55 Quotes About Denial

Denial is a powerful yet perplexing human experience that often shields us from uncomfortable truths or emotions. Whether we encounter it in ourselves or observe it in others, denial can manifest in various forms and situations—from personal relationships to broader social issues. In this blog post, we've compiled a curated collection of the top 55 quotes about denial, drawing wisdom from thinkers, authors, and everyday individuals. These quotes offer profound insights and reflections on the nature of denial and its impact on our lives, providing both comfort and a mirror to our own experiences. Dive in and explore how the words of others can shed light on this complex aspect of human nature.

1. “...and he just sat back and stared at the tube, almost interested in what was happening, trying to find the ability to believe in that lie so he could believe the one within.” - Hubert Selby Jr.

2. “Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.” - Voltaire

3. “We have had this discussion before. You are my son. I love you. I will always love you. But I also love Nell, and if you give her the chance and stop rejecting her advances, she will take you into her heart as well.""Oh, yeah, like he's going to allow me to do that," I muttered” - Katie MacAlister

4. “Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.” - George R.R. Martin

5. “The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ -- all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself -- that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness -- that I myself am the enemy who must be loved -- what then? As a rule, the Christian's attitude is then reversed; there is no longer any question of love or long-suffering; we say to the brother within us "Raca," and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide it from the world; we refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves.” - C.G. Jung

6. “I felt I was drawing close to that age, that place in life, where you realize one day what you'd told yourself was a Zen detachment turns out to be naked fear. You'd had one serious love relationship in your life and it had ended in tragedy, and the tragedy had broken something inside you. But instead of trying to repair the broken place, or at least really stop and look at it, you skated and joked. You had friends, you were a decent citizen. You hurt no one. And your life was somehow just about half of what it could be.” - Roland Merullo

7. “I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.” - Audre Lorde

8. “I protect myself by refusing to know myself.” - Floriano Martins

9. “There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.” - Douglas Adams

10. “I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.” - Rabih Alameddine

11. “Ruthie started to cry at Julia's use of the word "hate," though Ruthie knew it was true, accurate. For a long time now it had been easier just to hate her sister. Easier to try to define the relationship with that simple emotion than to live with the conflicting set of feelings Julia brought forth.” - Susan Rebecca White

12. “[P]erhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.” - Christopher Hitchens

13. “Ain't that a sight? With all the things we know and learn, we still ain't touched the big mysteries -- where we come from, where we go next, why we even her. And when something truly miraculous happens, we run and hide in our caves. We deny.” - Libba Bray

14. “I wasn't crying about mothers," he said rather indignantly. "I was crying because I can't get my shadow to stick on. Besides, I wasn't crying.” - J.M. Barrie

15. “We have inherited a fear of memories of slavery. It is as if to remember and acknowledge slavery would amount to our being consumed by it. As a matter of fact, in the popular black imagination, it is easier for us to construct ourselves as children of Africa, as the sons and daughters of kings and queens, and thereby ignore the Middle Passage and centuries of enforced servitude in the Americas. Although some of us might indeed be the descendants of African royalty, most of us are probably descendants of their subjects, the daughters and sons of African peasants or workers.” - Angela Davis

16. “It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.” - Joseph Conrad

17. “you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.” - Ernest Hemingway

18. “Now what state do you live in?''Denial.” - Bill Watterson

19. “That’s pretty much how we get through our own lives, watching television. Smoking crap. Self-medicating. Redirecting our attention. Jacking off. Denial.” - Chuck Palahniuk

20. “How 'bout a shot of truth in that denial cocktail.” - Jennifer Salaiz

21. “And the kids?""Quincy, nothing. All she wants to do is look for Saturn's rings and bring home every creature from the pound. Nelson, though, he's..." She looked at Nicholas. "He's like you. Gifted, but ignorant."Nicholas bristled, "I'm not ignorant.""You are about magic.""That's because I don't believe in magic.""Nicholas," She stopped, hands on hips, waiting until he turned around. "You're haunted. You see the dead. How can you not believe in magic?” - Stephen M. Irwin

22. “You told me, if something is not used it is meaningless, and took my temperature, which I had thought to save for a more difficult day. In the mirror, every night, the same face, a bit more threadbare, a dress worn too long. The moon was out in the cold, along with the restless, dissatisfied wind that seemed to change the location of the sycamores. I expected reproaches because I had mentioned the word love, but you only accused me of stealing your pencil, and sadness disappeared with sense. You made a ceremony out of holding your head in your hands because, you said, it could not be contained in itself.” - Rosmarie Waldrop

23. “To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.” - Oscar Wilde

24. “The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.” - Judith Lewis Herman

25. “Maggie scoffed. "Denial will not save you when Cupid's arrow find its mark.""If i see Cupid anywhere in the vicinity, I'm ripping his chubby little arms off." Vanda yanked the door open to Romatech.” - Kerrelyn Sparks

26. “If you desire healing,let yourself fall illlet yourself fall ill.” - Rumi

27. “Even as your body betrays you, your mind denies it.” - Sara Gruen

28. “... you sometimes had to force people to say things they would rather not articulate, just so they could hear their own words. It was interesting the way people could know things and not know them at the same time. Denial, he said, was like a thick stone wall.” - Nell Freudenberger

29. “If you believe everything you feel is an illusion then you’re delusional. Your emotion is part you. You’re made with it. Denying it and thinking it is all your mind, is denying your existence.” - Ann Marie Aguilar

