169 Quotes About Self-deception

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

To live a lie may allow us to avoid the truth, but the real lie lays in believing that we can avoid the truth in the first place.

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

The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state....The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.

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

I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.

The best lies about me are the ones I told.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.