“The painful truth is that while we might have the illusion, none of us are free.”
Source: Flesh and Fire (2009), p. 304
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Laura Anne Gilman11
American author and editor 1967Related quotes
Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author
Speech "Created Equal: How Christianity Shaped The West" http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/21PbAr/Hst/XtyShapesWest-DSouza.html (16 September 2008).
Patrick Henry (1736–1799) attorney, planter, politician and Founding Father of the United States
1770s, "Give me liberty, or give me death!" (1775)
Context: It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope and pride. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.
“When illusions are shattered by truth, talent is set free.”
Gillian Rubinstein Tales of the Otori
Source: Across the Nightingale Floor
“Truths are illlusions which we have forgotten are illusions.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education
Sec. 115
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)
Gianni Sarcone (1962) Italian author, artist, designer, and researcher in visual perception and cognitive psychology
ESOF (2010).
Context: Life, like art, is purposeless and unpredictable. That’s what makes it beautiful and rare! In life, we are given the choice between three paths: utopia, illusion or nonsense. The funny thing is, none of us get the joke.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer
Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: The divergent scales of values scream in discordance, they dazzle and daze us, and in order that it might not be painful we steer clear of all other values, as though from insanity, as though from illusion, and we confidently judge the whole world according to our own home values. Which is why we take for the greater, more painful and less bearable disaster not that which is in fact greater, more painful and less bearable, but that which lies closest to us. Everything which is further away, which does not threaten this very day to invade our threshold — with all its groans, its stifled cries, its destroyed lives, even if it involves millions of victims — this we consider on the whole to be perfectly bearable and of tolerable proportions.
