A Quote by Ben Aaronovitch

You know, your species [humans] has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched only by its ingenuity in trying to destroy itself.

Ben Aaronovitch

Quote Topics

Amazing Capacity Deception Destroy Humans Ingenuity Itself Know Matched Most Most Amazing Only Self Self-Deception Species Trying Your

Quote Author

Ben Aaronovitch
English - Author
Born: 1964

The only clear thing is that we humans are the only species with the power to destroy the earth as we know it. The birds have no such power, nor do the insects, nor does any mammal. Yet if we have the capacity to destroy the earth, so, too, do we have the capacity to protect it.

Dalai Lama

You bet I write disaster fiction. We have compiled a disastrous record on this planet, a record of stupidity and absurdity and self-abuse and self-aggrandizement and self-deception and pompousness and self-righteousness and cruelty and indifference beyond what any other species has demonstrated the capacity for, which is the capacity for all the above.

John Irving

What is the most fascinating kind of self-deception to me, and a kind that isn't necessarily unhealthy, is what Friedrich Nietzsche called "strategic self-deception." The kind of self-deception that you can engage in with your eyes wide open. You do it because you say, "There's things that I couldn't accomplish without this kind of self-deception."

Clancy Martin

We are the most dangerous species of life on the planet, and every other species, even the earth itself, has cause to fear our power to exterminate. But we are also the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy.

Wallace Stegner

That's the old AA maxim, "Always have a drink in your hand and you'll never want a drink." That's one of the most classic deceptions in the literature: "I'll take a drink tomorrow." I actually don't think that's necessarily a very helpful maxim in AA, but it's a very good maxim in showing how strategic self-deception can be employed, even self-consciously. That's the amazing thing, to me, about self-deception.

Clancy Martin

The ingenuity of self-deception is inexhaustible.

Hannah More

The only thing infinite is our capacity for self-deception

Robert Todd Carroll

If you asked me what makes the world go round, I would say self-deception. Self-deception allows us to create a consistent narrative for ourselves that we actually believe. I’m not saying that the truth doesn’t matter. It does. But self-deception is how we survive.

Errol Morris

What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

George Eliot

Of all forms of deception self-deception is the most deadly, and of all deceived persons the self-deceived are the least likely to discover the fraud.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

Only one deception is possible in the infinite sense, self-deception.

Soren Kierkegaard

The human mind has an infinite capacity for self-deception.

Gertrude Atherton

Our capacity for self-deception has no known limits

Michael Novak

Humans have an amazing capacity to believe in contradictory things. For example, to believe in an omnipotent and benevolent God but somehow excuse Him from all the suffering in the world. Or our ability to believe from the standpoint of law that humans are equal and have free will and from biology that humans are just organic machines.

Yuval Noah Harari

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

J. K. Rowling

To me, that's the brilliance of Michael Jordan. He was an incredible, amazing individual player who matched his talents to the team, matched the team's talents to him, and he lived in the middle of those extremes. I don't know how you do that.

B. J. Armstrong

A Quote by Ben Aaronovitch

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors