Deception Quotes

“Deception and self-deception are intimately intertwined. We fool ourselves in order to fool others, and we fool others in order to fool ourselves.”

“The power of His gentleness..In the Eye of Deception - This is my story.”

“At the most basic level, self-deception is fooling ourselves into believing something that is false -- or -- not believing something that is true.”

“Clever deceivers rarely tell outright falsehoods. It’s too risky. The art of deception is closely related to the magician’s craft: it involves knowing how to draw attention to a harmless place, to deflect it away from the action. Deeply entrenched patterns of perceptual, emotional, and cognitive dispositions serve as instruments of deception. A skilled deceiver is an illusionist who knows how to manipulate the normal patterns of what is salient to their audience. He places salient markers—something red, something anomalous, something desirable—in the visual field, to draw attention just where he wants it.”

“Perhaps the most tragic way that self-deception harms us is that we start believing our lies and we teach them to others.”

“The truth is that our self-deceptive lies range from seemingly tiny untruths to massive life-altering falsehoods about reality.”

“Deception starts from the pulpit”

“We cannot separate doubt from deception. Doubt robs a man of his confidence; it is a fearful thing. Offer him deception to restore that confidence and he will embrace the falsehood for the comfort it brings. If you would deceive, begin with doubt.”

“People need to remember that a man who is deceptive deceives by hiding that he is deceptive. He is not going to openly validate that he is deceiving you because his aim is to deceive you.”

“Art is a deception that creates real emotions - a lie that creates a truth. And when you give yourself over to that deception, it becomes magic.”