“youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.”

“youth is quick in feeling but weak in judgement.”

“Memory is a sly devil that pretends to wear the cloak of truth, but deceives us both in our youth and our age.”

“One forgets so quickly one’s own youth…”

“There is apparently some connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and a proneness to credulity. The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They ask to be deceived. What Stresemann said of the Germans is true of the frustrated in general: "They pray not only for their daily bread, but also for their daily illusion." The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led.”

“Everyone is deceived in his hopes, cheated in his expectations.”