Top 1200 Self-Delusion Quotes & Sayings

Experience convinces me that permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth & violence. Even if my belief is a fond delusion, it will be admitted that it is a fascinating delusion.

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

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.

It is possible to live only as long as life intoxicates us; once we are sober we cannot help seeing that it is all a delusion, a stupid delusion.

When told that man lives in delusion everyone thinks of himself as the exception; hence his delusion.

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

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.

Celebrity gives us delusion of self importance.

The greater your powers of self-delusion, the greater will be the apparent efficacy of this untruth.

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

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.

I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.

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

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance , the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale light.

It is a great delusion in those whose understanding has been darkened by self-love, to think that there is any obedience in the subject who tries to draw the superior to what he wishes.

It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion

What we can afford least is to define the problem of future war as we would like it to be and, by doing so, introduce into our defense vulnerabilities based on self-delusion.

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

The delusion that one's sexual pattern is The Only Right Way To Be is probably the single most common sexual-psychosis syndrome of this era, and it is virtually almost always the victim's fault. You cannot acquire this delusion by observing reality.

Self-delusion is pulling in your stomach when you step on the scales.

The self divided is precisely where the self is authentically located. . . We all have identity crises because a single identity is a delusion of the monotheistic mind. . . Authenticity is in the illusion, playing it, seeing through it from within as we play it, like an actor who sees through his mask and can only see in this way.

Human beings never think for themselves. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told - and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.

That's kind of what trust is, isn't it? A willful self-delusion.

When self-delusion and self-flattery enter the mind-set of a product team and the metrics they judge themselves by, like the first plague rat coming onto a ship, the end is practically preordained.

Self-delusion is one of the funniest things there is.

Writing is the perfect balance between self-confidence and self-doubt, with a bit of self-delusion thrown in.

As always, the illusion of self-transcendence is far more facile and available than self-transcendence itself: in the vast majority of cases what human consciousness opens up to is merely a more encompassing form of finitude (another captivating illusion or delusion).

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

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

I'd actually love to think that I could trust Kerry on national security. But the only way I could do that, at this point, would be via self-delusion.

If the influence of luck is a delusion, then all I can say is that the delusion is virtually universal.

We all need a bit of self-delusion. It gets us over the difficult spots.

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

Every time one can write a self-deluded song, you are way ahead of the game, way ahead. Self-delusion is the basis of nearly all the great scenes in all the great plays, from 'Oedipus' to 'Hamlet.'

Jerry Kilgore offers denial and delusion, ... Mr. Kaine Delusion and deceit. That means nothing happens.

I don't pretend to any exemption from the general lot of parental delusion-I mean that like most other parents I see my child through an atmosphere which illuminates, magnifies, and at the same time refines the object to a degree that amounts to a delusion.

I was suffering from my chronic delusion that one good share is safer than ten bad ones, and I am always forgetting that hardly anyone else shares this particular delusion.

...the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge.

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.

A lover is never a completely self-reliant person viewing the world through his own eyes, but a hostage to a certain delusion.

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.

Vanity, wounded pride, rejection, self-delusion. I could recite a litany of little pinpricks that finally produce a gaping wound. That's how marriages and friendships come apart.

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.

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.

To start from the self and try to understand all things is delusion. To let the self be awakened by all things is enlightenment.

A form of self-delusion.

Should this my firm persuasion of the soul's immortality prove to be a mere delusion, it is at least a pleasing delusion, and I will cherish it to my last breath.

That the self advances and confirms the ten thousand things is called delusion; that the ten thousand things advance and confirm the self is called enlightenment.

This solidity is not true. The apparent solidity is the delusion of the senses and of the self. Everything is made up of infinite, intelligent light.

The atheist view is correspondingly life-affirming and life-enhancing, while at the same time never being tainted with self-delusion, wishful thinking, or the whingeing self-pity of those who feel that life owes them something.

Children tell themselves stories, engage in self-delusion and fantasy, but those narratives are more evolving than calcified - and with that malleability comes both freedom and danger.

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

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!

The effect is delusion, and therefore the cause must be delusion.

DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.

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.

Self-delusion is rarely a good strategy for effective management.

We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And, indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again." ~Fiddler, pg. 558

What I've found in my research is that realism and self-honesty are the antidote to ego, hubris, and delusion.

It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness.