Daniel Day-Lewis Quotes

We have a never sated appetite for self deception.

A form of self-delusion.

I'm really interested in self-deception. Really interested in how people live in bubble universes. How people can fail to see the seemingly obvious.

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

Our capacity for self-deception has no known limits

This sounds so bleak when I say it, but we need some delusions to keep us going. And the people who successfully delude themselves seem happier than the people who can't.

The greater your powers of self-delusion, the greater will be the apparent efficacy of this untruth.

Take the life-lie away from the average man and straight away you take away his happiness.

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

If you can delude yourself by believing that there is some kind of Santa Claus out there who is going to bail you out in the end, then it will help you get through. Even if you are proven wrong in the end, you would have had a better life than a non-believer.

Men who cannot deceive others are very often successful at deceiving themselves.

Human beings have an almost unlimited capacity for self-delusion. We can justify any amount of sadness if it fits our own particular standard of reality.

What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.

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

There is this difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man, really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.

Success is following the pattern of life one enjoys most.

Since every man desires happiness, it is evidently no small matter whether he conceives of happiness in terms of work or of enjoyment.

Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

Our capacity for belief is so plastic, we can convince ourselves of anything. Believing is seeing.

There's something great about life when you can do something you enjoy.

I think if you were to ask me when I was much younger what my definition of the good life was, I think it would have sounded a lot like what most people would say - a life with all the things you want and everything you think you need to make you happy, and these sorts of things.

One theme we look at is what psychologists call motivated reasoning; lay people refer to it as self-deception, wishful thinking or rationalization. The list of creative ways people have for reaching conclusions they wish to reach and dismissing conclusions they find threatening is amazing. We've shown that it goes down even to the level of visual perception: You literally see what you want to see.

I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.

What gives you pleasure and joy? Let those be the things that lead you forward in life.

How much rationality and higher protection there is in such self-deception, and how much falseness I still require in order to allow myself again and again the luxury of my sincerity.