Quotes About Self-deception

There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best.

Dishonesty is all about the small acts we can take and then think, 'No, this not real cheating.' So if you think that the main mechanism is rationalization, then what you come up with, and that's what we find, is that we're basically trying to balance feeling good about ourselves.

The capacity for people to kid themselves is huge. Living on illusions or delusions, and the re-establishing of these illusions or delusions requires a big effort to keep them from being seen through. But a very old idea is at work behind our current state of affairs: enantiodromia, or the Greek notion of things turning into their opposite.

Psychologically speaking, one may say that the hypocrite is too ambitious; not only does he want to appear virtuous before others, he wants to convince himself.

The lies the government and media tell are amplifications of the lies we tell ourselves. To stop being conned, stop conning yourself.

We betray ourselves, don't we? In the end, we have no need for enemies.

Better to live in the truth, however terrible, than to murder your true self by living a lie.

It is much harder to pretend than it is to simply be who you already are.

We're all human beings, but some of us are more sophisticated at covering our flaws. We're just smart enough to lie to ourselves that everything is OK.

The biggest lie women tell themselves about men: When I get what I want, I will be happy.

You can only trust your emotions as you can lie to yourself with your brain but not your heart.

Without emotional response, love is an act of self-deceiving self-satisfaction by an unsatisfied self.

Under this aura of perfection he knows how flawed he really is but his intact denial system keeps this awareness suppressed in the far recesses of his mind.

A man's alibi is the child of his own imagination. It is human nature to defend one's own brain-child.

The hypocrite thinks he can hood wink the world and the eternal law of the world. There is but one person that he hoodwinks, and that is himself, and for that the law of the world inflicts its righteous penalty.

Building alibis with which to explain away failure is a national pastime. The habit is as old as the human race, and is fatal to success! Why do people cling to their pet alibis? The answer is obvious. They defend their alibis because they create them! A man's alibi is the child of his own imagination. It is human nature.

Anyone looking for confirmation will find enough of it to deceive himself—and no doubt his peers.*

which people, in order to avoid inconsistent beliefs, rationalize that, say, the grapes they can't reach got to be sour).

they can cherry-pick from statements they've made in the past, many of them contradictory, and end up convincing themselves of their intellectual lucidity

The willingness to experience and accept our feelings carries no implication that emotions are to have the last word on what we do. I may not be in the mood to work today; I can acknowledge my feelings, experience them, accept them—and then go to work. I will work with a clearer mind because I have not begun the day with self-deception.

One of the great self-deceptions--and one of the great foolishnesses--is to tell yourself, Only I will know. Only you will know that you are a liar; only you will know you deal unethically with people who trust you; only you will know you have no intention of honoring your promise. Whose knowledge or judgment do you imagine is more important? It is precisely your own ego from which there is no escape.

Truth often finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an unconscious self-deception during our waking moments.

Denn kein Mensch kann für längere Zeit sich selbst das eine und der Menge ein anderes Gesicht zeigen, ohne am Ende in Verwirrung zu geraten, welches das echt ist.

He had striven to put a cheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without the momentary relief of being self-deceived. He had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood.