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Self Delusion Quotes

Browse 88 quotes about Self Delusion.

Self Delusion Quotes

“Being the soothsayer of the tribe is a dirty job, but someone has to do it.”

TruthHonestyIntegrityAuthenticityDenialProphetTruth QuotesRevelationTruth And LiesTruth TellingPsychicSelf DelusionFranknessVeracitySeerTribeOracleBrutally HonestPsychic AbilitiesFortune TellerPsychic MediumSelf DeceitSpeaking TruthsStraightforwardnessRevealing TruthDivinerExposing LiesSoothsayerSoothsayersPredictorReveal WeaknessesBeing BluntDirty JobForecasterForeteller
Author:Anthon St. Maarten
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“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." [Modernism's Patriarch (Time Magazine, June 10, 1996)]”

ArtDoubtSelf EsteemGreatnessHumilityConfidenceFameDepressionSelf AwarenessInsecurityCreative ProcessNarcissismIntrospectionGreat ArtArtistsGreat ArtistSelf DoubtSelf DelusionCezanneFame And FortuneSelf Esteem Or Lack ThereofDepression HumorSelf DoubtsPaul Cezanne
Author:Robert Hughes
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“Ceux d'entre nous qui ignorent le secret consistant à régler au plus juste leur propre existence sur cet océan tumultueux de tracas absurdes que nous appelons la vie, ceux-là vivent dans un état de souffrance permanente - tout en s'efforçant, mais en vain, de paraître heureux et satisfaits. Nous chancelons en tentant de conserver notre équilibre moral, et nous voyons des signes précurseurs de tempête dans chaque nuage flottant à l'horizon. Quelle joie et quelle beauté; cependant, dans le déferlement des vagues qui roulent vers l'éternité ! Pourquoi ne pas pénétrer l'esprit de la vague, ou comme Lie-tseu, chevaucher l'ouragan lui-même ?”

ExistenceWorryTaoismJoy Of LifeBeauty Of LifeSelf DelusionBalance In LifeSuffering Of Humanity
Book:The Book of Tea
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“Government of the world begins in us. It's not the sincere who govern the world, but neither is it the insincere; it's those who create in themselves a real sincerity by artificial and automatic means. This sincerity is what makes them strong, and it outshines the less false sincerity of others. To be adept at deluding oneself is the first prerequisite for a statesman. Only poets and philosophers see the world as it really is, for only to them is it given to live without illusions. To see clearly is to not act.”

GovernmentClaritySincerityPoetsPoliticiansSelf DelusionDelusionsPhilosophers
Book:The Book of Disquiet
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“We are quiet, contemplative people, and our behaviour in the field is relatively aristocratic. Running is not necessarily beneath our dignity but it is in any case pointless because the flies move much too fast. Consequencly, we stand still, as if on guard, and moreover almost exclusively in blazing sunshine, little breeze and fragrant flowers. Passersby can therefore easily get the impression that the fly hunter is a convalescent of some kind, momentarily lost in meditation. This is not wholly inaccurate.”

DignitySelf DelusionComportment
Book:The Fly Trap
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“The...act of surrender—or devotion, as the case may be—was, to him, a kind of lifeline for those who sought a quick answer and didn’t want to stick around long enough to see their doubt through to its ultimate conclusion. A conclusion, which, of itself, was a bittersweet paradox—for how could doubt simply cease to exist by any stretch of the imagination? Doubt was, nonetheless—from his own perspective—the only inclusive insight into the nature of a Truth exclusive of conditions.”

TruthDoubtSurrenderDevotionParadoxBlind FaithEpistemologySelf DelusionEasy AnswersFallible
Book:Don't Forget to Breathe
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“At some time during the process, [of writing] I came up with a therapeutic device. After each draft I would tear up the pages and feed the paper to a worm compost I keep in my garage. A few months later, those painful pages were dirt that nourished my yard, which I could walk with bare feet. It was a real and tangible connection to that larger immensity. I liked to remind myself that the same process is going to happen to me when I'm done, when I die and nature tears me up...”

