People don’t care about being duped as long as they’re happy, which is the shortest form of happiness; hence ‘self-duprication’ becomes a habit.

Facts do not fall in the face of discomfort.

Beware of ‘god men’ and ‘god women’. Even people who have not been depressed for a day in their lives get sucked into the seductive delusion of spirituality. If you must seek, seek by yourself,...

That’s the fundamental delusion – that there is something out there that will make you happy forever.

I can’t prove it yet know it when I seem it.

Life is a planetary level phenomenon and the Earth has been alive for at least 3000 million years. To me the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable—the rhetoric of the...

It is so easy at times for a lonely individual to begin fantasizing about what the people outside are saying about him and, in result, irrationally and fearfully, and sometimes angrily, fancy himself a villain.

There is no deception on the part of the woman, where a man bewilders himself: if he deludes his own wits, I can certainly acquit the women. Whatever man allows his mind to dwell upon...

[I]t is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions.

It’s not that girls are delusional, per se. It’s just that they have this subtle ability to warp actual circumstances into something different.

My reality is it’s nighttime. The truth is I’m just blindfolded. How many people live like me, in self-deluded darkness?

The seething rage that accompanies the truly despondent, effaces the delusional that mock from the safety of their shared illusion.

Most people, if philosophy touches them, they shatter, they atomize, they turn to dust. It is win/lose between philosophy and delusion, and most people are almost entirely composed of delusion. They’re only allowed as much...

Evil originates not in the absence of guilt; but in our effort to escape it.

The ‘pre-emption’ versus ‘prevention’ debate may be a distinction without much difference. The important thing is to have it understood that the United States is absolutely serious. The jihadists have in the past bragged that...

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags,...

A faith so weak that it is not sufficient unto itself but requires that others tiptoe around it for fear of hurting it, knows deep down that it is a lie.

That’s when he hit her, when he saw how scared she was. He couldn’t bear it that she was frightened and asking for help. Asking for help is wrong. Because there isn’t any such thing...

The police called it choking, but I called it a two-handed neck hug. That’s how I knew she really loved me.

Delusion detests focus and romance provides the veil.

The sad truth about bigotry is that most bigots either don’t realize that they are bigots, or they convince themselves that their bigotry is perfectly justified.

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.

I wish to declare with all earnestness that I do not want any religious ceremonies performed for me after my death. I do not believe in such ceremonies, and to submit to them, even as...

We’re so used to events being portrayed in particular ways that when they actually happen to us, and our life bears no resemblance to expectation, we don’t really know how we’re supposed to respond. Our...

To connect is to dissolve the imaginary pyramids of artificial privilege.

If your love for another person doesn’t include loving yourself then your love is incomplete.

The last time that I consciously wrote anything to ‘save the honor of the Left’, as I rather pompously put it, was my little book on the crookedness and cowardice and corruption (to put it...

When enough insane people scream in harmony that they really are healthy, they can actually start to believe themselves. Or put even more simply: people with overlapping delusions get along wonderfully.

But the lack of faith could just as well be a crutch for non-believers, allowing them to live their lives without any concept of accountability and giving them some sort of false confidence. The different...

I’m not crying because of you; you’re not worth it. I’m crying because my delusion of who you were was shattered by the truth of who you are.

I believe God himself will someday debate with and answer every objection arrogant men can come up with against him; I believe he will humble us and humor himself. Know-it-alls, pseudo-intellectuals, militant anti-theists, for Christ’s...

If priests—of all clans—were free of disease and immune to death, then there might be some basis for the claim of the religionists. But these “men of God” are victims of the natural course of...

I saw my reflection in their eyes, but not the men themselves, not clearly. This preserved the idea that all intelligent and even vaguely attractive men were essentially good. Delusion detest focus and romance provides...

Good point. But I actually am one of the few special ones”—and this is the problem.

People often mistake their imagination for their heart, & so often are convinced they are converted as soon as they start thinking of becoming converted.

I’m a logician. No matter how wrong I am, I can always convince myself I am right.

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

It appears, from all this, that our eyes are uncertain. Two persons look at the same clock and there is a difference of two or three minutes in their reading of the time. One has...

As he once wrote of Kipling, his own enduring influence can be measured by a number of terms and phrases—doublethink, thought police, ‘Some animals are more equal than others’—that he embedded in our language and...

A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When...

Truth about tears is that , most tears are the result of a delusion

First, we must see that our negative actions arise due to prejudice and erroneous judgments. The discrimination that labels some as ‘friends’ and others as ‘enemies’ must be perceived as the root of our problems....

Reality. Sometimes it comes through foreign eyes; because if you don’t know any better, you can’t see the worse. Or vice versa.

J. E. Littlewood, a mathematician at Cambridge University, wrote about the law of truly large numbers in his 1986 book, “Littlewood’s Miscellany.” He said the average person is alert for about eight hours every day,...

The greater the gap between self perception and reality, the more aggression is unleashed on those who point out the discrepancy.

You will never find the real truth among people that are insecure or have egos to protect. Truth over time becomes either guarded or twisted as their perspective changes; it changes with the seasons of...

Not all light is good. There is negative light, that can cast bad shadows.

Whoever is to be wise despises himself. Only the ignorant trust their own judgement.

The aftermath of bearing shackles is an exquisite devastation, fraught with the ravages of survival. Even though one is no longer held captive—be that from a person, a government, or one’s inner self—the scars are...

Knowledge is responsibility, which is why people resist knowledge.