Truth And Delusion Quotes & Sayings

Build your life brick upon brick,
Live a life of truth,
And you will look back on a life of truth.
Live a life of fantasy,
And you will look back on delusion. — Ming-Dao Deng

2. "HOW COULD anything originate out of its opposite? For example, truth out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the generous deed out of selfishness? or the pure sun-bright vision of the wise man out of covetousness? Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the highest value must have a different origin, an origin of THEIR own - in this transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their source. But rather in the lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed God, in the 'Thing-in-itself - THERE must be their source, and nowhere else!" - — Friedrich Nietzsche

Victory without God is mockery and delusion, but ... defeat with God is not defeat. — William Faulkner

The victim mindset produces a delusion of fault and blame that blinds you from the simple truth of cause and effect. — Steve Maraboli

I couldn't move. It's something I'm still ashamed of. You always wonder how you'll handle a moment of crisis; if you've got what it takes to fight or if you've just been deluding yourself all along that somewhere deep inside you there's steel beneath the magnolia. Now I knew the truth. There wasn't. I was all petals and pollen. Good for attracting the procreators who could ensure the survival of our species, but not a survivor myself. I was Barbie after all. — Karen Marie Moning

If the truth about loving or hateful choices were revealed it would break open the earth's crust. Which is why we live in legalized and general delusion. Fiction takes the place of reality. This is why simply naming one of these turns of the unconscious that are part of our strange human adventure engenders such upsets (which are at once intimate, individual, and political); why consciously or unconsciously we constantly try to save ourselves from this naming. — Helene Cixous

We're constantly getting these messages to mind our own business and look the other way if we want to be well liked, to not tell the truth or speak our mind or say anything too intense. Well, I'm telling you here that this approach not only makes you party to other people's crimes against themselves but is a prescription for mediocrity and delusion — Kelly Cutrone

Sinner, I would be loth to have thy soul destroyed by wilful self-delusion ... So consequently, there is a despair which is a grievous sin; and there is a despair which is absolutely necessary to thy salvation. I would not have thee despair of the sufficiency of the blood of Christ to save thee, if thou believe, and heartily obey him; nor of the willingness of God to pardon and save thee, if thou be such a one; nor yet absolutely of thy own salvation; because, while there is life and time, there is some hope of thy conversion, and so of thy salvation ... Never stick at the sadness of the conclusion, man, but acknowledge plainly, If I die before I get out of this estate, I am lost forever. It is as good deal truly with thyself as not; God will not flatter thee, he will deal plainly whether thou do or not. The very truth is, this kind of despair is one of the first steps to heaven(233). — Richard Baxter

The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp. Above all, it fits more snugly than the truth into a universe of false appearances - of complex and irrational phenomena, defectively grasped. — Friedrich Nietzsche

From the viewpoint of absolute truth, what we feel and experience in our ordinary daily life is all delusion. Of all the various delusions, the sense of discrimination between oneself and others is the worst form, as it creates nothing but unpleasantness for both sides. If we can realize and meditate on ultimate truth, it will cleanse our impurities of mind and thus eradicate the sense of discrimination. This will help to create true love for one another. The search for ultimate truth is, therefore, vitally important. — Dalai Lama

Fiddler briefly wondered about those three dragons - where they had gone, what tasks awaited them - then he shrugged. Their appearance, their departure and, in between and most importantly, their indifference to the four mortals below was a sobering reminder that the world was far bigger than that defined by their own lives, their own desires and goals. The seemingly headlong plunge this journey had become was in truth but the smallest succession of steps, of no greater import than the struggles of a termite.
The worlds live on, beyond us, countless unravelling tales.
In his mind's eye he saw his horizons stretch out on all sides, and as they grew ever vaster he in turn saw himself as ever smaller, ever more insignificant.
We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again ... — Steven Erikson

My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfilment of which I could consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not have known what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guess of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless. — Leo Tolstoy

