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We live after all in a world where illusions are sacred and truth profane. Tariq Ali, The Guardian 26 May 2005
The Grand Parade at the end of war has always been a grand illusion especially in countries themselves not ravaged by war. Like television movies where blood and gore are never seen, the parades of the past were seen as great demonstrations of vital victorious manhood. Vietnam changed all that perhaps for ever ... Who would take the salute for such a parade? John Pilger, Vietnam: Still America’s War
We’re in a lot of trouble ... because you people and sixty-two million other Americans are listening to me right now. Because less than 3% of you people read books. Because less than 15% of you read newspapers. Because the only truth you know is what you get over of this tube. Right now there is a whole – an entire – generation that never knew anything that didn’t come out of this tube! This tube is the gospel! The ultimate revelation! This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers. This tube is the most awesome god-damned force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people ... And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome god-damned propaganda for us in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be paid to the truth on this network! So you listen to me. Listen to me. Television is not the truth. Television is a god-damned amusement park; television is a circus, a carnival, a travelling troop of acrobats, story-tellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion-tamers and football players – we’re in the boredom-killing business. So if you want the truth go to God. Go to your gurus. Go to yourselves! Because that’s the only place you’re ever going to find any real truth. But, man, you’re never going to get any truth from us. We‘ll tell you anything you want to hear. We’ll lie like hell ... We’ll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day night after night all ages, colors, creeds, where are you now? You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here. You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality and that you’re own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like a tube. You eat like a tube. You raise your children like a tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God’s name: you people are the reality. We are the illusion. Network 1976 starring Faye Dunaway & Peter Finch & William Holden & Robert Duvall & Wesley Addy & Ned Beatty & Beatrice Straight & Jordan Charney & William Prince & Lane Smith & Marlene Warfield et al, director Sidney Lumet
What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction. And the greatest good is of slight worth, as all life is a dream, and dreams and dreams. Pedro Calderon de la Barca
I’ve looked at life from both sides now,
From and win and lose and still somehow
It’s life illusions I recall;
I really don’t know life at all. Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now, song 1967
Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal. Jean-Paul Sartre
The external world of physics has thus become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, 1928
I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain. Rene Descartes
You, me, and the world we live in may be nothing more than an illusion. Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman s1e3: The Riddle of Black Holes, Science 2010
There are moments when a kind of clarity comes over you, and suddenly you can see through walls to another dimension that you’d forgotten or chosen to ignore in order to continue living with the various illusions that make life, particularly life with other people, possible. Nicole Krauss, Great House
We have been ruled by men who live by illusion. The illusion that you can have freedom by government decree. Margaret Thatcher
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. Saul Bellow, To Jerusalem and Back
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. Professor Stephen Hawking
All a self-portrait can ever be is an illusion. Laura Cumming, Ego: The Strange and Wonderful World of Self-Portraits, BBC 2013
Caravaggio gives us death twice over: The Death of John the Baptist, and the death of our most cherished illusion about art: that it can make us finer, more humane. Dream on, says Caravaggio. Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Caravaggio, BBC 2006
We have the ability to create the illusion of other places like the caves and your planet. Star Trek: The Next Generation s7e13: Homeward, Picard
Because Raisa is an illusion. Created by weather control systems, industrial replicators, seismic regulators. If the Federation is going to survive we’re going to have to stop wasting our time with toys. And get back to the essentials. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s5e7: He Who is Without Sin, Fullerton the fundamentalist
I have begun to wonder: what if it wasn’t a dream? What if this life we’re leading, all of this, you and me, everything, what if all of this is the illusion? Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s6e13: Far Beyond the Stars, Sisko to Dad
The illusion has become real – and the more real it becomes the more desperate they want it. Capitalism at its finest. Wall Street 1987 starring Michael Douglas & Charlie Sheen & Dary Hannah & Martin Sheen & John C McGinley & Terence Stamp & James Karen & Hal Holbrook & Sean Young & James Spader et al, director Oliver Stone
The illusion would be that our politicians are out there really seeking to do good for us. Not for themselves but do good for us. A kind of optimistic illusion that he is doing good for the public. Professor James Buchanan, televised interview
Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion. Blaise Pascal
It offers the chance of living without illusion. Christopher Hitchens v Rabbi David Wolpe, debate Boston 2010
He [Sigmund Freud] saw religion as an illusion. Dr Jonathan Miller: A Rough History of Unbelief III: The Final Hour, BBC 2004
Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Joseph Conrad
It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe and profitable and dull. Joseph Conrad
I am the master of illusion. Muhammad Ali, with trickbox performing before assembled children
Our experience is composed rather of illusions lost than of wisdom acquired. Joseph Roux
The greatest obstacle to discover is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge. Daniel Boorstin
I must be more sensible and realize that at my age, illusions are hardly permitted and they will always destroy me. Paul Cézanne
The Great Illusion. Norman Angell, title of book
What do any of us have but illusions? And what we ask of others that we be allowed to keep them. Somerset Maugham
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded. W Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage, 1915