Why We Lie — Dorothy Rowe // Quotes
People create their gods in their own image. Jesus was born a Jew in Palestine but, as Christianity moved Westwood, Jesus acquired blond hair and blue eyes.
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Charles Darwin challenged the pride people took in themselves, and presented people with complex ideas that required people to think.
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Paul Davies said, ‘Darwin struck at the root of what it is to be human.’
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Psychiatrist diagnose ‘bipolar disorder’ in children as young as two and tell their parents that the disorder is caused by a gene. The possibility that the parents are having difficulty in parenting the children is ignored, though the psychiatrist insist that the family has been very thoroughly investigated.
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Physicists and cosmologist are unlikely to lie to you about their research, but, if you want to see your world as controllable and predictable, they have naught for your comfort.
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For the first time in it’s 3.5 billion years of existence, the planet has an intelligent, communicating species that can consider the whole system and even do things about it. They are not yet bright enough, they have still to evolve quite away, but they could become a very positive contributor to planetary welfare. — James Lovelock
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This kind of loneliness is often called the loneliness of being. It is a very valuable loneliness because it allows us to think deeply, to become absorbed in meditation, or in the contemplation of nature, or the arts, or in some form of creativity.
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Watch Sport and you think about sport. Observe art and you discover yourself. — Steve Bierley (Guardian tennis correspondent)
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No wonder so many men prefer sport than art
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Every lie we tell, no matter how small and unimportant, is a defence of a sense of being a person.
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when we feel safe, we open ourselves to the world and other people: when we feel we are in danger, we close ourselves off and put a barrier between ourselves and the possible sources of that danger.
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People who described themselves as being’ sensitive’ have an amazing ability to perceive and intended insult in someone’s ordinary remark.
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A number of recent studies have found that even 15 month old toddlers seem to be able to detect that other people can have false beliefs about reality.
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The events in childhood that come to define who we are often are events that in themselves are insignificant.
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Many people, including Orwell, know the experience of falling through the gaps between the stars when their expectations about their world have been invalidated. However, they have not been forced to betray what they hold dear, and many of the principles they live by remain intact. They are changed by their experience, but they remain a person.
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We rarely ask,’ from where do torturers get their ideas?’ The truthful answer is considered to be unacceptable. It is from their experiences in childhood.
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Perhaps the most popular lie that adults tell their children is that the family’s nationality, race, religion, or class make some superior to all other people.
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He did administer beatings and other punishments, but he also wanted to humiliate his victims. He did this with great skill, but he also knew how to disconcert them by suddenly treating them with warm friendliness, that’s creating in them what psychologist came to call’ anxious attachment’.
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As children, when we suffer at the hands of others, we comfort ourselves with fantasies of becoming wealthy and admired, and thus’ showing them’, that is, humbling those who use the power against us.
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Taylor was looking at cruelty in terms of what she called ‘otherisation’, ‘a universal way of separating “us” from “them”, and enables “us” to treat “them” as untermenshen’, that is, subhuman. — Kathleen Taylor — cruelty: human evil and the human brain
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An introvert can be hurt and angry at being rejected or betrayed but still at stay an intact person, whereas he shatters and crumbles when he fails to achieve and loses control and what he sees as caos
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Hemingway saw his lying as an essential part of the writers’ art. He wrote,’ it is not unnatural that the best writers are liars. A major part of the trade is to lie or invent and they will lie when they are drunk, or to themselves, or to strangers. They often lie unconsciously and then remember their lies with deep remorse.’ Here Hemingway is presenting the self-justification’ everybody does it’ as profound advice about how to write.
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When fantasies become the myths that comfort and support us, and protect us from the truths of the world in which we live, we call them’ beliefs’.
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A delusion is a fantasy that has a little relationship with the world that rises out of memories needs fears and desires. Psychiatrist regarded delusions as a symptom of psychosis.
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Many of us hear voices. If we were lucky enough to have had a reasonably pleasant life, our voices speak pleasantly to us.
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In normal circumstances, people who turn their backs on reality as soon set straight by the mockery and criticism of those around them, which makes them aware that they had lost credibility
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Lies are words or actions intended to deceive other people or ourselves. Often, when we lie to other people we also lie to ourselves.
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Our anxiety about what we call a lie arises from our unwillingness to see how often we do lie
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Parents who have a secret that they keep from their children like to think that they are protecting the children, but what they are doing is hiding their own shame. Children can cope with the truth, provided the parents present it within the framework,’ this is terrible, but we are brave and strong and can cope with it.’
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When adults tell children that they are too young to understand something they have encountered, some children are tempted to be lazy and not think, the others are wise enough to know that, when I don’t see this, there is something in the situation that the adult wants to hide.