HumilityEgoSelf DelusionShortcomingDrawback
Book:Ego Is the Enemy
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“Even if it were possible to cast my horoscope in this one life, and to make an accurate prediction about my future, it would not be possible to 'show' it to me because as soon as I saw it my future would change by definition. This is why Werner Heisenberg's adaptation of the Hays Office—the so-called principle of uncertainty whereby the act of measuring something has the effect of altering the measurement—is of such importance. In my case the difference is often made by publicity. For example, and to boast of one of my few virtues, I used to derive pleasure from giving my time to bright young people who showed promise as writers and who asked for my help. Then some profile of me quoted someone who disclosed that I liked to do this. Then it became something widely said of me, whereupon it became almost impossible for me to go on doing it, because I started to receive far more requests than I could respond to, let alone satisfy. Perception modifies reality: when I abandoned the smoking habit of more than three decades I was given a supposedly helpful pill called Wellbutrin. But as soon as I discovered that this was the brand name for an antidepressant, I tossed the bottle away. There may be successful methods for overcoming the blues but for me they cannot include a capsule that says: 'Fool yourself into happiness, while pretending not to do so.' I should actually want my mind to be strong enough to circumvent such a trick.”

LifeRealityHappinessFutureDepressionPerceptionSmokingWritersAssistancePublicityMeasurementVirtuesMentorshipSelf DelusionAntidepressantsHoroscopesUncertainty PrincipleWerner HeisenbergSoothsayingBupropionHays Office
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“[O]ne has to have endured a few decades before wanting, let alone needing, to embark on the project of recovering lost life. And I think it may be possible to review 'the chronicles of wasted time.' William Morris wrote in The Dream of John Ball that men fight for things and then lose the battle, only to win it again in a shape and form that they had not expected, and then be compelled again to defend it under another name. We are all of us very good at self-persuasion and I strive to be alert to its traps, but a version of what Hegel called 'the cunning of history' is a parallel commentary that I fight to keep alive in my mind.”

LifeAgeHistoryBattlesHegelSelf DelusionReminiscenceWilliam MorrisSelf Persuasion
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“I am in good company, simply following those in front of me and knowing others are following behind. We are on our way up a narrow staircase. The bannister is a thick rope suggesting safety. The stairs go around and around inside a church tower; or perhaps it is a minaret? The whorls of the staircase grow narrower and narrower, but as there are so many people behind there is no longer any possibility of turning around or even stopping. The pressure from behind foeces me on. The staircase suddenly stops at a garbage chute in the wall. When i open the hatch and squeeze my way through the hole, i find myself on the outside of the tower. The rope has dissappeared. It is totally dark. I cling on to the slippery, icy wall of the tower while vainly trying to find a foothold in the emptiness.”

PsychologyIgnoranceDenialSelf DelusionGroup Think
Book:Exterminate All the Brutes; and Desert Divers
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“Do not make passion an argument for truth! - O you good-natured and even noble enthusiasts, I know you! You want to win your argument against us, but also against yourself, and above all against yourself!and a subtle and tender bad conscience so often incites you against your enthusiasm! How ingenious you then become in the outwitting and deadening of this conscience! How you hate the honest, the simple, the pure, how you avoid their innocent eyes! That knowing better whose representatives they are and whose voice you hear all too loudly within you, how it casts doubt on your belief- how you seek to make it suspect as a bad habit, as a sickness of the age, as neglect and infection of your own spiritual health! You drive yourself to the point of hating criticism, science, reason! You have to falsify history so that it may bear witness for you, you have to deny virtues so that they shall not cast into the shade those of your idols and ideals! Coloured pictures where what is needed is rational grounds! Ardour and power of expression! Silvery mists! Ambrosial nights! You understand how to illuminate and how to obscure, and how to obscure with light! And truly, when your passion rises to the point of frenzy, there comes a moment when you say to yourself: now I have conquered the good conscience, now I am light of heart, courageous, self-denying, magnificent, now I am honest! How you thirst for those moments when your passion bestows on you perfect self-justification and as it were innocence; when in struggle, intoxication, courage, hope, you are beside yourself and beyond all doubting; when you decree: 'he who is not beside himself as we are can in no way know what and where truth is!' How you thirst to discover people of your belief in this condition - it is that of intellectual vice - and ignite your flame at their torch! Oh your deplorable martyrdom! Oh your deplorable victory of the sanctified lie! Must you inflict so much suffering upon yourself? - Must you?”

