#deception

I can't count the men who have tried to seduce me away from my virtue by teaching me how to defend it. ↗

— Patrick Rothfuss

#deception #virtue #men

Where utopianism is advanced through gradualism rather than revolution, albeit steady and persistent as in democratic societies, it can deceive and disarm an unsuspecting population, which is largely content and passive. It is sold as reforming and improving the existing society's imperfections and weaknesses without imperiling its basic nature. Under these conditions, it is mostly ignored, dismissed, or tolerated by much of the citizenry and celebrated by some. Transformation is deemed innocuous, well-intentioned, and perhaps constructive but not a dangerous trespass on fundamental liberties. ↗

— Mark R. Levin

#gradualism #utopianism #nature

Language is something you inherit, it's never just you doing the talking, which helps when you're pretending. ↗

— Cees Nooteboom

#fantasy #language #night-thoughts #self-deception #self-knowledge

There is a law of the natural worlds (the spiritual and the physical) and this is something I have understood: that for every genuine existence, for every real manifestation and occurrence, there are are ten thousand falsities. Before you meet what or who is genuine, you will first have met, or known of, what is fake; and ten thousand times so! There is no need to feel disappointments, any number below ten thousand deceptions renders you a lucky person! And you ask why is there a need for this to happen? Well, if you have not known what is false first, there is no way to understand what then comes which is truth. What is lesser is so afraid of what is genuine, that it finds it necessary to imitate and duplicate that imitation ten thousand times over, for fear that you will finally meet what is real. The more important that one existence is, the more imitations there are in the world. ↗

— C. JoyBell C.

#disappointments #fake #false #genuine #imitations

The purple, formalized, iridescent, gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war was floating close beside the boat. It turned on its side and then righted itself. It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long deadly purple filaments trailing a yard behind in the water. ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#simile #simile

You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#delusion #extremism #fanaticism #fanatics #guerrilla-decontextualism

The consequences of President Johnson's campaign of deliberate deception regarding Vietnam could hardly have been more catastrophic for the nation, the military, the president, his party, and the presidency itself. ↗

— Eric Alterman

#campaign #catastrophic #consequences #could #deception

While all deception requires secrecy, all secrecy is not meant to deceive. ↗

— Sissela Bok

#deception #meant #requires #secrecy #while

Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture. ↗

— David Bohm

#compulsive #conform #constitute #culture #distortion

In the last few years, the very idea of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is dredged up only as a final resort when the alternative options of deception, threat and bribery have all been exhausted. ↗

— Michael Musto

#been #bribery #deception #exhausted #few