Quotes about illusion

A collection of quotes on the topic of illusion, use, life, world.

Ralph Smart quote: “The greatest illusion in this world is the illusion of separation.”

Quotes about illusion

“That work pride, that ridiculous work pride has put an end to his illusions, with those few illusions that he still had since at school they promised him a magnificent future just for entering university.”

José Baroja book No fue un catorce de febrero y otros cuentos

School, Future, Universe

“We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

love, Friendship, Love

“We are just waves in time and space, changing continuously, and the illusion of individuality is produced through the concatenation of the rapidly succeeding phases of existence. What we define as likeness is merely the result of the symmetrical arrangement of molecules which compose our body.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Change, Time

“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

People, Truth

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

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Attitude, Reality

“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.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted in O2 : Breathing New Life Into Faith (2008) by Richard Dahlstrom, Ch. 4 : Artisans of Hope: Stepping into God's Kingdom Story, p. 63; this source is disputed as it does not cite an original document for the quote. It is also used in The White Rose (1991) by Lillian Garrett-Groag, a monologue during Sophie's interrogation.
Disputed
Context: The real damage is done by those millions who want to "survive." The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves — or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. 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.

Life, People

“Time is an illusion.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Time

“Before the soul can see, the Harmony within must be attained, and fleshly eyes be rendered blind to all illusion.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book The Voice of the Silence

Source: The Voice of the Silence

Soul

“There is something within me that might be illusion as it is often case with young delighted people, but if I would be fortunate to achieve some of my ideals, it would be on the behalf of the whole of humanity. If those hopes would become fulfilled, the most exciting thought would be that it is a deed of a Serb.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Address at the Belgrade train station (1 June 1892)

People, Hope

“Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached "reality"; but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya [illusion].”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) occult writer

Idea, Reality, Time

“Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.”

Arthur Koestler (1905–1983) Hungarian-British author and journalist

Sad, Death, Sadness

“What of Art?
-It is a malady.
--Love?
-An Illusion.
--Religion?
-The fashionable substitute for Belief.
--You are a sceptic.
-Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.
--What are you?
-To define is to limit.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Love, Faith, Religion, Art

“The aim of a student’s life should be to overcome any illusions or prejudices he may have and to give up mean habits. He should, and it is his duty to, propagate education among his illiterate brothers and to consider the propagation of education as part of his own education. He ought to acquire knowledge for the sake of knowledge and he should not be unaware of the needs of life.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

In his first school essay, while in Class VIII, expressing his ideas and ideals, in: p. 28.
Quest for Truth (1999)

Life, Education, Knowledge, Parting

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

Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937) Bengali polymath, physicist, biologist, botanist and archaeologist

Quotations by 60 Greatest Indians, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/eresources/iresources/quotations.html,

Truth, Law

“I felt the first soft glow of intoxication that makes the blood warmer and spreads an illusion of adventure over uncertainty.”

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“You can't live without illusions, even if you must fight for them.”

Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) German-American actress and singer

Fight

“Please, don't talk to me about 'Pure Awareness' or 'Dwelling in the Absolute'.
I want to see how you treat your partner,
your kids, your parents, your precious body.
Please, don't lecture me about 'the illusion of the separate self' or how you achieved permanent bliss in just 7 days.
I want to feel a genuine warmth radiating from your heart.
I want to hear how well you listen,
take in information that doesn't fit your personal philosophy.
I want to see how you deal with people who disagree with you.
Don't tell me how awakened you are, how free you are from ego.
I want to know you beneath the words.
I want to know what you're like when troubles befall you.
If you can fully allow your pain and not pretend to be invulnerable.
If you can feel your anger yet not step into violence.
If you can grant safe passage to your sorrow yet not be its slave.
If you can feel your shame and not shame others:
If you can fuck up, and admit it.
If you can say 'sorry', and really mean it.
If you can be fully human in your glorious divinity.
Don't talk to me about your spirituality, friend.
I'm really not that interested.
I only want to meet YOU.
Know your precious heart.
Know the beautiful human struggling for the light.
Before 'the spiritual one'.
Before all the clever words.”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.facebook.com/LifeWithoutACentre/posts/1523252961105640

“Truth and expansion go hand in hand. Truth creates growth. Lies and illusion prevent it.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Truth

“Children don't read to find their identity, to free themselves from guilt, to quench the thirst for rebellion or to get rid of alienation. They have no use for psychology… They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff… When a book is boring, they yawn openly. They don't expect their writer to redeem humanity, but leave to adults such childish illusions.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

Nobel lecture as quoted in The Observer (17 December 1978) Variant: "They still believe in God, the family, angels, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other obsolete stuff."

