Vernon Howard Quotes

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.

People are so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's are transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone are rosy.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

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

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.

Thinking you know when in fact you don't is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone

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

We know less when we erroneously think we know than when we recognize that we don't.

I think the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Fooling ourselves may even be a necessary precondition for fooling others.

Most fools think they are only ignorant.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

Belief in the absence of illusions is itself an illusion.

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.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

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.

To deny that human beings are filled with anti-social passions betrays a denial of reality and a lack of self-awareness. One has to be taught nonsense for a great many formative years to believe it.

There is, however, no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.

Humans naturally think more highly of themselves and their communities than their evidence can justify, but deny that they are biased in this way. This sincere confidence helps people to convince others to think highly of them, and to convince their group of their strong attachment to it. If you force yourself to face facts squarely you may gain better insight into yourself and human nature, and perhaps even signal a certain rare ability to achieve this result. But you may less convince others of your other abilities, and to convince your group of your loyalty

The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.

Nothing is easier than self-deceit, since what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

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.

Another source of fallacy is the vicious circle of illusions which consists on the one hand of believing what we see, and on the other in seeing what we believe.