58 Quotes About Self-delusion

Deanna's job (as counselor) is to keep us from deluding ourselves.

It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.

Whatever discoveries have been made in the land of self-delusion, many undiscovered regions remain to be explored.

People often call fighting racism being 'PC' when they don't want to confront their own prejudice

There are so many paths to contentment if you're open to self-delusion.

Of course, that rationalization didn't work at all. It would have helped if I'd had some Oreo cookie ice cream to eat that the same time. I've learned that self-delusion is much easier when there's something sweet in your mouth.

Now there was no sign of any foul weather, but when one wishes to do a thing . . . one finds no lack of reasons for the doing.

We all know dogmatists who are more concerned about holding their opinions than about investigating their truth. ... if they are mistaken, they will never discover it; they have condemned themselves to perpetual error. Human beings (including myself) sometimes use their beliefs for wish-fulfillment. Too often we believe what we want to be true.

The...act of surrender—or devotion, as the case may be—was, to him, a kind of lifeline for those who sought a quick answer and didn’t want to stick around long enough to see their doubt through to its ultimate conclusion. A conclusion, which, of itself, was a bittersweet paradox—for how could doubt simply cease to exist by any stretch of the imagination? Doubt was, nonetheless—from his own perspective—the only inclusive insight into the nature of a Truth exclusive of conditions.