Self Deception Quotes

I suppose we all lie to ourselves sometimes.

Even if there are instances in which it can be mistook by onlookers, never fool yourself into using misunderstood genius as an excuse to be a fool.

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")

The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.

I often find that people confuse inner peace with some sense of insensibility whenever something goes wrong. In such cases inner peace is a permit for destruction: The unyielding optimist will pretend that the forest is not burning either because he is too lazy or too afraid to go and put the fire out.

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency -- the belief that the here and now is all there is.

Poor feeling hijacks thinking for self-deception: to hide harsh truths, avoid action, evade responsibility, and, as the existentialists might put it, flee from freedom. Thus, poor feeling is a kind of moral failing, indeed, the deepest kind, and virtue principally consists in correcting and refining our emotions and the values that they reflect. To feel the right thing is to do the right thing, without any particular need for conscious thought or effort.

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.

I believe in my mask-- The man I made up is meI believe in my dance-- And my destiny

One major cost of self-deception is that we use painful life experiences to justify being non-ideal versions of ourselves.

She thought men were saviors......And she looked for more in them than what they were...Only to rescue herself from those she wished would rescue her...And isn't that the most tragic lie...The lie where we tell what we wished were true and believe it...?She had an artificial memory, a prosthesis to a past that never was...She was like a party that no one ever went to...Like a cure...without a disease...And isn't that the greatest fear of all...to be ready with the answersto questions that no one asks anymore?

The truth is that our self-deceptive lies range from seemingly tiny untruths to massive life-altering falsehoods about reality.

The instinct of self-deception in human beings makes them try to banish from their minds dangers of which at the bottom they are perfectly aware by declaring them nonexistent, and a warning such as mine against cheap optimism was bound to prove particularly unwelcome at a moment when a sumptuously laid supper was awaiting for us in the next room.

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?

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

People love answers, but only as long as they are the ones who came up with them.

People hide truths about themselves from themselves. Such self-deception is a coping mechanism, and to one extent or another, most people begin deceiving themselves when they're children.

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

Our covetousness for miracles and wonders leads into self-deception

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.

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

I have never seen battles quite as terrifyingly beautiful as the ones I fight when my mind splinters and races, to swallow me into my own madness, again.

There's that horrible-beautiful moment, that bitter-sweet impasse where you know that somebody is bullshitting you but they're doing it with such panache and conviction...no, it's because they say exactly what you want to hear, at that point in time.

In these circumstances they did what most of us do, and, being ignorant of the truth, persuaded themselves into believing what they wished to believe.

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