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...

deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be....

for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have.

I’m not scared of the Maos and the Stalins and the Hitlers. I’m scared of the thousands of millions of people that hallucinate them to be “authority”, and so do their bidding, and pay for...

There are only two profound ways to reach enlightenment: Laugh by yourself, or get tickled.

What I admire about the modern atheist is not at all his logic, but rather his gift of imagination. There will always be the cartoon versions of Christianity further perpetuated by the extremist atheists who...

Let no man in the world live in delusion. Without a Guru none can cross over to the other shore.

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me. I mean, there are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‘That person I...

Whatever, crazy chick who maybe lives here and maybe also breaks into Michael’s house when they’re all gone. I’m out. Have a nice delusion. -Shayne

That’s the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments. Parasites, criminals, dope fiends, dope peddlers, whores–when we can ride past them at Fayette and Monroe, car doors locked, our...

No, Ben. What I’m asking is: Are you the vehicle, and Georgie rides around in you? That is why Ben’s the driver, right?

July 4, the day we celebrate giving our political masters independence from conscience, morality, consequences for evil doing, and basic social and economic reality.The fireworks are the glowing tears of your children’s incinerated futures.Cheer happy...

When you don’t have honesty in love then there is no communication. Honesty is improvisation of the heart; anything less is a well thought out and rehearsed script.

In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole...

That looks like a tree, let’s call it a tree,’ said Coyote to Earthmaker at the beginning, and they walked around the rootdrinker patting their bellies.

Del UsionIf you knew the personHe thinks he isYou’d have to admitHe’s one very special guy.

Our sexual fantasies are often redundant and intense, like many other ideas involving ourselves. Most people approach sexuality limited to the idea that they should imitate other people, art (e.g., romantic literature) or movies (e.g.,...

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.