Jack Gilbert Quotes

The worst of all deceptions is self-deception.

The most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one's self.

For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.

Man has an inexhuastible faculty for lying, especially to himself.

The more you defend a lie, the angrier you become.

We all talk about how much we hate lies. Yet we prefer, so often, to be lied to....because it allows us to dodge all those painful truths we'd rather not hear.

We lie best when we lie to ourselves.

The heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality and the heartbreaking impossibilty of lying about it

Human beings have the incredible capacity for denial. I think they do. And although it's really hard to believe, I have my doubts. But my feeling is that first they have to convince themselves. First they have to justify this stuff to themselves and if they can do that, even for just the moment that it's coming out their mouth, then they can kind of mouth it with kind of believable sincerity, even if some of us.

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

The easiest lies to tell are the ones you want to be true.

If you live in bad faith, lies will appear to you like the truth.

Deception is mostly a game we play with ourselves.

We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness.

Sometimes people need to lie to themselves most of all.

I always knew I was an excellent liar; I just didn't know that I had it in me to fool myself.

I tell myself lies and soon I believe them.

All lies and jests, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

Politicians: Some are ignorant; some are not ignorant, but those who are ignorant don't want to know. The psychologists call it denial.

People deny things that are true all the time.

If people tell an untruth long enough and loud enough, they begin to believe it themselves.

Trump lies when confronted with the truth, since any crack in his narcissism might spread like an Ebola of the soul, and he would deflate like one of Macy's balloons on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.

Intelligent people, caught at anything, denied it. Faced with evidence of having denied it falsely, people said they had not done it and had not lied about it, and didn't remember it, but if they had done it, or lied about it, they would have done it and misspoken themselves about it in an interest so much higher as to alter the nature of doing and lying altogether.

Obviously I wasn't playing well at the time. But as a player, you lie to yourself. You say, "There's nothing wrong. I'm just not on time [at the plate]." You make something else up because pain is not an option.