The Collaborative International Dictionary
Self-delusion \Self`-de*lu"sion\, n. The act of deluding one's self, or the state of being thus deluded.
Wiktionary
n. The act of deluding oneself, or the state of being so deluded.
Usage examples of "self-delusion".
God that we have no need of such self-delusion, and there is not one philosopher in the world who could prove to me that you require it.
That is no strange thing, then, that is now happening to us, when, after our fine communion season, we have suddenly fallen back into this deep darkness, and are cast into these terrible temptations, and feel as if all our past experiences and attainments and enjoyments had been but a self-delusion and a snare.
Realist and pragmatist though she was, she nevertheless nurtured a blind bit of self-delusion wherein she would turn Booboo around.
If your "enlightenment" is egoic self-delusion, then life will soon give you a challenge that will bring out your unconsciousness in whatever form -- as fear, anger, defensiveness, judgment, depression, and so on.
It had been utter folly to follow Corrie: a self-delusion, born of an attempt to help a cub reporter and to find his own new angle on the story.
In many cases their only claim to exceptionality is their abnormal gullibility and extraordinary capacity for self-delusion.
But flatworms don't matter, coincidences don't matter, no mundane proof matters: There is no proof that some cocksure psychiatrist could not explain away as coincidence, or déjà vu, or self-delusion.
He was at his dressing-table, flourishing his silver-backed brushes, improving his parting, with a dab or two at the ends of his pathetic Guardee moustache, and shooting his cuffs, while I marvelled at the human capacity for self-delusion.
As with all gut feelings, only time will tell whether this it is pathetic self-delusion.
As with all gut feelings, only time will tell whether this is pathetic self-delusion.
It is the only scientific design that defeats the illogical susceptibility of intelligent beings to placebo effects and terminal self-delusion.
The way toward truth that was to be unique in the human experience, a model of impartiality and integrity, turns out to be as open to the serving of vested interests and as subject to all the familiar human propensities toward self-delusion and wilful deception.