Quotes About Illusions

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do.

May I say, finally, that I have no illusions of grandeur; quite to the contrary, I am very humble in my knowledge that through forty years of my life my life has been an open book of service to my fellow architects and for the public good.

Illusions are the truths we live by until we know better.

It's very hard to look in the mirror. We all know this. It's much easier to have illusions about yourself. And in particular, when you think, well, I'm going to believe what I like, but I'll say what the powerful want, you do that over time, and you believe what you say.

I am almost certain that space and time are illusions. These are primitive notions that will be replaced by something more sophisticated.

With all thy getting, get understanding, is the banner under which these Forbes editorials have appeared since the first issue of the publication. We have no illusions about what great wealth can do and what it cannot do. We believe in the worthwhileness of striving by all worthy means to attain success and to attain wealth. Simply because we are convinced that no amount of money is worth the sacrifice of one's better instincts, of one's self-respect-of one's soul, if you wish-simply because we are convinced that riches not gained legitimately and decently are not worth having.

Everybody sooner or later has to drop the luggage and the baggage of illusions.

I have never had illusions about the value of my individual contribution! I realized early that what a man or a woman does is built on what those who have gone before have done, that its real value depends on making the matter in hand a little clearer, a little sounder for those who come after. Nobody begins or ends anything. Each person is a link, weak or strong, in an endless chain. One of our gravest mistakes is persuading ourselves that nobody has passed this way before.

Life is a process of losing our illusions, until we finally lose the illusion that we're alive.

I have no illusions about my position in this world as an actor or anything like that. I'm very realistic. Reality is a very liberating thing.

The main trouble with being an honest man was that it lost you all your illusions.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

Dive deep into the ocean, Sita, and you will find that the greatest treasures you find are the illusions you leave behind.

The camera does not know what it takes; it captures materials with which you reconstruct, not so much what you saw as what you thought you saw. Hence the best photography is aware, mindful, of illusion and uses illusion, permitting and encouraging it - especially unconscious and powerful illusions that are not usually admitted on the scene.

The mind has its illusions as the sense of sight; and in the same manner that the sense of feeling corrects the latter, reflection and calculation correct the former.

The true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions we uncover the laws of truth.

[Radical leftist] are never been a majority. We just fell for one of the greatest illusions in modern politics.

I've never had any illusions about being a lead actor in films, because lead actors have to be of a certain kind. Apart from the beauty of looks and figure, which I cannot claim to have, there's just a particular kind of ordinary-Joe quality that a film star needs to have.

Life is full of its disappointments, and I suppose the art of being happy is to disguise them as illusions.

You are not naked when you take off your clothes. You still wear your religious assumptions, your prejudices, your fears, your illusions, your delusions. When you shed the cultural operating system, then essentially you stand naked before the inspection of your own psyche.

After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us toward is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven.

Many other means there be, that promise the foreknowledge of things to come: besides the raising up and conjuring of ghosts departed, the conference also with familiars and spirits infernal. And all these were found out in our days, to be no better than vanities and false illusions.

How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs.

Science is the art of creating suitable illusions which the fool believes or argues against, but the wise man enjoys for their beauty or their ingenuity, without being blind to the fact that they are human veils and curtains concealing the abysmal darkness of the unknowable

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.

The loss of illusions and the discovery of identity, though painful at first, can be ultimately exhilarating and strengthening.

Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false Self. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.

They filled us full of false illusions and promiscuity, and they led us down that class-less road of mediocrity.

In my later novels, I systematically used the convention, and then a moment came - when did it come? With The Book of Illusions, maybe - I thought, I don't need them anymore, I don't need them, I want to integrate the dialogue into the text.

We need to come together sometimes and show our strength, so that the Donald Trump administration at its 100th day is under no illusions that people are somehow in a fog. We know absolutely what this guy is doing, and boy, are we pissed off about it.

I do not wish to grow old, to outlive my illusions. Only a short respite from cares and sorrow, a brief time of flowers, and music, and love, and laughter, and ecstatic tears.

Life and death are illusions. We are in a constant state of transformation.

David Brin is a technological determinist. He thinks that we understand the trend and we need to hop on it. I don't have any such illusions.

This is where we are at right now, as a whole. No one is left out of the loop. We are experiencing a reality based on a thin veneer of lies and illusions. A world where greed is our God and wisdom is sin, where division is key and unity is fantasy, where the ego-driven cleverness of the mind is praised, rather than the intelligence of the heart.

Lulled by stupefying illusions, the world is asleep in the cradle of infancy, dreaming away the hours.

The public wants work which flatters its illusions.

When you genuinely lose your illusions, you begin to marvel at things, because you don't have the answers any more.

Take a good long look at human beings in their actual practices and motives; bring the utmost psychological and bio-economic factors to bear on making sense of their illusions and delusions. What then would the truth have to be, such that such human beings are FIT TO KNOW IT at all, even provisionally or tentatively?

People who cling to their illusions find it difficult, if not impossible, to learn anything worth learning: a people under the necessity of creating themselves must examine everything, and soak up learning the way the roots of a tree soak up water.

A woman can't be, until a girl dies. . . . I mean the sprites that girls are, so different from us, all their fancies, their illusions, their flower world, the dreams they live in.

I think on death as the apparent end of the illusions that encompass us. They all have a sudden and unexpected end, that challenges any faith we have pinned to their worth.

It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, now I realize what we all are . If only they [people] could all see themselves as they really are I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusions, a point of pure truth This little point is the pure glory of God in us. It is in everybody.

I have no illusions. Of course, Russia is massively upgrading its military. We know that Russia is pursuing a policy of expansion. This is of course a cause for concern among Eastern European countries.

All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth, and none, or almost none for the disenchantment of age.

My father's from Pakistan and he has been a secularist all his life. In the Pakistani context, there's no messing with religion. There's been a battle for the soul of Pakistan since 1947 and I have grown up without any illusions about the dangers of religious power in the context of a country like Pakistan.

Hope cherishes no illusions, nor does it yield to cynicism.

All problems are illusions of the mind.