self-delusion

Second, people in positions of great authority are, and perhaps must be, capable of enormously high levels of self-delusion.

The subject of the moral reflections at the end is self-delusion in the particular form of sophisticated vanity.

The parable of the prodigal son and his return occurred to him, but he at once rejected the idea as a bit of self-delusion.

If it was only a self-delusion, an hallucination, he told himself that he would be content.

In such a case it is impossible to premise to what clouds of self-delusion an imaginative man will not rise.

What wonder that the history of Medicine should be to so great an extent a record of self-delusion!