illusions quotes

Albert Camus: 

Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.

Albert Einstein: 

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Aldous Huxley: 

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.

Anne Sexton: 

It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.

Bertrand Russell: 

What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

Carl Sagan: 

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

Carlos Castaneda: 

The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: 

However, one cannot put a quart in a pint cup.

Donald Williams: 

For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us.

Jean Cocteau: 

Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.

John D. Rockefeller: 

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

Joni Mitchell: 

I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all.

Margaret Wheatley: 

Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone [from Never Eat Alone]

Rabindranath Tagore: 

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.

Saul Alinsky: 

As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be.