Self Delusion Quotes

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Quotes About Self Delusion

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19The Necrotelicomnicon was written by a Klatchian necromancer known to the world as Achmed the Mad, although he preferred to be called Achmed the I Just Get These Headaches. It is said that the book was written in one day after Achmed drank too much of the strange thick Klatchian coffee which doesn't just sober you up, but takes you through sobriety and out the other side, so that you glimpse the real universe beyond the clouds of warm self-delusion that sapient life usually generates around itself to stop it turning into a nutcake. Little ~ Terry Pratchett
Self Delusion quotes by Terry Pratchett
Keep repeating the exercise of grief and it loses meaning, it becomes rote, false, a game of self-delusion, self-indulgence. A way of never getting over anything, ever. ~ Steven Erikson
Self Delusion quotes by Steven Erikson
Politicians or pundits can distort or cherry-pick climate science any way they want to try and gain temporary influence with the public. But any serious industrialist who's facing 'climate exposure' - as it's now called by money managers - cannot afford to engage in that sort of self-delusion. ~ Clive Thompson
Self Delusion quotes by Clive Thompson
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
Self Delusion quotes by Danail Hristov
I have a theory about marriage, Monsieur Boustouler. And it's that nearly always you will know within two weeks if it's going to work. It's astonishing how many people remain shackled for years, decades even, in a protracted and mutual state of self-delusion and false hope when in fact they had their answer in those first two weeks. ~ Khaled Hosseini
Self Delusion quotes by Khaled Hosseini
The great paradox of determinism and free will, which has held the attention of the wisest of philosophers and psychologists for generations, can be phrased in more biological terms as follows: If our genes are inherited, and our environment is a train of physical events set in motion before we were born, how can there be a truly independent agent within the brain? The agent itself is created by the interaction of the genes and the environment. It would appear that our freedom is only a self delusion. ~ E. O. Wilson
Self Delusion quotes by E. O. Wilson
The audience looked at him. They felt he had no chance. They could drop the nameless resentment, the sense of insecurity which he aroused in most people. And so, for the first time, they could see him as he was: a man totally innocent of fear. The fear of which they thought was not the normal kind, not a response to a tangible danger, but the chronic, unconfessed fear in which they all lived. They remembered the misery of the moments when, in loneliness, a man thinks of the bright words he could have said, but had not found, and hates those who robbed him of his courage. The misery of knowing how strong and able one is in one's own mind, the radiant picture never to be made real. Dreams? Self-delusion? Or a murdered reality, unborn, killed by that corroding emotion without name - fear - need - dependence - hatred? ~ Ayn Rand
Self Delusion quotes by Ayn Rand
I seek the truth ... it is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance that does harm. ~ Marcus Aurelius
Self Delusion quotes by Marcus Aurelius
Gefarhrgeist excelled at convincing themselves. It was their greatest strength and most terrible weakness. ~ Michael R. Fletcher
Self Delusion quotes by Michael R. Fletcher
Johnson was insulated from reality by his hopes and dreams. ~ Robert A. Caro
Self Delusion quotes by Robert A. Caro
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
Self Delusion quotes by G.K. Chesterton
I believe nothing. Belief is intellectual surrender; "faith" a state of willed self-delusion. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich
Self Delusion quotes by Barbara Ehrenreich
Sinner, I would be loth to have thy soul destroyed by wilful self-delusion ... So consequently, there is a despair which is a grievous sin; and there is a despair which is absolutely necessary to thy salvation. I would not have thee despair of the sufficiency of the blood of Christ to save thee, if thou believe, and heartily obey him; nor of the willingness of God to pardon and save thee, if thou be such a one; nor yet absolutely of thy own salvation; because, while there is life and time, there is some hope of thy conversion, and so of thy salvation ... Never stick at the sadness of the conclusion, man, but acknowledge plainly, If I die before I get out of this estate, I am lost forever. It is as good deal truly with thyself as not; God will not flatter thee, he will deal plainly whether thou do or not. The very truth is, this kind of despair is one of the first steps to heaven(233). ~ Richard Baxter
Self Delusion quotes by Richard Baxter
