there's blinders on your eyes!

If this is right, I'd rather be wrong. If this is sight, I'd rather be blind.

A lie twice believed is self-deceived.

Power is an illusion of perception.

That's kind of what trust is, isn't it? A willful self-delusion.