Quotes About Illusion

William Hjortsberg

To think wishfully, to rest in comforting illusion when scientific truth is conceivably within reach, is to desecrate both one's self and the universe.

The computer-simulated dreamworld of the Matrix trilogy is a technological version of Descartes's evil demon. In essence it represents the idea of a mind (the Architect) more powerful than our own that is intent on deceiving us whenever, and however, it sees fit.

Red is not in the apple but in the perception.

The schools turn wonder into drudgery and uniqueness into aberration. Acceptance by the dulled others becomes worth almost any surrender, and nothing is worth the price of solitude: to read, to ponder, to paint, to pray. In the new Plato's cave, we have the electronic shadows to make the unreal true and to give us an ersatz peace — even though every ad ever produced is deliberately formulated to make us unhappy.

You can put wings on a pig, but you don't make it an eagle.

I liked all their lies best, for I think they are the brightest part of anybody's history.

I was little more than a child still wrapped in a soothing blanket of illusion

But I know you, brother. And I know you got all the substance of a soap bubble.

Because they believe a thing does not make it so. There is no dignity in anger. But

There were times when he wondered whether the spell that bound him also deceived him. Perhaps it allowed him these illusions of freedom, all the better to lull him into submission. Perhaps Akama was more like his people than he knew. Perhaps he was, after all, the perfect broken leader for a perfectly broken people.

But then, we all tell ourselves stories about ourselves. The money man tells himself that by getting rich he is actually enriching others, the artist tells himself that his creations are things of deathless beauty, the soldier tells himself he is on the side of the angels.

Our blind trust in the system is the product of ignorance and magical thinking,

You can cheat with a picture. You can fall in love with an image of someone, with a memory or an idea of her. For that matter, the matter is generally easier to love than the actual person, since the image will never change, never grow old, never argue or disappoint you.

Our villains always disappoint us. They never look the part.

But then, we all tell ourselves stories about ourselves. The money man tells himself that by getting rich he is actually enriching others, the artist tells himself that his creations are things of deathless beauty, the soldier tells himself he is on the side of the angels. Me, I told myself that in court I could make things turn out right—that when I won, justice was served. You can get drunk on such thinking, and in Jacob's case I was.

If God does not exist, our lives are ultimately meaningless, valueless, and purposeless despite how desperately we cling to the illusion to the contrary.

The campus was Disney-fascist, a relentlessly upbeat place to wither and die.

And he clutched it tight in his fist, as if it were his final, brightest hope in a world of tragic illusions.

For what was hope but a liar, preoccupied with the droughts of the past and the harvests of the future while it killed off the present with its bland blandishments?

Just as a sycamore thrusts out leaves, so this universe thrusts out humanity. Our individuality is mere illusion and we remain, all of us, always, part of the great tree of creation, just as it remains part of us. These are the truths I learned, my child, alongside Magee in Number 24 General Hospital, Étaples, and which I pass on, now, to you.

After all, he muttered, what can they do to shake the confidence of a fellow whos got delusions of adequacy?

It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit

There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.