Quotes about Self-deception
People lie to themselves all the time about what they've been through and what it means - I'm no exception. But you write those lies down - lies that really matter to you and that are really painful to let go of because they've become a part of who you are - and they don't work.
- Phil Klay
In this journey of emotionally healthy spirituality, we are talking about radical change at the core of our being. At least two critical forces hinder such a profound shift. First, the pressure of others to keep us living lives that are not our own is enormous. And second, our own stubborn self-will is much deeper and more insidious than we think. The possibility of self-deception is so great that without mature companions we can easily fall into the trap of living in illusions.
- Peter Scazzero
The efficacy of prayer consists in a cognitive-spiritual catharsis, which purifies man of the most hideous untruth and deception, namely, the pretension that he belongs to himself and that he is his own lord.
- Joseph Soloveitchik
The mind controlled by lust has an infinite capacity for rationalization.
- Kent Hughes
Because we are more adult than actually mature, we tend to take our sins and baptize them, dressing them up as spiritual maturity.
- RC Sproul Jr.
The task of prophetic imagination is to cut through the numbness, to penetrate the self-deception, so that the God of endings is confessed as Lord. Notice that I suggest for the prophet in a really numbed situation a quite elemental and modest task.
- Walter Brueggemann
Men who cannot deceive others are very often successful at deceiving themselves.
- Samuel Johnson
Self-deception is an indispensable element of war, and that despite the fact that wars are calculated and planned, there is a sense in which human beings do not know what they are doing when they cut one another down on the battlefield.
- David Livingstone Smith