Illusion Quotes - page 12
![Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached "reality"; but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya [illusion]. (Helena Petrovna Blavatsky)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/02/helena-petrovna-blavatsky-absolute-369102.webp)
His faith in humanity began from an acknowledgement of limitation, not an illusion about perfectibility. He knew that joy flowed from honesty, rather than around it-sound familiar? In a similar way, Christians, whose identity is found apart from our ever-changing and often hopeless abilities and attributes, are free to laugh at ourselves. This is part and parcel of Christian joy.
Jim Henson
Again, there is the illusion of "increased command over Nature," meaning that cotton is cheap and that ten miles of country road on a bicycle have replaced four on foot. But even if man's increased command over Nature included any increased command over himself (the only sort of command relevant to his evolution into a higher being), the fact remains that it is only by running away from the increased command over Nature to country places where Nature is still in primitive command over Man that he can recover from the effects of the smoke, the stench, the foul air, the overcrowding, the racket, the ugliness, the dirt which the cheap cotton costs us.
George Bernard Shaw
There are no arguments. Can anyone who has reached the limit bother with arguments, causes, effects, moral considerations, and so forth? Of course not. For such a person there are only unmotivated motives for living. On the heights of despair, the passion for the absurd is the only thing that can still throw a demonic light on chaos. When all the current reasons - moral, esthetic, religious, social, and so on - no longer guide one's life, how can one sustain life without succumbing to nothingness? Only by a connection with the absurd, by love of absolute uselessness, loving something which does not have substance but which simulates an illusion of life. I live because the mountains do not laugh and the worms do not sing.
Emil Cioran
I do not feel brave. I am not the center of this symphony. No one even cares if I am here.
Where is the immortal majesty the poets promised me? Where is the stern will my ancestors preached to their children?
It was just an illusion conjured by fools who never left their libraries, or by agents of necessity.
This is the Noble Lie.
Pierce Brown
If time is an illusion, then all movement and change are also illusions. So the only thing that gives us the illusion of movement and change and events and time is the fact that our consciousness is moving through this mass along the time axis. If you imagine it as a strip of celluloid, each of those individual cells is motionless. If they each represent a moment, they're unchanging. They're not going anywhere, but as the projector beam of our consciousness passes across them, it provides the illusion of movement, and narrative and cause and effect and circumstances.
Alan Moore
It cannot be justly inferr'd... We do not perceive the Thing, therefore there is no such Thing, that is a false Illusion, a deceitful Dream, that wou'd cause us to join together two remote Instants of Time. But nevertheless this is very True... That is, for as much Motion as there was, so much Time seems to have been elapsed; nor, when we mention such a Quantity of Time, do we merely mean any Thing else, than the Performance of so much Motion, to the continued successive Extension of which we imagine the Permanency as Things is co-extended.
Isaac Barrow
I am under no illusion that our present strategy of using means short of total war to achieve our ends and oppose communism is a guarantee that a world war will not be thrust upon us. But a policy of patience and determination without provoking a world war, while we improve our military power, is one which we believe we must continue to follow....
Under present circumstances, we have recommended against enlarging the war from Korea to also include Red China. The course of action often described as a limited war with Red China would increase the risk we are taking by engaging too much of our power in an area that is not the critical strategic prize.
Red China is not the powerful nation seeking to dominate the world. Frankly, in the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this strategy would involve us in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.
Omar Bradley
[W]hat Husbands and Wives argues is that many "rational" relationships are actually not as durable as they seem, because somewhere inside every person is a child crying me! me! me! We say we want the other person to be happy. What we mean is, we want them to be happy with us, just as we are, on our terms... Beneath the urgency of all the older characters - both men, both women, and even the older dating partners they experiment with - is the realization that life is short, that time is running out, that life sells you a romantic illusion and neglects to tell you that you can't have it, because when you take any illusion and make it flesh, its hair begins to fall out, and it has B. O., and it asks you what your sign is. True love involves loving another's imperfections, which are the parts that tend to endure.
Roger Ebert
The centuries are thick, dark waves that rise and fall, steeped in blood. Every moment is a gaping abyss.
Gaze on the dark sea without staggering, confront the abyss every moment without illusion or impudence or fear. ... But this is not enough; take a further step: battle to give meaning to the confused struggles of man.
Nikos Kazantzakis
I soon discovered that the greater part of a day in Old State was devoted to meetings. Where the boundaries of jurisdiction were fuzzy or overlapping, meetings became inevitable. Most questions affected a number of functional and geographic divisions...These meetings gave the illusion of action, but often frustrated it by attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable. What was most often needed was not compromise but decision.
Dean Acheson
