Self Deception Quotes

We are inconsolable at being deceived by our enemies and being betrayed by our friends, yet we are often content in be being treated like that by our own selves.

It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us.

Humans are creatures, who spent their lifes trying to convince themselves, that their existence is not absurd

For usually people resist as long as they can to dismiss the fool they harbor in their bosom, they resist to confess a major mistake or to admit a truth that makes them despair.

The most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one's self.

We torment ourselves rather to make it appear that we are happy than to become so.

Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.

For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.

Take a day to heal from the lies you've told yourself and the ones that have been told to you.

However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else.

When we stand the truth on its head we generally fail to notice that our head is not standing where it should be standing either.

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.

We have more ability than will power, and it is often an excuse to ourselves that we imagine that things are impossible.

Man is very well defended against himself... The actual fortress is inaccessible, even invisible to him, unless his friends and enemies play the traitor and conduct him in by a secret path.

We sometimes think that we hate flattery, but we only hate the manner in which it is done.[Fr., On croit quelquefoir hair la flatterie; maid on ne hait que a maniere de flatter.]

There is nothing that deceives us more than our own judgment when used to give an opinion on our own works. It is sound in judging the work of our enemies but not that of our friends, for hate and love are two of the most powerfully motivating factors found among living things.

We know how often in our lives through laziness and cowardice we give up the battle and try to hypnotise our minds into the belief that we are brave.

To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.

Man is bound to lie about himself

The real trouble is that 'kindness' is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that 'his heart's in the right place' and 'he wouldn't hurt a fly,' though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble.

The only way you can be a mark is if you want something for nothing. If you're greedy, you're set up.

Sometimes in conversation the sound of our own voice distracts us and misleads us into making assertions that in no way express our true opinions.

It now seemed to me that all my other guesses had been only self-pleasing dreams spun out of my wishes, but now I was awake.

Why does man not see things? He is himself standing in the way: he conceals things.

We easily forget our faults when no one knows them but ourselves.

The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others.

The most sure method of subjecting yourself to be deceived is to consider yourself more cunning than others.

when we badly want a thing, we go to hunting for good and righteous reasons for it; we give it that fine name to comfort our consciences, whereas we privately know we are only hunting for plausible ones.

There is nothing everyone is so afraid of as being told how vastly much he is capable of. You are capable of - do you want to know? - you are capable of living in poverty; you are capable of standing almost any kind of maltreatment, abuse, etc. But you do not wish to know about it, isn't that so? You would be furious with him who told you so, and only call that person your friend who bolsters you in saying: 'No, this I cannot bear, this is beyond my strength, etc.

It is almost always a fault of one who loves not to realize when he ceases to be loved.

Never believe anything a writer tells you about himself. A man comes to believe in the end the lies he tells himself about himself.

I tell myself that I know you, and then when I think about it, I realize that I don't.

When men are about to commit, or sanction the commission of some injustice, it is not uncommon for them to express pity for the object either of that or some parallel proceeding, and to feel themselves, at the time, quite virtuous and moral, and immensely superior to those who express no pity at all. This is a kind of upholding of faith above works, and is very comfortable.

Strange that we all defend our wrongs with more vigor than we do our rights.

We get so much in the habit of wearing disguises before others that we finally appear disguised before ourselves.

Every young man is prone to be misled by the suggestions of his own ill-founded ambition which he mistakes for the promptings of asecret genius, and thence dreams of unrivaled greatness.

A man often believes himself leader when he is led; as his mind endeavors to reach one goal, his heart insensibly drags him towards another.

When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.

We are franker towards others than towards ourselves.

To benefit by others' killing and to delude oneself into the belief that one is being very religions and nonviolent is sheer self-deception.

No one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of company.

What we cut off from our other faults is very often but so much added to our pride.

I thought I was fooling people. But it's the old thing of 'they say vodka doesn't smell'. No, not until you sweat. And you just lie and lie and you think 'I can deal with this'. And then you finally go, 'No you can't'. And then you give up.

If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could never harm us.

Immodest creature, you do not want a woman who will accept your faults, you want the one who pretends you are faultless - one who will caress the hand that strikes her and kiss the lips that lie to her.

Men are inconsolable concerning the treachery of their friends or the deceptions of their enemies; and yet they are often very highly satisfied to be both deceived and betrayed by their own selves.

isn't so astonishing, the number of things that I can remember, as the number of things I can remember that aren't so.

The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.

These four, however, seek the freedom of their will at the very point where they are most securely chained. It is as if the silkworm sought freedom of will in spinning. What is the reason?

We should not be upset that others hide the truth from us, when we hide it so often from ourselves.

We must not be so ready to fancy ourselves intentionally injured. We must not expect a lively young man to be always so guarded and circumspect. It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does.

Men are good. But they are poor victims making themselves miserable under the false belief that they are doing good.

The more intelligent and cultured a man is, the more subtly he can humbug himself.

The vain.- We are like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities other ascribe to us - in order to deceive ourselves.

We do not lack strength so much as the will to use it; and very often our imagining that things are impossible is nothing but an excuse of our own contriving, to reconcile ourselves to our own idleness.

We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking.

I call a lie: wanting not to see something one does see, wanting not to see something as one sees it... The most common lie is the lie one tells to oneself; lying to others is relatively the exception.

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

Denial is much more then an Egyptian River.

They feed the crocodile in the hope that he will eat them last.