Top Highlights

• “The easiest thing of all,” said Demosthenes, “is to deceive one’s self; for what a man wishes he generally believes to be true” (Olynthiaca iii.19).
• The New Testament explicitly mentions self-deception in the context of false profession of faith: “If anyone seems to be religious, and bridles not his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is vain” (James 1:26); “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).
• I am persuaded that a very great part of the wickedness of the world is, one way or other, owing to the self-partiality, self-flattery, and self-deceit, endeavored there to be laid open and explained.
• Kirkegaard taught that men deceive themselves by ignoring what is in their hearts, thus leading inevitably to a clash between one’s private and public selves; in such a state men are unable to will without conflict and frustration.
• The theories of “unhappy consciousness” in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, of distortion through “ideology” and “false consciousness” in Marx and Mannheim, and of “repression” and “the unconscious” in Freud have fostered conceptions of the mind which deepen our awareness of the human capacity for self-deception.