Deception famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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Deceit is the false road to happiness; and all the joys we travel through to vice, like fairy banquets, vanish when we touch them.
-- Aaron Hill -
Mundus vult decipi'—the world wants to be deceived. To live without deception presupposes standards beyond the reach of most people whose existence is largely shaped by compromise, evasion and mutual accommodation. Could they face their weakness, their vanity and selfishness, without a mask?
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
As a painter, I realized that what we see is just manifestation of unseen power. Since then [1958 Coup in Iraq], reality started to take another form in my mind. Hence, I was aware of deception of our senses.
-- Ala Bashir -
A tyranny based on ... deception and maintained by terror must inevitably perish from the poison it generates within itself.
-- Albert Einstein -
A "just war" is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.
-- Alexander Cockburn -
A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths.
-- Alexander Pushkin -
An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
One handles truths like dynamite. Literature is one vast hypocrisy, a giant deception, treachery. All writers have concealed more than they revealed.
-- Anais Nin -
Melodies are just honest. They can only be what they are. Words have the capacity for deception. Theyre all full of subtext, and some of them are cliche and overused and vernacular. Theyre tricky. All I can say is, words are tricky.
-- Andrew Bird -
There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.
-- Arthur Conan Doyle -
We must look for consistency. Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception.
-- Arthur Conan Doyle -
If you are often deceived by those around you, you may be sure that you deserve to be deceived; and that instead of railing at the general falseness of mankind, you have first to pronounce judgment on your own jealous tyranny, or on your own weak credulity.
-- Arthur Helps -
What we need is a rebirth of satire, of dissent, of irreverence, of an uncompromising insistence that phoniness is phony and platitudes are platitudinous.
-- Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. -
Better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious.
-- B. C. Forbes -
Ruthven surmised that he had hit upon some of the central deceptions which had wrecked him and reduced him and so many of his colleagues to this condition. To surmise was not to conquer, of course; he was as helpless as ever but there was a dim liberation in seeing how he had been lied to, and he felt that at least he could take one thing from the terrible years through which he had come: he was free of self-delusion.
-- Barry N. Malzberg -
The broad outlines of the Double Cross deception have been known since 1972, when Sir John Masterman, the former chairman of the double agent committee, controversially published his account of the operation in defiance of official secrecy.
-- Ben Macintyre -
Deception is a sort of seduction. In love and war, adultery and espionage, deceit can only succeed if the deceived party is willing, in some way, to be deceived.
-- Ben Macintyre -
Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest.
-- Benjamin Franklin -
For as long as I care to remember, religion, like the striptease, has always been a display of the power of suggestion. Like the Virgin Birth, it has all too often supported an immaculate deception.
-- Bernard Katz -
The habit of employing self-deception to maintain one's self esteem has often become so ingrained that the first step to developing accurate self-awareness is honest acknowledgment of the existence of hidden emotions, motives and tendencies in the mind without immediately suppressing them.
-- Bhikkhu Analayo -
The two principles of truth, reason and senses, are not only both not genuine, but are engaged in mutual deception. The senses deceive reason through false appearances, and the senses are disturbed by passions, which produce false impressions.
-- Blaise Pascal -
Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.
-- Blaise Pascal -
All martial arts is simply an honest expression of one's body - with a lot of deception in between.
-- Bruce Lee -
It is Toussaint's supreme merit that while he saw European civilisation as a valuable and necessary thing, and strove to lay its foundations among his people, he never had the illusion that it conferred any moral superiority. He knew French, British, and Spanish imperialists for the insatiable gangsters that they were, that there is no oath too sacred for them to break, no crime, deception, treachery, cruelty, destruction of human life and property which they would not commit against those who could not defend themselves.
-- C. L. R. James -
To know how to disguise is the knowledge of kings.
-- Cardinal Richelieu -
Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.
-- Carl Sagan -
A truth is what it is. A lie, a thought out deception more brutal than a truth could ever be.
-- Charlotte Armstrong -
It is the cult of self that is killing the United States. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance ; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt.
-- Chris Hedges -
We live in imaginary, virtual worlds created by corporations that profit from our deception.
-- Chris Hedges -
People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?
-- Claude Debussy -
When a liar became too skilled at deception, he could lose the ability to discern truth, and could himself be more easily deceived.
-- Dean Koontz -
Nothing is so boring as having to keep up a deception.
-- E. V. Lucas -
A picture is an artificial work, outside nature. It calls for as much cunning as the commission of a crime.
