Self Delusion Quotes

• If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.

  Ronald Reagan

  Self, Faces, Facts

  Ronald Reagan (1983). “A Time for Choosing: The Speeches of Ronald Reagan, 1961-1982”, Gateway Books

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• The human capacity for self-delusion is boundless, and the effects of belief are overpowering.

  Michael Shermer

  Self, Belief, Capacity

  Michael Shermer (2016). “Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye”, p.136, Henry Holt and Company

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• The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe.

  Voltaire

  Believe, Men, Brain

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• I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.

  John Steinbeck

  Depression, Self, Mental Illness

  John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.12, Penguin

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• Since I no longer expect anything from mankind except madness, meanness, and mendacity; egotism, cowardice, and self-delusion, I have stopped being a misanthrope.

  Irving Layton

  Self, Madness, Misanthrope

  Irving Layton (1969). “The whole bloody bird: obs, aphs & pomes”

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• An honorable human relationship- that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love"- is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
  It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.
  It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.
  It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.

  Adrienne Rich

  Love, Self, Two

  Adrienne Rich (1995). “On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978”, p.104, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.

  George Orwell

  Power, Self, Deception

  George Orwell (2005). “In defence of English cooking”, Penguin Hardcover

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• Celebrity gives us delusion of self importance.

  Al Goldstein

  Self, Giving, Fame

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• Worship means reverence and humility it means revering your real self and humbling delusions.

  Bodhidharma

  Real, Mean, Humility

  Bodhidharma (2009). “The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma”, p.105, Macmillan

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• Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion.

  Jim Rohn

  Inspiring, Leadership, Greatness

  FaceBook post by Jim Rohn from Apr 22, 2017

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• Love is the self-delusion we manufacture to justify the trouble we take to have sex.

  Daniel S. Greenberg

  Love, Sex, Self

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• I learned that I never really know the true story of my guests' lives, that I have to content myself with knowing that when I'm interviewing somebody, I'm getting a combination of fact and truth and self-mythology and self-delusion and selective memory and faulty memory.

  Terry Gross

  Memories, Self, Knowing

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• It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Life, Beauty, Beautiful

  'The Kreutzer Sonata' 5 (translated by Maude)

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• I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self-delusion, so it's no problem for me to believe that I'm somebody else.

  Daniel Day-Lewis

  Believe, Self, Identity

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I seek the truth...it is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance that does harm.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Wisdom, Truth, Ignorance

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• History is the lies of the victors.

  Julian Barnes

  Lying

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• History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

  Julian Barnes

  Memories, Imperfection, Documentation

  Julian Barnes (2011). “The Sense of an Ending”, p.59, Random House

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• There is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual

  James Russell Lowell

  Self, Sensual, Life Is

  James Russell Lowell (1872). “Among my Books: Contents: Dryden. Witchcraft. Shakespeare once more. New England two centuries ago. Lessing. Rousseau and the Sentimentalists”, p.363

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• The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion - in the long run, these are the only people who count.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Running, Thinking, Self

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• We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self-aware, yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind.

  Michael Crichton

  Self, May, Three

  Michael Crichton (2002). “Prey”

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• Human beings have an almost unlimited capacity for self-delusion. We can justify any amount of sadness if it fits our own particular standard of reality.

  John Twelve Hawks

  Sadness, Reality, Self

  "The Traveler". Book by John Twelve Hawks, 2005.

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• Men, unlike mockingbirds, have the capacity for systematic self-delusion. We echo each other with equal precision, equal eloquence, equal assurance.

  Robert Ardrey

  Men, Echoes, Self

  Robert Ardrey (1966). “The Territorial Imperative”

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• You don't have to be Dave Halberstam to see that the American role in both conflicts [the Iraq war and the Vietnam conflict] is characterized by arrogance, ignorance and self-delusion at the highest levels of government.

  Jonathan Yardley

  War, Ignorance, Government

  "David Halberstam". Live chat, www.washingtonpost.com. April 24, 2007.

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• The great paradox of determinism and free will, which has held the attention of the wisest of philosophers and psychologists for generations, can be phrased in more biological terms as follows: If our genes are inherited, and our environment is a train of physical events set in motion before we were born, how can there be a truly independent agent within the brain? The agent itself is created by the interaction of the genes and the environment. It would appear that our freedom is only a self delusion.

  E. O. Wilson

  Independent, Self, Brain

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• There's always an element of self delusion among people who believe they ought to be President. There's an underestimation of your opponent and an overestimation of your own abilities. This is compatible with being rich and powerful, the idea that we were blessed by God because we deserve to be blessed.

  Jimmy Carter

  Powerful, Believe, Blessed

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