Nothing is so easy as to deceive one's self; for what we wish, that we readily believe; but such expectations are often inconsistent with the real state of things. — Demosthenes
We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves. — Blaise Pascal
We lie best when we lie to ourselves. — Stephen King
There is nothing which deceives us as much as our own judgement. — Leonardo da Vinci
We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves. — Eric Hoffer
Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false Self. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves. — Thomas Merton
We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage. — Albert Camus
Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune. — Carl Jung
The worst of all deceptions is self-deception. — Saul Bellow
Man has the supreme knack of deceiving himself; the Englishman is supremest among men. — Mahatma Gandhi
It is not being deceived, but undeceived, that renders us miserable. — Sophie Arnould
We are all hypocrites. We cannot see ourselves or judge ourselves the way we see and judge others. — Jose Emilio Pacheco
Our minds sometimes see what our hearts wish were true. — Dan Brown
Deceiving Ourselves Image Quotes
It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us.
Deceiving Oneself Quotes
As a painter today you have to work without that essential platform. But if one does not deceive oneself and accepts this lack of certainty, other things may come into play. — Bridget Riley
The most effectual way to be deceived is to believe oneself more cunning than one's neighbors. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld
Thing are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden.
One may rationally stick to a degenerating research programme until it is overtaken by a rival and even after. What one must not do is to deny its poor public record... It is perfectly rational to play a risky game: what is irrational is to deceive oneself about the risk. — Imre Lakatos
To deceive gracefully is the very essence of social life. One must start by deceiving oneself, and make a lifelong practice of deceiving others; if one does it well enough, in time one might even become an artist, the greatest illusionists of all. — Elspeth Huxley
One does not deceive oneself about the consequences of one's acts; one deceives oneself about the ease with which one can live with those consequences. — John Edward
It is in the ability to deceive oneself that the greatest talent is shown. — Anatole France
Within the mind there are no lies-no possibility of deceiving oneself; and yet, somehow we all manage to bypass the safety of truth in pursuit of dangerous desires. — Wes Fesler
Deceiving Yourself Quotes
Don't lose who you are in the blur of the stars Seeing is deceiving, dreaming is believing — Jessie J
Human potential is the same for all. Your feeling, 'I am of no value', is wrong. Absolutely wrong. You are deceiving yourself. We all have the power of thought — so what are you lacking? If you have will-power , then you can do anything. It is usually said that you are your own master. — Dalai Lama
A strong player requires only a few minutes of thought to get to the heart of the conflict. You see a solution immediately, and half an hour later merely convince yourself that your intuition has not deceived you. — David Bronstein
Be sure that you are not deceiving yourself at any time about actual conditions. — John D. Rockefeller
Life is about balance. Be kind, but don’t let people abuse you. Trust, but don’t be deceived. Be content, but never stop improving yourself. — Zig Ziglar
There are so many ways to betray someone. You can whisper behind his back. You can deceive him on purpose. You can deliver him into the hands of his enemy, when he trusts you. You can break a promise. The question is, if you do any of those things, are you also betraying yourself? — Jodi Picoult
Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not 'So there's no God after all,' but 'So this is what God's really like. Deceive yourself no longer. — C. S. Lewis
Seek for the endless life in the world, because with death, there remains neither the seeker nor the sought! The other world is altogether an illusion! Stop deceiving yourself; seek for the endless life in the world! — Mehmet Murat Ildan
I do not believe there is such a thing as a God. — George Holyoake
Fear is good. In the right degree it prevents us from making fools of ourselves. But in the wrong measure it prevents us from fully living. Fear is our boon companion but never our master. — Alan Brennert
If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless. — Bruce Sterling
I do think to some extent multitasking is a way of fooling ourselves that we're being exceptionally efficient. — James Surowiecki
Life is a very sad piece of buffoonery, because we have .. the need to fool ourselves continuously by the spontaneous creation of a reality .. which, from time to time, reveals itself to be vain and illusory. — Luigi Pirandello
Let us not fool ourselves - without Christianity, without Christian education, without the principles of Christ inculcated into young life, we are simply rearing pagans. — Peter Marshall
Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.'s if possible. — R. D. Laing
We must learn to give ourselves permission to blunder, to fail, and to make fools of ourselves every day for the rest of our lives. We do so in any case. — Sheldon B. Kopp
If Jesus Christ isn't the central figure in our lives and in our churches, we're only fooling ourselves. — Aiden Wilson Tozer
This is my child, this is my wealth: such thoughts are the preoccupations of fools. If we are unable to own even ourselves, why make such claims? — Buddha
Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves. — Richard P. Feynman
Self Deception Quotes
If someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, I shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: the harm is to persist in one's own self-deception and ignorance. — Marcus Aurelius
People always have been and they always will be stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics. — Vladimir Lenin
