Self Delusion Quotes

Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.

A veteran, calm and assured, he pauses for a well-measured moment in the doorway of the office and then, boldly, clearly, with the subtly modulated British intonation which his public demands of him, speaks his opening line, 'Good mor

Christopher Isherwood

We are quiet, contemplative people, and our behaviour in the field is relatively aristocratic. Running is not necessarily beneath our dignity but it is in any case pointless because the flies move much too fast. Consequencly, we stand still, as if on guard, and moreover almost exclusively in blazing sunshine, little breeze and fragrant flowers. Passersby can therefore easily get the impression that the fly hunter is a convalescent of some kind, momentarily lost in meditation. This is not wholly inaccurate.

Fredrik Sjöberg

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

Anthony Marra

Immortality entails not invincibility.

Ahmed Mostafa

If you consulted your business experiences instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter.

G.K. Chesterton

Joe is never sure whether they're mad or just alarmingly and uncompromisingly incapable of self-delusion.

Nick Harkaway

I live in my mind, such that whatever destroys me shall be a creature of my own invention.

Genevieve Ross

It's funny, in a human kind of way, how we can convince ourselves that we're in control at the very moment we are beginning to lose it.

William Moyers

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

T.H. White

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

DaShanne Stokes

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

Harold Holzer

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

Wally Lamb

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’s 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’s a lose-lose proposition. In order to hunt down and accurately tag authenticity, we must first pop the balloon of self-delusion.

Tom Hayes

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

Shannon L. Alder

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

Aesop

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...

Ryan Holiday

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.

Danail Hristov

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.

Howard Pyle

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

Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode Guide Team

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

Anthon St. Maarten

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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.

James Carlos Blake

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.

David L. Wolfe

Gefarhrgeist excelled at convincing themselves. It was their greatest strength and most terrible weakness.

Michael R. Fletcher

I am in good company, simply following those in front of me and knowing others are following behind. We are on our way up a narrow staircase. The bannister is a thick rope suggesting safety. The stairs go around and around inside a church tower; or perhaps it is a minaret? The whorls of the staircase grow narrower and narrower, but as there are so many people behind there is no longer any possibility of turning around or even stopping. The pressure from behind foeces me on. The staircase suddenly stops at a garbage chute in the wall. When i open the hatch and squeeze my way through the hole, i find myself on the outside of the tower. The rope has dissappeared. It is totally dark. I cling on to the slippery, icy wall of the tower while vainly trying to find a foothold in the emptiness.

Sven Lindqvist

Every society produces its own cultural conceits, a set of lies and delusions about itself that thrive in the face of all contrary evidence.

Jack Weatherford

Do not make passion an argument for truth! - O you good-natured and even noble enthusiasts, I know you! You want to win your argument against us, but also against yourself, and above all against yourself!and a subtle and tender bad conscience so often incites you against your enthusiasm! How ingenious you then become in the outwitting and deadening of this conscience! How you hate the honest, the simple, the pure, how you avoid their innocent eyes! That knowing better whose representatives they are and whose voice you hear all too loudly within you, how it casts doubt on your belief- how you seek to make it suspect as a bad habit, as a sickness of the age, as neglect and infection of your own spiritual health! You drive yourself to the point of hating criticism, science, reason! You have to falsify history so that it may bear witness for you, you have to deny virtues so that they shall not cast into the shade those of your idols and ideals! Coloured pictures where what is needed is rational grounds! Ardour and power of expression! Silvery mists! Ambrosial nights! You understand how to illuminate and how to obscure, and how to obscure with light! And truly, when your passion rises to the point of frenzy, there comes a moment when you say to yourself: now I have conquered the good conscience, now I am light of heart, courageous, self-denying, magnificent, now I am honest! How you thirst for those moments when your passion bestows on you perfect self-justification and as it were innocence; when in struggle, intoxication, courage, hope, you are beside yourself and beyond all doubting; when you decree: 'he who is not beside himself as we are can in no way know what and where truth is!' How you thirst to discover people of your belief in this condition - it is that of intellectual vice - and ignite your flame at their torch! Oh your deplorable martyrdom! Oh your deplorable victory of the sanctified lie! Must you inflict so much suffering upon yourself? - Must you?

Friedrich Nietzsche

Humans see what they want to see.

Rick Riordan

Mom has the Touch. She knows what flowers go with what occasions, what hors d'oeuvres work with what people. She believes passionately in the power of food to heal, restore, and stimulate relationships, and she has built a following of loyal customers who really hope she's right. If she's wrong, says Sonia, no one wants to know.

Joan Bauer

Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.

Richard Feynman

Self Delusion Quotes

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