The fact that the biosphere responds unpredictably to our actions is not an argument for inaction. It is, however, a powerful argument for caution, and for adopting a tentative attitude toward all we believe, and all we do. Unfortunately, our species has demonstrated a striking lack of caution in the past. It is hard to imagine that we will behave differently in the future.
We think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so. We never seem to acknowledge that we have been wrong in the past, and so might be wrong in the future. Instead, each generation writes off earlier errors as the result of bad thinking by less able minds
and then confidently embarks on fresh errors of its own.
We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self-aware, yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind. ~ Michael Crichton
Self Delusion quotes by Michael Crichton
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
Self Delusion quotes by Jack Weatherford
However hard some things are to understand, it is never helpful to start picking and choosing biblical truths we find congenial, as if the Bible is an open-shelved supermarket where we are at perfect liberty to choose only the chocolate bars. For the Christian, it is God's Word, and it is not negotiable. What answers we find may not be exhaustive, but they give us the God who is there, and who gives us some measure of comfort and assurance. The alternative is a god we manufacture, and who provides no comfort at all. Whatever comfort we feel is self-delusion, and it will be stripped away at the end when we give an account to the God who has spoken to us, not only in Scripture, but supremely in his Son Jesus Christ. ~ D. A. Carson
Self Delusion quotes by D. A. Carson
As for the myths, take anyone's life and deny that most of it is deliberate self-delusion - an aggrandizement - a mixture of lies and truth, of what was wanted and what was had, producing the necessary justification for having been granted life in the first place. I was struck like a match, Lily wrote. I had no option but to burn.
You can put a period after that. Lily did. It was the story of her life. ~ Timothy Findley
Self Delusion quotes by Timothy Findley
Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) - neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice. ~ William Hazlitt
Self Delusion quotes by William Hazlitt
There are so many paths to contentment if you're open to self-delusion. ~ Anthony Marra
Self Delusion quotes by Anthony Marra
I learned that I never really know the true story of my guests' lives, that I have to content myself with knowing that when I'm interviewing somebody, I'm getting a combination of fact and truth and self-mythology and self-delusion and selective memory and faulty memory. ~ Terry Gross
Self Delusion quotes by Terry Gross
The human capacity for self-delusion is limitless ~ Sarah Fine
Self Delusion quotes by Sarah Fine
Even an obvious fabrication is some comfort when you have few others. ~ Margaret Atwood
Self Delusion quotes by Margaret Atwood
A form of self-delusion. ~ Elbert Hubbard
Self Delusion quotes by Elbert Hubbard
Writing is very hard mostly because until you try to write something down, it's easy to fool yourself into believing you understand things. Writing is terrible for vanity and self-delusion. ~ Mark Vonnegut
Self Delusion quotes by Mark Vonnegut
Since I no longer expect anything from mankind except madness, meanness, and mendacity; egotism, cowardice, and self-delusion, I have stopped being a misanthrope. ~ Irving Layton
Self Delusion quotes by Irving Layton
Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves. ~ Richard Feynman
Self Delusion quotes by Richard Feynman
Medicine, and Law, and Philosophy -
You've worked your way through every school,
Even, God help you, Theology,
And sweated at it like a fool.
Why labour at it any more?
You're no wiser now than you were before.
You're Master of Arts, and Doctor too,
And for ten years all you've been able to do
Is lead your students a fearful dance
Through a maze of error and ignorance.
And all this misery goes to show
There's nothing we can ever know.
Oh yes you're brighter than all those relics,
Professors and Doctors, scribblers and clerics,
No doubts or scruples to trouble you,
Defying hell, and the Devil too.
But there's no joy in self-delusion;
Your search for truth ends in confusion.
Don't imagine your teaching will ever raise
The minds of men or change their ways.
And as for worldly wealth, you have none -
What honour or glory have you won?
A dog could stand this life no more.
And so I've turned to magic lore;
The spirit message of this art
Some secret knowledge might impart.
No longer shall I sweat to teach
What always lay beyond my reach;
I'll know what makes the world revolve,
Its mysteries resolve,
No more in empty words I'll deal -
Creation's wellsprings I'll reveal! ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Self Delusion quotes by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
