Self Delusion Quotes - Page 2

• Optimism is a tonic. Pessimism is poison. Admittedly, every businessman must be realistic. He must gather facts, analyze them candidly and strive to draw logical conclusions, whether favorable or unfavorable. He must not engage in self-delusion. He must not view everything through rose-colored glasses. Granting this, the incontestable truth is that America has been built up by optimists, not by pessimists, but by men possessing courage, confidence in the nation's destiny, by men willing to adventure to shoulder risks terrifying to the timid.

  B. C. Forbes

  Adventure, Destiny, Men

  21 Copy quote

• 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.

  Helen Van Slyke

  Pride, Vanity, Self

  4 Copy quote

• No one can genuinely love the world, which is too large to love entire. To love all the world at once is pretense or dangerous self-delusion. Loving the world is like loving the idea of love, which is perilous because, feeling virtuous about this grand affection, you are freed from the struggles and the duties that come with loving people as individuals.

  Dean Koontz

  Love, Struggle, Ideas

  Dean Koontz (2016). “The Complete Odd Thomas 8-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd, Saint Odd”, p.912, Bantam

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Richard Dawkins

  Atheist, Thinking, Self

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.405, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) - neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice.

  William Hazlitt

  Teacher, Laughter, Opportunity

  William Hazlitt (2004). “On the Pleasure of Hating”, p.31, Penguin UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Your cowardly self-delusions about “love” when you know as well as I do that there’s never been anything between us but contempt and distrust and a terrible sickly dependence on each other’s weakness- that’s why. That’s why I couldn’t stop laughing about the Inability to Love, and that’s why I can’t stand to let you touch me, and that’s why I’ll never again believe in anything you think, let alone anything you say

  Richard Yates

  Believe, Thinking, Self

  7 Copy quote

• Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.

  Dan Simmons

  Mean, Reality, Thinking

  Dan Simmons (2014). “The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle: Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion”, p.236, Spectra

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• People compose the schedules they do out of the priorities they have; and someone who says otherwise is deceiving himself about what he really values. The same thing applies to money that applies to time. I make a practice of watching what people do, never what they say. Whatever is important, to anyone sane, he will make a place for it; people live out their values. Values are different in this respect from "ideals," which are typically vain and effete and thus exist mostly for the sake of promoting self-delusions.

  Kenny Smith

  Time, Philosophy, Self

  4 Copy quote

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

  John Ralston Saul

  Self, Needs, Spots

  5 Copy quote

• I flattered myself that I was rather empathetic, that I had rather good imaginative empathy. I've realized now that that was a complete self-delusion and that I didn't really have any comprehension of what it was like to see your entire life go catastrophically wrong in a matter of moments.

  Decca Aitkenhead

  Self, Empathy, Matter

  "Decca Aitkenhead on Empathy and Memory". Interview with Emma Brown, www.interviewmagazine.com. August 15, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Brandon Sanderson

  Self, Kind, Delusion

  Brandon Sanderson (2011). “Mistborn Trilogy”, p.526, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his need of an amiable environment, his touching self-delusion.

  H. L. Mencken

  Mother, Men, Self

  H. L. Mencken (2015). “In Defense of Women: Human Sexuality”, p.7, 谷月社

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Glenn Reynolds

  Thinking, Self, Would Be

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Greatness, Men, Self

  "The Autobiography Of Calvin Coolidge". Book by Calvin Coolidge, 1929.

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Judith Kelman

  Writing, Self Confidence, Perfect

  6 Copy quote

• If the awareness of our limitations begins to limit or to dim our value consciousness as well—as happens, for instance, in old age with regard to the values of youth—then we have already started the movement of devaluation which will end with the defamation of the world and all its values. Only a timely act of resignation can deliver us from this tendency toward self-delusion.

  Max Scheler

  Self, Age, Movement

  Max Scheler, Harold J. Bershady (1992). “On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing: Selected Writings”, p.126, University of Chicago Press

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Each memory was brought to life before me and within me. I could not avoid them. Neither could I rationalize, explain away. I could only re-experience with total cognizance, unprotected by pretense. Self delusion was impossible, truth exposed in this blinding light. Nothing as I thought it had been. Nothing as I hoped it had been. Only as it had been.

  Richard Matheson

  Memories, Light, Self

  Richard Matheson (1978). “What dreams may come: a novel”, Putnam Publishing Group

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Lynn Margulis

  Moving, Responsibility, Self

  20 Copy quote

• Everyone, including skeptics, will generate delusions that match their views. That is how a normal and healthy brain works. Skeptics are not exempt from self-delusion.

  Scott Adams

  Self, Views, Healthy

  Scott Adams (2004). “God's Debris: A Thought Experiment”, p.73, Andrews McMeel Publishing

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The first-person viewpoint is more enjoyable to write, because it lets me meander more freely, and it can reveal more of the character's self-delusions. Really all the advantages are with first-person, so I'm sorry I don't get to pick and choose.

  Anne Tyler

  Sorry, Character, Writing

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fox News seems much more conservative than it is because no other television network over the past half-century has been anything but decidedly liberal. When the media norm is liberal, liberals equate liberalism with objectivity and deviations from it as bias, just as liberals preach tolerance toward all ideas - except conservative ones. Their self-delusion is surreal.

  David Limbaugh

  Past, Self, Objectivity

  4 Copy quote

• There are certain ways you have to delude yourself. Self-delusion is important, for instance in family life. You know what I mean? If you're in love with your wife you have to go in there with blind faith. You have to support everything. And with your kids, you have to believe that you're doing something that has higher purpose; even though you don't have any evidence that that's the way it's going to turn out.

  Greg Graffin

  Believe, Love You, Mean

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• A direct statement about yourself is considered objective only if it is negative. If it's positive, it is considered subjective. And 'objective' means it is accurate, and 'subjective' means it is conceited self-delusion.

  Barbara Sher

  Mean, Conceited, Self

  Barbara Sher (1979). “Wishcraft: How to Get what You Really Want”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Men educate each other in reason by contact or collision, and keep each other sane by the very conflict of their separate hobbies. Society as a whole is the deadly enemy of the particular crotchet of each, and solitude is almost the only condition in which the acorn of conceit can grow to the oak of perfect self-delusion.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Men, Self, Perfect

  6 Copy quote

• A form of self-delusion.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Education, Self, Form

  Elbert Hubbard, Bert Hubbard (1923). “Selected writings of Elbert Hubbard: his mintage of wisdom, coined from a life of love, laughter and work”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source