Errol Morris Quotes

We live in a world of denial, and we don't know what the truth is anymore.

In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant. One motto on the show is, 'Keep your facts, I'm going with the truth.'

People believed what they wanted to believe, no matter what was right in front of their eyes.

People don't want to hear the truth; they never do. They wanna live in some kind of fantasy.

People deny things that are true all the time.

We should not be upset that others hide the truth from us, when we hide it so often from ourselves

We have a never sated appetite for self deception.

We are willing to believe anything other than the truth.

Only fools imagine they are already awake. How clearly they understand everything! How easily they distinguish this deception from that reality!

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

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.

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

We believe what we want to, what we need to. The corollary is that we choose not to see what we'd rather pretend doesn't exist.

Truth is not always the best basis for happiness. There are certain lies which may constitute a far better and more secure foundation of happiness. There are people who perish when their eyes are opened.

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.

The easiest person to deceive is one's self.

You know the problem, we don't want to believe what we know.

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.

We all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable.

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.

No one wants to hear the truth if it isn't what they want to hear.

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

People take reality for granted.

I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.

Most people live in a myth and grow violently angry if anyone dares to tell them the truth about themselves.