Belief Perseverance Quotes

You can't reason someone out of something that they weren't reasoned into in the first place.

You can't reason people out of beliefs they weren't reasoned into.

Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.

It is always easier to deny reality than to allow our worldview to be shattered, a fact that was as true of die-hard Stalinists at the height of the purges as it is of libertarian climate change deniers today.

Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

No evidence against a firmly-held belief, no matter how good or abundant it may be, will sway the true believer.

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.

No executive devotes effort to proving himself wrong.

The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.

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

When we have learned something, there's this thing called belief perseverance. Having learned something, we tend to cling to that belief, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

All this is a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because it helps people establish what they value; they understand the sort of ideas they identify with. The curse is that they aren't challenged in their views. The Internet becomes an echo chamber. Users don't see the counterarguments.

The more Ronald Reagan repeated a story, the more he believed it and the more he resisted information that undermined premises.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it. The moment we want to disbelieve anything we have previously believed we suddenly discover not only that there is a mass of evidence against it but that this evidence was starting us in the face all the time.

Failure to believe stems from moral failure to recognize the truth, not from want of evidence, but from willful neglect or distortion of the evidence.

Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired

It is our knowledge - the things we are sure of - that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning.

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.

The problem is, most people don't like to hear suggestions that directly confront or run counter to their most sacred beliefs.

We do the same thing in our own lives, embracing information that supports what we already prefer or vindicates choices we previously made.After all, it feels better to justify our opinions rather than challenge them, to contemplate only the pros and relegate the cons to the back of our minds. However, if we want to make the most of choice, we have to be willing to make ourselves uncomfortable. The question is, if we are willing, how exactly do we go about fortifying ourselves against these biases?

It's not easy to change world views. Faith has its own momentum and belief is comfortable. To restructure reality is traumatic and scary. That is why many intelligent people continue to believe: unbelief is an unknown.

People who believe their unquestioned thoughts cannot see what is obvious and directly in front of their faces at all times, because they are invested in what they believe to be true. As long as they live out of an unquestioned mind, they must continue to argue with what they believe is happening rather than the reality of what is really happening.

My conceptual framework, which basically emphasizes the importance of misconceptions, makes me extremely critical of my own decisions. I know that I am bound to be wrong, and therefore am more likely to correct my own mistakes.

No evidence is powerful enough to force acceptance of a conclusion that is emotionally distasteful.

Everyone, including skeptics, will generate delusions that match their views. That is how a normal and healthy brain works. Skeptics are not exempt from self-delusion.