“Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people.”

Criterion Collection essay on Rashamon, excerpted from Something Like an Autobiography as translated by Audie E. Bock (1982) http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/196-akira-kurosawa-on-rashomon
Context: Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing. This script portrays such human beings — the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are. It even shows this sinful need for flattering falsehood going beyond the grave — even the character who dies cannot give up his lies when he speaks to the living through a medium. Egoism is a sin the human being carries with him from birth; it is the most difficult to redeem. This film is like a strange picture scroll that is unrolled and displayed by the ego. You say that you can’t understand this script at all, but that is because the human heart itself is impossible to understand. If you focus on the impossibility of truly understanding human psychology and read the script one more time, I think you will grasp the point of it.

Der Verstandesmensch verhöhnt nichts so bitter als den Edelmut, dessen er sich nicht fähig fühlt.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 20.

Introduction, p. 7
The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003)

Bishop
Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Vinod Rai at a seminar on 'Public Accountability and the Role of CAG' organized by the Institute of Public Auditors of India at New Delhi on 28/03/2012.

1982