The constant, obvious flattery, contrary to all evidence, of the people around him [Tsar Nicholas I] had brought him to the point that he no longer saw his contradictions, no longer conformed his actions and words to reality, logic, or even simple common sense, but was fully convinced that all his orders, however senseless, unjust, and inconsistent with each other, became sensible, just, and consistent with each other only because he gave them. ~ Leo Tolstoy
Self Delusion quotes by Leo Tolstoy
Ruthven surmised that he had hit upon some of the central deceptions which had wrecked him and reduced him and so many of his colleagues to this condition. To surmise was not to conquer, of course; he was as helpless as ever but there was a dim liberation in seeing how he had been lied to, and he felt that at least he could take one thing from the terrible years through which he had come: he was free of self-delusion. ~ Barry N. Malzberg
Self Delusion quotes by Barry N. Malzberg
Your cowardly self-delusions about "love" when you know as well as I do that there's never been anything between us but contempt and distrust and a terrible sickly dependence on each other's weakness- that's why. That's why I couldn't stop laughing about the Inability to Love, and that's why I can't stand to let you touch me, and that's why I'll never again believe in anything you think, let alone anything you say ~ Richard Yates
Self Delusion quotes by Richard Yates
I am not holier than you, you are not holier than me. Any one who thinks he is holier than the rest deludes himself. ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana
Self Delusion quotes by Bangambiki Habyarimana
Men educate each other in reason by contact or collision, and keep each other sane by the very conflict of their separate hobbies. Society as a whole is the deadly enemy of the particular crotchet of each, and solitude is almost the only condition in which the acorn of conceit can grow to the oak of perfect self-delusion. ~ Edwin Percy Whipple
Self Delusion quotes by Edwin Percy Whipple
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Self Delusion quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Love is the self-delusion we manufacture to justify the trouble we take to have sex. ~ Daniel S. Greenberg
Self Delusion quotes by Daniel S. Greenberg
The most common lie you will ever tell God is your opportunity to do the right thing was taken from you. ~ Shannon L. Alder
Self Delusion quotes by Shannon L. Alder
Men, unlike mockingbirds, have the capacity for systematic self-delusion. We echo each other with equal precision, equal eloquence, equal assurance. ~ Robert Ardrey
Self Delusion quotes by Robert Ardrey
It is a truly radical experience for a clergyperson to admit that their beliefs, and the faith that they have long articulated, have lost their meaning. It is more than the dark night of the soul; it is the utter abandonment of a worldview that, after thorough study, reflection, and lived experience, fails to withstand critique both intellectually and emotionally. It is a revelation that uncomfortably exposes the internal architecture of self-delusion and the social and religious constructs that buttress these imaginative ideologies. It is a journey that all members of the Clergy Project have taken, myself included. ~ Catherine Dunphy
Self Delusion quotes by Catherine Dunphy
The atheist view is correspondingly life-affirming and life-enhancing, while at the same time never being tainted with self-delusion, wishful thinking, or the whingeing self-pity of those who feel that life owes them something. ~ Richard Dawkins
Self Delusion quotes by Richard Dawkins
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. ~ Lee Goldberg
Self Delusion quotes by Lee Goldberg
Every time one can write a self-deluded song, you are way ahead of the game, way ahead. Self-delusion is the basis of nearly all the great scenes in all the great plays, from 'Oedipus' to 'Hamlet.' ~ Stephen Sondheim
Self Delusion quotes by Stephen Sondheim
The Norweigian philosopher Tonnesen said that to think about anything but death is evasion. Society, art, culture, the whole of civilisation is nothing but evasion, one great collective self delusion, the intention of which is to make us forget that all the time we are falling through the air, at every moment getting closer to death. ~ Sven Lindqvist
Self Delusion quotes by Sven Lindqvist
It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness. ~ Calvin Coolidge
Self Delusion quotes by Calvin Coolidge
That melting pot stuff was always more about what this country wanted to believe about itself than the way people really felt. ~ Wally Lamb
Self Delusion quotes by Wally Lamb
Phaethon asked: "Do you think there is something wrong with the Sophotechs? We are Manorials, father! We let Rhadamanthus control our finances and property, umpire our disputes, teach our children, design our thoughtscapes, and even play matchmaker to find us wives and husbands!"

