Bassem Youssef Quotes

To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats- we know it not.

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

I'm very good at denial.

I think I'm absolutely perfect. Because if I'm not good at something I completely banish it from my mind. Completely. Like it never happened.

We are willing to believe anything other than the truth.

Sometimes I wanted to believe something so badly, I deliberately manufactured excuses and ignored painful reality.

Self-deception is sometimes as necessary a tool as a crowbar.

I told myself it was the snow—she couldn’t possibly get to Philadelphia on the roads. I told myself a hundred lies. Children do that. It’s amazing the sorts of things you’ll make yourself believe.

My greatest enemy is reality. I have fought it successfully for thirty years.

I think denial's fascinating. It's a jokey word, but it really happens, and sometimes in enormous ways.

Denial is a very powerful thing.

Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

We have a never sated appetite for self deception.

A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one’s own mind.

[P]erhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.

A form of self-delusion.

It is not... That some people do not know what to do with truth when it is offered to them, But the tragic fate is to reach, after patient search, a condition of mind-blindness, in which. The truth is not recognized, though it stares you in the face.

Like the ostrich, head under wingWhen the roaring storm breaks,So many people take refugeUnder the soft pillowOf specious arguments.

The human race's favorite method for being in control of facts is to ignore them.

But when a man suspects any wrong it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing and tried to think nothing.

You can fool yourself, you know. You'd think it's impossible, but it turns out it's the easiest thing of all.

I am always amazed by people who know something is wrong but still insist on ignoring it, as if that will somehow make it go away. They spare themselves the confrontation, but end up boiling in resentment anyway.

My personal feeling is that human beings have this incredible capacity for denial.

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.

People would rather be deceived than have the truth cause them anxiety