Quotes About Self-deception

Another important lesson from the time was that mass self-deception is simply a sedative prescribed by leaders who cannot face reality themselves. And as the Spanish Civil War proved, the first casualty of war is not truth, but its source: the conscience and integrity of the individual.

Self-betrayal" 1. An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another is called an act of "self-betrayal." 2. When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal. 3. When I see the world in a self-justifying way, my view of reality becomes distorted.

Self-deception is like this. It blinds us to the true causes of problems, and once we're blind, all the "solutions" we can think of will actually make matters worse. Whether at work or at home, self-deception obscures the truth about ourselves, corrupts our view of others and our circumstances, and inhibits our ability to make

Self-deception actually determines one's experience in every aspect of life. The extent to which it does that—and in particular the extent to which it determines the nature of one's influence on, and experience of, others—is the subject of this book.

The reason this book has been so instrumental in helping people to resolve conflict is that it opens readers to how they have helped to create the very problems they have attributed to others. This is the essence of the self-deception solution— discovering how each of us has the problem of not knowing we have a problem. This is the realization that makes conflict resolution possible.

That's usually the case. Identify someone with a problem, and you'll be identifying someone who resists the suggestion that he has one. That's self-deception — the inability to see that one has a problem.

He had seen how people grew cruel with telling themselves of their own compassion: nothing made you harder than that.

The more perfect a person is on the outside, the more demons they have on the inside.

Dreams tell us many an unpleasant biological truth about ourselves and only very free minds can thrive on such a diet. Self-deception is a plant which withers fast in the pellucid atmosphere of dream investigation.

no one who still shares a delusion will ever recognize it as such.

They love their delusions as they love themselves.

There is not a single line in this diary that does not call for a correction or a denial...Yes: throughout these pages I meant what I was writing and I meant the opposite; reading them again I feel completely lost...I was lying to myself. How I lied to myself!

The danger is not that the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but that, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.

Of these three sorts of lies – lying to the party, lying to the public, lying to oneself – the first is by far the least evil. Yet if belonging to a party compels one to lie all the time, in every instance, then the very existence of political parties is absolutely and unconditionally an evil.

The human heart" wrote Calvin, "has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood lurks, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself.

And for all her theoretical desire to make their house a refuge for him and for whomever he liked to invite, she had never learned to keep her opinions of people to herself. When she was bored by callers, she would beg Do you mind if I run up to bed now--such a headache, with a bright friendliness which fooled no one save herself, and which left their guests chilled and awkward.

One of my weaknesses happens to be lying, and I could tell you that I'm never going to lie again in my life, but that would be a lie.

An awful realization that I have been fooling myself all my life thinking there was a next thing to do to keep the show going and actually I'm just a sick clown and so is everybody else...

Great leaders get people to admit the truth because they know that dreams are buried under the lies they tell themselves, in order to feel okay with giving up.

The worst denial of all is being in denial that we're in denial in the first place. And I would wonder if that's not exactly where most of us live out most of our lives.

When all else fails, there's always delusion.

There are times when it's easier to fool yourself than swallow some jagged piece of reality.

I have barred myself from thinking I'm improving because thus far I have only been fooling myself. Nevertheless, I think I'm improving.

If you can pretend well enough to fool someone else, you might even fool yourself.