Quotes About Self-deception

You have a good cry, lovey, you'll feel better afterwards. You did feel better afterwards, but as if you'd conned yourself, fobbed yourself off.

The lies you tell yourself. The necessary lies.

The inferior man hates the truth. That is no tragedy. The tragedy is, he isn't aware he does.

all I was doing was sweeping everything under my bed. My room would look spotless but it was actually still a disgusting mess. The same thing is true of most people's lives.

Excuses are easy lies we tell ourselves to cover up our failures.

People fool themselves into thinking that the currency of unhappiness will buy them happiness. That we have to "pay our dues," go on some sort of ride, and then get dropped off at a big location called our "purpose," where now we can be happy. It doesn't work that way.

Excuses are easy lies we tell ourselves to cover up our failures. One such excuse is, only dishonest people get ahead. This is also a lie. MAKE

People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.

People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all—a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named—but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not.

The trouble with a secret life is that it is very frequently a secret from the person who lives it and not at all a secret for the people he encounters.

The effort not to know what one knows is the most corrupting effort one can make—

I told her that I have loved her once and I made myself believe it.

There's no fool like a fool who thinks he's charming. On

We did what our people do all the time, we told ourselves something we did was right and we found a way to justify it, even though we knew it was wrong.

We did what people do all the time, we told ourselves something we did was right and we found a way to justify it, even though we knew it was wrong.

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

When I was married to an abuser, he'd tell me he wouldn't have to get so angry if only I'd be less demanding, more supportive, more understanding. I hid the truth from everyone, especially myself.

Should you be so unfortunate as to suppose you are a genius, and that 'things will come to you,' it would be well to undeceive yourself as soon as possible. Make up your mind that industry must be the price of all you obtain, and at once begin to pay down.

To think to be wise alone is a very great folly.

The more intelligent and cultured a man is, the more subtly he can humbug himself.

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

Men, unlike mockingbirds, have the capacity for systematic self-delusion. We echo each other with equal precision, equal eloquence, equal assurance.

Do not flatter yourselves with the belief that a mere recital of that celebrated verse in St. John makes a man a Christian.

A man's own vanity is a swindler that never lacks for a dupe.