Quotes About Rationalization

It's amazing how we can make ourselves believe what we want to.

Macho men, without their grief, must find a way to gain power and control over their environment. They have a unique way of rationalizing and justifying their behavior and violations of others

Robert Heinlein once put it . . . Man is a rationalizing animal not a rational one.

I write because I admire the act of rationalization, of seeking clarity in one's understanding of the complexities of life, and I'm bad at it. I'm slow. Writing, which is an arduous and slow process, proceeds at the same rate as my sloth-like mind.

I believe that things just happen in life, and pretty much after the fact, we make up a story to make it all seem rational. We all like simple stories that suggest a causal chain to life's events. Yet randomness is ever present.

The guilty always find a way of rationalizing their behavior, making it sound as though they've done you a favor.

Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along.

Con que ligereza y con qué defectuosos materiales edifica el hombre sus excusas!

The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves into thinking they have done "the right thing." —RAYNA BUTLER, sermons on Salusa Secundus

Well, most of the time I do what feels right. But I admit there are times when I give in to my ego. Sometimes the rationalizations are so good that it's easy to sidestep what's right. But eventually you do always realize if you haven't been true to yourself. There's that tiny niggling but persistent voice at the back of your head that is not very easy to ignore for long.

Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred

They want so hard to believe in what they've been taught that they find ways to rationalize things they wouldn't stand for otherwise. They need to keep their

Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.

If I betray myself," Bud said as he backed away from the board, "my thoughts and feelings will begin to tell me that I'm justified in whatever I'm doing or failing to do." He

Now, a lot of people didn't know him at all - it went through feeder funds, so they wouldn't even have known anything about Bernie Madoff. But everybody finds a justification for their behavior, and obviously, Bernie had a half dozen justifications in his own mind.

Human beings will justify anything.

Nobody sees themselves as being an evil person or doing something for a bad reason. There's always something that justifies it to themselves.

Now you know how I justify my addictions—if I can pay less for it than I would at Wal-Mart, I get to have it.

Everyone had a reason for everything they did, even if that reason was sometimes stupidity.

Simply shovel everything that seems to support their view into the box marked 'Evidence' and say, ''See? Look at all this stuff. We must be right!'' Never mind the contradictions. Never mind the lack of independent supporting fact. Never mind the blatant absurdities.

Not all who betray feel guilt and remorse. They often proclaim the betrayed deserved the punishment for past actions. A rationalization intended to ensnare the ignorant and offer warrant. Remember. The betrayer was either attempting to gain something for themselves, or to inflict pain upon you; or both.

The mind of man is never so cunning as when it is involved in the art of self-justification.

I killed little Esmerelda because I felt I owed it to myself and to the world in general. I had, after all, accounted for two male children and thus done womankind something of a statistical favour. If I really had the courage of my convictions, I reasoned, I ought to redress the balance at least slightly. My cousin was simply the easiest and most obvious target.

Right knowledge, of itself, EVIDENTLY does not bring about moral transformation in human beings - even supposing that right knowledge is something we are predisposed to desire in the first place. It is possible to be highly educated and at the same time morally depraved. There is, in fact, a certain kind of moral depravity that only the highly educated can attain, because it requires sophisticated skills of rationalization and self-deception.