Paradox
/pera,daks/ noun
1. Being told to wake up and come back to reality by your family and friends, while being dragged to church to hear a lesson on Jonah and the whale, followed by a sermon on believing in things you can't see without faith. — Shannon L. Alder

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. — Carl Sagan

...[T]here is no art in being intelligible if one renounces all thoroughness of insight; but also it produces a disgusting medley of compiled observations and half-reasoned principles. Shallow pates enjoy this because it can be used for everyday chat, but the sagacious find in it only confusion, and being unsatisfied and unable to help themselves, they turn away their eyes, while philosophers, who see quite well through this delusion, are little listened to when they call men off for a time from this pretended popularity in order that they might be rightfully popular after they have attained a definite insight. — Immanuel Kant

I seek the truth ... it is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance that does harm. — Marcus Aurelius

Each memory was brought to life before me and within me. I could not avoid them. Neither could I rationalize, explain away. I could only re-experience with total cognizance, unprotected by pretense. Self delusion was impossible, truth exposed in this blinding light. Nothing as I thought it had been. Nothing as I hoped it had been. Only as it had been. — Richard Matheson

The long-deluded will at last see the truth, and thus their expressions will have seen a ghost. — Criss Jami

There are only two profound ways to reach enlightenment: Laugh by yourself, or get tickled. — Saurabh Sharma

The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It isn't absurd, e.g., to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progress is delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by no means obvious that this is not how things are. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

It seems sometimes that people take a deliberately myopic and fill their eyes with things seen microscopically in order not to see macrosopically. — Marilyn Frye

The myth about the CIA dated back to the Bay of Pigs: that all its successes were secret, that only its failures were trumpeted. The truth was that the CIA could not succeed without recruiting and sustaining skilled and daring officers and foreign agents. The agency failed daily at that mission, and to pretend otherwise was a delusion. — Tim Weiner

As for the myths, take anyone's life and deny that most of it is deliberate self-delusion - an aggrandizement - a mixture of lies and truth, of what was wanted and what was had, producing the necessary justification for having been granted life in the first place. I was struck like a match, Lily wrote. I had no option but to burn.
You can put a period after that. Lily did. It was the story of her life. — Timothy Findley

Many ask what difference does it make whether man believes in a God or not.
It makes a big difference.
It makes all the difference in the world.
It is the difference between being right and being wrong; it is the difference between truth and surmises - facts or delusion.
It is the difference between the earth being flat, and the earth being round.
It is the difference between the earth being the center of the universe, or a tiny speck in this vast and uncharted sea of multitudinous suns and galaxies.
It is the difference in the proper concept of life, or conclusions based upon illusion.
It is the difference between verified knowledge and the faith of religion.
It is a question of Progress or the Dark Ages. — Joseph Lewis

By justifying our harmful negative habits, we live in delusion. We are lying to ourselves. And worse yet, we waste the precious opportunity of living our truth. — Dashama Konah Gordon

Faith is a device of self-delusion, a sleight of hand done with words and emotions founded on any irrational notion that can be dreamed up. Faith is the attempt to coerce truth to surrender to whim. In simple terms, it is trying to breath life into a lie by trying to outshine reality with the beauty of wishes. Faith is the refuge of fools, the ignorant, and the deluded,not of thinking rational people. — Terry Goodkind

Believe what you see with your eyes; trust what you hear with your ears; know what you feel with your flesh. The rest is dream and delusion. — Brian Staveley

There exists a black kingdom which the eyes of man avoid because its landscape fails signally to flatter them. This darkness, which he imagines he can dispense with in describing the light, is error with its unknown characteristics. Error is certainty's constant companion. Error is the corollary of evidence. And anything said about truth may equally well be said about error: the delusion will be no greater. — Louis Aragon

He that is warm for truth, and fearless in its defense, performs one of the duties of a good man; he strenghtens his own conviction, and guards others from delusion; but steadiness of belief, and boldness of profession, are yet only part of the form of godliness. — Samuel Johnson

