Best 110 quotes in «self deception quotes» category

Tossing out ideas itself was good. Stimulating the conference was something that should be welcomed. I didn’t mind if a formal brainstorm was chosen for the sake of presenting many ideas. But in the brainstorm and conference we were holding where nobody’s ideas were rejected, there was no foreseeable conclusion in sight. The conference I thought was proceeding on smoothly was beginning to look nonsensical. When I noticed, my hands recording the minutes had stopped. I loosely let my hands hang under the desk and sat there in silence watching the conference. The expression that I had was completely different from those who were energetically involved in the discussion. They had vivid and bright smiles floating on their faces. That was when I noticed. They were all enjoying this moment. That’s to say, they were enjoying this exchange between each other. What they wanted wasn’t the very idea of volunteer service, but the self­-acknowledgement of them doing these activities. It’s not that they wanted to do work. They just wanted to be immersed with the feeling of working. They just wanted to feel like they were actually doing it. And then, they would feel like they did everything that they could, where ultimately, everything had turned into nothing.

To understand yourself: Is that a discovery or a creation?

Truthful hyperbole’ is a contradiction in terms. It’s a way of saying, ‘It’s a lie, but who cares?’

We all practice self-deception to a degree; no man can handle complete honesty without being cut at each turn. There's not enough room in a man's head for sanity alongside each grief, each worry, each terror that he owns. I’m well used to burying such things in a dark cellar and moving on.

We are all worth something,' she said. 'Zottas are not worth more than the rest of us. Self-Deception makes us into monsters. Selfishness is an excuse to busy your empathy. People are basically good. Live as though it was the first days of a better [nation].

Well, I know a guy, he's from far far away He's a songwriter, he got something to say He says, "People in this city are too busy to hang out This town's so spread out, no one would hear you if you shout" Everyone's got a script to sell and someplace else they want to be There's always a lock that would open if you could just find the key" (It Ain't Easy Being Green)

We do not have to do with others as "they really are" but with our idea of them. This means that the experience of loss occurs both when we really lose someone and when this someone, for whatever reason, no longer corresponds to the idea we had of him. It is an inner grief just as strong and from which we often defend ourselves, as long as we can, through denial. Denial ends when the energy needed to deny becomes superior to what it takes to process the loss and move on.

While facts do kill ignorance, ignoring facts does not kill them.

What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually just the pretexts for it.

When my wits fail me, I resort to self-deception.

When you are the problem, it's hard to see it.

You are believing not in your god but in yourself if your god knows no better than you do...and yet, in this alone, I am afraid, you have already been fooling yourself.

Who do you think is lying to us?” Shevek demanded. Placid, Bedap met his gaze. “Who, brother? Who but ourselves?

With enough mental gymnastics, just about any fact can become misshapen in favor to one's confirmation bias.

You only reveal your game plan when you know you're winning, or losing.

All belief, without exception, is a form of deceit.

You're such a sucker for sweet talk that you'd lie with every scumbag who comes your way.

[W]henever we heard an unflattering portrait of our own side our first question to ourselves was not “Is this true?” but “What are they trying to hide about themselves by accusing us of this?” Once this mental defense system had been perfected, few criticisms could hit home.

When we successfully deceive others, they are not aware of it; the same is true with self-deception.

A common phrase: I was deceived; an uncommon one: I am deceived.

A genius is no more—and no less—than someone who insists on the truth, while others face the other way.

A lie, like a pill, is easier to swallow when you don't think about it.

A mask can hide you from others, but not from yourself.

Ample figure, dazzling splendour to rest under the bed of soil; blooming dreams and withering numb; pangs of hunger, hitches of joy; dreadful pain, loudest laughter, piteous silence that echoes deep – were they all mere delusion? Yet, I wonder if they were real at least until I close these eyes! O dear! Did your own self deceive you?

As for self-deceit, most people find it as essential for survival as air. You rarely indulge in it.

And the German society of eighty million people had been shielded against reality and factuality by exactly the same means, the same self-deception, lies, and stupidity that had now become engrained in Eichmann's mentality. These lies changed from year to year, and they frequently contradicted each other; moreover, they were not necessarily the same for the various branches of the Party hierarchy or the people at large. But the practice of self-deception had become so common, almost a moral prerequisite for survival, that even now, eighteen years after the collapse of the Nazi regime, when most of the specific content of its lies has been forgotten, it is sometimes difficult not to believe that mendacity has become an integral part of the German national character.

An irreligious society cannot endure the truth of the human condition. It prefers a lie, no matter how idiotic it may be.

Any casual observer can tell at a glance I'm not the person I think I am.

At the present time there still exist many doctrines which choose to leave in the shadow certain troubling aspects of a too complex situation. But their attempt to lie to us is in vain. Cowardice does not pay. Those reasonable metaphysics, those consoling ethics with which they would like to entice us only accentuate the disorder from which we suffer.

At the most basic level, self-deception is fooling ourselves into believing something that is false -- or -- not believing something that is true.

