self-deception

Did I know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to the bottom, and to be deceived in my own inability; but sprinkling here one word and there another, patterns cut from severalpieces and scattered without design and without engaging myself too far, I am not responsible for them, or obliged to keep close to my subject, without varying at my own liberty and pleasure, and giving up myself to doubt and uncertainty, and to myown governing method, ignorance.

It was strange to Old Robert that he, who knew so much more than his neighbors, who had pondered so endlessly, should be not even a good farmer. Sometimes he imagined he understood too many things ever to do anything well.

Ignorance leads to leaving in self-deception.

The only difference between fiction and religion is that people don't kill themselves over fiction.

Lie long enough and eventually you'll believe yourself.

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

Lying is second nature to him... More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least_ought_to be true.

If you look at your average contemporary person, the potential for tragedy is immense. The people and things we love and value are strewn across the globe. Any number of health disasters can befall you or them.The truth is depressing. We are going to die, most likely after illness; all our friends will likewise die; we are tiny insignificant dots on a tiny planet. Perhaps with the advent of broad intelligence and foresight comes the need for confabulation and self-deception to keep depression and its consequent lethargy at bay. There needs to be a basic denial of our finitude and insignificance in the larger scene. It takes a certain amount of chutzpah just to get out of bed in the morning.

...'fundamentalism' and 'liberalism' and terrorism.' These labels only tell us partial truths. We must use them humbly, guardedly, Niebuhr would say, aware of the limitations of our own vision and of our own capacity for misunderstanding and self-deception.

You only reveal your game plan when you know you're winning, or losing.

Kitsch is the most pernicious of all prisons. The bars are covered with the gold of simplistic, unreal feelings, so that you take them for the pillars of a palace.

Nothing is so deceiving as knowledge.

How can a man__ 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__mpetuous, 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

Only two possible reactions to the mimetic contagion exist, and they make an enormous difference. Either we surrender and join the persecuting crowd, or we resist and stand alone. The first way is the unanimous self-deception we call mythology.

I suppose we all lie to ourselves sometimes.

Our covetousness for miracles and wonders leads into self-deception

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?