Fiscal Illusion Quotes

To summarise, the design of Nordic tax systems has over time created a 'fiscal illusion', whereby the public is not aware of the taxes they are paying. One can reflect on whether it is really in line with democratic principles to raise taxes in a way such that citizens are unaware of them. Interestingly, few proponents of introducing a Nordic model of high taxes in other countries stress that such a move would require hiding the true cost of taxation from the public. ~ Nima Sanandaji

A journey is not a cure. It brings an illusion, only, of change, and becomes at best a spartan comfort ~ Colin Thubron

I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury. ~ Sydney Smith

You are drawn, I am just an outline, you are the sweet melody, I am just a string of notes, you are limitless, I am but an illusion of limits, In the secrecy of real image-reflection, why enact to be lovers! ~ Mahedevi Verma

In that moment part of me believed, as I had always believed, that it would be me who broke the spell, who caused it to break. When the stillness shattered and his fury rushed at me, I would know that something I had done was the catalyst, the cause. There is hope in such a superstition; there is the illusion of control. ~ Tara Westover

All these people that I used to know, they're an illusion to me now. Some are mathematicians, some are carpenters' wives. ~ Bob Dylan

... [T]he whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? ~ Philip Roth

I'm far more dangerous now, because I don't care at all. ~ Joe Strummer

It is only when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are, without any self-deception or illusion, that a light will develop out of events, by which the path to success may be recognized. ~ Debbie Ford

Then I grew up, and the beauty of succulent illusions fell away from me. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

There are optical illusions in time as well as space. ~ Marcel Proust

Privacy seems not an illusion for those
who want to believe in secrecy principle. ~ Toba Beta

The security (emotional security, spiritual security, intrapersonal security) that you think being thin or lean will provide you is just an illusion. Leanness and weight-loss will not deliver these securities to you. ~ Scott Abel

...knowing often felt preferable to not knowing. It provided the illusion of control. ~ Jordan Castillo Price

There is no liberation to compare with freeing oneself from the illusions and delusions of the age in which one lives. ~ Terence McKenna

What a costume designer does is a cross between magic and camouflage. We create the illusion of changing the actors into what they are not. We ask the public to believe that every time they see a performer on the screen, he's become a different person. ~ Edith Head

A natural response when people feel overwhelmed is to retreat into various forms of passivity. If we don't try too much in life, if we limit our circle of action, we can give ourselves the illusion of control. The less we attempt, the less chances of failure. If we can make it look like we are not really responsible for our fate, for what happens to us in life, then our apparent powerlessness is more palatable. ~ Robert Greene

One of the most interesting laws of planet earth is called the law of mirroring. I'm one of the 144 thousand chosen ones to ascend to paradise and I keep meeting people that are not but arrogantly believe they are. Now, how can I know which one is the reflection and which one is the illusion? They need religion to feel safe while I was born with the knowledge of a thousand galactic civilizations inside of me. They think I accept their religion, whatever it is, not realizing that it's their religion that matches me. I have already surpassed planet Earth. I came here to give these humans a second chance. And yet, the ones closer to get it, think I'm they are the ones offering me a second chance. Isn't this interesting? I think it is fascinating. This planet is truly fascinating. I could say utterly stupid, but I don't want to depress myself about it. I rather call it fascinating. ~ Robin Sacredfire

To lose a problem, do not oppose, let go of any need to control, perhaps it's all an illusion we project, more like a game we play than real? ~ Jay Woodman

The illusion of time and space that has been introduced by those who want to commodities and monetize on the time and space of others. ~ James Scott, Senior Fellow, The Center For Cyber Influence Operations Studies

All these years I had been sustained by an illusion-happiness through victory- and now that illusion was burned to ashes. I was no more happier, no more fullfilled, for all my achievements. Finally I saw through the clouds I saw that I had never learned how to enjoy life, only how to achieve. All my life i had been busy seeking happiness, but never finding it or sustaining it. ~ Dan Millman

The past is all patterns, and those patterns remain beneath our feet, even as the stars above reveal their own patterns - for the stars we gaze upon each night are naught but an illusion from the past. ~ Steven Erikson

As a young man, causes of one kind or another engaged me, and I thought the media is where you express yourself in that. I lived with the illusion, for quite a long time, that if you described something accurately, something would be done about it. ~ Jonathan Dimbleby

You can't live without illusions, even if you must fight for them. ~ Marlene Dietrich

Being loved means; are disagreements welcome in my relationships? If you cant disagree with someone then you live in a tyranny and if you live in a tyranny then you are only loved to the degree that you erase yourself and conform to the irrational expectations of bullies. That isn't love obviously.
Now if somebody in you life demands that you not disagree with them and gets angry, "offended", or outraged should you disagree with them then, that person is not a good person. It's pretty narcissistic. It's somebody who does not have the maturity, wisdom, and ego strength to handle, and in fact welcome disagreements.
When people disagree with me as a whole I think it's a great opportunity for learning. People don't want to expose topics that might cause disagreement because, if the disagreement is punished then the illusion of being loved by good people is shattered. ~ Stefan Molyneux

The failure of the White House and Congress to seriously address the nation's fiscal situation is certain to broaden the belief among many voters that the U.S. political system is broken. ~ Ron Fournier

All his life long he had been amazed at the way ideas have of agglomerating, divorced from feeling, like crystals in strange, meaningless formations; and of growing like tumors, devouring the flesh that conceives them; or of assuming certain human lineaments, but in monstrous wise, like those inert masses to which some women give birth, and which are, after all, only the incoherent dreams of matter. He found that a goodly number of the mind's productions are no more than such deformed mooncalves. Other conceptions, less impure and more precise, forged as if by a master workman, make for illusion when viewed from afar; though commanding our admiration for their parallels and their angles, like intricate iron grills, they are nevertheless only bars behind which the understanding imprisons itself, abstract fetters already eaten into by the rust of false premises. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar

Magic is something that happens that appears to be impossible. What I call 'illusion magic' uses laws of science and nature that are already known. Real magic uses laws that haven't yet been discovered. ~ Doug Henning

We live, after all, in a world where illusions are sacred and truth profane. ~ Tariq Ali

Although it was over 50 years ago, I have not forgotten the moment when, after exploring the maze of Indian metaphysics, I reached its central Thought. I read that if we go deeper and deeper into the self we can arrive at last at the recognition of Atman, the essential self; and that if we go deeper into the not-self, the world that seems so solid and real, pulling aside veil after veil of illusion, we shall find Brahman, the ultimate reality; and that Atman and Brahman are identical. ~ J.B. Priestley

Our first benchmark is to cut the deficit more quickly to safeguard Britain's credit rating. I know that we are taking a political gamble to set this up as a measure of success. Protecting the credit rating will not be easy The pace of fiscal consolidation will be co-ordinated with monetary policy. And we will protect Britain's credit rating and international reputation. ~ George Osborne

There is a notion that existence is an illusion. Existence is not an illusion. Existence is a projection from the inner through the brain producing the outer sensory world of what is - an amazing complete mystery. ~ Barry Long