Being dishonest to himself is the biggest crime any human can make

Biology teaches us that we’re competitive social animals, with all the instincts you’d expect from such creatures. And consciousness is useful—that’s why it evolved. So shouldn’t it stand to reason that we’d be hyper-conscious of our deepest biological incentives? And yet, most of the time, we seem almost willfully unaware of them. We all know they’re there. And yet they make us uncomfortable, so we mentally flinch away.

Charlie had always been a sucker for this part... the first days. The days when you let yourself believe the lies... Not just that there's someone who truly sees you... truly understands you... to your soul... but that you even want them to. That's the sweetest lie, the one you tell yourself.

Confirmation bias is the most effective way to go on living a lie.

Deception' is the word I most associate with anorexia and the treachery which comes from falsehood. The illness appears inviting. It would seem to offer something to those unwary or unlucky enough to suffer from it - friendship, a get-out, or a haven - when, in fact, it is a trap.

Does one need to deceive oneself, to understand self-deception! If not, then why do you deceive yourself, by conforming to the social labels, be it a religious label, a non-religious label, a nationalist label, an intellectual label, or a gender label.

Every person is driven to self-deceive, simply to get out of the discomfort of the truth. The best relationships are with people who will not let you be blind. They reveal your hidden strengths and your concealed wounds.

Fantasy and drama appeal to us. They are socially acceptable and make you feel good about yourself. Moreover, you get rewarded for being cleverly ignorant.

Find out what faith is and how you can put it into practice. Learn how to pray, and do it. Discover what pride is, and get rid of it. Develop a self-concept that is adequate and accurate. Clarify your values. Identify your talents. Probe the fact, meaning, and use of your sexuality. Face the fact that you engage in self-deception. Reflect on truth that you are made in the image of God. Use your spiritual gift. Clear your conscience. Feel deeply. Enjoy life. Face death. Treat your body right. Conquer the flesh. Depend on the Holy Spirit. Be humble.

For some, life may be a playground to undermine the brainwaves of others or simply a vainglorious game with an armory of theatrics, illustrating only bleak self-deception, haughty narcissism and dim deficiency in empathy. ("Another empty room")

As time moves on the line will blur. It will no longer seem to be the simplicity of good versus evil, but good versus fools who think they are good.

Be careful not to think that just because you know what a person is going to say, you know what that person is going to do. Be careful not to think that just because you know what a person is going to do to others, you know what that person is going to do (or not do) to you.

Beware of becoming a pawn in your own game.

Marcie: I know you’re still wounded. Danny, you have to let it go. That is what this mind game is all about, discovering who we are.       Humans lie to themselves all the time. There should be no disgrace in being human, that is what I believe.

Did I know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to the bottom, and to be deceived in my own inability; but sprinkling here one word and there another, patterns cut from several pieces and scattered without design and without engaging myself too far, I am not responsible for them, or obliged to keep close to my subject, without varying at my own liberty and pleasure, and giving up myself to doubt and uncertainty, and to my own governing method, ignorance.

Does not people's preoccupation these days with drugs, alcohol, medication and self deception prove that the truth not only hurts, but it is torture to bear?

[He] seemed to possess, beneath it all, an immutable sense of self-assurance, but in addition to that, the look of a man ensnared by what he perceived to be his own Duty. A Duty that effervesced inside of him impatiently, dry at the mouth, shaking feverishly, and holding its breath in anticipation for—not his action, but in fact—the fruits of his actions, however distant these may have been. The goal was to satiate its thirst in as few moves as possible, instilling each action with an almost implied necessity for having a motive by which it must exist, which is to say that no action was to be wasted for anything, but only for that which was rooted in some definable and clear-cut purpose...Every action had to be a step in some direction and there could be no dillydallying, for Duty bubbling in the bloodstream for too long brought with it a kind of sickness...from which it was difficult to recover. Neither could there be any reconsideration, for the values to which one has sworn were unassailable and beyond the powers of one individual to reassess. And so, Duty, once instilled, must be allowed to carry on unabated, diverting sustenance away from other aspects of one’s character—driving them to a weakened state, brow-beaten by circumstances beyond their immediate control and relegated to their own downtrodden acquiescence to the bravado of the Parasitic Superego, and, as such, cognizant of their growing superfluity.

How can a man’s candour be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of? But he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous kind—impetuous, arm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty, reptilian.

Human nature is full of riddles and contradictions; its very complexity engenders art—and by art I mean the search for something more than simple linear formulations, flat solutions, oversimplified explanations. One of these riddles is: how is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find strength to rise up and free themselves, first in spirit and then in body; while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly appear to lose the taste for freedom, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery. Or again: why is it that societies which have been benumbed for half a century by lies they have been forced to swallow find within themselves a certain lucidity of heart and soul which enables them to see things in their true perspective and to perceive the real meaning of events; whereas societies with access to every kind of information suddenly plunge into lethargy, into a kind of mass blindness, a kind of voluntary self deception.

I am not hlier than you, you are not holier than me. Any one who thinks he is holier than the rest deludes himself.