God, Children, Books, Family

“We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

“Our separation from each other is an optical illusion.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“Fear best lends itself to the creation of Nature-defying illusions.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fear, Nature

“Progress is not an illusion; it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Disappointment

“Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.”

Wole Soyinka (1934) Nigerian writer

Reality

“If you hold on to the handle, she said, it's easier to maintain the illusion of control. But it's more fun if you just let the wind carry you.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

“Harvard's motto is "Veritas." Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. There is some bitterness in my speech today, too. But I want to stress that it comes not from an adversary but from a friend.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

Truth

“The “end of a world” never is and never can be anything but the end of an illusion.”

René Guénon book The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times

The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times (1945)

World

“When animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction. The outcome need not always be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love”

C.G. Jung book Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self

a special instance of love at first sight
Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.338.30

Love, Drawing

“Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.… The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors…and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks Against Going to War with Iraq (2 October 2002).
2000-03

People, World, Way, History

“The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.”

Aleksandr Pushkin (1799–1837) Russian poet

The Hero ll. 64-65, quoted in Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov

Truth

“Life is a space between two illusions: Birth and Death…”

Gianni Sarcone (1962) Italian author, artist, designer, and researcher in visual perception and cognitive psychology

ESOF (2010).

Life, Death, Birth

“You say, “I want to know myself.” You are the I. You are the knowing. You are the consciousness through which everything is known and that cannot know itself. It is itself. There is nothing to know beyond that. And yet all knowing arises out of it. The “I” cannot make itself into an object of knowledge, of consciousness.
So you cannot become an object to yourself. That is the very reason the illusion of egoic identity arose because mentally you made yourself into an object. “That's me,” you say, and then you begin to have a relationship with yourself and tell others and yourself your story.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Stillness Speaks (2003)

Knowledge

“It is contradictory to say that the same person can be at the same time ruler and ruled. … The great ability of those who are in control in the modern world lies in making the people believe that they are governing themselves; and the people are the more inclined to believe this as they are flattered by it, as they are in any case incapable of sufficient reflection to see its impossibility. It was to create this illusion that “universal suffrage” was invented: the law is supposed to be made by the opinion of the majority, but what is overlooked is that this opinion is something that can very easily be guided and modified; it is always possible, by means of suitable suggestions, to arouse in it currents moving in this or that direction as desired. We cannot recall who it was that first spoke of “manufacturing opinion,” but this expression is very apt.”

René Guénon (1886–1951) French metaphysician

Source: The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), p. 93

People, World, Law, Universe

“We have to understand who we are and where we fit in the natural order of the world because our oppressor deals in illusions. They tell us that it is power, but it is not power. They may have all the guns and they may have all the racist laws and judges, and they may control all the money, but that is not power. These are imitations of power and they are only ‘power’ because in our minds we allow it to be power.”

John Trudell (1946–2015) Native American rights activist, musician, poet

"We are Power" speech (1980)

Money, World, Law, Understanding

“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.”

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.

Pain, World, Home, Confidence

“I think success is when you are confronted with utter defeat of your world, your intimacy, your ideas, your public picture, your heritage, your previous achievements. When in one moment it looks like there is one, and nothing that helps you. When almost every look is also a look of doubt, when you yourself put everything under the question mark. When all the illusions about yourself fall, illusions about your surroundings, about people, about faith and religion, about flags, about objects of love and how much are you in love…and then, in that moment of personal and private holocaust, of that ocean of pain looking like all inner strength faded away, and there is no right for excuses about your existence. When at that moment you rise and keep moving forward, you start and you lead a creative and productive life. Yes, I think that is objective strength and power.”

