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Self Deception Quotes

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Self Deception Quotes

“Successful friendship, like successful therapy, is a balance of deference and defiance. It involves showing positive regard, but also calling people on their self-deceptions. The Buddhists have a useful phrase for unconditional positive regard: “idiot compassion,” which is the kind of empathy that never challenges people’s stories or threatens to hurt their feelings. It consoles but also conceals.”

FriendshipBuddhismPositivityTherapySelf DeceptionDefianceDeferenceChallenging
Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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“That depends on how trouble is approached. We came to you nice and slow, and voilà: you can trick nearly anyone into thinking you’re domesticated.” “Don’t talk about me like a dog,” he warns. “Besides which, you forget that I’m first and foremost a scholar.” “Ah, I see. You’re utilizing a rare branch of philosophy: the one founded on lying to yourself because it’s convenient.”

FriendshipSelf DeceptionWitty Banter
Book:Blackpines: The Magpie Witch: The North Star in Eclipse
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“The weak are not a noble breed. Their sublime deeds of faith, daring, and self-sacrifice usually spring from questionable motives. The weak hate not wickedness but weakness; and one instance of their hatred of weakness is hatred of self. All the passionate pursuits of the weak are in some degree a striving to escape, blur, or disguise an unwanted self. It is a striving shot through with malice, envy, self-deception, and a host of petty impulses; yet it often culminates in superb achievements.”

SelfHateSacrificeDegreesAchievementSpringWeaknessShotsWeakHatredStrivePassionateDeedsEnvyNoblePursuitInstanceDeceptionImpulseMotiveHostDaringDisguiseSublimeWickednessPettyMaliceSelf DeceptionSelf SacrificeBlurUnwantedQuestionableSuperb
Book:The Ordeal of Change
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“First, what does truth require? It requires us to face the facts as they are, not to involve ourselves in self-deception; to refuse to think merely in slogans. If we are to work for the future of the city, let us deal with the realities as they actually are, not as they might have been, and not as we wish they were.”

IfsThinkingFirstsDoeHas BeensSelfFactsRealityMightTruthFacesDiesWishDealsCitiesRefuseDeceptionMight Have BeenSlogansSelf Deception
Author:John F. Kennedy
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“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.”

PeopleThinkingInspirationalSuccessLosesBusinessTeacherSucceedSmartLosingIllusionEntrepreneurIntelligenceDelusionSuccess In LifeCongratulationsSelf DeceptionBillionaireStudent SuccessBeing SmartSeducingSmart PeopleBusiness LeadersMotivational SuccessSuccesMeasure Of SuccessFailure InspirationalBecome RichAbout SuccessWill To SucceedDefinition Of SuccessShelf LifeSucceeding In LifeBusiness LifeYoung EntrepreneursQuality In BusinessSuccess Is MeasuredDelusions Of GrandeurFail To SucceedWealth And SuccessChasing SuccessFailure Of LeadershipAcademic SuccessSmart PersonPositive SuccessCelebrate SuccessThinking AlikeBad TeacherExam SuccessSmart ThinkingSmart InspirationalSmart Business
Book:The road ahead
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“Like Karl Kraus [Wittgenstein], was seldom pleased by what he saw of the institutions of men, and the idiom of the passerby mostly offended his ear - particularly when they happened to speak philosophically; and like Karl Kraus, he suspected that the institutions could not but be corrupt if the idiom of the race was confused, presumptuous, and vacuous, a fabric of nonsense, untruth, deception, and self-deception.”

IfsMenSelfSpeakRaceSawsHappenedEarsInstitutionsDeceptionConfusedNonsenseFabricOffendedSelf DeceptionUntruthIdiomPresumptuousVacuousPasserby
Author:Thomas Szasz
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“The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him.”

MenLyingHe ManRespectHuman ExperienceSelf DeceptionLove And RespectTruth And LiesNo RespectDon't LieRespect WomenLove RespectLies TruthRespect PeopleBrothers KaramazovTrust And RespectI Don't LieSelf Respect In LoveLying To YourselfSelf Respect And LoveWomen Self Respect
Book:The Greatest Works of Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment + The Brother's Karamazov + The Idiot + Notes from Underground + The Gambler + Demons (The Possessed / The Devils)
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“Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself. He is humiliated by his simian ancestry, and tries to deny his animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not limited by its weaknesses nor concerned in its fate. And this impulse may be harmless, when it is genuine. But what are we to say when we see the formulas of heroic self-deception made use of by unheroic self-indulgence?”

