Deception Quotes - Page 9

• deception and 'con games' are a way of life in all species and throughout nature. Organisms that do not improve their ability to deceive - and to detect deception - are less apt to survive.

  Harriet Lerner

  Games, Way, Deceiving

  Harriet Lerner (2009). “The Dance of Deception: Pretending and Truth-Telling in Women's”, p.19, Harper Collins

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• What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

  George Eliot

  Fate, Self, Capacity

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• If the world is an aggregate of relatively independent regions, then any assumption of universal laws is false and a demand for universal norms tyrannical: only brute force (or seductive deception) can then bend the different moralities so that they fit the prescriptions of a single ethical system. And indeed, the idea of universal laws of nature and society arose in connection with a life-and-death battle: the battle that gave Zeus the power over the Titans and all other gods and thus turned his laws into the laws of the universe.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Independent, Ideas, Law

  "Farewell to Reason". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1987.

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• Everywhere you go on the continent of Europe at this hour you see the conflict between militarism and industrialism. You see the expansion of industrial power pushed forward by the energy, hope, and thrift of men, and you see the development arrested, diverted, crippled, and defeated by measures which are dictated by military considerations.

  William Graham Sumner

  Military, Power, Men

  William Graham Sumner (1919). “War and Other Essays”

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• Good science is more than the mechanics of research and experimentation. Good science requires that scientists look inward-to contemplate the origin of their thoughts. The failures of science do not begin with flawed evidence or fumbled statistics; they begin with personal self-deception and an unjustified sense of knowing.

  Robert A. Burton

  Humility, Self, Knowing

  Robert A. Burton, M.D., M.D. (2008). “On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not”, p.170, Macmillan

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• It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise the future can never keep, and I had fallen into the meanest type of self-deception in making myself believe that all this was in preparation for great things to come.

  Jane Addams

  Believe, Self, Promise

  Jane Addams (2010). “The Selected Papers of Jane Addams: Vol. 2: Venturing into Usefulness”, p.601, University of Illinois Press

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• The American people, Neil, are sick and tired of excuses. They are sick and tired of the blame game. And they're sick and tired of the deception coming from this president and this administration. This is why I believe that I am doing so well in the polls.

  Herman Cain

  Believe, Tired, Games

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• Since in the long run deception is likely to be found out, your character had better not only seem good, but be it.

  F. L. Lucas

  Running, Honesty, Character

  F. L. Lucas (2012). “Style: The Art of Writing Well”, p.30, Harriman House Limited

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• If the defeated and depressed group of disciples overnight could change into a victorious movement of faith, based only on autosuggestion or self-deception-without a fundamental faith experience-then this would be a much greater miracle than the resurrection itself.

  Pinchas Lapide

  Self, Miracle, Groups

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• In the horrifying calculus of self-deception, the greater the pain we inflict on others, the greater the need to justify it to maintain our feelings of decency and self-worth.

  Carol Tavris

  Pain, Self Worth, Feelings

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• At a period when Literature was wont to attribute the grief of living exclusively to the mischances of disappointed love or the jealousy of adulterous deceptions, he had said not a word of these childish maladies, but had sounded those more incurable, more poignant and more profound: wounds that are inflicted by satiety, disillusion and contempt in ruined souls tortured by the present, disgusted with the past, terrified and desperate of the future.

  Joris-Karl Huysmans

  Grief, Past, Profound

  Joris-Karl Huysmans (2015). “Against the Grain: (À rebours)”, p.111, BoD – Books on Demand

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• You are never so easily fooled as when trying to fool someone else.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Trying, Fool, Fooled

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• Washington has become our Versailles. We are ruled, entertained, and informed by courtiers -- and the media has evolved into a class of courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are mostly courtiers. Our pundits and experts, at least those with prominent public platforms, are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games, and the purpose behind it is deception.

  Chris Hedges

  Games, Class, Mirrors

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• I expected so much from life and if I had not seen it so close, I would to this day be expecting something. What treasures I discovered in my own soul - where are they all? I have exchanged them for the world's coin, given my frankness, my first passion - and for what? For bitter disillusionment, for the knowledge that all is deception, all is brittle, that one can place trust neither in oneself nor in others - and I have come to fear both others and myself. I have not been able, along with this analysis, to accept the trifles of life and be content with them, as many others do.

  Ivan Goncharov

  Passion, Soul, Expecting Something

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• Our myths are so many, our vision so dim, our self-deception so deep and our smugness so gross that scarcely any way now remains of reporting the American Century except from behind the billboards.

  Nelson Algren

  Self, Vision, Smugness

  Nelson Algren (1998). “Nonconformity: Writing on Writing”, p.85, Seven Stories Press

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• Unlike a mere deception or a simple secret, which gives the impression that something's been taken away, a great magician makes you feel like something's been given to you.

  Jim Steinmeyer

  Taken, Simple, Giving

  Jim Steinmeyer, Teller (2009). “Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear”, p.22, Da Capo Press

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• The church today is riddled with fad doctrines and new sounds that distract from the clear message of the Great commission in the New Testament. Any message that attracts you which does not bring glory to Christ is the message of a seducing spirit and the man giving it is in deception.

  John Hagee

  Men, Church Today, Giving

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• You must keep your honor! You can't speak for the country; you can do little about the national economy or actions of moral weaklings who excuse themselves with the expression, "That is politics; nor can you be responsible for deception in others. But you are responsible for yourself! There are no collective panaceas - only individual ones."

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Country, Expression, Individuality

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• Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the State.

  James Jesus Angleton

  Country, Government, Historical

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• It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the "fronts" people assume before one another's eyes, and the "front" a writer puts on the face of reality.

  Francoise Sagan

  Eye, Reality, Two

  "Françoise Sagan, The Art of Fiction No. 15". Interview with Blair Fuller and Robert B. Silvers, www.theparisreview.org. Autumn 1956.

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• Invoking brings the heart closer to the hereafter and keeps the world away from the heart, even though the world is around it. Invoking warns the heedless heart to abandon its pleasures and deceptions.

  Ibn Ata Allah

  Heart, World, Pleasure

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• Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.

  Socrates

  Errors, People, Mind

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• We often shed tears that deceive ourselves after deceiving others.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Deceiving Others, Tears, Shed

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• It is very noble hypocrisy not to talk of one's self.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Self, Hypocrisy, Noble

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2012). “Human, All-Too-Human: Parts One and Two”, p.212, Courier Corporation

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• No one from the intelligence community, anyplace else ever came in and said, ‘What if Saddam is doing all this deception because he actually got rid of the WMD and he doesn't want the Iranians to know?' Now somebody should have asked that question. I should have asked that question. Nobody did. Turns out that was the most important question in terms of the intelligence failure that never got asked.

  Stephen Hadley

  Wmd, Should Have, Community

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