Quotes About Self-deception

We mislead ourselves when we pretend we can make someone into an effective manager by putting them through a few courses in business school.

For a long time, I felt that was actually the best I could ever hope for - to pretend to be a good person - because I was quite the opposite.

You can't know your real mind as long as you deceive yourself.

I think that I try really hard to think about how we deceive ourselves, and we let ourselves be deceived.

As an actor, I always feel you basically have to be able to delude yourself.

There are people who live under the delusion that simply because they will it to be so, it will be so.

Denial has been a way of life for me for many years. I actually believe in denial.

Some irony. The girl who couldn't face her own bullshit . . . suddenly forcing everyone else to.

But sometimes the lies we let ourselves believe are for our own good.

we all fool ourselves from time to time in order to keep our thoughts and beliefs consistent with what we have already done or decided.

Every lie is two lies — the lie we tell others and the lie we tell ourselves to justify it.

Am I lying to you if I tell you the same lie I tell myself?

The ultimate folly is to think that something crucial to your welfare is being taken care of for you.

You] will tend to deny that you ever experience any envy, at least strong enough to act on. you are simply not being honest with yourself.

Most people believe that they are in fact aware of the future, that they are planning and thinking ahead. They are usually deluded: What they are really doing is succumbing to their desires, to what they want the future to be.

If people were rational and morally superior, the world would be suffused with goodness and peace. We know, however, the reality, and so some people, perhaps all of us, are merely deceiving ourselves.

Quod volimus credimus libenter we always believe what we want to believe

Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.

You never escape the traps you spin yourself.

Just as the rag doll wanted to be an eagle, the donkey a lion and the monkey a queen, the zero put on airs and pretended to be a digit.

It's so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn't it?

It's so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn't it?

No lies are more seductive than the ones we use to console ourselves.

If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth" (1 John 1:8). It seems God leads us through failure toward maturity, rather than doing whatever is needed for us to move past ongoing failure.