Quotes About Self-deception

the human mind's ability to rationalize its own shortcomings into virtues is unlimited

It's a shock to have it proved to you that you can't resist seducing yourself.

The only drug I have ever been addicted to was nicotine, which I have quit five times in the last 20 years. Speaking from experience, I must say that Crowley has great understanding of the addict mentality and the way the biological need for the drug can generate "reasons" that almost seem rational at the time. Writing down the reasons for taking another cigarette, Crowley fashion, I have found is a real help in recognizing their self-deceiving quality and really quitting.

Because of the wind, the crows were pointing in one direction but traveling in another. I wondered if they knew it, and, knowing it, understood it, or if they were simply oblivious, carried along by a force that was felt but not seen. The same thing happens to people, but most of the time they don't know it, or when they know it, they think it an action of their own devising. They are usually wrong.

We fool ourselves. The best of us… the best and the brightest, we're easiest to fool.

Han måtte rehabilitere seg ved et bedrag; når han lot gjelde at han var som andre, at han var kommensurabel, så måtte jo stakkaren bruke sin egen målestokk og overtale seg til å tro på den. Han hadde kanskje sin lille lykke ved dette, han hadde iallfall ingen annen. Kunst altsammen altså? Kunst altsammen. Men intet dårlig kunstverk.

Mortal, if there's one thing I've learned in all my years, it's this: lies are curses you place on yourself.

lies are curses you place on yourself.

Mortal, if there's one thing I've learned in all my years, it's this: lies are curses you place on yourself.

If there's one thing I've learned in all my years, it's this: lies are curses you place on yourself.

In other words, the more stupid one is, the more he thinks he knows.

the surest way to lie to others is to lie to oneself first. If you can convince the single soul who knows the falsehood for what it is, then everyone else is an easy mark.

A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)

None more deceive themselves than they who think their religion is true and genuine, thought it refines not their spirits and reforms not their lives.

Denial makes it easier to keep an addiction progressing smoothly along and, being a lie, it's just better form.

Above all, don't lie to yourself.

A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.

While we are indifferent to our good qualities, we keep on deceiving ourselves in regard to our faults, until we come to look on them as virtues.

We deceive ourselves when giving respect to the person for whom we have surrendered ourselves, when we respectively expect them to be as we would wish them to be.

I cannot give without questioning my motives. Does giving have to do with generosity, or with the selfish comfort it brings? The self-deception it offers, when the truth is one has little, or nothing, to give? If one keeps giving, will one be good enough to be loved one day?

Emotions talked to you before you had words, so listen to them ... they are often more honest than the mind's remarkable ability to self deceive.

Minha consciência não passava de uma ferramenta de distorção, e meu controle, de conjecturas incertas, pura adivinhação. [...] O auto-engano era agora minha última esperança. Um ferido não exige que o curativo improvisado esteja necessariamente limpo

El autoengaño era mi último rayo de esperanza.