Ambrose Bierce Quotes

Men first make up their minds (and the smaller the mind the sooner made up), and then seek for the reasons; and if they chance to stumble upon a good reason, of course they do not reject it. But though they are right, they are only right by chance.

Amazing what we can self-rationalize when we really want something

In my experience, you always think you know what you're doing; you always think you can explain, but you always discover, years later, that you didn't and you couldn't. This leads me to suspect that the principal function of human reason is to rationalize what your lizard brain demands of you. That's my idea.

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.

How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!

People need meanings to everything. People want you to intellectualize every choice you make.

People go down bad paths and they make bad decisions, but it's always justified in their head.

It is not impossible to think that the minds of philosophers sometimes act like those of other mortals, and that, having once been determined by diverse circumstances to adopt certain views, they then look for and naturally find reasons to justify these views.

Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

In intelligence you can justify almost anything you want to if you go about it with enough zeal and effort which is what happened.

Men can reason themselves into almost any sort of opinion if they are so inclined.

To hold an idea and convince ourselves we arrived at it rationally, we go in search of evidence to support our view.

As human beings, we create belief systems that make us feel happy with the choices we make. You'd have a lot of unhappy people regretting everything if they didn't create the belief system in which they could explain all their choices and feel like they've done the right thing.

Human beings will justify anything.

I always have a reason for why I do something.

When one part of the brain makes a choice, other parts can quickly invent a story to explain why. If you show the command "Walk" to the right hemisphere (the one without language), the patient will get up and start walking. If you stop him and ask why he's leaving, his left hemisphere, cooking up an answer, will say something like "I was going to get a drink of water."

An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie; for an excuse is a lie guarded.

No executive devotes effort to proving himself wrong.

There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement.

One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity.

Inclination snatches arguments To make indulgence seem judicious choice.

Don't knock rationalization. Where would we be without it? I don't know anyone who'd get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex. Have you ever gone a week without a rationalization?

You do not convince me. You rationalize your actions and because the result is favorable you become right.

Why do you keep maintaining your ideas are right if you can't prove them?

Rationalizing is the self-exculpation which occurs when we feel ourselves, or our group, accused of misapprehension or error.