Some people have a difficult time facing truth and reality. They prefer to live in a make-believe world, pretending that certain things aren’t happening.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.

Acting is a nice childish profession – pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.

It’s all make believe, isn’t it?

I am not a crook.

I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

Time travel was once considered scientific heresy, and I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a ‚crank.‘

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

I have a terrifying long list of fears. Literally everything – diseases, spiders… and people getting tired of me.

Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.

What I’m denying is that I’m this cutthroat financier.

Because we’re actors we can pretend and fake it, but I’d rather the intimate investment was authentic.

I’m afraid the SS’s relationship with the Catholic Church is something the Church still has to deal with and does not deny.

In one way, I suppose, I have been ‚in denial‘ for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.

The thing about the truth is, not a lot of people can handle it.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

Therapy? I don’t need that. The roles that I choose are my therapy.

I think in defeat you grope for things that are happy, and it’s hard.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

I go through a lot of depression, and I know other people do, too, but I have an outlet that so many people don’t. If you have that inside of you and can’t get it out, what do you do?

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.

The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. We all have a dark side, a tendency to manipulate, and aggressive desires. The most dangerous types are those who repress their desires or deny the existence of them, often acting them out in the most underhanded ways.

We were the first generation to have to deal with the modern stardom of football. Some handled it better than others.

My mother was a professional sick person; she took a lot of pain pills. There are many people like that. It’s just how they are used to getting attention. I always remember she’s the daughter of alcoholics who’d leave her alone at Christmas time.

I would wear the blue overalls of the fieldworker and often wore round, rimless glasses known as Mazzawati teaglasses. I had a car, and I wore a chauffeur’s cap with my overalls. The pose of chauffeur was convenient because I could travel under the pretext of driving my master’s car.

When people are taken out of their depths they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they may put up.

God is, even though the whole world deny him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

Spiritual people don’t float around all day on clouds of glory; they live in the real world and deal with real issues in real ways.

From my close observation of writers… they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.

The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

I re-invented my image so many times that I’m in denial that I was originally an overweight Korean woman.

I try not to think about my life. I have no life. I need therapy.

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were.

A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.

People who lie to themselves about investing are the same as overweight people who blame their genes for their obesity.

There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: Deny your responsibility.

There are people in the world who have skills and strength and talent that I will never have. Never. These notions that you can ‚be whatever you want to be as long as you want it bad enough‘ are not true. They are fairy tales.

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.