100 Quotes About Self Deception

The truth is painful. It makes us feel vulnerable, weak, and scared. It can be hard to accept that we are not always right or that the way we see things is wrong. And to make matters worse, it’s often related to our own behavior Read more

The human mind is an amazing thing; it can be confusing, beautiful, and powerful. But often, the mind can also play tricks on us, deceive us into believing things that aren’t true. These deception quotes will help you to become aware of the self-deception you may need to overcome so you can have a more positive outlook on your world.

1
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
2
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
I lie to myself all the time. But I never...
3
I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me. S.E. Hinton
Stop lying to yourself. When we deny our own truth,...
4
Stop lying to yourself. When we deny our own truth, we deny our own potential. Steve Maraboli
What further helps to reveal reality is when our personal...
5
What further helps to reveal reality is when our personal thinking ceases to take reality for granted. Criss Jami
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty...
6
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. Leo Tolstoy
People love answers, but only as long as they are...
7
People love answers, but only as long as they are the ones who came up with them. Criss Jami
I believe in my mask-- The man I made up...
8
I believe in my mask-- The man I made up is me I believe in my dance-- And my destiny Sam Shepard
The only difference between fiction and religion is that people...
9
The only difference between fiction and religion is that people don't kill themselves over fiction. Ahmed Mostafa
Ignorance leads to leaving in self-deception.
10
Ignorance leads to leaving in self-deception. Sunday Adelaja
11
It was strange to Old Robert that he, who knew so much more than his neighbors, who had pondered so endlessly, should be not even a good farmer. Sometimes he imagined he understood too many things ever to do anything well. John Steinbeck
12
Did I know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to the bottom, and to be deceived in my own inability; but sprinkling here one word and there another, patterns cut from severalpieces and scattered without design and without engaging myself too far, I am not responsible for them, or obliged to keep close to my subject, without varying at my own liberty and pleasure, and giving up myself to doubt and uncertainty, and to myown governing method, ignorance. Michel De Montaigne
13
So the paradox goes: No man who is really ignorant is ever aware that he is ignorant. That is its finest, most faulty manifestation; there can be no true ignorance without first some claim of intelligence or consciousness, or superiority or enlightenment. Criss Jami
The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision...
14
The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency -- the belief that the here and now is all there is. Allan Bloom
Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst...
15
Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears. Rudyard Kipling
16
I often find that people confuse inner peace with some sense of insensibility whenever something goes wrong. In such cases inner peace is a permit for destruction: The unyielding optimist will pretend that the forest is not burning either because he is too lazy or too afraid to go and put the fire out. Criss Jami
No matter how crazy or hard a man acts sometimes...
17
No matter how crazy or hard a man acts sometimes he has a soft side. AuliqIce
18
Thus, you see, he arrived at the same end, via supposed duty, that he was previously pledged to via interest. I fancy a good number of us, when any line of action will promote our own interest, can make ourselves believe that reasons exist which compel us to it as a duty. Elizabeth Gaskell
Here's to love at first sight, and here's to getting...
19
Here's to love at first sight, and here's to getting over it the moment you blink. Ahmed Mostafa
I think that before and after we kissed are two...
20
I think that before and after we kissed are two different timelines. Ahmed Mostafa
I'd like to believe that my kiss has made you...
21
I'd like to believe that my kiss has made you see me in a whole different light. Ahmed Mostafa
22
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
Sometimes the shackles of oneself are worse than those of...
23
Sometimes the shackles of oneself are worse than those of others. Ahmed Mostafa
24
Human nature is full of riddles and contradictions; its very complexity engenders art–and by art I mean the search for something more than simple linear formulations, flat solutions, oversimplified explanations. One of these riddles is: how is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find strength to rise up and free themselves, first in spirit and then in body; while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly appear to lose the taste for freedom, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery. Or again: why is it that societies which have been benumbed for half a century by lies they have been forced to swallow find within themselves a certain lucidity of heart and soul which enables them to see things in their true perspective and to perceive the real meaning of events; whereas societies with access to every kind of information suddenly plunge into lethargy, into a kind of mass blindness, a kind of voluntary self deception. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I have never seen battles quite as terrifyingly beautiful as...
