People live with the illusion that we have a democratic system, but it's only the outward form of one. In reality we live in a plutocracy, a government of the rich.
Jose Saramago

People say I play real loud. I don't, actually. I'm recorded loud and a lot of that is because we have good engineers. Mick knows what a good drum sound is as well, so that's part of the illusion really. I can't play loud.
Charlie Watts

Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.
Andre Breton

Photography, as we all know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which we create our own private world.
Arnold Newman

Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.
George Orwell

Prosperity or egalitarianism - you have to choose. I favor freedom - you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion.
Mario Vargas Llosa

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein

Reason cannot establish values, and its belief that it can is the stupidiest and most pernicious illusion.
Allan Bloom

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
Sigmund Freud

Right now, there's the illusion of order and civilization, but there's a tremendous amount of economic tension in this country and the educational system is constantly eroding.
Kathryn Bigelow

Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.
Thomas Moore

Since fame is an illusion and death is in our future all we have is the next moment before we are swallowed into oblivion.
Al Goldstein

Since it is impossible to know what's really happening, we Peruvians lie, invent, dream and take refuge in illusion. Because of these strange circumstances, Peruvian life, a life in which so few actually do read, has become literary.
Mario Vargas Llosa

That time is important. It gives a comforting illusion of permanence not found in running by the mile.
Joe Henderson

The belief may be too often mistaken, but the illusion of coming into direct contact with the past is intoxicating and persuasive, and can result in an interpretation that carries conviction. Sometimes confidence is all that's needed.
Charles Rosen

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Albert Einstein

The experiences of promoting my first album were really something; there is so much illusion in my environment (touring and pop music) that I wanted to clear away.
Duncan Sheik

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin

The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe - responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.
Tom Stoppard

The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds.
Charles Horton Cooley