Quotes About Illusion

Our moral reasoning is plagued by two illusions. The first illusion can be called the wag-the-dog illusion: We believe that our own moral judgment (the dog) is driven by our own moral reasoning (the tail). The second illusion can be called the wag-theother-dog's-tail illusion: In a moral argument, we expect the successful rebuttal of an opponent's arguments to change the opponent's mind. Such a belief is like thinking that forcing a dog's tail to wag by moving it with your hand will make the dog happy.

Nirvana is a word that means enlightenment, being beyond the illusion of birth and death, the illusion of pain, the illusion of love, the illusion of time and life.

We actually allow ourselves to choose to have different experiences and to liberate ourselves to see past the illusion, past the fear of that fear, which is very strongly embedded in us as a part of the illusion here.

The illusion of design is so successful that to this day most Americans (including, significantly, many influential and rich Americans) stubbornly refuse to believe it is an illusion.

Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Art is an illusion.

If only we can give them faith that mountains can be moved, they will accept the illusion that mountains are moveable, and thus an illusion may become reality.

The illusion of the seventh veil was the illusion that you could get somebody else to do it for you. To think for you. To hang on your cross. The priest, the rabbi, the imam, the swami, the philosophical novelist were traffic cops, at best. They might direct you through a busy intersection, but they wouldn't follow you home and park your car.

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.

All writers know that on some golden mornings they are touched by the wand; they are on intimate terms with poetry and cosmic truth. I have experienced these moments myself. Their lesson is simple: It's a total illusion. And the danger in the illusion is that you will wait for those moments.

When you interact with another, an illusion is part of this dynamic. This illusion allows each soul to perceive what it needs to understands in order to heal.

The great human problem of evil stems from the illusion of separateness. Whenever this illusion is overcome, we behave lovingly to one another.

Children’s literature must build a bridge between the colorful dream world full of fantasy and illusion, and a tougher real world full of twists and turns. The child armed with the torch of knowledge, awareness and guidance must cross this bridge and set foot to the intense harshness of the bigger world.

"Pursuit of happiness" implies that we're running after happiness and happiness is running away from us. It also implies that happiness is somewhere out there, in material goods, which we have to pursue, whereas I believe that it is an illusion happiness is not out there, it is within us.

Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.

All time is eternal, moving inexorably toward an end which we believe is a result of our actions, but over which our control is mere illusion.

The trick was looking past the illusion, because the exit was never as far away as it seemed.

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

For a found-footage-style movie, there's a definite advantage in using unknowns, because it helps sell the illusion that it's real. A known actor would get in the way of the suspension of disbelief.

Performance-enhancing drugs are an illusion. I wish I had never gotten involved with steroids. It was wrong. It was stupid.

I still haven't gotten over this thing of walking down the street and somebody recognizing you because you've been in a movie. There's this illusion that movie stars only exist in the movies. And to see one live is like seeing a leopard let out of the zoo.

If you are under the illusion that you can start a business and run it at your life's schedule, you are mistaken. The business is like a starving puppy - when it needs to eat, then it needs to eat regardless of what you have going on personally.

Also, I had not yet found out about time; I was still under the illusion that I had plenty of time - time for this, time for that, time for everything, time to waste.

We trained hard ... but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.

Today we are beginning to notice that the new media are not just mechanical gimmicks for creating worlds of illusion, but new languages with new and unique powers of expression.

We may think that our tradition is exactly the same as it has always been, but that is an illusion.

People like Jesus Christ, the Buddha, and other walking masters who have moved through the earth have demonstrated that understanding that they have no needs, far from prohibiting them from experiencing the needs of others, allowed them to experience that others lived inside of the illusion of need and to have great compassion for them.

The sky is like a monochromatic contemporay painting, drawing me in its illusion of depth, pulling me up.

This world is all a fleeting show, For man's illusion given The smiles of joy, the tears of woe, Deceitful shine, deceitful flow, Theres nothing true but Heaven.

Christ’s love and friendship are no illusion. On the Cross Jesus showed how real they are.

There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

Relativity propped it up, at least gave it the illusion of being there…the way all reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted.

There is something truly restorative, finally comforting, in coming to the end of an illusion - a false hope.

The essence of all practice is to be cool. Life is not worth getting excited about because whatever you perceive is an illusion.

I mean, the thought of someone spending $20 to come and see me and saying 'Oh, I prefer the record and she's completely shattered the illusion' really upsets me. It's such a big deal that people come give me their time.

I think it just really excites me, the idea of delving so far into a character that people actually believe it's real, and I start to believe it's real. It's a strange thing to say, but it's the thrill of getting all the details right and being so absorbed in the character that people go along with the illusion.

Thus also every keen pleasure is an error and an illusion, for no attained wish can give lasting satisfaction.

Despair is the only cure for illusion.

To a father who loves his children victor has no charms. When the heart speaks, glory itself is an illusion.

I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth. - Blanche Scene II

You go on being reincarnated until you reach the actual Truth. Heaven and Hell are just a state of mind. We are all here to become Christ-like. The actual world is an illusion.

That is what the blueprint for this time is about. We're leaving behind the limitations and the illusion of the struggle. We're moving much more into having a very different experience now on the Earth plane with our sacredness.

'Tis folly in one Nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its Independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favours and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate upon real favours from Nation to Nation. 'Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

something can only become an illusion after disillusionment. before that, it is something real. what caused the disillusionment? no one told me the print on the wall was just ink and paper and had no life of its own. at some point the cat stopped blinking, and i stopped thinking it could.

The common meaning of gratitude is to be thankful for benefits received. While this is important, I feel that the energy of gratitude is one of the most powerful attracting forces in the universe. A heart filled with Thanksgiving, even when appearances tell us that we are mired in scarcity, conflict, and affliction, moves us to a higher frequency in consciousness and we soon witness reality shining through the illusion.

In this life struggle, here I am among you fully cognizant that a true believer has no fear of what God has ordained for him. Those who are visited by fear live only for their present, under the illusion that the world began with them and will end with their departure.

War is being reminded that you are completely at the mercy of death at every moment, without the illusion that you are not. Without the distractions that make life worth living.

The ‘equilibrium’ that people see in me is really an illusion. I am as flawed as anyone. It’s only that I seem to have the knack of hiding.

This world is nothing. An illusion. Death is the release.