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Illusion Quotes

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Illusion Quotes

“Much of American wealth is an illusion which is being secretly gnawed away and much of it will be completely wiped out in the near future....So what is the rest of your future? A grisly list of unpleasant events -- exploding inflation, price controls, erosion of your savings (eventually to nothing), a collapse of private as well as government pension programs, and eventually an international monetary holocaust which will sweep all paper currencies down the drain and turn the world upside down.”

WorldWellsGovernmentTurnsWealthEventsPaperIllusionProgramInternationalListsSavingOur FutureHolocaustCollapseCurrencyInflationYour FutureSavingsDrainsUpside DownMonetaryPensionExplodingErosionWorld Upside Down
Author:Howard Ruff
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“The New Yorker has always dealt with experience not by trying to understand it but by prescribing the attitude to be adopted toward it. This makes it possible to feel intelligent without thinking, and it is a way of making everything tolerable, for the assumption of a suitable attitude toward experience can give one the illusion of having dealt with it adequately.”

ThinkingWayGivingFeelsTryingAttitudeIllusionIntelligentAssumptionAdoptedNew YorkersSuitableTolerablePrescribing
Book:The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theatre & Other Aspects of Popular Culture
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“Ultimately, of course, you must decide for yourself whether the subjective psychological effects created by your evolved cognitive biases reflect an objective reality, perhaps as evidence that God designed your mind to be so receptive to Him. Or, just maybe, you will come to acknowledge that, like the rest of us, you are a hopeless pawn in one of natural selection's most successful hoaxes ever-and smile at the sheer ingenuity involved in pulling it off, at the very thought of such mindless cleverness. One can still enjoy the illusion of God, after all, without believing Him to be real.”

MindBelieveStillsRealRealityCoursesEnjoyNaturalSuccessfulEffectsInvolvedIllusionEvidenceObjectivesPsychologicalAcknowledgeHopelessBeing RealSheerPullingSelectionSubjectiveIngenuityNatural SelectionClevernessCognitiveMindlessReceptivePawnsHoaxesObjective RealityBelieving Him
Book:The God Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny and the Meaning of Life
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“Today, when death and old age are increasingly concealed behind euphemisms and comforting baby talk, and life is threatened with being smothered in the mass consumption of hypnotic mechanized vulgarity, the need to confront man with the reality of his situation is greater than ever. For the dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without fear, without illusions - and to laugh at it.”

MenNeedsRealityAgeTodayFacesLife IsLyingAbilityBehindsSituationAcceptingLaughingGreaterBabyMassIllusionDignityOld AgeConsumptionThreatenedComfortingConcealedVulgarityEuphemismLying MenHypnoticSenselessnessBaby TalkMass Consumption
Book:The Theatre of the Absurd
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“We have the illusion of freedom only because so few ever try to exercise it. Try it sometime. Try to save your home from the highway crowd, or to work a trade without the approval of the goons, or to open a little business without a permit, or to grow a crop without a quota, or to educate your child the way you want to, or to not have a child. We all have the freedom of a balloon floating in a pin factory.”

WayWantTryingChildrenLittlesHomeGrowsExerciseIllusionOur ChildrenTradeCrowdsYour ChildrenPermitEducateFactoriesApprovalFloatingHighwaysPinsCropsBalloonsQuotaGoonsIllusion Of Freedom
Author:Karl Hess
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“In short, no association or alliance can be happy or stable without me. People can't long tolerate a ruler, nor can a master his servant, a maid her mistress, a teacher his pupil, a friend his friend nor a wife her husband, a landlord his tenant, a soldier his comrade nor a party-goer his companion, unless they sometimes have illusions about each other, make use of flattery, and have the sense to turn a blind eye and sweeten life for themselves with the honey of folly.”

PeopleLongSometimesUseEyeTurnsPartyTeacherWifeMastersFoolHusbandIllusionBlindSoldierServantFollyCompanionHoneyAssociationStableRulersTolerateFlatteryMistressAlliancesPupilsMaidsComradeLandlordTenantsBlind Eyes
Author:Desiderius Erasmus
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“It is Toussaint's supreme merit that while he saw European civilisation as a valuable and necessary thing, and strove to lay its foundations among his people, he never had the illusion that it conferred any moral superiority. He knew French, British, and Spanish imperialists for the insatiable gangsters that they were, that there is no oath too sacred for them to break, no crime, deception, treachery, cruelty, destruction of human life and property which they would not commit against those who could not defend themselves.”

