Social Illusions Quotes

The commonsense rules of the "real world" are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions.

Civilised life, you know, is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us.

We're not as materialistic and income-tax conscious as we think. At the moment our superstitions are tucked away, but come out sometimes in strange ways sex crimes, black masses.

People don't want other people to get high, because if you get high, you might see the falsity of the fabric of the society we live in.

Practically all the relationships I know are based on a foundation of lies and mutually accepted delusion.

The joy of a party is the newness of people to each other, renewed strikingness of humanity. They love each other, to distraction. Really to distraction. Before they fall into conversation and separate. ... The strangeness, and the hopes aroused by strangeness, are illusions. Mirages arising wherever people gather expectantly together.

After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.