Quotes About Self-deception

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

Sometimes, though, you make a pact with yourself. I'll pretend there's nothing wrong if you pretend there's nothing wrong. It's called denial, and it's one of the strongest pacts in the world. Just ask all those people who were still drinking champagne while the Titanic went down.

Scientists would then build a demonstration fusion power plant that would begin operations in 2035 or 2040. After five decades of broken promises, lies, delusions, and self-deception, it will finally be true. Fusion energy will be thirty years away.

But when you're depressed, you think baloney is filet mignon. You score it, marinate it, and slap it on the grill. But when you finally bite into it, reality sets in (or is it heartburn?) and you realize it ain't steak---it's baloney.

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster. —JAMES BALDWIN

You can have the most wonderful motives for what you do, but if what you do harms other people, you're fooling yourself.

People are all evil. In order to falsely believe yourself to be just You must inevitably falsely believe That someone else is more evil than you.

As a grandiose self-deception, war is o' the same magnitude as religion. We embrace war or religion - usually both at the same time - as a means o' defeatin' death, but neither o' them do a blinkin' thing but sanction dyin'. Throughout history, Death's best friend has been a priest with a knife.

As a grandiose self-deception, war is o' the same magnitude as religion. We embrace war or religion—usually both at the same time—as a means o' defeatin' death, but neither o' them do a blinkin' thing but sanction dyin'. Throughout history, Death's best friend has been a priest with a knife.

The problem with a lot of people is that what they think is a virtue is actually a vice in disguise. It's much easier to convince yourself that you're reasonable and civilised, than soft and weak, isn't it?

There are all sorts of lies you tell yourself over and over until you accept them as readily as you do your own skin. And it isn't always easy to recognize them as lies.

Tragedy, Lazaar told her, is the story in which the liar is lying to himself; in comedy, the liar is lying to everyone else.

Who says I'm drinking? (Morgan) I guess the bottle drank itself. (Jake)

When guilty shame wears a mask of curiosity, men are turned inside out, becoming strangers to themselves.

And narcissists don't love themselves. They hardly have any selves to begin with. They put all their energy into the fake image that they wear like a mask. Only there's nothing but dead space behind it.

fundamentalism' and 'liberalism' and terrorism.' These labels only tell us partial truths. We must use them humbly, guardedly, Niebuhr would say, aware of the limitations of our own vision and of our own capacity for misunderstanding and self-deception.

I found myself doing this same thing—playing a role of having greater certainty and greater competence than I really possess. I can't tell you how disgusted with myself I felt as I realized what I was doing: I was not being me, I was playing a part.

People can love their lies, tell their lies, believe their own lies until hell pays a visit.

Evidenced in a capacity for denial so that you do not let yourself know what is really going on. You may be hurting yourself and others, but you will not acknowledge it. You may also be hurt, but you will repress that knowledge as well. Or, you believe what others say even when their perspective is directly counter to your own inner knowing.

In the previous chapter, we saw on a smaller scale how divorcing couples typically justify the hurt they inflict on each other. In the horrifying calculus of self-deception, because our victims deserved what they got, we hate them even more than we did before we harmed them, which in turn makes us inflict even more pain on them.

He's been to rehab, which is a travesty; you can tell by his smug face that he's not capable of genuine addiction.

Kidding yourself doesn't require that you have a sense of humor. But

A part of me does not want to think that I always knew something was wrong.=. This is probably the same part that didn't look at the evidence that was right before my eyes, and even though I know this, it does not stop me from defending the fairy tale.

If you were half as funny as you think you are, you'd be twice as funny as you are now.