A Quote by Clancy Martin

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

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Clancy Martin
Canadian - Novelist

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

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

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

Both of us, me and Friedrich Nietzsche being writers, if we weren't capable of some strategic self-deception, we would have moved on to more lucrative careers long ago.

Clancy Martin

self-sacrifice is one of a woman's seven deadly sins (along with self-abuse, self-loathing, self-deception, self-pity, self-serving, and self-immolation).

Sarah Ban Breathnach

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

Soren Kierkegaard

If... deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray - by the subtle signs of self-knowledge - the deception being practiced.' Thus, 'the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naive view of mental evolution.

Robert Trivers

The English language has 112 words for deception, according to one count, each with a different shade of meaning: collusion, fakery, malingering, self-deception, confabulation, prevarication, exaggeration, denial.

Robin Marantz Henig

The habit of employing self-deception to maintain one's self esteem has often become so ingrained that the first step to developing accurate self-awareness is honest acknowledgment of the existence of hidden emotions, motives and tendencies in the mind without immediately suppressing them.

Bhikkhu Analayo

People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be, until they have learned to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.

Vladimir Lenin

Self-deception can be more comforting than self-knowledge. We like to fool ourselves.

Russ Roberts

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

It is self-love and its offspring self-deception, which shut the gates of heaven, and lead men, as if in a delicious dream, to hell.

Christian Scriver

The most transformative experiences people have - bliss, devotion, self transcendence - are currently anchored to the worst parts of culture and to ways of thinking that merely amplify superstition, self-deception, and conflict.

Sam Harris

If we can but tear the blindfold of self-deception from our eyes and loosen the gag of self-denial from our voices, we can restore our country to greatness.

Theodore C. Sorensen

The essence of bravery is being without self-deception.

Pema Chodron

A Quote by Clancy Martin

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