Quotes About Deception

About as genuine as tea made from a bit of paper which once lay in a drawer beside another piece of paper which had been used to wrap up a few tea leaves from which tea had already been made three times.

There is something frightful in the fact that the most dangerous thing of all, playing at Christianity, is never included in the list of heresies and schisms.

What philosophers say about actuality [Virkelighed] is often just as disappointing as it is when one reads on a sign in a secondhand shop: Pressing Done Here. If a person were to bring his clothes to be pressed, he would be duped, for the sign is merely for sale.

No, like worldly contempt, worldly honor is a whirlpool, a play of confused forces, an illusory moment in the flux of opinions. It is a sense-deception, as when a swarm of insects at a distance seem to the eye like one body; a sense-deception, as when the noise of the many at a distance seems to the ear like a single voice.

Anxiety is freedom's possibility; this anxiety alone is, through faith, absolutely formative, since it consumes all finite ends, discovers all their deceptions.

Such works are mirrors: when an ape peers into them, no Apostle can be seen looking out.

A "no" does not hide anything, but a yes can very easily become a deception, a self-deception; which of all difficulties is the most difficult to conquer. Ah, it is all too true that, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

An illusion can never be destroyed directly, and only by indirect means can it be radically removed... That is, one must approach from behind the person who is under an illusion.

What shall it profit the sick man to imagine himself, as all men do, to be well, if the physician says he is sick!

A man's life is wasted when he lives on, so deceived by the joys of life or by its sorrows, that he never becomes decisively conscious of himself as spirit, as self, that is, he never is aware in the deepest sense that there is a God.

It is not truth that rules the world but illusions.

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true. The other is to refuse to accept what is true.

People do say that now to know oneself is a deception and an imperfection, but often they are unwilling to understand that someone who actually knows himself perceives precisely that he is not capable of anything at all

Zealousness to learn from life is seldom found, but all the more frequently a desire, inclination, and reciprocal haste to be deceived by life.

si pudiera alguien demostrar que no hay que creer absolutamente nada, por causa de la posibilidad del engaño, yo puedo demostrar que hay que creerlo todo, por causa de la posibilidad del engaño.

It is related of a Swedish priest that, profoundly disturbed by the sight of the effect his address produced upon the auditors, who were dissolved in tears, he said soothingly, Children, do not weep; the whole thing might be a lie.

Wenn man die Philosophen von der Wirklichkeit reden hört, so ist das oft ebenso irreführend, wie wenn man im Schaufenster eines Trödlers auf einem Schild die Worte liest: Hier wird gerollt. Wollte man mit seiner Wäsche kommen und sie rollen lassen, so wäre man angeführt. Der Schild hängt nur zum Verkauf da.

Just as a dog which is compelled to walk on two feet has every instant a tendency to go again on all four, and does so as soon as it sees its chance, waiting only to see its chance, so is Christendom an effort of the human race to go back to walking on all fours, to get rid of Christianity, to do it knavishly under the pretext that this is Christianity, claiming that it is Christianity perfected.

Numbers are the most dangerous of all illusions

Is it such a self-deception the present generation has need of, does it need to be trained to virtuosity in self-deception, or is it not rather sufficiently perfected already in the art of deceiving itself?

Dean Bloch introduces the article he writes against me in No. 94 of this newspaper by referring to another article written against me earlier in the same paper by an anonymous author, whose article Dean Bloch (an obsequious Basil) recognizes appreciatively in the strongest and most deferential terms as what might be called a leading article. And there is something in that, for it leads astray

The act of concealing truth is known as 'aavarana', and that of projecting untruth is called 'vikshepa'. When these occur at the level of an individual, it is known as 'avidya' and when they occur at the level of a group or the world, it is known as 'maya'.

How have I survived uncorrupted this long, surrounded by oil-tongued flatterers like you

His grandmother had said to him once, smiling slightly, that if you compelled people to behave as if they believed something eventually all but the strongest-willed really did start to believe it, because it was easier on their pride than admitting every moment in the privacy of their soul that they were pretending.