How We Lie to Ourselves

Truly good people are always ready and even, at times, highly enthusiastic about telling lies. This sounds odd only because we are in the grip of a heroic but indiscriminate and delusional addiction to truth-telling...

We are liars of genius when it comes to hiding uncomfortable facts from ourselves. But there's real wisdom in understanding how we manage to deceive ourselves – and real utility in learning to be a little bit more honest with ourselves. 

Know Yourself

In Ancient Greece, the philosopher Socrates famously declared that the unexamined life was not worth living. Asked to sum up what  all philosophical commandments could be reduced to, he replied: ‘Know yourself.’


Knowing yourself has extraordinary prestige in our culture. It has been framed as quite literally the meaning of life. MORE