No Self Deception Quotes & Sayings

Being deeply knowledgeable on one subject narrows one's focus and increases confidence, but it also blurs dissenting views until they are no longer visible, thereby transforming data collection into bias confirmation and morphing self-deception into self-assurance. — Michael Shermer

She wanted to have him hold her and tell her all the demons were pretend, that there was no monster in her closet, that everything would be okay. But that was a lie. The demon was in her head, telling her she was too fat. She had to get the demon out. But she couldn't do it by herself. — Jackie Morse Kessler

We all practice self-deception to a degree; no man can handle complete honesty without being cut at each turn. There's not enough room in a man's head for sanity alongside each grief, each worry, each terror that he owns. I'm well used to burying such things in a dark cellar and moving on. — Mark Lawrence

There is no greater shackle than self-deception. A man who denies his heart, either through fear of personal consequence - whether regarding physical jeopardy, or self-doubt, or simply of being ostracized - is not free. To go against your values and tenets, against that which you know is right and true, creates a prison stronger than adamantine bars and thick stone walls. — R.A. Salvatore

Had Beta been French, perhaps he would've been an existentialist, probably though that would not have satisfied him.
He smiled contemptuously at mental speculations, for he remembered seeing philosophers fighting over garbage in the concentration camps.
Human thought had no significance; subterfuge and self-deception were easy to decipher: all that really counted was the movement of matter. — Czeslaw Milosz

No matter how sweet is smells, if you know it will give you a discomfort later, don't even attempt to taste it. Discipline yourself to stay out of sin! — Israelmore Ayivor

And even though he's the father of capitalism and wrote the most famous and maybe the best book ever on why some nations are rich and others are poor, Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments wrote as eloquently as anyone ever has on the futility of pursuing money with the hope of finding happiness. How do you reconcile that with the fact that no one did more than Adam Smith to make capitalism and self-interest respectable? That is a puzzle I try to unravel toward the end of this book. Besides the emptiness of excessive materialism, Smith understood the potential we have for self-deception, the danger of unintended consequences, the seductive lure of fame and power, the limitations of human reason, and the unseen sources of what makes our lives both so complex and yet at times so orderly. The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a book of observations about what makes us tick. As a bonus, almost in passing, Smith tells us how to lead the good life in the fullest sense of that phrase. — Russ Roberts

Feynman's cryptic remark, "no one is that much smarter ... ," to me, implies something Feynman kept emphasizing: that the key to his achievements was not anything "magical" but the right attitude, the focus on nature's reality, the focus on asking the right questions, the willingness to try (and to discard) unconventional answers, the sensitive ear for phoniness, self-deception, bombast, and conventional but unproven assumptions. — Philip Warren Anderson

A genius is no more - and no less - than someone who insists on the truth, while others face the other way. — Neel Burton

The problem with holiness is that once we look into the face of it we are no longer capable of taking that which is odious and filthy and somehow pretending that it's translucent and clean. In other words, we have to do one of the most revolting things possible; we have to face ourselves. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

For twenty-five years I've been speaking and writing in defense of your right to happiness in this world, condemning your inability to take what is your due, to secure what you won in bloody battles on the barricades of Paris and Vienna, in the American Civil War, in the Russian Revolution. Your Paris ended with Petain and Laval, your Vienna with Hitler, your Russia with Stalin, and your America may well end in the rule of the Ku Klux Klan! You've been more successful in winning your freedom than in securing it for yourself and others. This I knew long ago. What I did not understand was why time and again, after fighting your way out of a swamp, you sank into a worse one. Then groping and cautiously looking about me, I gradually found out what has enslaved you: YOUR SLAVE DRIVER IS YOU YOURSELF. No one is to blame for your slavery but you yourself. No one else, I say! — Wilhelm Reich

You are believing not in your god but in yourself if your god knows no better than you do ... and yet, in this alone, I am afraid, you have already been fooling yourself. — Criss Jami