It is the cult of self that is killing the United States. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance ; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt. — Chris Hedges
Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning. — Karen Horney
It's easy to be in motion and convince yourself that you're making progress. — James Clear
All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished. — Marshall B. Rosenberg
We expect more from technology and less from each other. We create technology to provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. — Sherry Turkle
I will not allow yesterday's success to lull me into today's complacency, for this is the great foundation of failure. — Og Mandino
I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened. — Kazuo Ishiguro
It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Fooling Yourself Quotes
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this. — Henry David Thoreau
Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused. — Alan Cohen
All negotiations are defined by a network of subterranean desires and needs. Don’t let yourself be fooled by the surface. Once you know that the Haitian kidnappers just want party money, you will be miles better prepared. — Chris Voss
You will never become who you want to be if you keep blaming everyone else for who you are now. — John Spence
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. — Richard P. Feynman
If you expect the world to be fair with you because you are fair, you're fooling yourself. That's like expecting the lion not to eat you because you didn't eat him. — John Spence
The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too. — Samuel Butler
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself. — Charlie Chaplin
There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. — Cynthia Heimel
You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job. — Laurence J. Peter
Deceiving Others Quotes
Remember: The best deceivers do everything they can to cloak their roguish qualities. They cultivate an air of honesty in one area to disguise their dishonesty in others. Honesty is merely another decoy in their arsenal of weapons. — Robert Greene
Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy. — Blaise Pascal
I think each player has an individual style. Each is concerned with giving the best to his team, and I think my best talent is dribbling and setting up goal situations, giving an assist or deceiving one of the other team's players. — Ronaldinho
You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves. — Saint Francis de Sales
Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. — Oscar Wilde
There's a sort of rage a man feels when he's been deceived where he most trusted. It compares to no other anger. — Orson Scott Card
A cunning woman is her own mistress because she confides in no one. She who deceives others anticipates deceit, and guards herself. — Ninon De L'Enclos
Human beings will continue to deceive and overpower one another. Basically, everyone exists in the very nature of suffering, so to abuse or mistreat each other is futile. The foundation of all spiritual practice is love. That you practice this well is my only request. — Dalai Lama
An attempt to gain a value by deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality. — John Galt
He who has made it a practice to lie and deceive his father, will be the most daring in deceiving others. — Horace
Lying To Yourself Quotes
In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself. — Jiddu Krishnamurti
When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself. — Tecumseh
When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. — Thomas Sowell
Truths are not truths to you unless you realize them within yourself. Without realization, they are just ideas. For spiritual perception, spiritual consciousness, lies not in vague theological ideas, but in the acquisition of Self-realization. — Paramahansa Yogananda
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 Dostoevsky
One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach the ultimate realization of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path is not ready-made, lying there and waiting for you. — Osho [Chandra Mohan Jain]
The lies the government and media tell are amplifications of the lies we tell ourselves. To stop being conned, stop conning yourself. — James Wolcott
You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself. — Marilyn Monroe
Don't be afraid to expand yourself, to step out of your comfort zone. That's where the joy and the adventure lie. — Herbie Hancock
Get better at whatever you’re doing. So what if you suck at it now. Everybody sucks at everything when they start. But if you love it, and don’t lie to yourself, then get better at it. — Joe Rogan
Lies We Tell Ourselves Quotes
Sex is full of lies. The body tries to tell the truth. But, it's usually too battered with rules to be heard, and bound with pretenses so it can hardly move. We cripple ourselves with lies. — Jim Morrison
The biggest lie is the lie we tell ourselves in the distorted visions we have of ourselves, blocking out some sections, enhancing others. What remains are not the cold facts of life, but how we perceive them. That's really who we are. — Kirk Douglas
Deliver us from evil - from moral duplicity and weakness, from laziness and spiritual complacency, from those lies we tell ourselves from our fear of facing the truth. — Rich Mullins
The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we're afraid.We fear we will not find love,and when we find it we fear we'll lose it. We fear that if we don't have love we will be unhappy. — Richard Bach
One of the lies that we tell ourselves is that we're making progress; but Huey's chair's empty. — H. Rap Brown
The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. — Richard Bach
There are some things that we know are just not as pleasant as the lies that we tell ourselves, and in that sense in order to endure existence everyone endures a certain amount of dishonesty in their everyday lives. — Todd Rundgren
Words are such powerful things. We can rip somebody apart with them, we can write words down that can forever hurt another person. We can use them to tell stories and lies. We can misquote them and change what other people said to make ourselves look good. — Joan Bauer
Mythology tells us that where you stumble, there your treasure is ... The world is a match for us, and we’re a match for the world. And where it seems most challenging lies the greatest invitation to find deeper and greater power in ourselves. — Joseph Campbell
And you take care, too, Shahara. Remember the lies we tell ourselves to survive seldom bring peace to our souls. (Nero) — Sherrilyn Kenyon
Deceived Us Quotes
We have been deceived into believing prayer is all about persuading God to release His power. We no longer need to beg or plead; we need to exercise the authority He has given us and receive His blessings. — Andrew Wommack
We must trust to nothing but facts: These are presented to us by Nature, and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation. — Antoine Lavoisier
Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work out salvation... Let us not deceive ourselves: we must elect world peace or world destruction. — Bernard Baruch
The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once. — Rene Descartes
Fortune is a great deceiver. She sells very dear the things she seems to give us. — Vincent Voiture
There is nothing that deceives us more than our own judgment when used to give an opinion on our own works. It is sound in judging the work of our enemies but not that of our friends, for hate and love are two of the most powerfully motivating factors found among living things. — Leonardo da Vinci
Let us not deceive ourselves; we must elect world peace or world destruction. — Bernard Baruch
Being Deceived Quotes
Our labor here is brief, but the reward is eternal. Do not be disturbed by the clamor of the world, which passes like a shadow. Do not let false delights of a deceptive world deceive you. — Clare of Assisi
A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human. — Alan Turing
Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great Minds are Skeptical. — Friedrich Nietzsche
The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists. — Joan Robinson
If the president alone was vested with the power of appointing all officers, and was left to select a council for himself, he would be liable to be deceived by flatterers and pretenders to patriotism. — Roger Sherman
I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another. — Osamu Dazai
Every time I went away I was deceiving my mum. I'd tell her I was going to school but I'd be out on the street playing football. I always had a ball on my feet. — Ronaldo
Wherever there is power, there is age. Don't be deceived by dimples and curls. I tell you that babe is a thousand years old. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
No matter how smart or well-educated you are, you can be deceived. — James Randi
. . . you should know that there is present with you the angel whom God has appointed for each man. . . This angel, who is sleepless and cannot be deceived, is always present with you; he sees all things and is not hindered by darkness. You should know, too, that with him is God. — Anthony the Great
Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him; and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive; for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities; as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight. — Samuel Johnson
The sinister, the terrible never deceive: the state in which they leave us is always one of enlightenment. And only this condition of vicious insight allows us a full grasp of the world, all things considered, just as a frigid melancholy grants us full possession of ourselves. We may hide from horror only in the heart of horror. (“The Medusa”) — Thomas Ligotti
If we judge our lives by what we know or by what we say, we can easily deceive ourselves into thinking that we are something we are not; it is wiser to evaluate ourselves by the amount of truth we actually live. This is very humbling. — Paul Washer
Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others. — Fyodor Dostoevsky
All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince. — Plato
Let us therefore yield ourselves and bow to the authority of the Holy Scriptures, which can neither err nor deceive. — Saint Augustine
Our power knows no limits, yet we cannot find food for a starving child, or a home for a refugee. Our knowledge is without measure and we build the weapons that will destroy us. We live on the edge of ourselves, terrified of the darkness within. We have harmed, corrupted and ruined, we have made mistakes and deceived. — John Le Carre
Do we, holding that the gods exist, deceive ourselves with insubstantial dreams and lies, while random careless chance and change alone control the world? — Euripides
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is no use in deceiving ourselves. American public opinion rejects the market economy, the capitalistic free enterprise system that provided the nation with the highest standard of living ever attained. Full government control of all activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties. — Ludwig von Mises
We would be deceiving both ourselves and the people if we concealed from the masses the necessity of a desperate, bloody war of extermination, as the immediate task of the coming revolutionary action. — Vladimir Lenin
Moving along the upward spiral requires us to learn, commit, and do on increasingly higher planes. We deceive ourselves if we think that any one of these is sufficient. To keep progressing, we must learn, commit, and do-learn, commit, and do-and learn, commit, and do again. — Stephen Covey
While we are indifferent to our good qualities, we keep on deceiving ourselves in regard to our faults, until we come to look on them as virtues. — Heinrich Heine