Alfred Freddy Krupa (1971) Croatian contemporary painter, master draughtsman, book artist and art teacher, the pioneer of the New Ink Art m…

Overcoming a Personal Holocaust, Alfred Freddy Krupa (in the article by Ante Vranković), Life As A Human (Canada), 2019
2010s

Faith, Religion, Pain, Success

“There is the world for you. Beauty, true beauty, is intangible. It is in the eye of the beholder. Something that we can lose at any moment, and the more you examine it, the more illusive it becomes. True happiness is virtue, and virtue is predicated on knowledge and righteous conduct.”

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic

in The Alchemist of Happiness

World, Beauty, Knowledge, Happiness

“This is nihilism; or this is truth. He has to push past his boundaries. There is the outline of a body, distinct, separate, its integrity an illusion, a tragic deception, because un seen there is a slit between the legs, and he has to push into it. There is never a real privacy of the body that can coexist withe intercourse: with being entered. The vagina itself is muscled and the muscles have to be pushed apart. The thrusting is persistent invasion. She is opened up, split down the center. She is occupied - physically, internally, in her privacy.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 7, "Occupation/Collaboration"

Truth, Past

“Verona is full of pictures which have never been painted. Every step excites emotion and gives rise to unaffected reflection. In the course of a short stroll, you may pass by a Roman amphitheatre, still used, then the castle of some petty prince of the Middle Ages, and while you are contrasting the sublime elevation of antiquity with the heterogeneous palace of a Scaliger your eyes light on a gate of Oriental appearance and fantastic ornament... The illusion is perfect, the eye rests with pain on the passing citizens in their modern costumes; you look for black velvets and gold chains, white feathers and red stockings.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Isaac Disraeli (September 1826), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), p. 107

Painting, Perfection, Pain, Light

“Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in it's place?”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Truth

“And once again I believe that nothing that's important really becomes lost. We just delude ourselves, thinking that we own the things, the moments and the others. Still with me are all the dead persons who I loved, all the friends who turned away, all the happy days that faded. I lost nothing but the illusion that everything could be mine forever.”

Miguel Sousa Tavares (1952) Portuguese writer

Love, Thinking, Personality, Dead

“How lovely it is that there are words and sounds. Are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things which are eternally apart?”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Love

“There is an old illusion. It is called good and evil.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Evil

“All male friendships are essentially quixotic: they last only so long as each man is willing to polish the shaving-bowl helmet, climb on his donkey, and ride off after the other in pursuit of illusive glory and questionable adventure.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Source: Wonder Boys

Friendship, Question

“There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: Essays and Lectures

Personality

“We're here to awaken from the illusion of separateness”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Source: How Can I Help? Stories and Reflection on Service

“I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

People, Religion, Problem, Freedom

“If freedom is a requisite for human happiness, then all that’s necessary is to provide the illusion of freedom.”

B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) American behaviorist

Freedom, Happiness

“I get along quite well with someone only when he is at his lowest point and has neither the desire nor the strength to restore his habitual illusions.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Knowledge

“Loneliness was an unsatisfied thirst for illusion.”

Kóbó Abe book The Woman in the Dunes

Source: The Woman in the Dunes

Loneliness

“She was wearing the same clothes, but now she looked haggard and dirty. The delicate illusions that get us through life can only stand so much strain.”

Hunter S. Thompson The Rum Diary

Source: The Rum Diary

Life, Clothes

“Human perception through the sense organs is always piecemeal. It can give you an illusion of completeness but can never comprehend the whole.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Sense

“The point of modernity is to live a life without illusions while not becoming disillusioned”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

Life

“Truths are illlusions which we have forgotten are illusions.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Truth

“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Compare: It’s a point so blindingly obvious that only an extraordinarily clever and sophisticated person could fail to grasp it.
John Bercow, 2016.
General sources
Variant: There is no limit to the amount of intelligence invested in ignorance when the need for illusion runs deep.
Source: To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account (1976), p. 127

Intelligence

“Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist but you have ceased to live.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Source: Following the Equator (1897), Ch. LXII

Parting

“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Voltaire, "L'illusion est le premier plaisir" from the satirical poem "La Pucelle d’Orléans" [The Maid of Orleans]. For a complete review see the misattributed quotation entry at Oscar Wilde in America http://oscarwildeinamerica.org/quotations/illusion-first-of-all-pleasures.html. Misattributed Variant: Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Pleasure

“Without justice and love, peace will always be a great illusion.”

