self-delusion

Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments without difficulty.

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

One paper boasted that its subscription and advertising numbers proved that America did not need the social change it rival paper advocated.

That melting pot stuff was always more about what this country wanted to believe about itself than the way people really felt.

Too many companies_ and individuals_ are befuddled by delusion when it comes to identifying their authentic strengths and projecting those strengths through their brand. It__ as if they live in Opposite Land. If their service is wretched, they tell people that they are great at service. If they are selling a mediocre car, they expound on its hip sportiness. Claiming that you are what you are not will obscure the strengths you do have while destroying your credibility. It__ a lose-lose proposition. In order to hunt down and accurately tag authenticity, we must first pop the balloon of self-delusion.

The most common lie you will ever tell God is your opportunity to do the right thing was taken from you.

I thought these grapes were ripe, but I see now they are quite sour.

At some time during the process, [of writing] I came up with a therapeutic device. After each draft I would tear up the pages and feed the paper to a worm compost I keep in my garage. A few months later, those painful pages were dirt that nourished my yard, which I could walk with bare feet. It was a real and tangible connection to that larger immensity. I liked to remind myself that the same process is going to happen to me when I'm done, when I die and nature tears me up...

Human history is one prolonged and painful limping. We invariably step with one foot on the rock of justice, and with the other, we sink into the mire of deceit and self-delusion.

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.

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

Being the soothsayer of the tribe is a dirty job, but someone has to do it.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

One of the greatest of human follies is that we think we know ourselves so well, that we know how we would act under any conditions, that we would under any circumstance 'do the right thing.' Well, as many have discovered, you don't really know what you'll do in the dark till the lights go out.