
“I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.”
Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America
December 2006, Interview with Jordan Business magazine entitled “The Grass is Greener … On Both Sides”.
“I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.”
Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Attributed to Madison by Frederick Nymeyer in Progressive Calvinism: Neighborly Love and Ricardo's Law of Association, January 1958, p. 31. The source is given there as the 1958 calendar of Spiritual Motivation. It subsequently appeared in Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), p. 541; Jerry Falwell, Listen America! (1980), p. 51; David Barton, The Myth of Separation Between Church and State (1989); and William J. Federer, America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations (1994) p. 411. David Barton has since declared it "unconfirmed" after Madison scholars reported that this statement appears nowhere in the writings or recorded utterances of James Madison. http://www.members.tripod.com/candst/boston2.htm It appears to be an expansion and corruption of Madison's reference (Federalist Papers XXXIX) to "that honourable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government."
Misattributed
“We are ready to sacrifice our true, transitory self for the imaginary eternal self we are building”
Section 47
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice
Context: Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience—the knowledge that our mighty deeds will come to the ears of our contemporaries or "of those that are to be." We are ready to sacrifice our true, transitory self for the imaginary eternal self we are building up, by our heroic deeds, in the opinion and imagination of others.
Hitler's “Barbarossa” Proclamation, (June 22, 1941) http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/hitler4.htm
1940s
1940s, Third inaugural address (1941)
Source: Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team