25
I have never seen battles quite as terrifyingly beautiful as the ones I fight when my mind splinters and races, to swallow me into my own madness, again. Nicole Lyons
26
There is no deception on the part of the woman, where a man bewilders himself: if he deludes his own wits, I can certainly acquit the women. Whatever man allows his mind to dwell upon the imprint his imagination has foolishly taken of women, is fanning the flames within himself -- and, since the woman knows nothing about it, she is not to blame. For if a man incites himself to drown, and will not restrain himself, it is not the water's fault. John Gower
27
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. Saul Bellow
28
History is a set of lies agreed upon. Unknown
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Reality denied comes back to haunt. Philip K. Dick
30
Time and time over it is the ones who try a little too hard to be innovative rebels - and for the sheer glory of being considered innovative rebels - who then turn out not quite as innovative or as rebellious as they would like to think they are. Criss Jami
31
People are always talking about it being their duty to find their way to their fellow men – to their neighbour, as they are forever saying with all the baseness of false sentiment – when in fact it is purely and simply a question of finding their way to themselves. Let each first find his way to himself! And since hardly anyone has yet found his way to himself, it is inconceivable that any of these unfortunate millions has ever found his way to another human being – or to his neighbour, as they say, dripping with self-deception. Thomas Bernhard
32
The instinct of self-deception in human beings makes them try to banish from their minds dangers of which at the bottom they are perfectly aware by declaring them nonexistent, and a warning such as mine against cheap optimism was bound to prove particularly unwelcome at a moment when a sumptuously laid supper was awaiting for us in the next room. Stefan Zweig
33
People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort. Thomas Hardy
34
One major cost of self-deception is that we use painful life experiences to justify being non-ideal versions of ourselves. Cortney S. Warren
35
Sometimes, we expect life to work a certain way and when it doesn’t we blame others or see it as a sign, rather than face the pain of the choices we should or shouldn’t have made. Real healing won’t begin until we stop saying, “God prevented this or that.” Often in our attempt to protect ourselves from pain, we leave things to fate and don’t take chances. Or, we don’t work hard enough to keep the blessings we are given. Maybe, we didn't recognize a blessing, until it was too late. Often, it is the lies we tell ourselves that keeps us stuck in a delusion of not being responsible for our lives. We leave it all up to God. The truth is we are not leaves blowing toward our destiny without any control. To believe this is to take away our freedom of choice and that of others. The final stage of grief is acceptance. This can’t be reached through always believing God willed the outcomes in our lives, despite our inaction or actions. To think so is to take the easy escape from our accountability. Sometimes, God has nothing to do with it. Sometimes, we just screwed up and guarded our heart from accepting it, by putting our outcome on God as the reason it turned out the way it did. Faith is a beautiful thing, but without work we can give into a mysticism of destiny that really doesn't teach us lessons or consequences for our actions. Life then becomes a distorted delusion of no accountability with God always to blame for battles we walked away from, won or loss. Shannon L. Alder
36
Language is something you inherit, it's never just you doing the talking, which helps when you're pretending. Cees Nooteboom
37
Fantasy and drama appeal to us. They are socially acceptable and make you feel good about yourself. Moreover, you get rewarded for being cleverly ignorant. Saurabh Sharma
38
The notion of the perfect time is more than myth. It's the ultimate self-delusion. Gina Greenlee
39
My message to you is this: pretend that you have free will. It's essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don't. The reality isn't important: what's important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has. Ted Chiang
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The truth is that our self-deceptive lies range from seemingly tiny untruths to massive life-altering falsehoods about reality. Cortney S. Warren
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Reality blithely ignores the lies we tell ourselves about it. Chris Cogan
42
Raging crime, class warfare, invasive immigrants, light morals, public misbehavior. Always we convince ourselves that the parade of unwelcome and despised is a new phenomenon, which is why the phrase "the good old days" has passed from cliché to self-parody. Anna Quindlen
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Confirmation bias is the most effective way to go on living a lie. Criss Jami
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If you say it very softly, with a smile, you can get away with saying almost anything, even the truth. Neel Burton
45
Perhaps the strangest thing about this illusion of control is not that it happens but that it seems to confer many of the psychological benefits of genuine control. In fact, the one group of people who seem generally immune to this illusion are the clinically depressed, who tend to estimate accurately the degree to which they can control events in most situation. Daniel M. Gilbert
46
To live a lie may allow us to avoid the truth, but the real lie lays in believing that we can avoid the truth in the first place. Craig D. Lounsbrough
47
