Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

Belief in the absence of illusions is itself an illusion.

The more important the subject and the closer it cuts to the bone of our hopes and needs, the more we are likely to err in establishing a framework for analysis.

Little white lies are told by humans all the time. Indeed, lying is often how we get through each day in a happy little bubble. We spend time and energy rationalizing our own behaviors, beliefs and decision-making processes.

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.

Self delusion is not a good basis for making important policy.

Even intelligent people succumb to their own propaganda.

If you assume away most or all of the questions or difficulties, you can persuade yourself of just about anything.

People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.

The senses do not deceive us, but the judgment does.

Judgment is forced upon us by experience

Overconfidence is a powerful source of illusions, primarily determined by the quality and coherence of the story that you can construct, not by its validity.

Reason deceives us more often than does nature.

We are so bemused by our own petard, that we are unable to look at things objectively.

Life is just an endless chain of judgements. . . . The more imperfect our judgement, the less perfect our success.

He thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led.

Giving importance to what we think because we thought it, taking our own selves not only (to quote the Greek philosopher) as the measure of all things but as their norm or standard, we create in ourselves, if not an interpretation, at least a criticism of the universe, which we don't even know and therefore cannot criticize. The giddiest, most weak-minded of us then promote that criticism to an interpretation that's superimposed, like a hallucination; induced rather than deduced. It's a hallucination in the strict sense, being an illusion based on something only dimly seen.

Those who think their intellect will keep them from deception are already deceived.

But anyone who thinks themselves genuinely unbiased is bound to be taken in.

Every fool stands convinced; and everyone convinced is a fool. The faultier a person's judgement the firmer their convictions.

There are no such self-deceivers as those who think they reason when they only feel.

Human beings seem to have an almost unlimited capacity to deceive themselves, and to deceive themselves into taking their own lies for truth.

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