"We just cannot adopt toward ourselves the same attitudes that we adopt easily and in fact, reflexively, when others commit crimes."

Or not. But that's my favorite.

"We all know that low self-esteem is a sexual romantic turn-off."

Duh!

It's also "perfectly possible" that some of them are well aware of their dishonesty, that some of them are quite comfortable with the 'problem' of telling you whatever it takes to get what they (and/or their leader) want(s), that some of them are utterly conscience-free sociopaths and/or that some of them are criminally insane.

And while those subjects may be very interesting to various people for varying reasons, WHY (and/or how) "the present set of organisms" manage to behave as they do isn't nearly so important to the vast ('normal') majority of us as WHAT they do (and did) and what WE--or more accurately, Congress, the FBI and the Courts--ought to do about that behavior.

My pick is:

"I think in everyday life we're aware of the fact that when we're watching something on stage, so to speak, we have a better view than the actors on the stage have. If you can see events laterally, you can say, my god, they're doing this and they're doing that."

"To be able to live with those contradictions in your mind, really does take a good education."

A Stutts education!

"So modes of deception and manipulation had to be developed in order to keep them under control."

I freely admit this is purely a guess on my part but the sentence that seems a likely candidate might be this one:

“And one of the striking features of the modern period is the institutionalization of that process, so that we now have huge industries deceiving the public—and they're very conscious about it, the public relations industry.”

I was going to copy the whole interview and remove all the periods except for the last period thus making it one huge run-on sentence but I did not think it would fool you.

Somehow.

The SELF DECEPTION is they thought they could win in Iraq.

I have read that interview some time ago when it came out in that magazine. Chomsky website provided a link. It indeed is a very good interview. Most of Chomsky Interviewers ask him only boring old questions which he long ago answered. I guess he must be pretty bored to answer those questions. Another turnoff is all those interviewers seem to be too much in awe of him and venerating and always looking over their shoulders not to upset the Great Man.
The best thing about this interview is Trivers does not fall for that kind of trap. He is definitely respectful of NC, But He also asks many interesting questions. It's a treat to read.

I'm going to second Rob Payne because Schwarz talks a lot about the media's and government's compulsion to keep secrets.

Keeping it simple, "We find repeatedly now — in wasps, in birds and in monkeys — that when organisms realize they're being deceived, they get pissed off."

Or course, on a still more basic level, "There's twice as big a jump if you hear your own voice."

"If you can see events laterally, you can say, my god, they're doing this and they're doing that. But if you're embedded in that network it's much harder."

My favorite, however was on the need to maintain credibility in international affairs: "It's kind of like the Mafia."

So we generalize positively to ourselves, particularize negative and reverse it when we're talking about other people.

Damn, racrecir beat me to that guess.

I suppose if that's the right one, I will have to clean the cobwebs off my wallet and buy the damn book.

yeah, rats. i guess this is opening statement that relates to the closing statement above.

" Psychologists have shown that people make these verbal switches when they're in a we/they situation, in a your-group-versus-another situation."

"One is intellectuals who, in a sense, go through a process of education which results in a self-deceived organism who is really working to serve the interests of the privileged few without necessarily being conscious of it at all."

My choice would have been the last one made my patience. But since that's taken, I'll have to go with the penguin reference, i.e, "kin relations in birds are poorly developed—they often don't even nest next to their relatives."

Either that or, "Noam Chomsky stepped on my toe."

And the ones that do attack you are precisely those whose dominance status you are attempting to expropriate or mimic.

"I mean, I think we all know from personal life, if there's something you want to do, it's really easy to convince yourself it's right and just. You put away evidence that shows that's not true." - just admit it - it's a BLOG damnit!

OK, how about

"And inventing reality is a little bit more of a relaxed enterprise I suppose."

Sorry, I was trying to save Iraq's oil wealth from being stolen -- http://accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=1482 -- will get right on this.

I'm basically with Maud here, but I choose the sentence that contained this:

"based on the fact that we respond to hearing our own voice with greater arousal than we do to hearing another human's voice."

sound familiar?

Errr... It's a little bit like a gorilla pounding at its chest. Yep - that just about sums you (and ATR) up to me ;-)

My guess, based solely on possible lack of flattery:
"As anyone who watches a US election knows, it's marketing."

My guess .....

"So, I'm trying to understand these phenomena at the individual level and also put them together in groups, since at times institutions act like individuals in the way they practice internal self-deception."

If that's not the purpose of your blog, then you must just want the terrorists to win.