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0c5362f
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Humans see what they want to see.
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mankind
self-delusion
willful-ignorance
perception
humans
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Rick Riordan |
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f2cd3f0
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You can fool yourself, you know. You'd think it's impossible, but it turns out it's the easiest thing of all.
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self-delusion
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Jodi Picoult |
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7f4becc
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Even if it were possible to cast my horoscope in this one life, and to make an accurate prediction about my future, it would not be possible to 'show' it to me because as soon as I saw it my future would change by definition. This is why Werner Heisenberg's adaptation of the Hays Office--the so-called principle of uncertainty whereby the act of measuring something has the effect of altering the measurement--is of such importance. In my case the difference is often made by publicity. For example, and to boast of one of my few virtues, I used to derive pleasure from giving my time to bright young people who showed promise as writers and who asked for my help. Then some profile of me quoted someone who disclosed that I liked to do this. Then it became something widely said of me, whereupon it became almost impossible for me to go on doing it, because I started to receive far more requests than I could respond to, let alone satisfy. Perception modifies reality: when I abandoned the smoking habit of more than three decades I was given a supposedly helpful pill called Wellbutrin. But as soon as I discovered that this was the brand name for an antidepressant, I tossed the bottle away. There may be successful methods for overcoming the blues but for me they cannot include a capsule that says: 'Fool yourself into happiness, while pretending not to do so.' I should actually my mind to be strong enough to circumvent such a trick.
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depression
future
reality
happiness
life
assistance
bupropion
hays-office
measurement
mentorship
publicity
soothsaying
horoscopes
uncertainty-principle
werner-heisenberg
self-delusion
perception
virtues
writers
smoking
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Christopher Hitchens |
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34094ec
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It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.
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identity
identification
observational
materialism
self-delusion
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James Baldwin |
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b606d58
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To be loved to madness--such was her great desire. Love was to her the one cordial which could drive away the eating loneliness of her days. And she seemed to long for the abstraction called passionate love more than for any particular lover.
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unhappiness
dissatisfaction
drama-queen
self-delusion
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Thomas Hardy |
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75ba0a6
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The easiest thing in the world is to convince yourself that you are right. As one grows older, this is easier still.
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self-delusion
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Robert Ludlum |
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4250183
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Every society produces its own cultural conceits, a set of lies and delusions about itself that thrive in the face of all contrary evidence.
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society
self-delusion
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Jack Weatherford |
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191d11e
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[O]ne has to have endured a few decades before wanting, let alone needing, to embark on the project of recovering lost life. And I think it may be possible to review 'the chronicles of wasted time.' William Morris wrote in that men fight for things and then lose the battle, only to win it again in a shape and form that they had not expected, and then be compelled again to defend it under another name. We are all of us very good at self-persuasion and I strive to be alert to its traps, but a version of what Hegel called 'the cunning of history' is a parallel commentary that I fight to keep alive in my mind.
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history
life
battles
hegel
self-persuasion
william-morris
self-delusion
reminiscence
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Christopher Hitchens |
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6cdbc25
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Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the commandments without difficulty.
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dissonance
self-delusion
obedience
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T.H. White |
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908f68a
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A veteran, calm and assured, he pauses for a well-measured moment in the doorway of the office and then, boldly, clearly, with the subtly modulated British intonation which his public demands of him, speaks his opening line, 'Good morning!' And the three secretaries - each of them a charming and accomplished actress in her own chosen style - recognise him instantly, without even a flicker of doubt, and reply 'Good morning' to him. (There is something religious here, like responses in church; a reaffirmation of faith in the basic American dogma, that it is, always, a Morning. Good, despite the Russians and their rockets, and all the ills and worries of the flesh. For of course we know, don't we, that the Russians and the worries are not real? They can be unsought and made to vanish. And therefore the morning can ve made to be good. Very well then, it good.
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playing-roles
rituals
self-delusion
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Christopher Isherwood |
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1190449
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But was it love? Was it simply the hysteria of a man who, aware deep down of his inaptitude for love, felt the self-deluding need to simulate it?
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love
self-delusion
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Milan Kundera |
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bf41584
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The constant, obvious flattery, contrary to all evidence, of the people around him [Tsar Nicholas I] had brought him to the point that he no longer saw his contradictions, no longer conformed his actions and words to reality, logic, or even simple common sense, but was fully convinced that all his orders, however senseless, unjust, and inconsistent with each other, became sensible, just, and consistent with each other only because he gave them.
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narcissism
self-delusion
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Leo Tolstoy |
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636d92e
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If you consulted your business experiences instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter.
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self-belief
self-delusion
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G.K. Chesterton |
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51710e9
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Inventive rhetoric is characteristic of true believers.
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self-delusion
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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53f3c91
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Johnson was insulated from reality by his hopes and dreams.
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obsessive
self-delusion
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Robert A. Caro |
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2b6fb14
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At some time during the process, [of writing] I came up with a therapeutic device. After each draft I would tear up the pages and feed the paper to a worm compost I keep in my garage. A few months later, those painful pages were dirt that nourished my yard, which I could walk with bare feet. It was a real and tangible connection to that larger immensity. I liked to remind myself that the same process is going to happen to me when I'm done, when I die and nature tears me up...
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shortcoming
ego
humility
self-delusion
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Ryan Holiday |