Make no mistake, hiding one's true self away in a closet and creating a facade of heterosexuality is not without its consequences. It may appear to have a degree of safety but from my experience they are very unhealthy places and do all kinds of terrible things to individuals psychologically, emotionally and behaviourally ... to say nothing of projection. The damage of the fear, shame, guilt and self-loathing that exist inside a closet are often reflected unknowingly in the external life of the individual. In or out of the closet; there is a price to pay. Each individual must weigh up the consequences of honesty, openness, secrecy and deception for themselves. Coming out, for most of us, is like an exorcism that releases us of the darkness we have lived in for years and caused us to believe awful things about ourselves. On the other side of the looking glass are freedom, light and life. — Anthony Venn-Brown

What is awakening? Awakening is the cessation of self-deception! Religion is self-deception; fate is self-deception; the idea that there is no death but only continuation is a self-deception! Real awakening is to acquire a scientific mind, it is to meet face to face with the bare realities, and it is to leave the spiritual fallacies and fantasies! And this is real awakening! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

To such perseverance in willful self-deception Elizabeth would make no reply, and immediately and in silence withdrew; determined, that if he persisted in considering her repeated refusals as flattering encouragement, to apply to her father, whose negative might be uttered in such a manner as must be decisive, and whose behavior at least could not be mistaken for the affectation and coquetry of an elegant female. — Jane Austen

If you do have to look at polls, you should do it no more than once every few days, to get a general sense of the state of the race. I've seen the work on information overload, which makes people depressed, stressed and freezes their brains. I know that checking the polls constantly is a recipe for self-deception and anxiety. — David Brooks

As time moves on the line will blur. It will no longer seem to be the simplicity of good versus evil, but good versus fools who think they are good. — Criss Jami

No satisfaction based upon self-deception is solid. — Bertrand Russell

A process of self-deception to satisfy and summarily persuade yourself of righteousness. What one among us has any excuse but self-love? We do not create or confess a morality that is convenient, that lends itself to growth, and remains simple, that allows transgression without excuse or punishment. It would be wise and commonsense to do so, whatever the state of affairs in your mind. Nature eventually denies that which it affirms: Through permanent association with the same moral code we help desire to transgress. Desire of those things denied, the more you restrict the more you sin, but desire equally desires preservation of moral instinct, so desire is its own conflict (and weakly enough). Have no fear, the Bull of earth has long had nothing to do with your unclean conscience, your stagnant ideas of morality. The microbe alone would seem without fear! — Austin Osman Spare

If I had had to write only about imaginary people, I would have had to close up my typewriter. I wrote about my life in less and less disguise as I grew older, and finally with no disguise - except the disguise we create for ourselves, which is self-deception. — William Maxwell

Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless, He is a just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God? But if we do, we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution ... Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and the forgiveness of our sins, we are not dealing with ourselves but with the living God? God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

And as they stood in silence before her, prayed again. "Nothing is altered and in spite of God's mercy I am still alone. Though my suffering seems senseless I am still in agony. There is no explanation of my life." Indeed there was not, nor was this what he'd meant to convey. "Please let Yvonne have her dream
dream?
of a new life with me
please let me believe that all that is not an abominable self-deception," he tried ... "Please let me make her happy, deliver me from this dreadful tyranny of self. I have sunk low. Let me sink lower still, that I may know the truth. Teach me to love again, to love life." That wouldn't do either ... "Where is love? Let me truly suffer. Give me back my purity, the knowledge of the Mysteries, that I have betrayed and lost.
Let me be truly lonely, that I may honestly pray. Let us be happy again somewhere, if it's only together, if it's only out of this terrible world. Destroy the world!" he cried in his heart. — Malcolm Lowry

The mask of self-deception was not longer a mask for me, it was a part of me. Night lifted it, laying bare the stifled truth below; but there was no one to see except myself, and when day broke the mask fell back again of its own accord. — Robert W. Chambers

No prize , however great can justify an ounce of self deception or a small departure of the ugly facts. ( Notes from Underground) — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Here is something for you to write down and remember: facing reality is never pessimistic. Believing the truth, no matter how difficult that may be, is the ultimate act of optimism because it opens up the panorama of options that will free us from further deception. Taking off a blindfold is never an act of pessimism. Getting angry at the truth (or at the messenger who delivers the truth) is a self-deceptive act of narcissistic theater, and it is a colossal waste of time. — Michael Bunker

An irreligious society cannot endure the truth of the human condition.
It prefers a lie, no matter how idiotic it may be. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

