Quotes About Self-deception

People argue themselves out of their pleasures

People don't care about being duped as long as they're happy, which is the shortest form of happiness; hence 'self-duprication' becomes a habit.

American seekers of happiness are in danger of deluding themselves into believing that only one part of the world exists, the part that gladdens their egos.

In all of history, we have found just one cure for error—a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.

Those of us with ravaged faces, lacking in the social graces, desperately remained at home, inventing lovers on the phone.

Honesty is the best policy, says the familiar axiom; but people who are honest on that principle defraud no one but themselves.

Losing hope is not so bad. There's something worse: losing hope and hiding it from yourself.

Human beings are about 1,000 times dumber and meaner than they think they are.

He's an undersized pissant with delusions of adequacy.

The pretended desires of many to behold the glory of Christ in heaven, who have no view of it by faith while they are here in this world, are nothing but self-deceiving imaginations.

Nothing is so easy as to deceive oneself; for what we wish, we readily believe.

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

Therefore do not deceive yourself! Of all deceivers fear most yourself!

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

Only now, when it is too late, do I long for Dearth. I was a misbegotten child of bad blood and bile, and I mistook my own orneriness for cleverness. I presumed to know what happiness was - something I could possess, like a marble, or a man. Something I could only find elsewhere. But just when I started to find it at home, I outfoxed myself and lost it forever.

Our ability to delude ourselves may be an important survival tool.

The lies we tell ourselves. Comforting justifications, designed to try and fill the holes in us. I

Bravado may feel like a shield, but when you're telling yourself lies, it becomes a prison.

I got up and stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, first thinking about how great I looked, then thinking about how the cops weren't going to catch me.

I wanted power so badly that I had convinced myself I already had too much of it, that I was an evil schemer who might destroy everyone around me through the poison seeping out of my pores. I was appalled by my own majesty. I wanted someone to betray.

The idea of sin being able to deceive us, suppressing truth so that we believe a lie, should send shivers down our spines. It is one thing to deceive other people. That is scary enough. It is even more frightening when we realize that each lie we tell leaves us more self-deceived. All practiced sin teaches us to believe lies. WE don't often consider the boomerang effect of our deception. In the end it will get us.

What does your worship look like? Anxiety, despair, shopping, primping, acting like someone you aren't, acting stupid when you are smart, or acting like you don't care when you do? Why do you do it? You are hoping that, if you worship it correctly, the idol will give you what you want. But idols are notoriously slow in responding.

All vampires use self-hypnosis to avoid seeing themselves as they really are, but Histrionics are virtuosos of self-deception. Like stage magicians, they divert their own awareness away from the strings and wires that hold their personalities together. They simply do not see anything in themselves that they consider inappropriate or unlovable. Their image of themselves is like a series of attractive still photos, scenes from a movie with no overall plot to hold them together.

When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself; that's the basic principle of every faith.