Quotes About Self-deception

Was it not her constant study to second the will of Heaven? -- But, alas! she often fell into the terrible mistake of taking for the will of Heaven, the vain imaginings of her own brain.

We cannot afford to be afraid, and so we don't allow ourselves to sense and feel the fear within us. We lower our brows to deny it, set our jaws to defy it, and smile to deceive ourselves. But inwardly we remain scared to death.

Liars lie to others and they lie to themselves without even the concept of lying arising in their minds because this concept doesn't exist for them. There is no judgment, remorse, guilt, worry, or condemnation because lying is not a right or wrong thing. It just is. An axiomatic "Given." To

That man has always lied, to himself and to others, is indisputable. He has lied for the sheer fun of it—the fun of exercising this astounding gift of being able to "say what is not so," creating by his word a world for which he alone is responsible. Also, he has lied in self-defense: the lie is a weapon. It is the preferred weapon of the underdog and the weakling.

If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

The fool within himself is the object of pity, until he is flattered.

We always want to congratulate ourselves at having made more progress than we actually have.

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

Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other, but it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves.

It would be wrong to believe that the deceivers at this game are sharply separated from the deceived, that the world is neatly divided between the cold calculators and the innocent dupes. Everybody is a little of both; you must be a dupe of your own comedy to play it with conviction. The romantic and satanic vision of the cold calculator, of the totally lucid manipulator of other people's desires, is a more sophisticated version of the narcissistic illusion.

Only two possible reactions to the mimetic contagion exist, and they make an enormous difference. Either we surrender and join the persecuting crowd, or we resist and stand alone. The first way is the unanimous self-deception we call mythology.

What if we are all capable of lying to ourselves? But the story didn't bother Naomi. Instead it reassured her confirming that the stories we tell ourselves have more meaning than the facts. That doesn't make them lies. Seeded with every myth was the emotional truth.

Hay gente tan corrupta que no se da cuenta de su propia corrupción

As great-grandchildren of the Enlightenment, we like to think of ourselves as free moral agents, choosing rationally among possible actions, but Scripture unmasks that cheerful illusion and teaches us that we are deeply infected by the tendency to self-deception.

The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we're afraid.

The falseness of your own hearts, if you look not to them, may undo you(15).

Such people are trapped in their own hall of mirrors, and for them there is no escape. They can never know whether they are wrong, even when they are. No evidence, no logic, no reason will ever get through to them.

The urge to self-deception, which seemed to Keynes fundamental to untrained and thoughtless people, was what he most resisted. Public opinion he recognized as gullible, uninformed, wayward and super-abundant in misplaced confidence. Improvisations, expedients and thoughtless half-truths led to blunders, as he was to demonstrate in The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

More painful than her naivete is the fact that she doesn't believe herself to be naive. Should you make the mistake of asking her why she's doing something so stupid, she'll explain it to you.

And he told himself, reader, that it was the cloth that he desired and not the light.

To be sure," wrote Hugo Wolf, "I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds.

be sure," wrote Hugo Wolf, "I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds.

Why, Mr. Stevens, why, why, why do you always have to pretend?

As a writer, I am more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.