PeopleHumansMoralBreakSawsCrimeIllusionDestructionFoundationSacredLaysPropertyValuableBritishSupremeCommitCrueltyDeceptionHuman LifeMeritSuperiorityOathCivilisationGangstersInsatiableTreacheryNecessary ThingsMoral Superiority
Author:C. L. R. James
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“There is no neatness in any life- great or small. It is only an illusion men foolishly pursue. All lived lives are a mess. The neatness in my life had begun to crumble some time before, but now it disintegrated completely as I vanished into a world of endlessly opening doors, teasing riddles and lives without boundaries. For the first time I began to understand how shallow neatness is. How cramping, how limiting. For the first time I understood neat lives are comatose lives. (the Alchemy of Desire 304)”

MenWorldFirstsDesireDoorsIllusionUnderstoodFirst TimeBoundariesOpeningPursueMessShallowNeatAlchemyTeaseRiddleNeatnessOpening DoorsComatose
Author:Tarun J. Tejpal
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“Imperialism creates the illusion of wealth as far as the masses are concerned. It usually serves to hide the fact that the ruling classes are gobbling up the natural resources of the home territory in an improvident manner and are otherwise utilizing the national wealth largely for their own purposes. Eventually the general public is called upon to pay for all of this, frequently after the military machine can no longer maintain external aggression.”

FactsHomePurposeNaturalWealthPayClassMilitaryMassIllusionResourcesConcernedMachinesTerritoryAggressionImperialismRulingNatural ResourcesGeneral PublicUtilizing
Author:Jack D. Forbes
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“Now you see. We are all fugitives. We have always been fugitives from the void. Whatever comfort, whatever power we gain from outside of ourselves diminishes us -- because comfort and power, unless they are won from the void inside of us, are illusions that make us forget the emptyness that carries us. When we forget that, we believe we deserve comfort and power and so are capable of any evil. We deserve nothing but what we make of ourselves. We deserve nothing else. And when we understand that, then nothing is enough.”

BelieveEnoughEvilForgetComfortCapableIllusionDeserveGainsCarrieVoidDiminish
Author:A.A. Attanasio
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“Now suppose that the clue experiences that can correct the illusion become for some reason increasingly scarce – perhaps because the dominant story itself brings about their elimination! Then the illusion might go on for a very long time, might have to result in real catastrophe, before anyone realizes anything is wrong.”

LongRealReasonStoriesMightRealizingResultsGoes OnLong TimeIllusionDominantCatastropheClueScarceElimination
Book:The Eye of the Crocodile
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“Over the years, Americans in particular have been all too willing to squander their hard-earned independence and freedom for the illusion of feeling safe under someone else's authority. The concept of self-sufficiency has been undermined in value over a scant few generations. The vast majority of the population seems to look down their noses upon self-reliance as some quaint dusty relic, entertained only by the hyperparanoid or those hopelessly incapable of fitting into mainstream society.”

YearsLooksHas BeensSelfHardFeelingsSeemsValuesGenerationsParticularWillingSafeAuthorityIllusionConceptsIndependenceMajorityPopulationNosesMainstreamIncapableSelf RelianceRelianceFittingSelf SufficiencyRelicsSufficiencyQuaintIndependence And FreedomMainstream Society
Book:When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need to Survive When Disaster Strikes
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“Had it been published by a voice from heaven, that twelve poor men, taken out of boats and creeks, without any help of learning, should conquer the world to the cross, it might have been thought an illusion against all reason of men; yet we know it was undertaken and accomplished by them.”

KnowsMenWorldShouldHas BeensReasonHelpingMightHeavenVoicePoorTakenIllusionCrossesBoatConquerAccomplishedTwelveMight Have BeenPoor ManCreeksConquer The World
Book:The Existence and Attributes of God
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“It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

PeopleIfsWayLittlesDoeLife IsSpiritDiesMy OwnStreetsSafeApproachIllusionBallsEdgesWideTinyNoiseCandleAvenuesTorchesNarrow Streets
Author:Sophie Scholl
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“Our business is to wake up. We have to find ways in which to detect the whole of reality in the one illusory part which our self-centered consciousness permits us to see. We must not live thoughtlessly, taking our illusion for the complete reality, but at the same time we must not live too thoughtfully in the sense of trying to escape from the dream state. We must be continuously on watch for ways in which we may enlarge our consciousness.”

WayTryingMaySelfStatesWholeDreamRealityConsciousnessWatchesIllusionWake UpAwakeningPermitSelf CenteredIllusory
Book:Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948
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“One cannot overstate the childishness of the ideas that feed and stir the masses. Real ideas must as a rule be simplified to the level of a child's understanding if they are to arouse the masses to historic actions. A childish illusion, fixed in the minds of all children born in a certain decade and hammered home for four years, can easily reappear as a deadly serious political ideology twenty years later.”

IfsYearsMindChildrenIdeasRealHomeActionPoliticalCertainUnderstandingBornLevelsFourSeriousMassIllusionTwentiesLibertarianDecadesIdeologyFixedFour YearsHistoricHammeredPolitical IdeologyChildishness
Book:Defying Hitler: A Memoir
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“The happiness of being envied is glamour. Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest - if you do, you will become less enviable. In this respect the envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power. The power of the glamorous resides in their supposed happiness: the power of the bureaucrat in his supposed authority.”

IfsFormInterestGreaterDependsAuthorityIllusionEnvySolitaryGlamourGlamorousBureaucratsEnviedReassurance
Author:John Berger
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