Christopher Hampton Quotes

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

The truth is still the truth whether or not you believe it. Can we say the same about lies? No, lies only exist because we believe them. If we don't believe in lies, they simply disappear.

It's very difficult to distinguish between what a person believes and what they say they believe.

I like illusion when it is so convincing that we might as well see reality this way - I like to present to our belief system something that is convincing, that 'we know not to be.'

... if a man really and truly believed that black was white, you might advise him to see an oculist, but you mustn't call him a liar.

If you search for truthfulness, you might as well be blind.

All you know is what you think you know, but that isn't always what's real.

Since I wasn't able to leave a succession of beautiful lies, I want to leave the smidgen of truth that the falsehood of everything lets us suppose we can tell.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn't -it's human.

The world we live in is vastly different from the world we think we live in.

It's so easy for us to misperceive and see the things in others that we want to see. And, when we're wrong, and often we're dead wrong, we miss the truth.

People say they love truth, but in reality they want to believe that which they love is true.

Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.

Some people choose not to believe the truth because it disagrees with what they fundamentally want.

People deny things that are true all the time.

Belief and seeing: They are both often wrong.

The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp. Above all, it fits more snugly than the truth into a universe of false appearances—of complex and irrational phenomena, defectively grasped.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Politicians aren't special. They lie the same way we all do, revealing their true nature under pressure.

How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs.

But an Adrian also knew that an Adrian's lies were real: they were lived and felt and acted out as thoroughly as another man's truths - if other men had truths - and he believed it possible that this last lie might see him through to the grave.

Life is more or less a lie, but then again, that's exactly the way we want it to be.

The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.

Illusions are the truths we live by until we know better.