30. “I hope someday she meets just the right man and has babies - a whole passel of babies, more than I could have - so she understands how it kills me now that she won't let me hug her when she's in obvious distress. (The Life You've Imagined)” - Kristina Riggle

31. “A fear of weakness only strengthens weakness.” - Criss Jami

32. “What man ever openly apologizes for slander? It is not so much a feeling of slander as it is that of a massive lie, a misdeed not only to the slandered but also to those manipulated in the process. He has made them all, every one, his enemies, thereupon he is so overwhelmed with guilt that he will deny it until his grave.” - Criss Jami

33. “I'm convinced that most men don't know what they believe, rather, they only know what they wish to believe. How many people blame God for man's atrocities, but wouldn't dream of imprisoning a mother for her son's crime?” - Criss Jami

34. “Go ahead, look at the message. You know you want to.”“No, it doesn’t matter.”“Then why do you keep staring at it like it’s the last piece of food on earth?” - Victoria Michaels

35. “Somehow everything I own smells of you, and for the tiniest moment it's all not true” - Snow Patrol

36. “It's all overrated, man. Sex is only a great thing if you're not getting any.” - Charles Bukowski

37. “If you been feeling or acting crazy, think about it perhaps you are.” - Victoria Addino

38. “Everything was perfectly healthy and normal here in Denial Land.” - Jim Butcher

39. “A sign of power in a man is not only when people follow what he suggests, but also when people make a conscious effort to do the exact opposite of what he suggests.” - Criss Jami

40. “If I don't read page ninety, it won't have happened to them. Black Beauty will still live with all his friends at Birtwick Park … The knights will be able to go on having jolly adventures without Lancelot meeting Guinevere and bringing the whole Round Table crashing down into ruin on their heads… ” - Barbara Hambly

41. “There's a fine line between forgiveness and denial.” - Janet Rebhan

42. “Confidence turns into pride only when you are in denial of your mistakes.” - Criss Jami

43. “The process of leniency involves accepting the reality of the current situation and finding a satisfying meaning therein, as opposed to misconstruing or denying the facts of the situation.” - Sandra L. Schneider

44. “You heard people say forty was the new thirty and fifty was the new forty and sixty was the new forty-five, but you never heard anybody say eighty was the new anything. Eighty was just eighty.” - John Lanchester

45. “Everyone has a breaking point. Deny it, and you'll blind yourself to know when you've reached yours.” - Dorothy McFalls

46. “Denial is an essential part of my existence. Without it, I am nothing.” - Jason Krumbine

47. “Those who deny guilt and sin are like the Pharisees of old who thought our Saviour had a “guilt complex” because He accused them of being whited sepulchers—outside clean, inside full of dead men’s bones. Those who admit that they are guilty are like the public sinners and the publicans of whom Our Lord said, “Amen, I say to you, that the publicans and the harlots shall go into the Kingdom of God before you” (Matt. 21:31). Those who think they are healthy but have a hidden moral cancer are incurable; the sick who want to be healed have a chance. All denial of guilt keeps people out of the area of love and, by inducing self-righteousness, prevents a cure. The two facts of healing in the physical order are these: A physician cannot heal us unless we put ourselves into his hands, and we will not put ourselves into his hands unless we know that we are sick. In like manner, a sinner’s awareness of sin is one requisite for his recovery; the other is his longing for God. When we long for God, we do so not as sinners, but as lovers.” - Fulton J. Sheen

48. “YOU CAN RUN, BUT CAN NOT HIDE"The statement, 'after giving it much thought', hardly becomes credible when one spends less that 24 hours in that endeavor. In fact, it is really giving something very little thought at all. In that case it becomes an issue of denial. And also, those who proclaim Christ as Lord and God as Abba, who run to Them to hide from the very issues in their lives that They desire to deal with and remove, always amaze me. We as Christians should run to God with the hope that He will reveal to us that which He intently desires to deliver us from".[Just Keeping It Real]” - R. Alan Woods

49. “Asking someone to deny their own inner reality causes further rupture.” - Elaine Margolin

50. “The typical atheist rebels against God as a teenager rebels against his parents. When his own desires or standards are not fulfilled in the way that he sees fit, he, in revolt, storms out of the house in denial of the Word of God and in scrutiny of a great deal of those who stand by the Word of God. The epithet 'Heavenly Father' is a grand reflection, a relation to that of human nature.” - Criss Jami

51. “For nothing is so hard to hear as that which is half known, and evaded. One never denies so hotly as in denying to one's self what one fears is true, and one never resents so bitterly as in resenting that which one cannot say one has the right to resent.” - Susan Glaspell

52. “The moonlight rained down on the beach as if to shine a spotlight on my solitude, and I wanted to cry out at it, ‘Why did you take her? You, surrounded by all of your twinkling stars and infinite wonders and darkness. There’s already enough beauty where you are.” - Rachael Wade

53. “Shut up!" I say, holding my hands to my ears. "Shut up!"But the stupid gummy won't shut up; he's trying to tell me something important even though I'm covering my ears and I don't want to hear it and I don't want to think about who I am or what's wrong with me or why I'm out here at the edge of the Urb, at the edge of the known world, listening to some old mope who's so crazy, he think about the future when everyone knows that the future doesn't exist.” - Rodman Philbrick

54. “...you’d be amazed at the grand tales the human brain will throw up to make sense of something nonsensical.” - Dianna Hardy

55. “The mind, stretched to new dimensions by images, thoughts and ideas, can never return to its former shape.” - Travis Luedke