"Son, the Sophotechs may be sufficient to advise the Parliament on laws and rules. Laws are a matter of logic and common sense. Specially designed human-thinking versions, like Rhadamanthus, can tell us how to fulfill our desires and balance our account books. Those are questions of strategy, of efficient allocation of resources and time. But the Sophotechs, they cannot choose our desires for us. They cannot guide our culture, our values, our tastes. That is a question of the spirit."

"Then what would you have us do? Would you change our laws?"

"Our mores, not our laws. There are many things which are repugnant, deadly to the spirit, and self-destructive, but which law should not forbid. Addiction, self-delusion, self-destruction, slander, perversion, love of ugliness. How can we discourage such things without the use of force? It was in response to this need that the College of Hortators evolved. Peacefully, by means of boycotts, public protests, denouncements, and shunnings, our society can maintain her sanity against the dangers to our spirit, to our humanity, to which such unboundried liberty, and such potent technology, exposes us."

(...) But Phaethon ~ John C. Wright
Self Delusion quotes by John C. Wright
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 Sjoberg
Self Delusion quotes by Fredrik Sjoberg
Odor in his clothes and beard and flesh too which I believed was the smell of powder and glory, the elected victorious but know better now: know now to have been only the will to endure, a sardonic and even humorous declining of self-delusion which is not even kin to that optimism which believes that that which is about to happen to us can ~ William Faulkner
Self Delusion quotes by William Faulkner
There's always an element of self delusion among people who believe they ought to be President. There's an underestimation of your opponent and an overestimation of your own abilities. This is compatible with being rich and powerful, the idea that we were blessed by God because we deserve to be blessed. ~ Jimmy Carter
Self Delusion quotes by Jimmy Carter
I find it strange how some men simply give up their soul to a woman, and act in obedience to their will. I find it stranger that those same women, are ignorant to the belief that this isn't his real face. Most women don't know what their man looks like when he's not in-love with them. But when that mystical spell is broken, it's like a person seeing the true face of God; only realizing that you simply never understood ... their real self. ~ Lionel Suggs
Self Delusion quotes by Lionel Suggs
Laurent had known who he was, and had still made love to him. He wondered what mix of yearning and self-delusion had allowed Laurent to do that. ~ C.S. Pacat
Self Delusion quotes by C.S. Pacat
If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I think the truth , which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence and self-delusion and ignorance which does harm. ~ Marcus Aurelius
Self Delusion quotes by Marcus Aurelius
Faith is a device of self-delusion, a sleight of hand done with words and emotions founded on any irrational notion that can be dreamed up. Faith is the attempt to coerce truth to surrender to whim. In simple terms, it is trying to breath life into a lie by trying to outshine reality with the beauty of wishes. Faith is the refuge of fools, the ignorant, and the deluded,not of thinking rational people. ~ Terry Goodkind
Self Delusion quotes by Terry Goodkind
Then I began to smell it again, like each time he returned, like the day back in the spring when I rode up on the drive standing in one of his stirrups - that odor in the his clothes and beard and flesh too which I believed was the smell of powder and glory, the elected victorious but know better now: know now to have been only the will to endure, a sardonic and even humorous declining of self-delusion which is not even kin to that optimism which believes that that which is about to happen to us can possibly be the worst which we can suffer. ~ William Faulkner
Self Delusion quotes by William Faulkner
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
Self Delusion quotes by James Carlos Blake
But then in all his words if not deeds Jefferson was so beautifully human, so eminently vague, so entirely dishonest but not in any meretricious way. Rather it was a passionate form of self-delusion that rendered Jefferson as president and as man (not to mention as writer of tangled sentences and lunatic metaphors) confusing even to his admirers. Proclaiming the unalienable rights of man for everyone (excepting slaves, Indians, women and those entirely without property), Jefferson tried to seize the Floridas by force, dreamed of a conquest of Cuba, and after his illegal purchase of Louisiana sent a military governor to rule New Orleans against the will of its inhabitants. ~ Gore Vidal
Self Delusion quotes by Gore Vidal
I'd actually love to think that I could trust Kerry on national security. But the only way I could do that, at this point, would be via self-delusion. ~ Glenn Reynolds
Self Delusion quotes by Glenn Reynolds
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
Self Delusion quotes by Howard Pyle
History is the lies of the victors, ~ Julian Barnes
Self Delusion quotes by Julian Barnes
To reduce the demands of God's law is to do violence to the holiness of God. To inflate one's own self-assessment to the point of self-delusion is an extreme form of pride. ~ R.C. Sproul
Self Delusion quotes by R.C. Sproul
Believing in the second coming itself is anything but arrogant. The whole point of it is to insist, over against not only the wider pagan world, but against all self-delusion or pretension within the church, that Jesus remains sovereign and will return at last to put everything right. This putting right (the biblical word for it is "justice") is the sort of sigh-of-relief event that the whole world, at its best and at many other times too, longs for most deeply. All sorts of things are out of joint, both on a large and a small scale, in the world; and God the creator will put them straight. All sorts of things are still going wrong, corrupting the lives of human beings and the larger life of the environment, the planet itself; God the creator will put them right. All sorts of things are still wrong with us, Jesus's followers; Jesus, when he comes, will put us right as well. That may not be comfortable, but it's what we need. ~ N. T. Wright
Self Delusion quotes by N. T. Wright
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 ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Self Delusion quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche
For the optimal realization of our possibilities, we need to trust ourselves and we need to admire ourselves, and the trust and admiration need to be grounded in reality, not generated out of fantasy and self-delusion. ~ Nathaniel Branden
Self Delusion quotes by Nathaniel Branden
The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion - in the long run, these are the only people who count. ~ Robert A. Heinlein
Self Delusion quotes by Robert A. Heinlein
He wondered whether there was any love between human beings that did not rest upon some sort of self-delusion ... ~ John Le Carre
Self Delusion quotes by John Le Carre
Self-Evaluation is healthy and constructive. Denial and self-delusion is DESTRUCTIVE. ~ Michelle Cook-Hall
Self Delusion quotes by Michelle Cook-Hall
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
Self Delusion quotes by William Moyers
It's the bell curve again," I said to Ishtar. "If - as Lazarus thinks, and statistics back him up - every migration comes primarily from the right-hand end of the normal-incidence curve of human ability, then this acts as a sorting device whereby the new planet will show a bell curve with a much higher intelligence norm than the population it came from…and the old planet will average almost imperceptibly stupider."

