Quotes About Self-deception

The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool.

If you can't fool yourself," he said, "how can you expect to fool anybody else?

We lied to our parents and we lied to each other and we lied to ourselves, so addicted to deception had we become.

If people mean that man has in himself the power to work in partnership with God's grace they are most wretchedly deluding themselves.

You just go around acting like you're saving other people so you don't have to deal with your own problems.

When it came to the war, he believed that the "consent" of the governed had been, in his phrase, "manufactured." Hence, as he wrote, "It is no longer possible…to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-deception, and to forms of persuasion that we cannot verify.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

Men's minds are too ingenious in palliating guilt in themselves

Narcissism and self-deception are survival mechanisms without which many of us might just jump off a bridge.

Excuses tell me two things about a person; they aren't honest with themselves, or others, and they believe I can't see they are lying to both of us - Tom too tall Cunningham

What one hides is worth neither more nor less than what one finds. And what one hides from oneself is worth neither more nor less than what one allows others to find.

Cuando uno está enamorado, siempre comienza engañándose a sí mismo y termina engañando a otros. Eso es lo que el mundo llama amor

Kiedy si? zakochamy, zawsze najpierw oszukujemy siebie, a na koniec nieodmiennie zwodzimy innych. To w?a?nie ?wiat nazywa romansem.

what elaborate lengths we go to fool ourselves)...

He had been fooled. He had not, after all, had a great time: he had merely been drinking again.

These are good people out here,' he said. 'Most honest people in the world. They wouldn't lie to you for anything.' He shook his head. 'But they'll lie to themselves every time.

You know, your species [humans] has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched only by its ingenuity in trying to destroy itself.

We manufacture anger to give ourselves the illusion of power when we feel weak and helpless.

If we deny our anger, our pain, our ambition, or our goodness, we will suffer.

He was all show, and he had the conviction, as such people do, that show is the same as substance. He didn't think he was fooling other people; he had fooled himself.

He was all show, and he had the conviction, as such people do, that show is the same as substance. He didn't think he was fooling other people; he had fooled himself. He thought he saw what he thought we saw.

They say that it is the practiced liar who can deceive. But so often the practiced and chronic liar deceives only himself; it is the man who all his life has been selfconvicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence.

He was wrong; he knew he was when it was too late for him to stop just as a drunkard reaches a point where it is too late for him to stop, where he promises himself that he will and maybe believes he will or can but it is too late.

Sincerity becomes the honesty of people who cannot be honest with themselves.