Quotes about Self-deception

The pretended desires of many to behold the glory of Christ in heaven, who have no view of it by faith while they are here in this world, are nothing but self-deceiving imaginations.

The more intelligent and cultured a man is, the more subtly he can humbug himself.

In fact, we humans have a fatal tendency to try to adjust the truth to fit our desires rather than adjusting our desires to fit the truth.

What do you mean, Phib?" asked Miss Squeers, looking in her own little glass, where, like most of us, she saw - not herself, but the reflection of some pleasant image in her own brain.

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing compared to self-swindlers.

persuading himself that he was a most conscientious and glorious martyr, [he] nobly resolved to do what, if he had examined his own heart a little more carefully, he would have found he could not resist. Such is the sleight of hand by which we juggle with ourselves, and change our very weaknesses into stanch and most magnanimous virtues!

Men who are thoroughly false and hollow, seldom try to hide those vices from themselves; and yet in very act of avowing them, they lay claim to the virtues they feign most to despise

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

If people mean that man has in himself the power to work in partnership with God's grace they are most wretchedly deluding themselves.

Thus we never see the one truth that would help us begin to solve our ethical and political problems: that we are all more or less wrong, that we are all at fault, all limited and obstructed by our mixed motives, our self-deception, our greed, our self-righteousness and our tendency to aggressivity and hypocrisy.

When a proud man thinks he is humble his case is hopeless.

We keep on deceiving ourselves in regard to our faults, until we at last come to look upon them as virtues.