A Quote by John Steinbeck

I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.

John Steinbeck

Quote Topics

Boundless Capacity Delusion Our Self Self-Delusion Suppose

Quote Author

John Steinbeck
American - Author
February 27, 1902 - December 20, 1968

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

Michael Shermer

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

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

Speaking of Self-realizatio n is a delusion. It is only because people have been under the delusion that the non-Self is the Self and the unreal the Real that they have to be weaned out of it by the other delusion called Self-realizatio n; because actually the Self always is the Self and there is no such thing as realizing it.

Ramana Maharshi

To me, the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable - the rhetoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self-inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth, or heal our sick planet, is evidence of our immense capacity for self delusion. Rather, we need to protect ourselves from ourselves.

Lynn Margulis

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

My life is devoted to self-delusion - and I have a great capacity for that - but it's the thing that gives me the most pleasure, so I can't complain about it.

Daniel Day-Lewis

In the beginner's mind there is no thought, "I have attained something." All self-centered thoughts limit our vast mind. When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners. Then we can really learn something. The beginner's mind is the mind of compassion. When our mind is compassionate, it is boundless. Dogen-zenji, the founder of our school, always emphasized how important it is to resume our boundless original mind. Then we are always true to ourselves, in sympathy with all beings, and can actually practice.

Shunryu Suzuki

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

If it is the great delusion of moralists to suppose that all previous ages were less sinful than their own, then it is the great delusion of intellectuals to suppose that all previous ages were less sick.

Louis Kronenberger

We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.

Michael Crichton

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

Robert Ardrey

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

The True Self is not our creation, but God's. It is the self we are in our depths. It is our capacity for divinity and transcendence.

Sue Monk Kidd

Here is where our real selfhood is rooted, in the divine spark or seed, in the image of God imprinted on the human soul. The True Self is not our creation, but God's. It is the self we are in our depths. It is our capacity for divinity and transcendence.

Sue Monk Kidd

This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe Is boundless better, boundless worse.