There is so much wretchedness in the world, that we may safely take the word of any mortal professing to need our assistance; and, even should we be deceived, still the good to ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth more than the trifle by which we purchase it. — Nathaniel Hawthorne
We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more. — Madame Swetchine
I do not believe it is in our nature to love impartially. We deceive ourselves when we think we can love two beings, even our own children, equally. There is always a dominant affection. — Napoleon Bonaparte
It many times falls out that we deem ourselves much deceived in others because we first deceived ourselves. — Philip Sidney
We learn to deceive ourselves while we are trying to deceive others. — Sidney Jourard
We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more. — Sophie Swetchine
The vain.- We are like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities other ascribe to us - in order to deceive ourselves. — Friedrich Nietzsche
We hunger for significance, for signs that our personal existence is of special meaning to the universe. To that end, we’re all too eager to deceive ourselves and others, to discern a sacred image in a grilled cheese sandwich or find a divine warning in a comet — Neil deGrasse Tyson
We do not deceive ourselves that we are engaging in an activity that is anything but debilitating, dangerous, euphoric, kinesthetic, expensive, frivolously essential, economically useless and totally without redeeming social significance. One should not probe for
deeper meanings. — Allen Steck
We are deceiving ourselves if we believe that a literary work written and published in a country where 70 per cent of the population is illiterate, can change the political and social life of the country..it is up to political organization..and not to romantic literature.. to change the present situation. — Zakaria Tamer
We can so easily deceive ourselves, mistaking the presence of physical bodies in a crowd for the existence of spiritual life in a community. — David Platt
Most of all, we must never be deceived. We must never allow ourselves to think that anything in this world succeeds, fails, is given, taken, done, or undone without Allah. It is only by our connection to our Creator that we rise or fall in life, in our relationship with our world—and with all of humanity. — Yasmin Mogahed
Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugationthe last arguments to which kings resort. — Patrick Henry
There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our friends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please --that is, as they please or displease us. — William Hazlitt
When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. — Joan Didion
Long looking at paintings is equivalent to being dropped into a foreign city, where gradually, out of desire and despair, a few key words, then a little syntax make a clearing in the silence. Art... is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar... We have to recognize that the language of art, all art, is not our mother-tongue. — Jeanette Winterson
HIV is no respecter of persons. Any of us could find ourselves with the disease, and then what? We tend to stigmatize as a way to deceive ourselves about our invincibility. But it is a delusion. — Kwame Dawes
Self-love makes us deceive ourselves in almost all matters, to censure others, and to blame them for the same faults that we do not correct in ourselves; we do this either because we are unaware of the evil that exists within us, or because we always see our own evil disguised as a good. — Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable
It is said that ridicule is the test of truth; but it is never applied except when we wish to deceive ourselves - when if we cannot exclude the light, we would fain draw the curtain before it. The sneer springs out of the wish to deny; and wretched must that state of mind be, that wishes to take refuge in doubt. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I do think that sometimes you can invent more palatable or digestible reasons versions or reasons, when perhaps you don't want to admit the truth to yourself, and sometimes we deceive ourselves - along with others - about our reasons and motives. — Adam Brody
It is said that ridicule is the test of truth: it is never applied, but when we wish to deceive ourselves. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon
There is something in us, somehow, that, in the most degraded condition, we snatch at a chance to deceive ourselves into a fanciedsuperiority to others, whom we suppose lower in the scale than ourselves. — Herman Melville
The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive. — W. H. Auden
wrongness always seems to come at us from left field - that is, from outside ourselves. But the reality could hardly be more different. Error is the ultimate inside job. Yes, the world can be profoundly confusing; and yes, other people can mislead or deceive you. In the end, though, nobody but you can choose to believe your own beliefs. — Kathryn Schulz
Commitment to the truth...means a relentless willingness to root out the ways we limit or deceive ourselves from seeing what is, and to continually challenge our theories of why things are the way they are. It means continually broadening our awareness. It also means continually deepening our understanding of the structures underlying current events. — Peter Senge
Fear is another emotion that is strongly suppressed. We cannot afford to be afraid, and so we don't allow ourselves to sense and feel the fear within us. We lower our brows to deny it, set our jaws to defy it, and smile to deceive ourselves. But inwardly we remain scared to death. — Alexander Lowen
We need to stop comparing ourselves to others, and stop patting ourselves on the back for attaining artificial measurements of spirituality. We need to take care that we do not think we are something we are not, or else we may deceive ourselves, setting ourselves up for rebuke in the future when we see Christ face to face — Dan Schilling
In Conclusion
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