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Moral hazard is based on a lie,’ it doesn’t matter what I do.’ Everything we do has consequences, and to deny this is a very stupid lie. The consequences might mean that we suffer for what we have done, or we might not, but other people suffer. We are responsible for what we do.
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One way of saying that the person is lying without actually using the word is to you use the psychological term’ in denial’, as in,’he’s in denial.’
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McGreal spoke to several of the Hutu worshippers. He wrote,’ some of the worshippers denied that there had been a massacre; a woman who said it was a lie refuse to look at a foot sticking out of the ground beside her.’
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Anorexic girls close to starvation can look in a mirror and see a fat girl who needs a diet. Families who wish to see themselves as well adjusted and happy or refused to see that an adult in the family is very unhappy, or that a child is struggling with a problem and needs help.
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The statement’ we had no choice’ is a line used by those people who know that they have a choice but are determined to do what they want to do while at the same time are absolving themselves of all responsibility for what they do.
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If we insist that our enemies deserve all the suffering we have inflicted on them we have to create a whole mesh of lies to keep the first light in place. It is easier to stay with one monstrous lie, that our enemies do not suffer because they are not human like ourselves.
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Why do people deny that climate is changing? Anthony, a commentator on George Marshall’s blog, gave a succinct answer,’ denial is our adaption strategy. It is so much easier than doing anything.’
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The word’ hypocrisy’ comes from the Greek hypokrisis crisis meaning the playing of a part. We hope that our audience will believe our lie. We might know that we are pretending, but sometimes we lie to ourselves and tell ourselves that what we pretend is true. Such is our need to think well of ourselves.
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Many hypocrites rely on the fact that the media is attention span rivals that of the legendary goldfish. There is nothing world leaders seem to like better than lining up for a photograph after having announced that they have pledged billions to a good cause, such as helping poor countries deal with climate change. Then, when the journalists and photographers have departed, these leaders renege on their promises. John Vidal reported that developing countries have received less than 10% of the money promised by rich countries to help them adapt to global warming… the world’s richest countries have together pledged nearly $18bn, but less than $900m has been dispersed.
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Constant and sometimes unfair criticism is the price politicians have to pay for living in a democracy. To survive they have to be masters of hypocrisy. No matter what is happening, everything is fine.
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When gay pressure groups need discrimination against gays and lesbians in the army a political issue, army Chiefs and President Clinton agreed on a policy called don’t ask, don’t tell. Don’t ask anyone if he is a homosexual, and, if you are, don’t tell.
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Perhaps we should feel sorry for young men on the make. They are driven by forces inside them that they do not understand. Indeed, they know nothing of what goes on inside them, and they dare not look. All they know is that they have to compete with on other young men and win. Only thus can they prove that they are strong and brave, a man all men admire. If they lose, the worst that could possibly happen will happen. They will be nothing, a nobody, less than the dust, and all men will despise them. They know this as an absolute truth, the law of the universe, and questionable and unquestioned. Do you not tell them that they are wrong because they will despise you.
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If you believe your lies strongly enough, you’re not going to show signs of lying. — Elkman
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Remorse requires us to recognise that our past is not what we want it to be. However, recognising the harm we have done brings to mind all the regrets we have buried, painful matters of being unloved, betrayed, and rejected.
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The lies details in order to avoid remove come in many forms, and the nearest we can get to’ I’m sorry’, to the blatant,’ I’m not to blame.’
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Bush and Cheney did not know how the Afghans and the Iraqi saw their situation, and they did not want to know because this information would show them that the situation was not what they wanted it to be.
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Tony Blair wants said, very complacently, that he wished she had studied history.
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And so, Bush, Cheney and Blair repeated the mistakes of the Vietnam war, and added a few mistakes of their own.
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Depression is a defence where we try to hold ourselves together and stop ourselves from falling apart. Depression serves a purpose. It gives us a space where we can consider the ways we have interpreted certain events in our life and identify where we have lied to ourselves.
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Uncertainty and aloneness are part of our human condition, just as breathing is.
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Reality, as TS Eliot said, it’s too much for human being is to be, or at least, not all the time.
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If you get angry with those people who do not accept what to say, you inadvertently reveal a great deal about yourself.
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By recognising your own truths, no matter how painful and saddening these might be, you make yourself into a whole person who is much better able to deal with whatever life throws at you.
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We are like goldfish. We swim months around our bowl and when we complete the circle everything looks new. — Jon Macintosh
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Whenever we encounter a story that is new to us, we understand a new story in terms of the story we already know.
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