Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

It is easier to deceive yourself, and to do so unperceived, than to deceive another.

Nothing is easier than self-deceit.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

It's one thing to lie to ourselves. It's another thing to believe it.

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.

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

Nothing fools you better than the lie you tell yourself.

We have a never sated appetite for self deception.

The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp. Above all, it fits more snugly than the truth into a universe of false appearances—of complex and irrational phenomena, defectively grasped.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

The mirror can lie. It doesn’t show you what’s inside.

Only one deception is possible in the infinite sense, self-deception.

We lie best when we lie to ourselves.

I was living a life of a lie. And I was doing a lot of things, that hurt a lot of people. And stripping away denial and rationalization you start coming to the truth of who you really are and that can be very ugly.

We like to be deceived.

We are our own aptest deceiver.

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

It's easier to lie to yourself when you say things out loud.

I tell myself lies and soon I believe them.

When we believe in lies, we cannot see the truth, so we make thousands of assumptions and we take them as truth. One of the biggest assumptions we make is that the lies we believe are the truth!

Some people have a difficult time facing truth and reality. They prefer to live in a make-believe world, pretending that certain things aren't happening.

I think the greatest illusion we have is that denial protects us. It's actually the biggest distortion and lie. In fact, staying asleep is what's killing us.

Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth.

I never lie. I believe everything I say, so it's not a lie.

A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.