-- Edgar Degas -
They who say that women do not desire the right of suffrage, that they prefer masculine domination to self-government, falsify every page of history, every fact in human experience. It has taken the whole power of the civil and canon law to hold woman in the subordinate position which it is said she willingly accepts.
-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton -
I pray to God that I shall not live one hour after I have thought of using deception.
-- Elizabeth I -
I would gladly chastise those who represent things as different from what they are. Those who steal property or make counterfeit money are punished, and those ought to be still more severely dealt with who steal away or falsify the good name of a prince.
-- Elizabeth I -
The monster likes to talk; he jumps into your head and opens your mouth, making it spout your deepest darkest deceptions. Making you say all the things you'd rather not say, at least not in mixed company." (Ellen Hopkins)
-- Ellen Hopkins -
The consequences of President Johnsons campaign of deliberate deception regarding Vietnam could hardly have been more catastrophic for the nation, the military, the president, his party, and the presidency itself.
-- Eric Alterman -
Judgment consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions, but in being able to awaken the decency dormant in every person.
-- Eric Hoffer -
I'm really interested in self-deception. Really interested in how people live in bubble universes. How people can fail to see the seemingly obvious.
-- Errol Morris -
If you asked me what makes the world go round, I would say self-deception. Self-deception allows us to create a consistent narrative for ourselves that we actually believe. I’m not saying that the truth doesn’t matter. It does. But self-deception is how we survive.
-- Errol Morris -
Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown. There is only one thing and that which seems to be a plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing, produced by a deception, the Indian maya, as in a gallery of mirrors.
-- Erwin Schrodinger -
If your aim is life is pursuing truth, one of the things you might want to study is why deception is so common in life.
-- Eugene Burger -
One of Satan's most frequently used deceptions is the notion that the commandments of God are meant to restrict freedom and limit happiness.
-- Ezra Taft Benson -
You say, "Well, I am not going to be anyone's 'yes man.' If I see something wrong in a person, I'm going to warn others about it." Fine. But beware that what you are calling "courage to speak out" is not more truly a deception masking a rebellious, dishonouring attitude.
-- Francis Frangipane -
We often shed tears that deceive ourselves after deceiving others.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld -
You are never so easily fooled as when trying to fool someone else.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld -
The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld -
A resolution never to deceive exposes a man to be often deceived.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld -
Euphemisms, like fashions, have their day and pass, perhaps to return at another time. Like the guests at a masquerade ball, they enjoy social approval only so long as they retain the capacity for deception.
-- Freda Adler -
It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Truth lives on in the midst of deception....
-- Friedrich Schiller -
Deceive not thy physician, confessor, nor lawyer.
-- George Herbert -
Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.
-- George Orwell -
The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.
-- Georges Bernanos -
My landscapes are not only beautiful or nostalgic, with a Romantic or classical suggestion of lost Paradises, but above all 'untruthful'...
-- Gerhard Richter -
The human mind has an infinite capacity for self-deception.
-- Gertrude Atherton -
In 2004, I wrote 'What We've Lost,' a book about the Bush administration. It sold only reasonably well, in part, I think, because the book was a horrific downer, an unrelenting account of the administration's actions, bungles, deceptions, half-truths, untruths, and downright corruptions.
-- Graydon Carter -
Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man and recover the natural and unreasonable order.
-- Hans Arp -
deception and 'con games' are a way of life in all species and throughout nature. Organisms that do not improve their ability to deceive - and to detect deception - are less apt to survive.
-- Harriet Lerner -
A marriage based on full confidence, based on complete and unqualified frankness on both sides; they are not keeping anything back; there's no deception underneath it all. If I might so put it, it's an agreement for the mutual forgiveness of sin.
-- Henrik Ibsen -
Fake it may be, lies and deceptions, but this is the world in which we find ourselves, and here we must make our little lives.
-- Ian McDonald -
Especially difficult when the first and best unconscious move of a dedicated liar is to persuade himself he's sincere. And once he's sincere, all deception vanishes.
-- Ian Mcewan -
Invoking brings the heart closer to the hereafter and keeps the world away from the heart, even though the world is around it. Invoking warns the heedless heart to abandon its pleasures and deceptions.
-- Ibn Ata Allah -
You just sit there and tolerate it, the same way everything in this country is tolerated. Every deception, every lie, every bullet in the brains. Just as you are already tolerating bullets in the brains that will be implemented only after the bullet is put in your brains.