Both revelation and delusion are attempts at the solution of problems. Artists and scientists realize that no solution is ever final, but that each new creative step points the way to the next artistic or scientific problem. In contrast, those who embrace religious revelations and delusional systems tend to see them as unshakeable and permanent ... Religious faith is an answer to the problem of life ... The majority of mankind want or need some all-embracing belief system which purports to provide an answer to life's mysteries, and are not necessarily dismayed by the discovery that their belief system, which they proclaim as "the truth," is incompatible with the beliefs of other people. One man's faith is another man's delusion ... Whether a belief is considered to be a delusion or not depends partly upon the intensity with which it is defended, and partly upon the numbers of people subscribing to it.* ANTHONY STORR, FEET OF CLAY — Jon Krakauer

If the idea of having to change ourselves makes us uncomfortable, we can remain as we are. We can choose rest over labour, entertainment over education, delusion over truth, and doubt over confidence. The choices are ours to make, but while we curse the effect, we continue to nourish the cause — Jim Rohn

The ... act of surrender - or devotion, as the case may be - was, to him, a kind of lifeline for those who sought a quick answer and didn't want to stick around long enough to see their doubt through to its ultimate conclusion. A conclusion, which, of itself, was a bittersweet paradox - for how could doubt simply cease to exist by any stretch of the imagination? Doubt was, nonetheless - from his own perspective - the only inclusive insight into the nature of a Truth exclusive of conditions. — Ashim Shanker

I think you were telling the truth, Jill. But a dream is a true experience of a sort and so is a hypnotic delusion. — Robert A. Heinlein

Optimism is a tonic. Pessimism is poison. Admittedly, every businessman must be realistic. He must gather facts, analyze them candidly and strive to draw logical conclusions, whether favorable or unfavorable. He must not engage in self-delusion. He must not view everything through rose-colored glasses. Granting this, the incontestable truth is that America has been built up by optimists, not by pessimists, but by men possessing courage, confidence in the nation's destiny, by men willing to adventure to shoulder risks terrifying to the timid. — B.C. Forbes

But the sort of honor Richard was talking about was flattery, not truth. It wasn't real. Honor that was given to you because of how you were born - that was just a delusion. She wasn't going to rely on Parliament - or the people around her - to provide an assessment of herself. They were fickle and untrustworthy. — Courtney Milan

A sense of humor always withers in the presence of the messianic delusion, like justice and truth in front of patriotic passion. — H.L. Mencken

If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I think the truth , which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence and self-delusion and ignorance which does harm. — Marcus Aurelius

You can keep your passive hope and blind faith, and I'll take the despair. Because at least the despair is real. I'd rather live in a grim reality than a comfortable delusion. — Evan Grinde

I learned that I never really know the true story of my guests' lives, that I have to content myself with knowing that when I'm interviewing somebody, I'm getting a combination of fact and truth and self-mythology and self-delusion and selective memory and faulty memory. — Terry Gross

It would, therefore, seem obvious that patriotism as a feeling is bad and harmful, and as a doctrine is stupid. For it is clear that if each people and each State considers itself the best of peoples and States, they all live in a gross and harmful delusion. — Leo Tolstoy

For thousands of years, human beings have been obsessed with beauty, truth, love, honor, altruism, courage, social relationships, art, and God. They all go together as subjective experiences, and it's a straw man to set God up as the delusion. If he is, then so is truth itself or beauty itself. — Deepak Chopra

He said every delusion has an objective, and the objective of a delusion is not merely to colonize one brain but to transmit itself to as many brains as possible. That is the purpose of every delusion, that is how a delusion survives, that is how it succeeds. By spreading, maximizing its colony, like a virus. According to Unni, any philosophy that can be transmitted to another person is a delusion. If two people believe in the same idea of truth, it is a delusion. Truth is a successful delusion. — Manu Joseph