The fine thing about pacts with the devil is that when you sign them you are well aware of their conditions. Otherwise, why would you be recompensed with hell? Umberto Eco
48
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
49
In these circumstances they did what most of us do, and, being ignorant of the truth, persuaded themselves into believing what they wished to believe. Arrian
50
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
51
Of what use was memory anyway than as a template for one's most reassuring self-deceptions! Ashim Shanker
52
More fundamentally, 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
53
Self-deception and vanity are grievous sin. The ego is the cause of all human suffering. We suffer from life only when we fail to examine the cause of our sorrow. Letting go of destructive illusions and freeing oneself from egotism of self-pity enables a person to sense the rich intertexture of their inner world, which is the only facet of reality that we exercise exclusive dominion and control. Kilroy J. Oldster
54
Every person is driven to self-deceive, simply to get out of the discomfort of the truth. The best relationships are with people who will not let you be blind. They reveal your hidden strengths and your concealed wounds. Vironika Tugaleva
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Thank you for undusting my true colors; or color: black... Oh, how I missed the darkness! Ahmed Mostafa
56
It is necessary to write, that much is clear, and to write in a way quite unlike any way which I have employed before. Iris Murdoch
57
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
58
For us, then, life is a confidence trick we must run on ourselves, hoping we do not catch on to any monkey business that would leave us stripped of our defense mechanisms and standing stark naked before the silent, staring void. To end this self-deception, to free our species of the paradoxical imperative to be and not to be conscious, our backs breaking by degrees upon a wheel of lies, we must cease reproducing. Nothing less will do. Thomas Ligotti
59
To understand yourself: Is that a discovery or a creation? Pascal Mercier
60
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
61
Persecution complexes are reaffirming to those who benefit from unearned privileges. DaShanne Stokes
62
Be careful not to think that just because you know what a person is going to say, you know what that person is going to do. Be careful not to think that just because you know what a person is going to do to others, you know what that person is going to do (or not do) to you. Clifford Cohen
63
Every culture that’s ever existed has operated under the illusion that it understood 95% of reality and that the other 5% would be delivered in the next 18 months, and from Egypt forward they’ve been running around believing they had a perfect grip on things and yet we look back at every society that preceded us with great smugness at how naive they all were. Well, it never occurs to us, then, that maybe we’re whistling in the dark too! That the universe is stranger than you CAN suppose, and that that openness that that perception imparts is a great joy, a great blessing, because then you can live your life not in service to some fascistic metaphor but in service to the living mystery: the fact that you’re not going to understand it; it is not going to yield to logic; or magic; or any other technique that’s been developed… . Terence McKenna
64
Even if there are instances in which it can be mistook by onlookers, never fool yourself into using misunderstood genius as an excuse to be a fool. Criss Jami
65
Being dishonest to himself is the biggest crime any human can make Loknath
66
The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others. Friedrich Nietzsche
67
If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself. W. Somerset Maugham
68
The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves. Derek Landy
69
And the German society of eighty million people had been shielded against reality and factuality by exactly the same means, the same self-deception, lies, and stupidity that had now become engrained in Eichmann's mentality. These lies changed from year to year, and they frequently contradicted each other; moreover, they were not necessarily the same for the various branches of the Party hierarchy or the people at large. But the practice of self-deception had become so common, almost a moral prerequisite for survival, that even now, eighteen years after the collapse of the Nazi regime, when most of the specific content of its lies has been forgotten, it is sometimes difficult not to believe that mendacity has become an integral part of the German national character. Hannah Arendt
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Truthful hyperbole’ is a contradiction in terms. It’s a way of saying, ‘It’s a lie, but who cares?’  Tony Schwartz
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With enough mental gymnastics, just about any fact can become misshapen in favor to one's confirmation bias. Criss Jami
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Perhaps the most tragic way that self-deception harms us is that we start believing our lies and we teach them to others. Cortney S. Warren
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A mask can hide you from others, but not from yourself. Marty Rubin
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Any casual observer can tell at a glance I'm not the person I think I am. Marty Rubin
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Poor feeling hijacks thinking for self-deception: to hide harsh truths, avoid action, evade responsibility, and, as the existentialists might put it, flee from freedom. Thus, poor feeling is a kind of moral failing, indeed, the deepest kind, and virtue principally consists in correcting and refining our emotions and the values that they reflect. To feel the right thing is to do the right thing, without any particular need for conscious thought or effort. Neel Burton
