Quotes about Delusion

The first step to unselfish love is the recognition that our love may be deluded. We must first of all purify our love by renouncing the pleasure of loving as an end in itself. As long as pleasure is our end, we will be dishonest with ourselves and with those we love. We will not seek their good, but our own pleasure.

We keep on deceiving ourselves in regard to our faults, until we at last come to look upon them as virtues.

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

We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling. HENRI POINCARÉ (1854—1912)

Nietzsche mourns the loss of "man's belief in his dignity, his uniqueness, his irreplace-ability in the scheme of existence." For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits? For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.

Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?

He feeds on ashes. His deceived mind has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself, or say, "Isn't there a lie in my right hand?" Isaiah 44:20

All genuine epiphanies seem to follow this model: their defining quality is the relinquishment of delusion.

Vanity is the greatest seducer of reason: when you are most convinced your work is important, that is when you are most under its spell.

Falling in love, although it resulted in altered body chemistry and was therefore real, was a hormonally induced delusional state.