MenTryingMayMadeSelfUseGivenAnimalFateStrangeWeaknessConcernedNotionDenyGenuineDeceptionImpulseBeastFormulasHeroicIndulgenceSelf DeceptionAncestryHumiliatedCultivatingSelf Indulgence
Author:Upton Sinclair
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“It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise the future can never keep, and I had fallen into the meanest type of self-deception in making myself believe that all this was in preparation for great things to come.”

BelieveSelfPurposeEasyTypePromiseGreat ThingsPreparationDeceptionFallenSelf DeceptionDupesHull House
Book:The Selected Papers of Jane Addams: Vol. 2: Venturing into Usefulness
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“The reinvention of American culture as purely the self catapulted Las Vegas to prominence. The city took sin and made it choice -- a sometimes ambiguous choice, but choice nonetheless. Combined with a visionary approach to experience that melded Hollywood and Americans' taste for comfort and self-deception, Las Vegas grew into the last American frontier city, as foreign at times as Prague but as quintessential as Peoria. In Las Vegas, you can choose your fantasy; in the rest of America, you don't always get to pick.”

MadeSelfSometimesLastsAmericaChoicesCultureSinCitiesFantasyGrewComfortTasteApproachPicksHollywoodMade ItDeceptionFrontiersAmerican CultureVegasLas VegasVisionariesSelf DeceptionAmbiguousReinventionQuintessentialProminencePraguePeoria
Author:Hal Rothman
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“It is probably true that almost all atheists stand for the values of reason and freethought. I will attempt to put these values in more substantial terms. There is the belief that inquiry and doubt are essential checks against deception, self deception, and error. There is the belief that logic and the scientific method is the only way the world can arrive at an agreement on the truth about anything.”

WorldWaySelfReasonValuesBeliefTermDoubtAtheismEssentialsLogicMethodErrorsAtheistChecksDeceptionAgreementInquirySelf DeceptionScientific Method
Author:Richard Carrier
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“An ideology is a complex of ideas or notions which represents itself to the thinker as an absolute truth for the interpretation of the world and his situation within it; it leads the thinker to accomplish an act of self-deception for the purpose of justification, obfuscation and evasion in some sense or other to his advantage.”

WorldIdeasSelfPurposeSituationAtheismAdvantageAbsolutesComplexesNotionAccomplishPositive AtheismIdeologyDeceptionInterpretationThinkerJustificationSelf DeceptionAbsolute TruthEvasionObfuscation
Author:Karl Jaspers
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“Homo religiosus invents religious symbols, which he venerates and worships to save him from facing the finality of his death and dissolution. He devises paradise fictions to provide succor and support... In acts of supreme self-deception, at various times and in various places he has been willing to profess belief in the most incredible myths because of what they have promised him.”

Has BeensSelfBeliefReligiousFictionSupportAtheismWillingWorshipIncrediblesVariousPositive AtheismMythSupremeSymbolsDeceptionParadiseSelf DeceptionDissolutionFinality
Author:Paul Kurtz
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“Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.”

ThinkingSelfPlayFactsGovernmentWishTermActingSituationRolesSourceNotionOneselfContraryFactorsDeceptionFixedAllowingSelf DeceptionWishful ThinkingRejectingAssessing
Book:The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
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“Those who know in their hearts that they are not really necessary -- and are entirely replaceable-- must inevitably be tempted to misrepresent the nature of their work and build up a false notion of its importance. A further alienation from truth takes place, a further loss of contact with reality. And one thing we can be sure of is that self-deception, whether on the level of the wind and the rain or on that of spiritual reality, must always come up against the real sooner or later, and that its destruction is very painful.”

KnowsHeartRealSelfRealitySpiritualLossLevelsOne ThingWindRainDestructionImportanceNotionCome UpPainfulContactDeceptionSooner Or LaterTemptedAlienationSelf Deception
Author:Charles le Gai Eaton
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“Many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of 'spirituality' or 'mysticism' to be synonymous with mental illness, conscious fraud, or self-deception. I have argued elsewhere that this is a problem - because millions of people have had experiences for which 'spiritual' and 'mystical' seem the only terms available.”

PeopleSelfProblemSeemsSpiritualSpiritualityTermMillionsConsciousFellowsAtheistIllnessAvailableMental IllnessDeceptionMysticismFraudElsewhereMysticalSelf Deception
Author:Sam Harris
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“If... deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray - by the subtle signs of self-knowledge - the deception being practiced.' Thus, 'the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naive view of mental evolution.”

IfsWorldSelfFactsTurnsStrongNaturalAnimalViewsProduceCommunicationOughtEvolutionDegreesFundamentalsFavorsNervousSpotsDeceptionMotiveUnconsciousSubtleDeceitBetrayAccurateConventionalSelf KnowledgeSelectionNaiveSelectSelf DeceptionNatural SelectionNervous SystemRendering
Author:Robert Trivers
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