when we start to deeply believe in an illusion, it becomes a delusion.

At first it was a lie, then a strong delusion, and at last downright madness.

It appears that we all labour under delusions.

He had leaped into the embrace of self-delusion.
There was a lot of that going around.

Ah! How we all love to be deluded! We have a secret dread of being thought ignorant. And we end by being ignorant after all, only we have done it in a long and roundabout way.

With all great deceivers there is a noteworthy occurrence to which they owe their power. In the actual act of deception... they are overcome by belief in themselves. It is this which then speaks so miraculously and compellingly to those who surround them.

Belief in the lie is the life of the lie.

Sure men were born to lie, and women to believe them!

In the beginning was belief, foolish belief, and faith, empty faith, and illusion, the terrible illusion. ... We believed in God, had faith in man, and lived with the illusion that in each one of us is a sacred spark from the fire of the shekinah, that each one carried in his eyes and in his soul the sign of God. This was the source — if not the cause — of all our misfortune.

Like many a man before him, he found himself forced into a lie because the truth simply would not be believed.

Human beings seem to have an almost unlimited capacity to deceive themselves, and to deceive themselves into taking their own lies for truth.

A delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

The "passion for incredulity" can produce as much self-deception as the uncritical will to believe.

The whole fabric of our religion is based on superstitious belief in lies that have been foisted upon us for ages by those directly above us, to whose personal profit and aggrandizement it was to have us continue to believe as they wished us to believe.