life on planet earth on Deception

It’s important, then, to have our eyes open to this deception. How is it that so many modern promises sound true but in the end lead to our deception, or even our destruction? A long, long time ago, t...

Our propensity to deceive ourselves about our place and purpose makes it so very difficult to see the truth of our lives, to understand the meaning of our moment in history and our responsibility to i...

The art of pleasing is the art of deception.

To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.

Where there is hypocrisy in our life, please name it. Where we practice deception, please bring truth. In your goodness, meet us and heal us that we might be pure in heart and see you.

We love to think that we're rational—that our take on the world is correct—and that if we were being dishonest with ourselves... we'd know. However, there's good reason to think that we...

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.

The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.

In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

Our goodness is our biggest self-delusion, and all of us seem to be living with it.

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

Holy and merciful God, we need Your grace and love today. We deliberately lie and speak falsehoods. We mislead and deceive with half-truths. We omit facts that make us look bad. We take pleasure in go...

Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.

It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.

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

The greatest of all illusions is the illusion of familiarity.

Evading self-acknowledgment of our faults enables us to avoid painful moral emotions: guilt and remorse for harming others; shame for betraying your own ideals; self-contempt for not meeting even our ...

The ear is sometimes deceived in hearing sounds, which are only imaginary; the eye, too, sees things in motion, which in reality are at rest; the sense of smell alone is not deceived.

The simple truth of our being gets lost in the metanarratives we spin. We become the fictions we live. Consequently, our way of being in the world is so false and unnatural that our presence is thorou...

When we observe evil, sinful behavior from a distance, the inclination is simply to see people as acting with malicious intent. We assume they are “bad people.” But often the motivations that lead to ...

Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.

Our race would not have gotten far, Had we not learned to bluff it out And look more certain than we are Of what our motion is about.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power.

[The flattery of others] is narcotic and addictive. It preys on two desperate and inescapable desires; to be thought well of by others and to think well of ourselves … We desire and need approbation s...

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

He wonders if he’s lying. If he is, he is hung in the middle of nowhere, and the thought hollows him.

At some point in childhood we all make the powerful discovery that we can manipulate the truth about ourselves.

All: O Lord, you declare that the forgiven person is blessed, that the person who has no deceit is blessed. We confess that we have had deceitful hearts, deceitful tongues, deceitful thoughts, and dec...