Helder Camara (1909–1999) Brazilian Catholic priest, archbishop of Olinda and Recife

Love, Peace, Justice

“Limits, like fears, are often just an illusion”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Hall of Fame induction address, 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf3PYecdgjE&NR=1

Powerful, Fear

“Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Birth of Tragedy

Source: The Birth of Tragedy

Knowledge

“Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the earth.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Soul

“Time is an optical illusion- never quite as soild or strong as we think it is”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Thinking, Strong, Time

“Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be, like the reality of yesterday, an illusion tomorrow.”

Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) Italian dramatist, novelist, short story writer, and poet, Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

Reality

“It is not difference that dominates the world, but the obliteration of difference by mimetic reciprocity, which itself, being truly universal, shows the relativism of perpetual difference to be an illusion.”

René Girard (1923–2015) French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science

Source: The One by Whom Scandal Comes

World, Universe

“Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Tom, as Narrator, in Scene One
Source: The Glass Menagerie (1944)

Truth, Appearance

“Read day and night, devour books — these sleeping pills — not to know but to forget! Through books you can retrace your way back to the origins of spleen, discarding history and its illusions.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Source: Tears and Saints (1937)

Books, Way, History, Sleep

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Funny, Cute, Back To Work, Time

“All problems are illusions of the mind.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises from the Power of Now

Problem

“The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation. … Both are illusions.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

The Power of Now (1997)
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Past, Future

“The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.”

Frank Herbert book Children of Dune

Source: Children of Dune

“Searching for truth is itself a big illusion because whatever we term the truth is always and everywhere. We don't have to search for it; we don't have to seek it; it always is. Now the only problem is your inability to experience life beyond what you call mind; or right now your capability to experience life only through the limited dimension that we call mind. That is the only problem.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Himalayan Lust

Life, Truth, Search, Problem

“I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth.
- Blanche Scene II”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

Truth

“It's overwhelming. I feel as if I am living in an illusion a dream where all things are possible. Amazing things do happen I know but always to someone else always in some far off place and time.”

Christopher Paolini (1983) American author

Dreams, Feeling, Time

“[T]hus one should not think that desire is repressed, for the simple reason that the law is what constitutes both desire and the lack on which it is predicated. Where there is desire, the power relation is already present: an illusion, then, to denounce this relation for a repression exerted after the event.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Source: The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction

Law, Thinking

“The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

Source: The Masterpiece

Past

“Then I grew up, and the beauty of succulent illusions fell away from me.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Beauty

“Since everything that lives is obliged to expend and receive life, there is an exchange of modifications between the living creature and its environment.
And yet, once that vital necessity is satisfied, our species—a positively strange species—thinks it must create for itself other needs and tasks besides that of preserving life. … Whatever may be the origin or cause of this curious deviation, the human species is engaged in an immense adventure, an adventure whose objective and end it does not know. …
The same senses, the same muscles, the same limbs—more, the same types of signs, the same instruments of exchange, the same languages, the same modes of logic—enter into the most indispensable acts of our lives, as they figure into the most gratuitous. …
In short, man has not two sets of tools, he has only one, and this one set must serve him for the preservation of his life and his physiological rhythm, and expend itself at other times on illusions and on the labours of our great adventure. …
The same muscles and nerves produce walking as well as dancing, exactly as our linguistic faculty enables us to express our needs and ideas, while the same words and forms can be combined to produce works of poetry. A single mechanism is employed in both cases for two entirely different purposes.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Source: Regards sur le monde actuel [Reflections on the World Today] (1931), pp. 158-159

Life, Idea, Thinking, Sense

“On the other hand one must not entertain any fantastic illusions on the productive power of the credit system, so far as it supplies or sets in motion money-capital.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Vol. II, Ch. XVII, p. 351.
(Buch II) (1893)

Money

“The withering away of illusions is a long and dreary process, like a toothache. But you can pull out a tooth. Illusions, dead, continue to rot within us. And stink. And you can't escape them. I carry all of mine around with me.”

