A delusion is a fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, or some other misleading effects of perception. Profoundly inspirational delusional quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.
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Famous Delusional Quotes
If history teaches anything, it teaches that self delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. Ronald Reagan
To understand the world at all, sometimes you could only focus on a tiny bit of it, look very hard at what was close to hand and make it stand in for the whole
The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe. Voltaire
And the media came to believe it knew everything about Trump his vanities, delusions, and lies, and the levels, uncharted, to which he would stoop for ever more media attention
The human capacity for self delusion is boundless, and the effects of belief are overpowering. Michael Shermer
He was so carried away by his simulated emotion, that he was for one moment almost believing it himself
Since I no longer expect anything from mankind except madness, meanness, and mendacity; egotism, cowardice, and self delusion, I have stopped being a misanthrope. Irving Layton
And yet, although we know it to be a mere delusion, we all idealize and idolize our childhood
I suppose our capacity for self delusion is boundless. John Steinbeck
All my bravado from this morning, the power, the perfect crime, taking down the patriarchy, the way we Liars saved the summer idyll and made it better, the way we kept our family together by destroying some part of it all that is delusional. The dogs are dead
An honorable human relationship that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word love is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
There is no timestamp on trauma. There isn’t a formula that you can insert yourself into to get from horror to healed. Be patient. Take up space. Let your journey be the balm. Dawn Serra
It is important to do this because it breaks down human self delusion and isolation
Bad things do happen. How I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have life itself. Walter Anderson
It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity
A lot of people who have experienced trauma at the hands of people they’ve trusted take responsibility, and that is what’s toxic. Hannah Gadsby
It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us. Adrienne Rich
One of the things that pains me is we have so tragically underestimated the trauma, the hardship we create in this country when we treat people unfairly, when we incarcerate them unfairly, when we condemn them unfairly. Brian Stevenson
Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self deception. George Orwell
What we change inwardly will change outer reality. Plutarch
Celebrity gives us a delusion of self importance. Al Goldstein
Even in times of trauma, we try to maintain a sense of normality until we no longer can. That, my friends, is called surviving. Not healing. We never become whole again we are survivors. If you are here today you are a survivor. But those of us who have made it thru hell and are still standing? We bare a different name: warriors. Lori Goodwin
I learned that I never really know the true story of my guests’ lives, that I have to content myself with knowing that when I’m interviewing somebody, I’m getting a combination of fact and truth and self mythology and self delusion and selective memory and faulty memory. Terry Gross
There are people who come home from war and want to talk about the pain, but no one wants to listen; there are others who want to keep silent and repress the memories, and all their family and friends want is to talk about it. I call this the war veteran reintegration paradox. M.B. Dell’occhio
Love is the self delusion we manufacture to justify the trouble we take to have sex. Daniel S. Greenberg
It is only in sorrow bad weather masters us; in joy we face the storm and defy it. Amelia Barr
Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion. Jim Rohn
Healing from trauma can also mean strength and joy. The goal of healing is not a papering over of changes in an effort to preserve or present things as normal. It is to acknowledge and wear your new life warts, wisdom, and all with courage. Catherine Woodiwiss
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. Leo Tolstoy
When you love a girl that has lived trauma, when she realizes that you are choosing to love her, and not hurt her, she will love you back with the same kind of tenacity that it took to walk through fire. Tracy Malone
I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self delusion, so it’s no problem for me to believe that I’m somebody else Daniel Day Lewis
Post traumatic stress injury isn’t a disease. It’s a wound to the soul that never heals. Tom Glenn
I seek the truth it is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance that does harm. Marcus Aurelius
I wish my head could forget what my eyes have seen. Dave Parnell
Worship means reverence and humility it means revering your real self and humbling delusions. Bodhidharma
I’m destroying myself so others can’t, she said, and it’s the worst kind of control but it’s the only form I know. S.Z.
History is the lies of the victors. Julian Barnes
You are stronger than you think. You have gotten through every bad day in your life, and you are undefeated.
History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation. Julian Barnes
After a traumatic experience, the human system of self preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment. Judith Lewis Herman
There is no self delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual James Russell Lowell , Self delusion quotes in life
Hold yourself back, or heal yourself back together. You decide. Brittany Burgunder
No one can genuinely love the world, which is too large to love entire. To love all the world at once is pretense or dangerous self delusion. Loving the world is like loving the idea of love, which is perilous because, feeling virtuous about this grand affection, you are freed from the struggles and the duties that come with loving people as individuals. Dean Koontz
The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do. Steve Jobs
We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self aware, yet self delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind. Michael Crichton
Delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it’s all in your head? Octavia E. Butler
The great paradox of determinism and free will, which has held the attention of the wisest of philosophers and psychologists for generations, can be phrased in more biological terms as follows: If our genes are inherited, and our environment is a train of physical events set in motion before we were born, how can there be a truly independent agent within the brain? The agent itself is created by the interaction of the genes and the environment. It would appear that our freedom is only a self delusion. E. O. Wilson
Trauma creates change you don’t choose. Healing is about creating change you do choose. Michelle Rosenthal
Vanity, wounded pride, rejection, self delusion. I could recite a litany of little pinpricks that finally produce a gaping wound. That’s how marriages and friendships come apart. Helen Van Slyke
Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t. Richard Bach
There’s always an element of self delusion among people who believe they ought to be President. There’s an underestimation of your opponent and an overestimation of your own abilities. This is compatible with being rich and powerful, the idea that we were blessed by God because we deserve to be blessed. Jimmy Carter
You never know how strong you are, until being strong is the only choice you have. Bob Marley
The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self delusion in the long run, these are the only people who count. Robert A. Heinlein
Optimism is a tonic. Pessimism is poison. Admittedly, every businessman must be realistic. He must gather facts, analyze them candidly and strive to draw logical conclusions, whether favorable or unfavorable. He must not engage in self-delusion. He must not view everything through rose colored glasses. Granting this, the incontestable truth is that America has been built up by optimists, not by pessimists, but by men possessing courage, confidence in the nation’s destiny, by men willing to adventure to shoulder risks terrifying to the timid. B. C. Forbes
One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through and it will be someone else’s survival guide.
Human beings have an almost unlimited capacity for self delusion. We can justify any amount of sadness if it fits our own particular standard of reality. John Twelve Hawks
People start to heal the moment they feel heard. Cheryl Richardson
You don’t have to be Dave Halberstam to see that the American role in both conflicts the Iraq war and the Vietnam conflict is characterized by arrogance, ignorance and self delusion at the highest levels of government. Jonathan Yardley
You don’t have to save me, you just have to hold my hand while I save myself.
Men, unlike mockingbirds, have the capacity for systematic self delusion. We echo each other with equal precision, equal eloquence, equal assurance. Robert Ardrey
The mind replays what the heart can’t delete.
There are certain ways you have to delude yourself. Self delusion is important, for instance in family life. You know what I mean? If you’re in love with your wife you have to go in there with blind faith. You have to support everything. And with your kids, you have to believe that you’re doing something that has higher purpose; even though you don’t have any evidence that that’s the way it’s going to turn out. Greg Graffin
War becomes a part of you. It is a feeling just as much as an experience. If you can’t feel it, you weren’t paying attention. And if you weren’t paying attention, you are probably dead anyway. Clint Van Winkle
I’d actually love to think that I could trust Kerry on national security. But the only way I could do that, at this point, would be via self delusion. Glenn Reynolds
Am I awake or dreaming? It doesn’t matter anymore. When I close my eyes I dream of death and war. When I open my eyes I see death and war. Michael Anthony
