What other people think is their problem.
If you ask men why they did a good job, they'll say, 'I'm awesome. Obviously. Why are you even asking?' If you ask women why they did a good job, what they'll say is someone helped them, they got lucky, they worked really hard.
People who hold a low view of themselves [will credit] their achievements to external factors, rather than to their own capabilities.
Dont blame me, I was given this world, I didn't make it.
It is just as painful to me when I do poorly. If the fault is all mine, that's what's painful. If it's a situation where no one could have succeeded, I don't feel as bad.
If I win, it's because of my natural ability and if I lose, it's because I wasn't trying so hard.
The man who meets with a failure attributes this failure rather to the ill will of another than to fate.
How baffling it was that even the most cunning and clever people would frequently see only what they wanted to see, and would rarely look beyond the thinnest of facades. Or they would ignore reality, dismissing it as the facade. And then, when their whole world fell to pieces...they would tear their topknots or rend their clothes and bewail their karma, blaming gods or kami or luck or their lords or husbands or vassals-anything or anyone-but never themselves.
People who believe they cause good things tend to like themselves better than people who believe good things come from other people or circumstances.
We find or invent the cleverest means of attributing our sins to anything or anyone outside of ourselves.
Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people.
The optimistic style of explaining good events is the opposite of that used for bad events: It's internal rather than external.
