Tommy Lee Quotes

We hew and saw and plane facts to make them dovetail with our prejudices, so that they become mere ornaments with which to parade our objectivity.

We only see what we want to see; we only hear what we want to hear. Our belief system is just like a mirror that only shows us what we believe.

I think if somebody is so set in their ways about what they feel about something - and you get this a lot in academia, of course, and also different sorts of journalism too - you're going to sweep under the carpet the facts that don't suit your thesis. And I think that happens quite a lot in the courtroom, for instance.

We as Americans and as humans have very selective hearing and very selective memory. We only hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest.

Men willingly believe what they wish.

All of us show bias when it comes to what information we take in. We typically focus on anything that agrees with the outcome we want.

We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.

Another source of fallacy is the vicious circle of illusions which consists on the one hand of believing what we see, and on the other in seeing what we believe.

Men quickly find a theory that adapts itself to their desires.

When you write a book, and you argue a problem is complicated and multidimensional, it's very easy to read a slice of that book and say, 'Well, this is the part that either confirms or really challenges my biases, so that's what I'm going to say the entire book is about.'

It is in the nature of human beings to bend information in the direction of desired conclusions.

What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.

People hear what they want and expect to hear, not what is said.

The passion to interpret as madness that with which we disagree seems to have infected the best of contemporary minds.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.

The reason facts don’t change most people’s opinions is because most people don’t use facts to form their opinions. They use their opinions to form their “facts.”

In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads.

People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.

Men who have excessive faith in their theories ... make poor observations, because they choose among the results of their experiments only what suits their object, neglecting whatever is unrelated to it and carefully setting aside everything which might tend toward the idea they wish to combat

We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do.

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere.

I only use statistics to reinforce what I already think, or if it's something unusual.

The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.

Most people see what they want to, or at least what they expect to.

We find what we expect to find, and we receive what we ask for.