No man engaged in a work he does not like can preserve many saving illusions
about himself. The distaste, the absence of glamour, extend from the occupation to the personality. It is only when our
appointed activities seem by a lucky accident to obey the particular earnestness of our temperament that we can taste the comfort of complete self-deception. — Joseph Conrad

The phrase, the world wants to be deceived, has become truer than had ever been intended. People are not only, as the saying goes, falling for the swindle; if it guarantees them even the most fleeting gratification they desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them. They force their eyes shut and voice approval, in a kind of self-loathing, for what is meted out to them, knowing fully the purpose for which it is manufactured. Without admitting it they sense that their lives would be completely intolerable as soon as they no longer clung to satisfactions which are none at all. — Theodor Adorno

Therefore, Christ crucified is the foundation of all honest and everlast- ing joy. No self-deception is necessary to enjoy it. Indeed all deception must cease in order to enjoy it to the full. — John Piper

The web of hypocrisy of today hangs on the frontiers of two domains, between which our time swings back and forth, attaching its fine threads of deception and self-deception. No longer vigorous enough to serve morality without doubt or weakening, not yet reckless enough to live wholly to egoism, it trembles now toward the one and now toward the other in the spider-web of hypocrisy, and, crippled by the curse of halfness, catches only miserable, stupid flies. — Max Stirner

There's no greater perjury than self-deception. Lying to ourselves puts to death our definitive truth. Confronting the lies we've told ourselves, no matter how small, is a difficult endeavor but nothing is more liberating. To be honest with ourselves is the fastest path to self-acceptance. Being authentic about who we are, actually enriches the relationships around us. The truth sets us free and that's no lie. ~Jason Versey — Jason Versey

Martel seems to point to the fact that most people are engaged in forms of self-deception or revisionist history, reworking the narrative of their lives in order to see actions that were motivated by self-interest instead of motivated out of concern for others. ... So what is the "truth"? Martel's message is that it is impossible to ascertain. There is no neat binary. It is always just beyond our grasp - we are all capable of being both victims and victimizers, innocent and guilty, good and bad simultaneously — Melissa A. Fitch

No man was ever so much deceived by another as by himself. — Fulke Greville

The willingness to experience and accept our feelings carries no implication that emotions are to have the last word on what we do. I may not be in the mood to work today; I can acknowledge my feelings, experience them, accept them - and then go to work. I will work with a clearer mind because I have not begun the day with self-deception. — Nathaniel Branden

Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignation with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through one's marked cards- the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed. — Joan Didion

If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed. — Marcus Aurelius

Finally, the optimist's impatience with or condemnation of pessimism often has a smug macho tone to it (although males have no monopoly of it). There is a scorn for the perceived weakness of the pessimist who should instead 'grin and bear it'. This view is defective for the same reason that macho views about other kinds of suffering are defective. It is an indifference to or inappropriate denial of suffering, whether one's own or that of others. The injunction to 'look on the bright side' should be greeted with a large dose of both scepticism and cynicism. To insist that the bright side is always the right side is to put ideology before the evidence. Every cloud, to change metaphors, may have a silver lining, but it may very often be the cloud rather than the lining on which one should focus if one is to avoid being drenched by self-deception. Cheery optimists have a much less realistic view of themselves than do those who are depressed. — David Benatar

Moderate' Muslims, and apologists and propagandists for Islam, will attempt to deny or obscure the real meaning, nature, and intent of jihad. Some will say that jihad means only a Muslim's 'inner struggle' to be a better person, and that jihad has no military meaning whatever. Others will acknowledge that Muslims have a religious duty to spread Islam throughout the world, but insist that it is to be spread only peacefully, through dawah - literally 'the call' - meaning persuasion and reasoning. Finally, some will go so far as to admit that it can also mean warfare, but insist that in Islam, warfare is allowed only in self-defense or against oppression. However, all of these assertions are examples of a tactic that Islam encourages in waging jihad: taqiyya or Kithman - 'lying,' 'deception,' 'deceit.' Muslims are encouraged to lie if, in the opinion of the liar, telling the lie will be 'good' for Islam. This is a documented fact according to both ancient and modern scholars of Islam. — Brigitte Gabriel