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When you are the problem, it's hard to see it. Marty Rubin
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Find out what faith is and how you can put it into practice. Learn how to pray, and do it. Discover what pride is, and get rid of it. Develop a self-concept that is adequate and accurate. Clarify your values. Identify your talents. Probe the fact, meaning, and use of your sexuality. Face the fact that you engage in self-deception. Reflect on truth that you are made in the image of God. Use your spiritual gift. Clear your conscience. Feel deeply. Enjoy life. Face death. Treat your body right. Conquer the flesh. Depend on the Holy Spirit. Be humble. J. Grant Howard
78
The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state.. The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard. . Henry David Thoreau
79
There are a great number of ego defenses, and the combinations and circumstances in which we use them reflect on our personality. Indeed, one could go so far as to argue that the self is nothing but the sum of its ego defenses, which are constantly shaping, upholding, protecting, and repairing it. The self is like a cracked mask that is in constant need of being pieced together. But behind the mask there is nobody at home. . Neel Burton
80
At the present time there still exist many doctrines which choose to leave in the shadow certain troubling aspects of a too complex situation. But their attempt to lie to us is in vain. Cowardice does not pay. Those reasonable metaphysics, those consoling ethics with which they would like to entice us only accentuate the disorder from which we suffer. Simone De Beauvoir
81
Man cannot bear to be in the wrong. As soon as he feels guilt or remorse, he bends his ethics to suit himself. Actions do not flow from ethics, but ethics from actions, and it is by refining our actions that we refine our ethics. Neel Burton
82
Deception' is the word I most associate with anorexia and the treachery which comes from falsehood. The illness appears inviting. It would seem to offer something to those unwary or unlucky enough to suffer from it - friendship, a get-out, or a haven - when, in fact, it is a trap. Carol Lee
83
For some, life may be a playground to undermine the brainwaves of others or simply a vainglorious game with an armory of theatrics, illustrating only bleak self-deception, haughty narcissism and dim deficiency in empathy. ("Another empty room") Erik Pevernagie
84
You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission. Flannery OConnor
85
At the most basic level, self-deception is fooling ourselves into believing something that is false -- or -- not believing something that is true. Cortney S. Warren
86
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 answersto questions that no one asks anymore? . Merrit Malloy
87
Does not people's preoccupation these days with drugs, alcohol, medication and self deception prove that the truth not only hurts, but it is torture to bear? James Turner
88
A genius is no more–and no less–than someone who insists on the truth, while others face the other way. Neel Burton
89
Ample figure, dazzling splendour to rest under the bed of soil; blooming dreams and withering numb; pangs of hunger, hitches of joy; dreadful pain, loudest laughter, piteous silence that echoes deep — were they all mere delusion? Yet, I wonder if they were real at least until I close these eyes! O dear! Did your own self deceive you? Preeth Nambiar
90
Our covetousness for miracles and wonders leads into self-deception Sunday Adelaja
91
I suppose we all lie to ourselves sometimes. Cassandra Clare
92
Only two possible reactions to the mimetic contagion exist, and they make an enormous difference. Either we surrender and join the persecuting crowd, or we resist and stand alone. The first way is the unanimous self-deception we call mythology. Unknown
93
How can a man’s candour be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of? But he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous kind–impetuous, arm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty, reptilian. George Eliot
94
Nothing is so deceiving as knowledge. Marty Rubin
95
Kitsch is the most pernicious of all prisons. The bars are covered with the gold of simplistic, unreal feelings, so that you take them for the pillars of a palace. Pascal Mercier
96
You only reveal your game plan when you know you're winning, or losing. Ahmed Mostafa
97
...'fundamentalism' and 'liberalism' and terrorism.' These labels only tell us partial truths. We must use them humbly, guardedly, Niebuhr would say, aware of the limitations of our own vision and of our own capacity for misunderstanding and self-deception. Krista Tippett
98
If you look at your average contemporary person, the potential for tragedy is immense. The people and things we love and value are strewn across the globe. Any number of health disasters can befall you or them. The truth is depressing. We are going to die, most likely after illness; all our friends will likewise die; we are tiny insignificant dots on a tiny planet. Perhaps with the advent of broad intelligence and foresight comes the need for confabulation and self-deception to keep depression and its consequent lethargy at bay. There needs to be a basic denial of our finitude and insignificance in the larger scene. It takes a certain amount of chutzpah just to get out of bed in the morning. William Hirstein
99
Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
100
Lie long enough and eventually you'll believe yourself. Ahmed Mostafa