169 Quotes About Self-deception

What further helps to reveal reality is when our personal thinking ceases to take reality for granted.

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.

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.

My message to you is this: pretend that you have free will. It's essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don't. The reality isn't important: what's important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.

The areas in which we felt most insecure, unsafe, unloved, uncomfortable, embarrassed, angry, and generally unresolved as a child are the areas that we will be most prone to self-deception as an adult.

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

Only sensitivity to our own experience can drag us back from self-deception.

On the whole, people deceive themselves through lack of courage rather than lack of clarity about the predicament in which they find themselves-- one may deceive oneself because one lacks the courage to face the implications of one's experience, or simply because that experience is so confused and puzzling that one opts for a relatively non-threatening interpretation of it.

Only sensitivity to our own experience can drag us back from self-deception,