-- Imre Kertész -
I expected so much from life and if I had not seen it so close, I would to this day be expecting something. What treasures I discovered in my own soul - where are they all? I have exchanged them for the world's coin, given my frankness, my first passion - and for what? For bitter disillusionment, for the knowledge that all is deception, all is brittle, that one can place trust neither in oneself nor in others - and I have come to fear both others and myself. I have not been able, along with this analysis, to accept the trifles of life and be content with them, as many others do.
-- Ivan Goncharov -
The best way to deceive a knave is to tell him the truth.
-- Ivan Panin -
Machiavelli says that if as a ruler you accept that your every action must pass moral scrutiny, you will without fail be defeated by an opponent who submits to no such moral test. To hold on to power, you have not only to master the crafts of deception and treachery but to be prepared to use them where necessary.
-- J. M. Coetzee -
Conversation! Supple sentences, with first and second meanings and overtones beyond, outrageous challenges with cleverly planned slip-points, rebuttals of elegant brevity; deceptions and guiles, patient explanations of the obvious, fleeting allusions to the unthinkable. As a preliminary, the conversationalist must gauge the mood, the intelligence and the verbal facility of the company. To this end, a few words of pedantic exposition often prove invaluable.
-- Jack Vance -
There is as much deception in noise as there is in silence
-- Jacqueline Carey -
Human beings are under the control of a strange force that bends them in absurd ways, forcing them to play a role in a bizarre game of deception.
-- Jacques Vallee -
Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the State.
-- James Jesus Angleton -
It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise the future can never keep, and I had fallen into the meanest type of self-deception in making myself believe that all this was in preparation for great things to come.
-- Jane Addams -
An economy where advertisers thrive while journalists and artists struggle, reflects the values of a society more interested in deception and manipulation than in truth and beauty
-- Jaron Lanier -
Want to discover the truth about deception in therapy? Jeffrey Kottler and Jon Carlson have collected a formable collection of old pros whose compelling prose sheds light on an important, but previously unexplored, subtext that permeates psychotherapy. Don't fool yourself: The roadmap to avoid being duped is contained within.
-- Jeffrey K. Zeig -
Deception by an omission of the truth is as bad as a lie.
-- Jennifer Chiaverini -
The fundamental factor of self-deception is this constant desire to be something in this world and in the world hereafter.
-- Jiddu Krishnamurti -
James says that you deceive yourself if you only hear the Word but do not do it. How many people live in this deception their whole life-hearing and hearing, but never even trying to do what they hear!
-- Johan Oscar Smith -
Nothing is more common on earth than to deceive and be deceived.
-- Johann Gottfried Seume -
Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
An offended heart is the breeding ground of deception.
-- John Bevere -
And here and now we must insist again that fidelity, honor, and love of country demand untrammeled debate and open dissent. At no time is that truer than in the midst of a war rooted in deceit and justified by continuing deception.
-- John F. Kerry -
The church today is riddled with fad doctrines and new sounds that distract from the clear message of the Great commission in the New Testament. Any message that attracts you which does not bring glory to Christ is the message of a seducing spirit and the man giving it is in deception.
-- John Hagee -
The endless, agonizing recycling of what might have been, soon followed by a litany of rationalizations and self-deceptions as you struggle to reconcile the void between the person you want to be and the person you fear you are..
-- Jon Krakauer -
Empire of Deception is a sure thing--a book guaranteed to entertain and make you rich (in knowledge, that is). Dean Jobb has found a fascinating yet little-known jazz-age tale and told it with style and smarts. Get in on the action.
-- Jonathan Eig -
If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art... the minute painter would be more apt to succeed. But it is not the eye, it is the mind which the painter of genius desires to address.
-- Joshua Reynolds -
Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.
-- Karen Horney -
An ideology is a complex of ideas or notions which represents itself to the thinker as an absolute truth for the interpretation of the world and his situation within it; it leads the thinker to accomplish an act of self-deception for the purpose of justification, obfuscation and evasion in some sense or other to his advantage.
-- Karl Jaspers -
We tend to tell strangers what we think will make us sound good. I myself, to my utter amazement, informed a telephone pollster that I exercised regularly, a bare-faced lie.
-- Katha Pollitt -
in politics as in life, what is known is not necessarily what is believed, what is shown is not necessarily what is seen, and what is said is not necessarily what is heard.
-- Kathleen Hall Jamieson
