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.
“It is the property of every Hero, in every time, in every place and situation, that he come back to reality; that he stand upon things, and not shows of things. According as he loves, and venerates, articulately or with deep speechless thought, the awful realities of things, so will the hollow shows of things, however regular, decorous, accredited by Koreishes or Conclaves, be intolerable and detestable to him.”
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Priest
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Thomas Carlyle 481
Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian… 1795–1881Related quotes
“A man may be so much of every thing, that he is nothing of any thing.”
1783, p. 500
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV
Source: The Life of Johnson, Vol 4
Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 537
Sunni Hadith
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Priest
Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters (1899), p. 186.
Context: Every man should have a college education in order to show him how little the thing is really worth. The intellectual kings of the earth have seldom been college-bred.
Stobaeus, Florilegium, XL, VI, 24, as reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of Quotations (1897), p. 515.