Mental Trickery Quotes

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

The ingenuity of self-deception is inexhaustible.

When I graduated from college, I thought I was losing my hair. And I started looking into hair transplants. I was talking to my mom. My mom said, 'You're crazy. You have so much hair.' It was a real lesson in your mind playing tricks on you. You can make your mind think anything is happening.

I once listed all the good things I did over the past year, and then turned them into resolution form and backdated them. That was a good feeling

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.

If you can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves. The recognition of illusion is also its ending. Its survival depends on your mistaking it for reality.

You can trick yourself into doing things by doing it one step at a time and never letting yourself see the overall picture.

Magicians have done controlled testing in human perception for thousands of years.

Illusions are like umbrellas - you no sooner get them than you lose them, and the loss always leaves a little painful wound.

Make yourself look really stupid so you don't feel bad doing something a little stupid.

Distractions can take us in an exciting direction but most often borrow our attention briefly without much resistance and take their sweet time giving it back. Distractions lure us in with an easy escape and then trick us by stealing our attention.

I lie to myself every day when I tell myself, 'I can skip yoga.'

So, eventually, he made one final arrangement with himself, which he has religiously held to ever since, and that was to count each fish that he caught as ten, and to assume ten to begin with. For example, if he did not catch any fish at all, then he said he had caught ten fish - you could never catch less than ten fish by his system; that was the foundation of it. Then, if by any chance he really did catch one fish, he called it twenty, while two fish would count thirty, three forty, and so on.

What is illusion? M.: To whom is the illusion? Find it out. Then illusion will vanish. Generally people want to know about illusion and do not examine to whom it is. It is foolish. Illusion is outside and unknown. But the seeker is considered to be known and is inside. Find out what is immediate, intimate, instead of trying to find out what is distant and unknown.

On the subject of spinach: divide into little piles. Rearrange again into new piles. After five of six maneuvers, sit back and say you are full.

It is not only by dint of lying to others, but also of lying to ourselves, that we cease to notice that we are lying.

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

The thing with pretending you're in a good mood is that sometimes you can actually trick yourself into feeling better.

The mind is so tricky. It will say, "No one cares. Is it true? Well, someone does. Let's see: So-and-so doesn't care. Well, maybe they do. Well, there is someone who doesn't care." It just shifts and shifts and shifts, so it can keep all of its concepts intact.

How not to choose is the whole art of religion, how to drop into a choicelessness. But remember, don't choose choicelessness! Otherwise, listening to me or to Sosan or Krishnamurti you will become enchanted by the word 'choicelessness.' Your mind will say, "This is very good. Then ecstasy is possible and much bliss will happen to you if you become choicelessness. Then the door of the mysteries of life will be opened." The mind feels greedy. The mind says, "Okay, so I will choose choicelessness." The door is closed, only the label is changed, but you have fallen a victim of the old trick.

Approaching the treadmill I tell myself, 'Okay, it's just 10 minutes, after that you can get off the thing'. That's no time at all.

It's a mental fake-out to myself. I make believe I'm making a new show so I forget the material I was working on and make up some fresh material.

Can a person steal happiness? Or is just another internal, infernal human trick?

Sometimes I talk to myself in languages I'm unfamiliar with... just to screw with my subconscious.

He knew that there was a difference between something that makes you happy and something that doesn’t make you unhappy. The trick was convincing yourself these were one and the same.