Jane Smiley Quotes

Nothing is easier than self-deceit.

The worst deluded are the self-deluded.

Of all forms of deception self-deception is the most deadly, and of all deceived persons the self-deceived are the least likely to discover the fraud.

We should not be upset that others hide the truth from us, when we hide it so often from ourselves

We have a never sated appetite for self deception.

When we successfully deceive others, they are not aware of it; the same is true with self-deception.

To be infatuated with the power of one's own intellect is an accident which seldom happens but to those who are remarkable for the want of intellectual power. Whenever Nature leaves a hole in a person's mind, she generally plasters it over with a thick coat of self-conceit.

It's the easiest thing in the world for a man to deceive himself.

I might show facts as plain as day: but, since your eyes are blind, you'd say, 'Where? What?' and turn away.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game you've been playing all your life.

Obviously, some people are thick, and they're not gonna see what they don't want to see.

No one who lives in error is free.

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.

It's what a fellow thinks he knows that hurts him.

We're blind to our blindness. We have very little idea of how little we know. We're not designed to know how little we know.

He occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.

Between knowing and not knowing is not wanting to know.

In boxing, they say it's the punch you don't see coming that knocks you out. In the wider world, the reality we ignore or deny is the one that weakens our most impassioned efforts toward improvement.

I guess a little bit of delusion can go a long way.

I surely don't think ignorance is bliss. But like everything else that has survived thousands of years of human evolution, ignorance - like denial, self-delusion, and magical thinking - seems to have its uses.

There are some things the arrogant mind does not see; it is blinded by its vision of what it desires.

Sometimes we find ourselves walking through life blindfolded, and we try to deny that we're the ones who securely tied the knot.

The ingenuity of self-deception is inexhaustible.

The question is asked in ignorance, by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it.