The realization is disconcerting because it suggests that in a given disagreement, the other guy might have a point, we may not be as pure as we think, the two sides will come to blows each convinced that it is in the right, and no one will think the better of it because everyone's self-deception is invisible to them. For — Steven Pinker

Marcie: I know you're still wounded. Danny, you have to let it go. That is what this mind game is all about, discovering who we are.
Humans lie to themselves all the time. There should be no disgrace in being human, that is what I believe. — Andrew Neff

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If there's one thing every good novelist understands, it's that our inner world is unreliable and yet there's no getting beyond it. Every sense is subject to deception, including the moral sense. What seems at first like the hard surface of spiritual reality is really fathomless when you dive down into it. There is no bottom. We neve know anything for sure. (p. xvi) — Andrew Klavan

Sometimes I think the urge to believe in our own worldview is our most powerful intellectual imperative, the mind's equivalent of feeding, fighting, and fornicating. People will eagerly twist facts into wholly unrecognizable shapes to fit them into existing suppositions. They'll ignore the obvious, select the irrelevant, and spin it all into a tapestry of self-deception, solely to justify an idea, no matter how impoverished or self-destructive. — Barry Eisler

the mystery of love bespeaks another mystery - the mystery of God. If we refuse to ascribe the name of God to the mystery of love, we shall remain in the throes of endless self-deception. Which means that melancholia cannot but be deeply, inherently religious. It has its human players and counterplayers, yet, in the end, it always comes down to one's personal experience of the mystery, the uncanniness of love. And there is nothing more uncanny than a love that has no knowable boundaries. — Donald Capps

There's that horrible-beautiful moment, that bitter-sweet impasse where you know that somebody is bullshitting you but they're doing it with such panache and conviction ... no, it's because they say exactly what you want to hear, at that point in time. — Irvine Welsh

The Cloud of Unknowing was written by someone who was exceedingly tough-minded in the sense in which William James used the phrase. He was most unsentimental, matter of fact, and down to earth; and he regarded this habit of mind as a prerequisite for the work in which he was engaged. He proceeded upon the belief that when an individual undertakes to bring his life into relation to God, he is embarking upon a serious and demanding task, a task that leaves no leeway for self-deception or illusion. It requires the most rigorous dedication and self-knowledge. The Cloud of Unknowing is therefore a book of strong and earnest thinking. It makes a realistic appraisal of the problems and weaknesses of individual human beings, for it regards man's imperfections as the raw material to be worked with in carrying out the discipline of spiritual development. — Ira Progoff

Nevertheless we are free individuals, and this freedom condemns us to make choices throughout our lives. There are no eternal values or norms we can adhere to, which makes our choices even more significant. Because we are totally responsible for everything we do. Sartre emphasized that man must never disclaim the responsibility for his actions. Nor can we avoid the responsibility of making our own choices on the grounds that we "must" go to work, or we "must" live up to certain middle-class expectations regarding how we should live. Those who thus slip into the anonymous masses will never be other than members of the impersonal flock, having fled from themselves into self-deception. On the other hand our freedom obliges us to make something of ourselves, to live "authentically" or "truly". — Jostein Gaarder

No one was ever injured by the truth; but he who persists in self-deception and ignorance is injured. — Marcus Aurelius

The discovery of this reality is hindered rather than helped by belief, whether one believes in God or believes in atheism. We must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would "lief" or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception. — Alan W. Watts

Humans are born with a susceptibility to that most persistent and debilitating disease of intellect: self-deception. The best of all possible worlds and the worst get their dramatic coloration from it. As nearly as we can determine, there is no natural immunity. Constant alertness is required. — Frank Herbert

The fact is that we have no way of knowing if the person who we think we are is at the core of our being. Are you a decent girl with the potential to someday become an evil monster, or are you an evil monster that thinks it's a decent girl?"
"Wouldn't I know which one I was?"
"Good God, no. The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves. — Derek Landy

