Quotes About Self-deception

Roland had taught him that self-deception was nothing but pride in disguise, an indulgence to be denied.

The hardest for man is lie to himself between 3:00 and 6:00 in the morning.

We want so badly to be happy – to live the kinds of lives that we always hoped we'd live – that we give gifts to ourselves by remembering things not as they were, but as we wish they were.

Don't, but if at all, then, lie to the whole damn world - never to your own damn, silly stupid self.

A game of secret, cunning stratagems, in which only the fools who are fated to lose reveal their true aims or motives - even to themselves.

I'm fine," she said, wondering how you could say something so patently true yet untrue at the same time.

And nothing is more common than for men to be mistaken concerning their own state: many that are abominable to God, and the children of his wrath, think highly of themselves, as his precious saints and dear children. Yea, there is reason to think that often some that are most bold in their confidence of their safe and happy state, and think themselves not only true saints, but the most eminent saints in the congregation, are in a peculiar manner a smoke in God's nose.

at least a depressed person will usually admit she's depressed. Curing hypocrisy is much harder because part of the problem is that we don't believe there's a problem.

WE LIE, CHEAT, AND JUSTIFY SO WELL THAT WE HONESTLY BELIEVE WE ARE HONEST

Your freedom it says. What is that? Some kind of illusory concept where the people in charge let you have comfortable distractions. Enough THINGS so that you don't see your chains. I respect your work too much to let you endure that kind of self-deception.

The really good liars, the true grandmasters of bullshit, are so damn convincing because they actually believe their own lies.

We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.

Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.

Such people neither steal, nor murder, nor commit adultery, but do good according to their abilities. But . . . they must close their eyes and ears to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep their private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world. In all that they do, what they fail to do will not let them rest. They will either be destroyed by this unrest, or they will become the most hypocritical of all Pharisees.

Vanity metrics wreak havoc because they prey on a weakness of the human mind. In my experience, when the numbers go up, people think the improvement was caused by their actions, by whatever they were working on at the time.

It takes a lifetime of practice to betray yourself without showing any effort, to be so dream-locked and absent that you say the reverse of what you mean, over and over again, to do the opposite of what is good for you.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

Who has deceived thee as often as thyself?

Worse, I convinced myself our tragedy was entirely her making. I spent years working myself into the very thing I swore she was: a righteous ball of hate.

She was one of those middle-aged women who thought they were fooling people.

I damned myself for my earlier romanticism. That Croaker who had come north, so thoroughly bemused by the mysterious Lady, was another man. A stripling, filled with the foolish ignorances of youth. Yeah. Sometimes you lie to yourself just to keep going.

Lie to everyone in this man's world if need be, but never lie to yourself, because that's the quickest road to destruction.

There is a time in life when a man with a little acting ability is able to deceive even himself.

I suppose it was only one more indication of a human being's capacity for self-deception, our baseless optimism that is so much more appalling than our despair.