Self Deception Quotes

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  • Trivers, pursuing his theory of the emotions to its logical conclusion, notes that in a world of walking lie detectors the best strategy is to believe your own lies. You can’t leak your hidden intentions if you don’t think they are your intentions. According to his theory of self-deception, the conscious mind sometimes hides the truth from itself the better to hide it from others. But the truth is useful, so it should be registered somewhere in the mind, walled off from the parts that interact with other people.

  • In the horrifying calculus of self-deception, the greater the pain we inflict on others, the greater the need to justify it to maintain our feelings of decency and self-worth.

  • We are all members of the same flawed species. Putting our moral vision into practice means imposing our will on others. The human lust for power and esteem, coupled with its vulnerability to self-deception and self-righteousness, makes that an invitation to a calamity, all the worse when the power is directed at a goal as quixotic as eradicating human self-interest.

    Mean   Self   Practice  
  • The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

    Peace   Truth   Lying  
    Mark Twain (2017). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated Edition): Novels, Short Stories, Memoir, Travel Books, Letters, Biography, Articles & Speeches: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi, Yankee in King Arthur's Court…”, p.2818, e-artnow
  • Many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of 'spirituality' or 'mysticism' to be synonymous with mental illness, conscious fraud, or self-deception. I have argued elsewhere that this is a problem - because millions of people have had experiences for which 'spiritual' and 'mystical' seem the only terms available.

    "On Spiritual Truths" by Sam Harris, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 16, 2011.
  • You know, your species [humans] has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched only by its ingenuity in trying to destroy itself.

    Self   Deception   Trying  
  • People always have been and they always will be stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics.

    Freedom   Stupid   Self  
  • There is nothing disastrous in the temporary nature of our ideas. They are always that. But there may very easily be a train of evil in the self-deception which regards them as final. I think God will forgive us our skepticism sooner than our Inquisitions.

    Thinking   Self   Ideas  
    Walter Lippmann (1914). “A Preface to Politics”
  • Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.

    Barbara Tuchman (2015). “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam”, p.13, Crux Publishing Ltd
  • You can fool yourself, you know. You'd think it's impossible, but it turns out it's the easiest thing of all.

    Jodi Picoult (2007). “Vanishing acts”, p.156, Simon and Schuster
  • Food, clothing and shelter — these are the basic needs. Beyond that, if you want anything, it is the beginning of self-deception.

    Self   Deception   Needs  
    "Stopped in Our Tracks, Book Two: Excerpts from U.G.'s Dialogues". Book by K. Chandrasekhar, 2005.
  • The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.

    John Ruskin (1910*). “The Complete Works of John Ruskin”
  • An ideology is a complex of ideas or notions which represents itself to the thinker as an absolute truth for the interpretation of the world and his situation within it; it leads the thinker to accomplish an act of self-deception for the purpose of justification, obfuscation and evasion in some sense or other to his advantage.

    Self   Ideas   Deception  
  • I just can't believe that there won't come a day when people won't be fed-up with being overfed. That they won't get fed-up with the self-deception that all this fantastic food is the whole point of life.

    Believe   Self   People  
    "Audiovisions: Cinema and Television as Entr'actes in History". Book by Siegfried Zielinski, 1999.
  • Good science is more than the mechanics of research and experimentation. Good science requires that scientists look inward-to contemplate the origin of their thoughts. The failures of science do not begin with flawed evidence or fumbled statistics; they begin with personal self-deception and an unjustified sense of knowing.

    Humility   Self   Knowing  
    Robert A. Burton, M.D., M.D. (2008). “On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not”, p.170, Macmillan
  • Maturity is the ability to sort the portions of truth from the accepted lies and self-deceptions that you have grown up with.

    Lying   Maturity   Self  
    Alexei Panshin (1982). “Rite of passage”, Pocket
  • If we can but tear the blindfold of self-deception from our eyes and loosen the gag of self-denial from our voices, we can restore our country to greatness.

    Country   Eye   Greatness  
    "Congressional Record, V. 150, PT. 13, July 22, 2004 to September 14, 2004". Book published by Government Printing Office, p. 18022, 2009.
  • I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

    "In the Land of Memory" by Adam Dunn, edition.cnn.com. October 27, 2000.
  • No one was ever injured by the truth; but he who persists in self-deception and ignorance is injured.

  • Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

    Love   Life   Respect  
    "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.
  • Our capacity for self-deception has no known limits

    Self   Deception   Limits  
    Michael Novak (2011). “Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove: An Invitation to Religious Studies (Third Revised Edition)”, p.50, Transaction Publishers
  • All deception in the course of life is indeed nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and falsehood passing from words into things.

    Life   Lying   Practice  
  • The human mind has an infinite capacity for self-deception.

    Self   Deception   Mind  
  • The weak are not a noble breed. Their sublime deeds of faith, daring, and self-sacrifice usually spring from questionable motives. The weak hate not wickedness but weakness; and one instance of their hatred of weakness is hatred of self. All the passionate pursuits of the weak are in some degree a striving to escape, blur, or disguise an unwanted self. It is a striving shot through with malice, envy, self-deception, and a host of petty impulses; yet it often culminates in superb achievements.

    Hate   Spring   Sacrifice  
    Eric Hoffer (1963). “The Ordeal of Change”
  • I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)

    Christian   Self   Worry  
  • At the very outset I have to tell you that truth is what it is. You cannot mold it, you cannot change it. It is always the same. It has been the same, it is the same, it will be the same. But to say that we know the truth and that we have the truth is really a self-deception. If you had known the absolute truth there would have been no problems and everybody would have said the same thing. There would be no discussions, no arguments, no fights and wars. But when we don't know the absolute truth then we can find out our own mental conceptions as the truth. But this mind is so limited.

    Love   Wisdom   War  
  • It is one of the dangerous self-deceptions of our society to pretend that mechanisms of control do not really exist, and to maintain, without qualification, that we are an economically "free" people.

    Self   People   Deception  
    "The Future As History". Book by Robert Heilbroner, Chapter III, Part 9, The Embrarras De Richesses, p. 150, 1960.
  • If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.

  • He who desires anything but God deceives himself, and he who loves anything but God errs miserably.

    Love   God   Christian  
  • People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.

    Life   Strong   Believe  
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