Our capacity for self-deception has no known limits — Michael Novak

Modern humanism is the faith that through science humankind can know the truth- and to be free. But if Darwin's theory of natural selection is true this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth. To think otherwise is to resurrect the pre-Darwinian error that humans are different from all other animals. (...) There is no mechanism of selection in the history of ideas akin to that of the natural selection of genetic mutations in evolution.(...) Among humans, the best deceivers are those who deceive themselves: 'we deceive ourselves in order to deceive others better'. A lover who promises eternal fidelity s more likely to be believed if he believes his promise himself; he is no more likely to keep his promise.(...) In a competition for mates, a well-developed capacity for self-deception is an advantage. — John Gray

For I am - or I was - one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all - a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named - but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. This is certainly what my decision, made so long ago in Joey's bed, came to. I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well - by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion. — James Baldwin

It is not brains or intelligence that is needed to cope with the problems with Plato and Aristotle and all of their successors to the present have failed to confront. What is needed is a readiness to undervalue the world altogether. This is only possible for a Christian ... All technologies and all cultures, ancient and modern, are part of our immediate expanse. There is hope in this diversity since it creates vast new possibilities of detachment and amusement at human gullibility and self-deception. There is no harm in reminding ourselves from time to time that the "Prince of this World" is a great P.R. man, a great salesman of new hardware and software, a great electric engineer, and a great master of the media. It is his master stroke to be not only environmental but invisible for the environmental is invincibly persuasive when ignored. — Marshall McLuhan

Well, I know a guy, he's from far far away
He's a songwriter, he got something to say
He says, "People in this city are too busy to hang out
This town's so spread out, no one would hear you if you shout"
Everyone's got a script to sell and someplace else they want to be
There's always a lock that would open if you could just find the key"
(It Ain't Easy Being Green) — Shannon McNally

We all grasp on to a single idea of ourselves, the way aging people dye their hair. It's no matter that this dye doesn't fool you. My lady, you don't dye your hair to decieve other people, or to fool yourself, but rather to cheat your image in your mirror a little. — Luigi Pirandello

By contrast, the late-modern and post-modern self has in essence no essence. To this fragmented, fluid and compartmentalized self, denial, far from being an aberration, is only to be expected. This, however, is not just a change in world-views. Freud himself was quite clear that the unitary self of even the healthiest, 'integrated' person was permanently under siege. The self could never be fully socialized; denial and self-deception are part of being human. — Stanley Cohen

She thought men were saviors ...
... And she looked for more in them than what they were ...
Only to rescue herself from those she wished would rescue her ...
And isn't that the most tragic lie ...
The lie where we tell what we wished were true and believe it ... ?
She had an artificial memory, a prosthesis to a past that never was ...
She was like a party that no one ever went to ...
Like a cure ... without a disease ...
And isn't that the greatest fear of all ... to be ready with the answers
to questions that no one asks anymore? — Merrit Malloy

Freedom like charity, begins at home. No man is worthy to fight in the cause of freedom unless he has conquered his internal masters. He must learn control and discipline over the disastrous passions that would lead him to folly and ruin. He must conquer inordinate vanity and anger, self-deception, fear, and inhibition. — Jack Whiteside Parsons

But I was not my self, confronted with my thoughts. I should also rise up above my thoughts to my own self. My journey goes there, and that is why it leads away from men and events into solitude. Is it solitude, to be with oneself? Solitude is true only when the self is a desert.73 Should I also make a garden out of the desert? Should I people a desolate land? Should I open the airy magic garden of the wilderness? What leads me into the desert, and what am I to do there? Is it a deception that I can no longer trust my thoughts? Only life is true, and only life leads me into the desert, truly not my thinking, that would like to return to thoughts, to men and events, since it feels uncanny in the desert. My soul, what am I to do here? But my soul spoke to me and said, "Wait." I heard the cruel word. Torment belongs to the desert. — C. G. Jung

Although to be driven back upon oneself is an uneasy affair at best, rather like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials, it seems to me now the one condition necessary to the beginning of self-respect. Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. — Joan Didion

At the very outset I have to tell you that truth is what it is. You cannot mold it, you cannot change it. It is always the same. It has been the same, it is the same, it will be the same. But to say that we know the truth and that we have the truth is really a self-deception. If you had known the absolute truth there would have been no problems and everybody would have said the same thing. There would be no discussions, no arguments, no fights and wars. But when we don't know the absolute truth then we can find out our own mental conceptions as the truth. But this mind is so limited. — Nirmala Srivastava