TruthPassionIntoleranceNarcissismSelf DelusionDissimulation
Book:Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
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“In his lifetime, he had seen enough injustice to know the world was cold and remorseless and didn’t care one fig about the happiness of people. He tried to live a good life and devote that life to helping others, but he never thought the world would reward him for his efforts. Such a thought would be the ultimate in self-deluding self-aggrandizement, for why would the world care one iota about him?”

Good LifeRewardSelf DelusionDelusions Of GrandeurBrown SkinGuard Your HeartUgliness Of LifeUgly World
Book:The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen
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“Too many companies— and individuals— are befuddled by delusion when it comes to identifying their authentic strengths and projecting those strengths through their brand. It’s as if they live in Opposite Land. If their service is wretched, they tell people that they are great at service. If they are selling a mediocre car, they expound on its hip sportiness. Claiming that you are what you are not will obscure the strengths you do have while destroying your credibility. It’s a lose-lose proposition. In order to hunt down and accurately tag authenticity, we must first pop the balloon of self-delusion.”

ServiceQuotes About LifeCredibilityRelevanceAuthenticBrandSelf DelusionMatter MoreQuotes To Make You ThinkAccurate ObservationsOpposite LandSelf DelusionsAuthentic Strengths
Author:Tom Hayes
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“A veteran, calm and assured, he pauses for a well-measured moment in the doorway of the office and then, boldly, clearly, with the subtly modulated British intonation which his public demands of him, speaks his opening line, 'Good morning!' And the three secretaries - each of them a charming and accomplished actress in her own chosen style - recognise him instantly, without even a flicker of doubt, and reply 'Good morning' to him. (There is something religious here, like responses in church; a reaffirmation of faith in the basic American dogma, that it is, always, a Good Morning. Good, despite the Russians and their rockets, and all the ills and worries of the flesh. For of course we know, don't we, that the Russians and the worries are not real? They can be unsought and made to vanish. And therefore the morning can ve made to be good. Very well then, it is good.”

BehaviorSelf DelusionRitualsPlaying Roles
Book:A single man
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“What are humanity’s great dreams? To conquer the world? To split the atom? When Alexander spread his empire from the Mediterranean to India, we say he conquered the world, but he barely touched a quarter of it. We lie. We lie again when we say we split the atom. ‘Atom’ was supposed to be the smallest piece of matter—all we did is give that name to something we can split, knowing that there are quarks and tensors, other pieces smaller that we cannot touch, and only these deserve the title ‘atom.’ Man is more ambitious than patient. When we realize we cannot split a true atom, cannot conquer the whole Earth, we redefine the terms to fake our victory, check off our boxes and pretend the deed is done. Alexander conquered Earth, we tell ourselves, Rutherford split the atom, no need to try again. Lies.”

Self DelusionLies We Tell OurselvesHuman Endeavor
Book:Too Like the Lightning
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“Why indeed does the hand experience such difficulty in rendering itself? ...It is a tragedy, or perhaps a boon, that the form should never know itself or approach anything resembling itself without warping the parameters of its being. Awareness is thusly obliteration and through reproduction of this intuitive knowing, the self is contaminated, and thereby annihilated.”

AwarenessRenderingHandSelf DelusionSketchUnknowableFormsDeus Absconditus
Book:Inward and Toward
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“We protect our minds by an elaborate system of abstractions, ambiguities, metaphors and similes from the reality we do not wish to know too clearly; we lie to ourselves, in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension, possessing which we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most monstrous crimes”

RealityFantasyConscienceSelf DeceptionSelf DelusionAcquiescence
Book:The Olive Tree and other essays
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“Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) - neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice.”