All people express a fondness for truth and sincerity, yet many people prefer to live with their illusions and delusions. A person's sincere desire to believe only what is true oftentimes does not trump their ingrained resistance to truths that fail to coincide with their deeply held desires. People reject truth because it undercuts what they wish was true and despise or discredit anyone whom offers a different version of truth than they are prepared to accept. — Kilroy J. Oldster

One-half of life is admitted by us to be passed in sleep, in which, however, it may appear otherwise, we have no perception of truth, and all our feelings are delusions; who knows but the other half of life, in which we think we are awake, is a sleep also, but in some respects different from the other, and from which we wake when we, as we call it, sleep. As a man dreams often that he is dreaming, crowding one dreamy delusion on another. — Blaise Pascal

The Truth doesn't need your cooperation to exist. All forms of cult, all forms of hype, all forms of delusion do require your participation in order to exist. I've looked into marginal areas of human experience -historical and otherwise- with a rational mind, and what I've found is that doorways into the miraculous are far fewer than the publicists of the New Age would have us believe. On the other hand, they are not as rare as the proponents of radical reductionism and materialism would have us believe. There are doorways out of the mundane ... — Terence McKenna

The mess that's emerging ... at least reflects the truth of my experience, the fact that every contemplation is interrupted, and that every interruption becomes further object of contemplation, and that this rhythm of delusion and revelation feels as if it's essential to the nature of consciousness considering itself. — Edward St. Aubyn

Then he comes to the brink of a precipitous fall; that is, he comes to the point where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve. Meanwhile man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth. In this way the impression comes to prevail that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct. This illusion gives rise in turn to one final delusion: It seems as though man everywhere and always encounters only himself ... In truth, however, precisely nowhere does man today any longer encounter himself, i.e. his essence. Man stands so decisively in attendance on the challenging-forth of Enframing that he does not apprehend Enframing as a claim, that he fails to see himself as the one spoken to, and hence also fails in every way to hear in what respect he ek-sists, from out of his essence, in the realm of an exhortation or address, and thus can never encounter only himself. — Martin Heidegger

Just say it, she thought. Say what everyone in this bunker is thinking. Say what we all know to be true. The truth that we are all going to die down here, and death is the end. Nobody wakes up to a heaven or paradise. Your life will be gone. You will be gone. Forever. Uncover the truth. Tear off the bandages of delusion. Open your hearts and minds to the real world. We were doomed the day we were born. We lived and we will die and the only immortals are the people who did something worth remembering while they lived. My genetics are prime. I am pleasing to the eyes of man and machine. A dripping fountain of pleasure. Their organic sanctuary. And in time? Aging. Fading. Graying. What am I? Who am I? What makes me human? Emotions? My conscience? The soul is an old testament myth. No one shall ascend anywhere except into annihilation. The dust of earth and stars are the only eternals, she said. — C.J. Anderson

I have generally been denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious I am no Christian, except mere infant baptism make me one; and as to being a Deist, I know not, strictly speaking, whether I am one or not, for I have never read their writings; mine will therefore determine the matter; for I have not in the least disguised my sentiments, but have written freely without any conscious knowledge of prejudice for, or against any man, sectary or party whatever; but wish that good sense, truth and virtue may be promoted and flourish in the world, to the detection of delusion, superstition, and false religion; and therefore my errors in the succeeding treatise, which may be rationally pointed out, will be readily rescinded. — Ethan Allen

In dream, delusion, and fantasy, exist man's next best reality: that place where he is the creator of his own worlds; where he builds, learns, discovers and entertains; is master of all outcomes, his own god of destiny, and thus the student of his own evolving and ever uncertain truth. — Duane Hewitt

His response is more than sensible. It reflects his understanding that evens unfold as a refelction of precise karmic order and that a benevolent response in all circumstances will be the most healing one. I think he is so universally admired becuase he exemplifies by his behavior the truth that the essence of natural mind, unclouded by greed or anger or delusion, is that of peace. — Sylvia Boorstein