"Imperceptible except for one thing!" Lazarus objected.

"That tiny fraction that hardly shows statistically is the brain. I recall a country that lost a key war by chasing out a mere half dozen geniuses. Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion - in the long run these are the only people who count and they are the very ones who migrate when it is physically possible to do so ~ Robert A. Heinlein
Self Delusion quotes by Robert A. Heinlein
It was as if his apostasy from the faith of his fathers, filling him with the fiery zeal of the convert, and particularly of the convert to heresy, had blinded him to every other element in the gigantic self-delusion of civilized man. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Self Delusion quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche
There is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual ~ James Russell Lowell
Self Delusion quotes by James Russell Lowell
Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves the single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, slaughtered - is this the essential of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable? ~ Han Kang
Self Delusion quotes by Han Kang
Fox News seems much more conservative than it is because no other television network over the past half-century has been anything but decidedly liberal. When the media norm is liberal, liberals equate liberalism with objectivity and deviations from it as bias, just as liberals preach tolerance toward all ideas - except conservative ones. Their self-delusion is surreal. ~ David Limbaugh
Self Delusion quotes by David Limbaugh
We lost our faith and went around wondering what life was for. If art was no more than a frustrated out-flinging of desire, if religion was no more than self-delusion, what good was life? Faith had always given us answers to all things. But it all went down the drain with Freud and Darwin. We were and still are a lost people. ~ Ray Bradbury
Self Delusion quotes by Ray Bradbury
The notion of the perfect time is more than myth. It's the ultimate self-delusion. ~ Gina Greenlee
Self Delusion quotes by Gina Greenlee
Self-delusion is one of the funniest things there is. ~ Douglas Coupland
Self Delusion quotes by Douglas Coupland
Human beings have an almost unlimited capacity for self-delusion. We can justify any amount of sadness if it fits our own particular standard of reality. ~ John Twelve Hawks
Self Delusion quotes by John Twelve Hawks
As a matter of face, Zen is at present most fashionable in America among those who are least concerned with moral discipline. Zen has, indeed, become for us a symbol of moral revolt. It is true, the Zen-man's contempt for conventional and formalistic social custom is a healthy phenomenon, but it is healthy only because it presupposes a spiritual liberty based on freedom from passion, egotism and self-delusion. A pseudo-Zen attitude which seeks to justify a complete moral collapse with a few rationalizations based on the Zen Masters is only another form of bourgeois self-deception. It is not an expression of healthy revolt, but only another aspect of the same lifeless and inert conventionalism against which it appears to be protesting. ~ Thomas Merton
Self Delusion quotes by Thomas Merton
Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments without difficulty. ~ T.H. White
Self Delusion quotes by T.H. White
The author concedes that humanity had the fatal tendency to shape truth to our beliefs rather than beliefs to the Truth. ~ Frank Turek
Self Delusion quotes by Frank Turek
The Salem [witch] trials…can be seen as an example of the propensity of the American people to be convulsed by spasms of self-righteous rage against enemies, real or imaginary, of their society and way of living. Hence the parallels later drawn between Salem in 1692 and the "Red Scare" of 1919-20, Senator McCarthy's hunt for Communists in the early 1950's, the Watergate hysteria of 1973-74, and the Irangate hunt of the 1980s. What strikes the historian, however, is not just the intensity of the self-delusion in the summer of 1692, by no means unusual for the age, but the speed of the recovery from it in the autumn, and the anxiety of the local government and society to confess wrongdoing, to make reparation and search for the truth. That indeed is uncommon in any age. In the late 17th century it was perhaps more remarkable than the hysteria itself and a good augury for America's future as a humane and truth-seeking commonwealth. The rule of law did indeed break down, but it was restored with promptness and penitence. ~ Paul Johnson