Dmitri Shostakovich book Testimony

Page 85
Testimony (1979)

Dead

“Self-knowledge — the bitterest knowledge of all and also the kind we cultivate least: what is the use of catching ourselves out, morning to night, in the act of illusion, pitilessly tracing each act back to its root, and losing case after case before our own tribunal?”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Knowledge, Night

“When you look at a tree, you are aware of the tree. When you have a thought or feeling, you are aware of that thought or feeling. When you have a pleasurable or painful experience, you are aware of that experience. These seem to be true and obvious statements. Yet if you look at them very closely, you will find that in a subtle way their very structure contains a fundamental illusion, an illusion which is unavoidable when you use language. Thought and language create an apparent duality and a separate person where there is none.
The truth is you are not somebody who is aware of the tree, the thought, feeling or experience. You are the awareness or consciousness in and by which those things appear. As you go about your life, can you be aware of yourself as the awareness in which the entire content of your life unfolds?”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Stillness Speaks (2003)

Life, Pain, Pleasure, Truth

“As people age, they confuse changes in themselves with changes in the world, and changes in the world with moral decline—the illusion of the good old days.”

Steven Pinker book The Sense of Style

p 4
The Sense of Style (2014)

People, Age, World, Change

“The owl of wisdom flies, as is well known, after sunset. Thus the theory of a "socialist" system of money and prices was developed only after twilight of inflationist illusions.”

Leon Trotsky book The Revolution Betrayed

Source: The Revolution Betrayed (1936), Ch. 4, Section 3 : The Rehabilitation of the Ruble

Wisdom, Money

“Once, when she was looking at me distressfully, she murmured, "You — you've no more illusion at all. I pity you!"
At that moment, within the space of a flash, she was thinking of me only, and she pities me! She has found something in her grief to give me.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XIX - Ghosts

Thinking

“What can a man say about woman, his own opposite? I mean of course something sensible, that is outside the sexual program, free of resentment, illusion, and theory. Where is the man to be found capable of such superiority? Woman always stands just where the man's shadow falls, so that he is only too liable to confuse the two. Then, when he tries to repair this misunderstanding, he overvalues her and believes her the most desirable thing in the world.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Source: "Woman in Europe" (1927), P. 236

World

“It is mere illusion and pretty sentiment to expect much from mankind if he forgets how to make war. And yet no means are known which call so much into action as a great war, that rough energy born of the camp, that deep impersonality born of hatred, that conscience born of murder and cold-bloodedness, that fervor born of effort of the annihilation of the enemy, that proud indifference to loss, to one's own existence, to that of one's fellows, to that earthquake-like soul-shaking that a people needs when it is losing its vitality.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Human, All Too Human (1878)

War, People, Soul, Effort

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Sometimes attributed to Hawking without a source, but originally from historian Daniel J. Boorstin. It appears in different forms in The Discoverers (1983), Cleopatra's Nose (1995), and introduction to The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1995)
Misattributed

Knowledge

“You don't know things anywhere! You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Amanda, Scene Seven
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

Dreams

“An illusion which makes me happy is worth a verity which drags me to the ground.”

Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813) German writer, poet and publisher

Ein Wahn, der mich beglückt,
Ist eine Wahrheit werth, die mich zu Boden drückt.
Idris, ein heroisch-comisches Gedicht, Song 3, line 79 (1768); translation from Harry T. Reis and Caryl E. Rusbult (eds.) Close Relationships (New York: Psychology Press, 2004) p. 321.

Happiness

“An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

"The Year it Came Apart" http://books.google.com/books?id=MekCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA30, New York magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1 (30 December 1974 – 6 January 1975), p. 30

“Let us be under no illusion. The Jewish spirit, which was responsible for the alliance of large-scale capital with Marxism and was the driving force behind so many anti-Spanish revolutionary agreements, will not be got rid of in a day.”

Francisco Franco (1892–1975) Spanish general and dictator

Victory speech in Madrid (19 May 1939)

“I am under no illusion that our present strategy of using means short of total war to achieve our ends and oppose communism is a guarantee that a world war will not be thrust upon us. But a policy of patience and determination without provoking a world war, while we improve our military power, is one which we believe we must continue to follow….
Under present circumstances, we have recommended against enlarging the war from Korea to also include Red China. The course of action often described as a limited war with Red China would increase the risk we are taking by engaging too much of our power in an area that is not the critical strategic prize.
Red China is not the powerful nation seeking to dominate the world. Frankly, in the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this strategy would involve us in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.”