The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes. — Thomas Jefferson

Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion.
For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. If men really could not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy-stories about frog-kings would not have arisen. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Why do you so earnestly seek
the truth in distant places?
Look for delusion and truth in the
bottom of your own heart. — Ryokan

9The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan r with all power and false signs and wonders, 10and with all wicked deception for s those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11Therefore t God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe u what is false, 12in order that all may be condemned v who did not believe the truth but w had pleasure in unrighteousness. — Anonymous

Seven billion who need to be kept happy, and docile, until the end. How do you do that? What's the best way to calm down a scared kid, get them to go back to sleep? Tell them a story. Some shit about Jesus or whatever. — Neal Stephenson

The only relationships that exist are based on truth. Everything else is just a mutual and isolating delusion. — Stefan Molyneux

Real Evolution is a state of consciousness. To really and truly evolve, means to align with the truth; to align with something other than the illusion and delusion of the ego mind and lower states of consciousness. — Arielle Hecht

Maybe thinking any one person can show up and give you all you need is as much of a delusion as thinking you can find truth in a bottle. Maybe you can just find what you need in little pieces, in people who show up for one crucial moment
or a whole chain of them
even if they can't solve it all. Maybe this is the secret of big families, like the Garretts ... and like AA. People's strengths can take their turn. There can be more of us than there is trouble. — Huntley Fitzpatrick

All the holy words you read and all the holy words you speak are as nothing if you do not act upon them. Even if you read little and say little but live the right way, forsaking craving, hatred and delusion, you will know the truth and find calmness and will show others the path. — Gautama Buddha

Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever; but, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure, that he may speak it the longer. — Edmund Burke

Mankind's most dangerous enemy is the human imagination. What their minds can imagine is far more malicious than the deepest furnaces of their chimerical Hell. They imagined an invisible god to corrupt their thoughts with everlasting fantasies and eternal lies. When the human species invented God the darkness of imagination was present. Mankind imagined an unseen creator to form their bodies and then to reform them indestructible upon death. The mortal truth became the immortal delusion. They possessed no knowledge of God so they invented him. Where human knowledge ends the imagined God begins. — C.J. Anderson

Every religion lies. Every moral precept is a delusion. Even the stars are a mirage. The truth is darkness, and the only thing that matters is making a statement before one enters it. Cutting the skin of the world and leaving a scar. That's all history is, after all: scar tissue. — Stephen King

The majority falls prey to the delusion popular in some circles that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns, and we would be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals on the government payroll. But the simple truth born of experience is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people. — Alex Kozinski

Beliefs are a quintessential part of the human psyche, but they can be both healthy and harmful. And the beliefs of the fundamentalist Australopithecines are particularly harmful. These beliefs are what we call "delusions". Except unlike in a neuropsychological ailment, the delusion of the fundamentalists is not just harmful for the individuals suffering from it, but more importantly it is the greatest threat to peace, progress and wellbeing of the entire human species. — Abhijit Naskar

Today's truth will be tomorrow's lie and you will be left questioning your own sanity. — Michael R. Fletcher

Facts are delusion," he said. "They are a delusion of truth as a mirage is a delusion of sight. The real facts lie in people's minds and not in fingerprints and books and photographs and all the other physical things which are only the accidents that occur as a result of what lies in the mind. Truth is a matter of the mind and all else is only a blurred shadow to reconstruct the original image. Bit it is the image we are searching for. — Leonard Holton

Yeah so - nothing gets lost. Cal isn't, and not just because he'll still be a little part of my life. I get to carry him with me, the way you do all your memories and mistakes. He started out a mistake I had no memory of, and he wound up being, well, my kid.
Maybe thinking any one person can show up and give you all you need is as much of a delusion as thinking you can find truth in a bottle. Maybe you can just find what you need in little pieces, in people who show up for one crucial moment - or a whole chain of them - even if they can't solve it all. Maybe this is the secret of big families, like the Garretts ... and like AA. People's strengths can take their turn. There can be more of us than their is trouble. — Huntley Fitzpatrick