Self Delusion quotes by Paul Johnson
We who were not so pathologically far out on the spectrum of self-involvement, we dwellers of the visible spectrum who could imagine how it felt to go beyond violet but were not ourselves beyond it, could see that David was wrong not to believe in his lovability and could imagine the pain of not believing in it. How easy and natural love is if you are well! And how gruesomely difficult--what a philosophically daunting contraption of self-interest and self-delusion love appears to be--if you are not! And yet ... the difference between well and not well is in more respects a difference of degree than of kind. Even though David laughed at my much milder addictions and liked to tell me that I couldn't even conceive of how moderate I was, I can still extrapolate from these addictions, and from the secretiveness and solipsism and radical isolation and raw animal craving that accompany them, to the extremity of his. I can imagine the sick mental pathways by which suicide comes to seem like the one consciousness-quenching substance that nobody can take away from you. ~ Jonathan Franzen
Self Delusion quotes by Jonathan Franzen
You can fool yourself, you know. You'd think it's impossible, but it turns out it's the easiest thing of all. ~ Jodi Picoult
Self Delusion quotes by Jodi Picoult
Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings. ~ Dan Simmons
Self Delusion quotes by Dan Simmons
Beautiful self-delusion: Isn't that what being young is all about? You think you're immortal until one day when you're around sixty, it hits you: you see and Ingmar Bergman-y specter of death and you do some soul searching and possibly adopt a kid in need. You resolve to live the rest of your life in a way you can be proud of. But I am not one of those young people. I've been obsessed with death since I was born. ~ Lena Dunham
Self Delusion quotes by Lena Dunham
Deanna's job (as counselor) is to keep us from deluding ourselves. ~ Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode Guide Team
Self Delusion quotes by Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode Guide Team
AUDIO LOG TRANSCRIPT: SOL 119

You know what!? Fuck this! Fuck this airlock, fuck that Hab, and fuck this whole planet!
Seriously, this is it! I've had it! I've got a few minutes before I run out of air and I'll be damned if I spend them playing Mars's little game. I'm so god damned sick of it I could puke!
All I have to do is sit here. The air will leak out and I'll die.
I'll be done. No more getting my hopes up, no more self-delusion, and no more problem-solving. I've fucking had it!

AUDIO LOG TRANSCRIPT: SOL 119 (2)

Sigh...okay. I've had my tantrum and now I have to figure out how to stay alive. ~ Andy Weir
Self Delusion quotes by Andy Weir
This praise of his strategic abilities was especially pleasing to [Tsar] Nicholas, because, though he was proud of his strategic abilities, at the bottom of his heart he was aware that he had none. And now he wanted to to hear more detailed praise of himself. ~ Leo Tolstoy
Self Delusion quotes by Leo Tolstoy
Sometimes, when you don't ask questions, it's not because you are afraid that someone will lie to your face. It's because you're afraid they'll tell you the truth. ~ Jodi Picoult
Self Delusion quotes by Jodi Picoult
If the awareness of our limitations begins to limit or to dim our value consciousness as well - as happens, for instance, in old age with regard to the values of youth - then we have already started the movement of devaluation which will end with the defamation of the world and all its values. Only a timely act of resignation can deliver us from this tendency toward self-delusion. ~ Max Scheler
Self Delusion quotes by Max Scheler
Writing is the perfect balance between self-confidence and self-doubt, with a bit of self-delusion thrown in. ~ Judith Kelman
Self Delusion quotes by Judith Kelman
Not complete inaction, which is an error, a confusion, a self-delusion, an impossibility, but action full and
free done without subjection to sense and passion, desireless and unattached works, are the first secret of perfection. ~ Sri Aurobindo
Self Delusion quotes by Sri Aurobindo
An honorable human relationship – that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love" – is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.

