Just as the 99% of Soviet citizens who supported the Soviet regime in 1985 was no indication of what the people inside the USSR really thought, the army of true believers that we think we see in the Arab world is an illusion.
The illusion that times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all ages.
I don't have any illusion that The Creeper is as popular or will ever be as popular as any of the classic movie monsters, but I think in the heart of every young horror fan is his desire to create his own creature.
Magic's an art where you use slight of hand or illusion to create wonder. And I was just intrigued with that idea.
When all is said and done, cheap gas is an illusion, because our reliance on gas creates a whole series of costs that aren't factored in to the pump price - among them congestion, pollution, and increased risk of accidents.
They're not even within 100 miles of Baghdad. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion... they are trying to sell to the others an illusion.
I mean, I had probably an illusion of being the wife that, you know, I wanted to create a home. I wanted to have children. I wanted him to be a husband. It was never going to be that way. It couldn't be that way.
There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.
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.
The time of illusion, then, is the beautiful moment of passion; it represents the artistic zone in which the poet or romance writer ought to be free to do the very best that he can.
There's also something of an illusion in that, you can perhaps record a TV thing one month and complete a book the next and then be in a play. Then, if they all come out at once, it looks as if you're actually juggling a million things.
We need a romantic illusion to embark on relationships in the first place. After that, they survive or fail for other, more practical reasons.
I don't want to give the illusion that one day God came down and I was healed.
We have an illusion of security, we don't have security.
Perhaps scientists will eventually discover that we are all clockwork bunnies, and our experience of volition is an electro-chemical illusion.
Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.
My point was that it's hard to make good films, but I'm not under any illusion that you do all the time.
A change in external circumstances without inner renewal is a materialist's illusion, as though man were only a product of his social circumstance and nothing else.
Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.
There are limits to how much sound a cello can make. That's part of the framing of acoustical instruments. Finding what those limits might be, and then trying to suggest perhaps even the illusion of going beyond is part of that kind of effort.
We have that illusion that we are 'deciding' what to make a character do, in order to 'convey our message' or something like that. But, at least in my experience, you are often more like a river-rafting guide who's been paid a bonus to purposely steer your clients into the roughest possible water.
At the end of the day, the sovereignty of maleness is an illusion. In essence and in origin, we are all entirely female.
Love can sometimes be magic. But magic can sometimes... just be an illusion.
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.
The idea that the world can unite without being regulated is clearly an illusion.
We cast away priceless time in dreams, born of imagination, fed upon illusion, and put to death by reality.
I even had the illusion, for a very short time, that I could become a medium pace bowler.
Sometimes my art is just an illusion - or is it?
I probably complicate things unnecessarily now just to give the illusion of professionalism.
I believe there should be no arbitrary date set for withdrawal and yet no permanent, unending deployment. No cut and run, yet measured progress in helping a people who want to be free without an illusion of overnight success.
We go on dates thinking that person is our future husband or wife, without getting to know them, as we live in a fantasy and an illusion of romance.
The purpose of satire has been rightly stated as to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half truth, and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again!
Before 9/11, I was playing a wide range of characters. I would play a lover, a cop, a father. As long as I could create the illusion of the character, the part was given to me. But after 9/11, something changed. We became the villains, the bad guys. I don't mind to play the bad guy as long as the bad guy has a base.
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.
There is the illusion of the world and the reality of the Torah.
If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.