SelfOpportunityRoomsCasesTeacherDangerHumourLaughterConsequencePrejudiceDefeatDelusionScholarExposureScornDisgraceGood TeacherCapriceSelf DelusionTime Away
Book:On the Pleasure of Hating
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“No one can genuinely love the world, which is too large to love entire. To love all the world at once is pretense or dangerous self-delusion. Loving the world is like loving the idea of love, which is perilous because, feeling virtuous about this grand affection, you are freed from the struggles and the duties that come with loving people as individuals.”

PeopleWorldLoveIdeasSelfFeelingsIndividualStruggleDangerousDutyAffectionDelusionVirtuousPretenseSelf Delusion
Book:The Complete Odd Thomas 8-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd, Saint Odd
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“Ruthven surmised that he had hit upon some of the central deceptions which had wrecked him and reduced him and so many of his colleagues to this condition. To surmise was not to conquer, of course; he was as helpless as ever but there was a dim liberation in seeing how he had been lied to, and he felt that at least he could take one thing from the terrible years through which he had come: he was free of self-delusion.”

YearsSelfCoursesFeltSeeingOne ThingConditionsTerribleConquerDeceptionLiberationDelusionHelplessColleaguesLiedSelf Delusion
Book:Breakfast in the Ruins
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“Men educate each other in reason by contact or collision, and keep each other sane by the very conflict of their separate hobbies. Society as a whole is the deadly enemy of the particular crotchet of each, and solitude is almost the only condition in which the acorn of conceit can grow to the oak of perfect self-delusion.”

MenSelfReasonWholeGrowsPerfectEnemyConditionsParticularSolitudeConflictContactDelusionEducateSaneHobbiesConceitOaksCollisionAcornsSelf Delusion
Author:Edwin Percy Whipple
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“Optimism is a tonic. Pessimism is poison. Admittedly, every businessman must be realistic. He must gather facts, analyze them candidly and strive to draw logical conclusions, whether favorable or unfavorable. He must not engage in self-delusion. He must not view everything through rose-colored glasses. Granting this, the incontestable truth is that America has been built up by optimists, not by pessimists, but by men possessing courage, confidence in the nation's destiny, by men willing to adventure to shoulder risks terrifying to the timid.”

MenHas BeensSelfFactsAmericaPoliticalPoliticsNationsViewsDestinyRiskWillingAdventureTruth IsDrawsBuiltOptimismRoseStriveGlassesShouldersConclusionPoisonDelusionLogicalPessimismRealisticBusinessmanOptimistPessimistPossessingSelf DelusionColored GlassRose Colored Glasses
Author:B. C. Forbes
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“Fox News seems much more conservative than it is because no other television network over the past half-century has been anything but decidedly liberal. When the media norm is liberal, liberals equate liberalism with objectivity and deviations from it as bias, just as liberals preach tolerance toward all ideas - except conservative ones. Their self-delusion is surreal.”

Has BeensIdeasSelfSeemsPastHalfCenturyMediaTelevisionNewsConservativeToleranceLiberalismDelusionBiasFoxesNormSurrealObjectivityOver The PastFox NewsDeviationSelf Delusion
Author:David Limbaugh
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“There are certain ways you have to delude yourself. Self-delusion is important, for instance in family life. You know what I mean? If you're in love with your wife you have to go in there with blind faith. You have to support everything. And with your kids, you have to believe that you're doing something that has higher purpose; even though you don't have any evidence that that's the way it's going to turn out.”

IfsKnowsWayBelieveMeanImportantSelfKidsPurposeCertainTurnsSupportWifeLove YouHigherEvidenceBlindInstanceDelusionFamily LifeBlind FaithSelf DelusionHigher Purpose
Author:Greg Graffin
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