Omar Bradley (1893–1981) United States Army field commander during World War II

Testimony before the Senate Committees on Armed Services and Foreign Relations (15 May 1951), published in Military Situation in the Far East, hearings, 82d Congress, 1st session, part 2 (1951), p. 732.
Variation: "… a wrong war at the wrong place and against a wrong enemy."
Military Situation, p. 753.

War, World, Communication, Time

“It is because the cosmos is meaningless that we must secure our individual illusions of values, direction, and interest by upholding the artificial streams which give us such worlds of salutary illusion. That is—since nothing means anything in itself, we must preserve the proximate and arbitrary background which makes things around us seem as if they did mean something. In other words, we are either Englishmen or nothing whatever.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (6 November 1930), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 208
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

World

“A world without problems is an illusion, so is a world without solutions.”

Gianni Sarcone (1962) Italian author, artist, designer, and researcher in visual perception and cognitive psychology

Puzzillusions (2007).

World, Problem

“As a military man who has given half a century of active Service, I say in all sincerity that the nuclear arms race has no military purpose. Wars cannot be fought with nuclear weapons. Their existence only adds to our perils because of the illusions which they have generated. There are powerful voices around the world who still give evidence to the old Roman precept—if you desire peace, prepare for war. This is absolute nuclear nonsense.”

Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma (1900–1979) British statesman and naval officer

Speech in Strasbourg, 11 May 1979.

War, World, Peace, Sincerity

“Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself — in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity — is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them. They are deeply immersed in illusions and in dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see "forms."”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Variant translation: The constant fluttering around the single flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could make its appearance among men.
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)

Men, Truth, Law, Dreams

“It is just as ridiculous to get excited & hysterical over a coming cultural change as to get excited & hysterical over one's physical aging... There is legitimate pathos about both processes; but blame & rebellion are essentially cheap, because inappropriate, emotions... It is wholly appropriate to feel a deep sadness at the coming of unknown things & the departure of those around which all our symbolic associations are entwined. All life is fundamentally & inextricably sad, with the perpetual snatching away of all the chance combinations of image & vista & mood that we become attached to, & the perpetual encroachment of the shadow of decay upon illusions of expansion & liberation which buoyed us up & spurred us on in youth. That is why I consider all jauntiness, & many forms of carelessly generalised humour, as essentially cheap & mocking, & occasionally ghastly & corpselike. Jauntiness & non-ironic humour in this world of basic & inescapable sadness are like the hysterical dances that a madman might execute on the grave of all his hopes. But if, at one extreme, intellectual poses of spurious happiness be cheap & disgusting; so at the other extreme are all gestures & fist-clenchings of rebellion equally silly & inappropriate—if not quite so overtly repulsive. All these things are ridiculous & contemptible because they are not legitimately applicable... The sole sensible way to face the cosmos & its essential sadness (an adumbration of true tragedy which no destruction of values can touch) is with manly resignation—eyes open to the real facts of perpetual frustration, & mind & sense alert to catch what little pleasure there is to be caught during one's brief instant of existence. Once we know, as a matter of course, how nature inescapably sets our freedom-adventure-expansion desires, & our symbol-&-experience-affections, definitely beyond all zones of possible fulfilment, we are in a sense fortified in advance, & able to endure the ordeal of consciousness with considerable equanimity... Life, if well filled with distracting images & activities favourable to the ego's sense of expansion, freedom, & adventurous expectancy, can be very far from gloomy—& the best way to achieve this condition is to get rid of the unnatural conceptions which make conscious evils out of impersonal and inevitable limitations... get rid of these, & of those false & unattainable standards which breed misery & mockery through their beckoning emptiness.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Frank Belknap Long (27 February 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 291
Non-Fiction, Letters, to Frank Belknap Long

Life, Pleasure, Youth, Age

“Guilt. It's this mechanism we use to control people. It's an illusion. It's a kind of social control mechanism and it's very unhealthy. It does terrible things to our body.”

Ted Bundy (1946–1989) American serial killer

Quoted in Michaud, Stephen; Aynesworth, Hugh (1999) The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Sex Killer Ted Bundy (Paperback; revised ed.). Irving, Texas: Authorlink Press. pg. 320

People