It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.

It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us. ~ Adrienne Rich
Self Delusion quotes by Adrienne Rich
I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self-delusion, so it's no problem for me to believe that I'm somebody else! ~ Daniel Day-Lewis
Self Delusion quotes by Daniel Day-Lewis
She wished Bennie were here; only Bennie could appreciate the depth of self-delusion she was witnessing. "Let me get this straight," she said. "You want to do a lot of interviews and press around the fact that you're an ailing and decrepit shadow of your former self. And then you want to do a tour - ~ Jennifer Egan
Self Delusion quotes by Jennifer Egan
Vanity, wounded pride, rejection, self-delusion. I could recite a litany of little pinpricks that finally produce a gaping wound. That's how marriages and friendships come apart. ~ Helen Van Slyke
Self Delusion quotes by Helen Van Slyke
They knew how to live with nature and get along with nature. They didn't try too hard to be all men and no animal. That's the mistake we made when Darwin showed up. We embraced him and Huxley and Freud, all smiles. And then we discovered that Darwin and our religions didn't mix. Or at least we didn't think they did. We were fools. We tried to budge Darwin and Huxley and Freud. They wouldn't move very well. So, like idiots, we tried knocking down religion. We succeeded pretty well. We lost our faith and went around wondering what life was for. If art was no more than a frustrated outflinging of desire, if religion was no more than self-delusion, what good was life? Faith had always given us answer to all things. But it all went down the drain with Freud and Darwin. We were and still are lost people. ~ Ray Bradbury
Self Delusion quotes by Ray Bradbury
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 morning!'
And the three secretaries - each of them a charming and accomplished actress in her own chosen style - recognise him instantly, without even a flicker of doubt, and reply 'Good morning' to him. (There is something religious here, like responses in church; a reaffirmation of faith in the basic American dogma, that it is, always, a Good Morning. Good, despite the Russians and their rockets, and all the ills and worries of the flesh. For of course we know, don't we, that the Russians and the worries are not real? They can be unsought and made to vanish. And therefore the morning can ve made to be good. Very well then, it is good. ~ Christopher Isherwood
Self Delusion quotes by Christopher Isherwood
I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless. ~ John Steinbeck
Self Delusion quotes by John Steinbeck
What was the nature of the universe into which she had been born? Why did it exist at all? If it had a purpose, what was it? These seemed to her the only questions worth exploring. And the only valid technique evolved by humans for exploring such questions was the scientific method, a robust and self-correcting search for the truth. Yet it had become obvious to her since about the age of twelve that science as it had progressed so far – physics, chemistry, biology, all the rest – had only inched towards grappling with the true questions, the fundamentals. Those questions had only been addressed by theologians and philosophers, it seemed to her. Unfortunately, their answers were a mush of doubt, self-delusion and flummery that had probably done more harm than good. And yet that was all there was. ~ Terry Pratchett
Self Delusion quotes by Terry Pratchett
The essence of foreign policy, is deciding which son of a bitch to support -in 1941, Hitler or Stalin; in 1972, Brezhnev or Mao; in 1979, Somoza or Ortega. One has to choose. A blanket anti-son of a bitch policy, like a blanket anti-ethnic cleansing policy, is soothing, satisfying and empty. It is not a policy at all but righteous self-delusion. ~ Charles Krauthammer
Self Delusion quotes by Charles Krauthammer
Each memory was brought to life before me and within me. I could not avoid them. Neither could I rationalize, explain away. I could only re-experience with total cognizance, unprotected by pretense. Self delusion was impossible, truth exposed in this blinding light. Nothing as I thought it had been. Nothing as I hoped it had been. Only as it had been. ~ Richard Matheson
Self Delusion quotes by Richard Matheson
If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. ~ Ronald Reagan
Self Delusion quotes by Ronald Reagan
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