Michael Shermer Quotes

The human mind has an infinite capacity for self-deception.

Man's ability to delude himself is infinite.

Our capacity for self-deception has no known limits

False beliefs can be every bit as consoling as true ones, right up until the moment of disillusionment.

I'm really interested in self-deception. Really interested in how people live in bubble universes. How people can fail to see the seemingly obvious.

The greater your powers of self-delusion, the greater will be the apparent efficacy of this untruth.

It is in the ability to deceive oneself that the greatest talent is shown.

We humans, you see, have an infinite capacity for self-rationalization.

Human beings have an almost unlimited capacity for self-delusion. We can justify any amount of sadness if it fits our own particular standard of reality.

Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

We have a never sated appetite for self deception.

One theme we look at is what psychologists call motivated reasoning; lay people refer to it as self-deception, wishful thinking or rationalization. The list of creative ways people have for reaching conclusions they wish to reach and dismissing conclusions they find threatening is amazing. We've shown that it goes down even to the level of visual perception: You literally see what you want to see.

A form of self-delusion.

Self-deception is sometimes as necessary a tool as a crowbar.

Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking processes attempt to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organizing our life.

Of course you have to create the conditions of a certain belief. And maybe ignoring something that you don't want to see, at least for the time of the shooting.

Human beings seem to have an almost unlimited capacity to deceive themselves, and to deceive themselves into taking their own lies for truth.

You can fool yourself, you know. You'd think it's impossible, but it turns out it's the easiest thing of all.

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.

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

If you want something to be true badly enough, you can rewrite it that way, in your head. You can even start to believe it.

The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

Men who cannot deceive others are very often successful at deceiving themselves.

It's the easiest thing in the world for a man to deceive himself.

I told myself it was the snow—she couldn’t possibly get to Philadelphia on the roads. I told myself a hundred lies. Children do that. It’s amazing the sorts of things you’ll make yourself believe.