Quotes About Self-deception

I prefer to keep fooling myself, at least for a little while longer.

There is no hypocrisy so great as the words which we say to ourselves, I wish to know the worst! At heart we do not wish it at all. We have a dreadful fear of knowing it. Agony is mingled with a dim effort not to see the end. We do not own it to ourselves, but we would draw back if we dared; and when we have advanced, we reproach ourselves for having done so.

Who knows how easily ambition disguises itself under the name of a calling, possibly in good faith and deceiving itself, in sanctimonious confusion?

My mistake wasn't in letting the marriage end; it was in fooling myself into believing that marrying him was a good idea in the first place.

When one has made up one's mind that things are going well, and that one has helped to make them go well, it takes some time to realize that in fact the opposite is true, and that things are not going well.

Halk, her zaman yalanlar? kendisi yaratm??; sonra da bunlara inanm??t?r.

We are so used to disguise ourselves to others, that at last we disguise ourselves even to ourselves.

We are never so ridiculous through what we are as through what we pretend to be.

A resolution never to deceive exposes a man to be often deceived.

We can't bear to be deceived by our enemies, and betrayed by our friends; yet are often content to be so served by ourselves.

He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much; but he who fancies the world can't do without him is yet more mistaken.

The ambitious deceive themselves in proposing an end to their ambition; that end, when attained, becomes a means.

Human beings seem to have an almost unlimited capacity to deceive themselves, and to deceive themselves into taking their own lies for truth.

Many a choice is made in this way: by pretending it makes itself. And many a fate is decided by those who cannot decide.

Jace," she said. "Why are you doing this to me?" "Because you're lying to me. And you're lying to yourself." Jace's eyes were blazing, and even though his hands were stuffed into his pockets, she could see that they were knotted into fists.

So many times in life we think we see what we want. That we know what we want. Looking back through the wrong end of that scope, I sometimes wonder why we still believe we know anything at all.

So, who's stronger, the man who looks truth in the eye, or the man who tells himself lies to make it go away?

Americans all acted like they were trying to pretend they hadn't just chased a fistful of ecstasy with a noseful of coke to save themselves from a police officer only they could see.

You can fool some of the people some of the time—but you'd best not be fooling yourself, the biggest fool of all.

If female liberation is to happen, if the reservoir of real female love is to be tapped, this sterile self-deception must be counteracted. The only literary form which could outsell romantic trash on the female market is hard-core pornography.

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he can no longer distinguish the truth, within him or around him.

The vain man does not think he is vain.

They thought it was an enemy but it was only their own reflection.

dumheden hos disse mænd og den endnu større dumhed hos dem, der tror, at de er stærkere end naturen, og med eventyrlige argumenter bilder sig selv ind, at de formår, hvad de ikke formår, og ønsker at få andre til at handle ligesom dem selv, selvom det strider imod deres natur.