If you’re not, pretend you are.’ Take

When you aren't sincere you need to pretend, and by pretending you end up believing yourself; that's the basic principle of every faith.

Pretend to be something you’re not until you are — fake it until you’re successful, until everybody sees you the way you want them.

1. Pretend to be something you’re not until you are — fake it until you’re successful, until everybody sees you the way you want them to; or 2. Pretend to be making something until you actually make something. I love both readings — you have to dress for the job you want, not the job you have, and you have to start doing the work you want to be doing.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

There is something I don't know
that I'm supposed to know.
I don't know what it is I don't know,
and yet I'm supposed to know,
and I feel stupid
if I seem both to not know it
and not know what it is I don't know.
Therefore I pretend to know it.
This is nerve-racking
since I don't know what I must pretend to know.
Therefore I pretend to know everything.

It is often useful to give the slight impression that you are deliberately pretending not to know what is going on, because the reality may be that you don't know what is going on, but people won't be able to tell the difference.

The poet is a pretender.
He pretends so completely,
that he even pretends that it is pain
the pain he really feels.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

We cannot know the truth but we can pretend that we know. And this is lying. Lying fills all our life. People pretend that they know all sorts of things: about God, about the future life, about the universe, about the origin of man, about evolution, about everything; but in reality they do not know anything, even about themselves. And every time they speak about something they do not know as though they knew it, they lie.

Be careful who you pretend to be. You might become it.

I think everyone has what it takes to be a good actor innately within them. It’s really about connecting to your own humanity and your own behaviors, and getting to a level of self-awareness so that you can have perspective and step outside of yourself and transform and become another person. You can’t become another person if you’re not self-aware; you wouldn’t know what’s changed. [But] the ability to play pretend is something that everyone has access to; you see little kids doing it. On the spectrum of imagination, there are people who are more imaginative than others—I guess some kids are hardcore pretenders and have imaginary friends for years and other kids play and they have fun, but it’s not quite as specific like that. I’m sure there’s a range, but I think everyone can pretend.

The greatest way to live with honour in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

To some extent, of course, we're all impostors—we all play roles when on the stage of life, presenting a different public self than the private self we share with intimates, and morphing both selves as circumstances demand. Displaying a facade and misleading our audience are defensive behaviors learned early.