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.

A mask can hide you from others, but not from yourself.

What further helps to reveal reality is when our personal thinking ceases to take reality for granted.

The best lies about me are the ones I told.

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...

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.

Language is something you inherit, it’s never just you doing the talking, which helps when you’re pretending.

It’s always the ‘others’ who are deceived.

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...

I believe in my mask– The man I made up is meI believe in my dance– And my destiny

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...

If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.

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

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.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

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...

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...

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...

…’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...

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.

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.

[He] seemed to possess, beneath it all, an immutable sense of self-assurance, but in addition to that, the look of a man ensnared by what he perceived to be his own Duty. A Duty that...

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...

The fact is that we have no way of knowing if the person who we think we are is at the core of our being. Are you a decent girl with the potential to someday...

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.

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...

Of what use was memory anyway than as a template for one’s most reassuring self-deceptions!

Being dishonest to himself is the biggest crime any human can make

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,...

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?

We see beyond our eyes, but not back into them, at least not without the self-deceptive help of a mirror. Squeegees are for lovers.

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.

Avoidance of self deception is a matter of integrity not comfort.

The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.

Stop lying to yourself. When we deny our own truth, we deny our own potential.

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...

I suppose we all lie to ourselves sometimes.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

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?

I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.

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...

Reality blithely ignores the lies we tell ourselves about it.

Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.

The notion of the perfect time is more than myth. It’s the ultimate self-delusion.

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...

Nothing is so deceiving as knowledge.

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...

To understand yourself: Is that a discovery or a creation?