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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #deception
For twenty-five years I've been speaking and writing in defense of your right to happiness in this world, condemning your inability to take what is your due, to secure what you won in bloody battles on the barricades of Paris and Vienna, in the American Civil War, in the Russian Revolution. Your Paris ended with Petain and Laval, your Vienna with Hitler, your Russia with Stalin, and your America may well end in the rule of the Ku Klux Klan! You've been more successful in winning your freedom than in securing it for yourself and others. This I knew long ago. What I did not understand was why time and again, after fighting your way out of a swamp, you sank into a worse one. Then groping and cautiously looking about me, I gradually found out what has enslaved you: YOUR SLAVE DRIVER IS YOU YOURSELF. No one is to blame for your slavery but you yourself. No one else, I say! ↗
[R]aging crime, class warfare, invasive immigrants, light morals, public misbehavior. Always we convince ourselves that the parade of unwelcome and despised is a new phenomenon, which is why the phrase "the good old days" has passed from cliché to self-parody. ↗
What was to be the value of the long looked forward to, Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders, Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit? The serenity only a deliberate hebetude, The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets Useless in the darkness into which they peered Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us, At best, only a limited value In the knowledge derived from experience. The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies, For the pattern is new in every moment And every moment is a new and shocking Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm. ↗
#experience #knowledge #maturity #wisdom #age
Who would appreciate such candor? No one. None of us really likes honesty. We prefer deception –but only when it is unabashedly flattering or artfully camouflaged. Groups seem to need to believe that they are superior to others and that they have a purpose greater than just passing along their genes to the next generation. Individuals seem to need similar delusions – about who they are and why they do what they do. They need heroes, however fraudulent… Studies show that people are more likely to accept the opinion of a confident con man than the cautious view of someone who actually knows what he is talking about. And professionals who form overconfident opinions on the basis of incorrect readings of the facts are more likely to succeed than their more competent peers who display greater doubt. What’s more, deception works best, according to studies by psychologists, when the person doing the deceiving is fool enough to be deceived, too; that is, when he believes his own lies. That is why incompetent leaders – who are naïve enough to fall for their own guff – are such a danger to civilized life. If they are modern leaders, they must also delude themselves into thinking they know how to make the world a better place. Invariably, the answers they propose to problems are ones that bubble up from their own vanity, the essence of which is to make the rest of the world look just like them! ↗
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. ↗
It’s like my grandpa always used to say, ‘A butter knife would make a deadlier weapon than a melting stick of butter.’” “Your grandpa never said that.” “No, but he should have. He was a damn fool not to have uttered those words.” “My grandpa was a janitor, in the Great Depression. The greatest thing he ever said was, ‘Greg, I just Gregged all over your floor. Do you have a mop I can use to clean it up?’” “Who’s Greg?” “I don’t know.” “What the shit kind of story is that? That story is bullshit. Greg doesn’t exist. Nobody knows nobody named Greg. It’s a unicorn name—it’s complete mythology.” “What about Lou Greg, the baseball player?” “Lou who? Lou Gehrig?” “Here’s a Lou for you. Greg Louganis.” “Bah, Greg Louganis doesn’t exist. He was a myth created by the Soviets to push their divers to perfection. The Russians realized they couldn’t be the best until they deceived their divers into believing there was someone who was always better.” “I’ve seen Greg Louganis, and he’s as real as you or me.” “You’ve seen what they wanted you to see. They gave you a blindfold to wear and convinced you it would improve your eyesight.” ↗
#funny #greg-louganis #humor #legend #myth
So may the outward shows be least themselves. The world is still deceived with ornament. In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt But, being seasoned with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damnèd error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? There is no vice so simple but assumes Some mark of virtue on his outward parts. How many cowards whose hearts are all as false As stairs of sand wear yet upon their chins The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars, Who, inward searched, have livers white as milk, And these assume but valor’s excrement To render them redoubted. Look on beauty, And you shall see ’tis purchased by the weight, Which therein works a miracle in nature, Making them lightest that wear most of it. So are those crispèd snaky golden locks Which maketh such wanton gambols with the wind, Upon supposèd fairness, often known To be the dowry of a second head, The skull that bred them in the sepulcher. Thus ornament is but the guilèd shore To a most dangerous sea, the beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian beauty—in a word, The seeming truth which cunning times put on To entrap the wisest. Therefore then, thou gaudy gold, Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee. Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge 'Tween man and man. But thou, thou meagre lead, Which rather threaten’st than dost promise aught, Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence, And here choose I. Joy be the consequence! ↗
The fact is that we have no way of knowing if the person who we think we are is at the core of our being. Are you a decent girl with the potential to someday become and evil monster, or are you an evil monster that thinks it's a decent girl?" "Wouldn't I know which one I was?" "Good God, no. The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves. ↗
