Rationalization Quotes

Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue.

It doesn't matter if the truth is right there out in front of your eyes. You will find a way, a mechanism, in order to keep your own system of denial. So as I always say it, denial is a river that runs in the - in Egypt. So we became very good in that.

Why not? After all, it belongs to him.

The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp. Above all, it fits more snugly than the truth into a universe of false appearances—of complex and irrational phenomena, defectively grasped.

Rationalization is a cover-up, a process of providing one's emotions with a false identity, of giving them spurious explanations and justifications - in order to hide one's motives, not just from others, but primarily from oneself. The price of rationalizing is the hampering, the distortion, and, ultimately, the destruction of one's cognitive faculty. Rationalization is a process not of perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one's emotions.

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

The easiest way to solve a mystery is to decide that there is no mystery to solve.

A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.

As soon as the Confederates laid down their arms, some picked up their pens and began to distort what they had done and why. The resulting mythology took hold of the nation a generation later and persists.

Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

The reasons and purposes for habits are always lies that are added only after some people begin to attack these habits and to ask for reasons and purposes. At this point the conservatives of all ages are thoroughly dishonest: they add lies.

Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance with his instincts, he will accept it even on the slenderest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

The more bad choices you make, the less bad your choices seem.

Guessing right for the wrong reason does not merit scientific immortality.

Poison gas meant that the war could be brought to an end sooner and thus reduce the number of casualties.

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

Sometimes great injustices may be inflicted on the minority when the majority is in the pursuit of a great and just cause.

The Second World War is and was constantly being drudged up by Blair and Bush to rationalize the invasion of Iraq.

It's not denial. I'm just selective about the reality I accept.

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.

Our guilt has its uses. It justifies much in the lives of others.

Man has an inexhuastible faculty for lying, especially to himself.

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.