44 Self deception Quotes

People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else.

A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.

When cowardice becomes a fashion its adherents are without number, and it masquerades as forbearance, reasonableness and whatnot.

It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer from something; that they are showing the way when they are running away; that they see the light when they feel the heat; that they are chosen when they are shunned.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.

Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves. (From the 'Cosmos' television series, 'Blues for the Red Planet')

Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America.

There's only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but the second-best.

And then he thought: Is this how idiots rationalize their stupidity to themselves? -Ender's Shadow

Mankind naturally and generally love to be flatter'd: Whatever sooths our Pride, and tends to exalt our Species above the rest of the Creation, we are pleas'd with and easily believe, when ungrateful Truths shall be with the utmost Indignation rejected. 'What! bring ourselves down to an Equality with the Beasts of the Field! with the meanest part of the Creation! 'Tis insufferable!' But, (to use a Piece of common Sense) our Geese are but Geese tho' we may think 'em Swans; and Truth will be Truth tho' it sometimes prove mortifying and distasteful.

You can't invent yourself as you maunder on. Your fabrications aren't going to impress the blood test, the urinalysis or the chest X-ray. Science is not amused.

Quite often a man goes on for years imagining that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him.

Science is what we have learned about how not to fool ourselves about the way the world is.

Sometimes I think these self-righteous labors are attempts to impress myself rather than sincere strides toward God.

Sister Carlotta is a nun. You'll never find a more honest person Honest people have been known to deceive themselves

He fears his own murderous heart so much that he won't let himself think of his whole plan openly

A way to make it respond to who a person really is. Cut through all the: Yes? Just wondering Cut through all the ? Stories we tell ourselves. All the lies that we believe about ourselves. About who we really are

People who think they can control their negative emotions and manifest them when they want to, simply deceive themselves. Negative emotions depend on identification; if identification is destroyed in some particular case, they disappear. The strangest and most fantastic fact about negative emotions is that people actually worship them. I think that, for an ordinary mechanical man, the most difficult thing to realise is that his own and other people's negative emotions, have no value whatever and do not contain anything noble, anything beautiful or anything strong. In reality negative emotions contain nothing but weakness and very often the beginning of hysteria, insanity or crime. The only good thing about them is that, being quite useless and artificially created by imagination and identification, they can be destroyed without any loss. And this is the only chance of escape that man has.

The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.

But to go back to Bach-Zelewski - I think Bach-Zelewski has the kind of personality that can't differentiate between the truth and lies. He gets himself so much into the whole thing he can't differentiate. He convinces himself and believes he has gone so far that he has to die for the cause. Originally it was not the truth, but he so convinces himself - he's ready to die for it.

At the outset the solemn asseverations of monarchs and leading statesmen in each nation that they did not want war must be placed on a par with the declarations of men who pour paraffin about a house knowing they are continually striking matches and yet assert they do not want a conflagration. This form of self-deception, which involved the deception of others, is fundamentally dishonest.

I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself.

The good thing about being a hypocrite is that you get to keep your values.

It is the integrity of each individual human that is in final examination. On personal integrity hangs humanity's fate. You can decieve others, you can decieve your brain-self, but you can't decieve your mind-self - for mind deals only in the discovery of truth and the interrelationship of all truths. The cosmic laws with which mind deals are noncorruptible. Cosmic evolution is omniscient God comprehensively articulate.

It is noble to be shy, illustrious not to know how to act, great not to have a gift for living.

Tout le monde se plaint de sa memoire, et personne ne se plaint de son jugement.

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.

Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.

If you use a trick in logic, whom can you be tricking other than yourself? (p. 24e)

He calls his extravagance, generosity; and his trusting everybody, universal benevolence.

Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.

My 'act' has ended by becoming an integral part of my nature, I told myself. It's no longer an act. My knowledge that I am masquerading as a normal person has even corroded whatever of normality I originally possessed, ending by making me tell myself over and over again that it too was nothing but a pretense of normality. To say it another way, I'm becoming the sort of person who can't believe in anything except the counterfeit.

I had long since insisted upon interpreting the things that Fate forced me to do as victories of my own will and intelligence, and now this bad habit had grown into a sort of frenzied arrogance. In the nature of what I was calling my intelligence there was a touch of something illegitimate, a touch of the sham pretender who has been placed on the throne by some freak chance. This dolt of a usurper could not foresee the revenge that would inevitably be wreaked upon his stupid despotism.