In fact, lying to ourselves may be the most dangerous thing in the world because we live our truth whether we are honest about it or not.

One major cost of self-deception is that we use painful life experiences to justify being non-ideal versions of ourselves.

We would all benefit by shifting our focus from seeing pain as bad to seeing pain as motivation to change.

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

I cannot overemphasize the impact our childhood has on our ability to be honest because we live out what we learned as children in our adult relationships.

Living through difficult life circumstances in not an excuse for passing trauma onto someone else.

When you are not aware that you are bringing old learning to your current relationships, you will want to lie about where it is coming from.

We lie to reflect the aspirational goals that we unconsciously know we will not uphold.

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

It is actually a good survival strategy to manipulate twist, and reorganize the truth in a way that is more consistent with what we can psychologically tolerate.

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

(...) I'm not much of anything, (...) besides bored and boring, punctuated by fits of scant self-amusement. And you are ...?

To have a curable illness and to leave it untreated except for prayer is like sticking your hand in a fire and asking God to remove the flame.

The tradition in Serbia has always been team sports - football, basketball, handball, volleyball and water polo, individual sports are not supported.

I can't believe that God put us on this earth to be ordinary.

I was always a sensitive, sweet kid, but I got brutalized and I became brutal. And frankly, I don't think it was my natural makeup. I don't think its anyone's natural makeup to be a violent brawler.

The superior man is universally minded and no partisan. The inferior man is a partisan and not universal.

The greatest victory is defeat.

I even used to stop vehicles going through stop signs, even though I was walking.

It's really hard to be poor in New York - I was really poor when I lived in New York.

In acute suffering the need for meaning is as strong or stronger than the need for happiness.