
“I do not believe he believes what he is saying.”
John Emerson, New York Times, unspecified article/page, 2 April 1992.
“I do not believe he believes what he is saying.”
John Emerson, New York Times, unspecified article/page, 2 April 1992.
“It becomes so easy to believe what one wishes to believe.”
Source: Book 2, Chapter 2 “The Castle Built of Blood” (p. 320), Corum, The King of the Swords (1971)
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis
Captain Richard Sharpe, p. 304
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Sword (1983)
Third Olynthiac http://books.google.com/books?id=n4INAAAAYAAJ&q="the+easiest+thing+in+the+world+is+self-deceit+for+every+man+believes+what+he+wishes+though+the+reality+is+often+different"&pg=PA57#v=onepage, section 19 (349 BC), as translated by Charles Rann Kennedy (1852)
Variants:
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.
As quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (1987) by Robert Andrews, p. 255
There is nothing easier than self-delusion. Since what man desires, is the first thing he believes.
Yesterday and Today, 1917-1967: Contemporaries Report on the Progress of German Soviet Friendship - Page 105 - by Verlag Zeit im Bild - Soviet Union - 1967.
“What the enemy believed of you was probably true, or else why were you enemies in the first place?”
Part Eight “The Return”, Chapter v “Nonesuch”, Section 2 (p. 353)
(1987), BOOK TWO: THE FUGUE
As quoted in Lincoln; An Account of his Personal Life, Especially of its Springs of Action as Revealed and Deepened by the Ordeal of War (1922) by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson.
1860s
Quoted in "Fallen Soviet Generals: Soviet General Officers Killed in Battle" - Page 198 - by Aleksander A. Maslov, David M. Glantz - 1998