Quotes About Rationalization

He chuckled as he realized how he'd rationalized betrayal into gallantry. Damn, he was a good lawyer. But

Yet our common moral knowledge is as real as arithmetic, and probably just as plain. Paradoxically, maddeningly, we appeal to it even to justify wrongdoing; rationalization is the homage paid by sin to guilty knowledge.

Gerry, you peed on Weems's car!" I shrugged. It seemed like the thing to do at the time.

Our emotional mind will harness the rational mind to its purposes, for our feelings and reactions-- rationalizations-- justifying them in terms of the present moment, without realizing the influence of our emotional memory.

Feelings are self-justifying, with a set of perceptions and "proofs" all their own.

Taleb suggests that we humans constantly fool ourselves by constructing flimsy accounts of the past and believing they are true.

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.

Every villain has their belief system that makes perfect sense to them.

I think, to me, I was always taught you never approach any character as a villain. Every human being on earth really believes that they're doing the best thing. We all have our rationalizations.

I always tried to play the bad guys as guys who didn't know they were bad guys. There are villains we run into all the time, but they don't think they are doing anything wrong. If they do, they think they are cunning and smart. When people break laws and ethical rules, they justify it in their own terms.

Scientific and religious beliefs are important to people; but they are (usually) neither foundational premises, backing one outcome in advance against all others, nor ex post facto rationalizations, disguising personal preferences in the language of impersonal authority. They are only tools for decision making, one of the pieces people try to bundle together with other pieces, like moral teachings and selfish interests and specific information, when they need to reach a decision.

A murder was never about brawn, it began and ended in the brain and the brain could justify anything.

No amount of rationalisation, reform, or Freudian analysis can quite annul the thrill of the chimney-corner whisper or the lonely wood.

It's amazing what you can convince yourself of, if you buy into the lie.

When you want something bad, you'll tell yourself a thousand lies. Like: The fifth time's the charms. Like: Things between Zoe and me will be better once the baby's born. Like: One sip isn't going to kill me.

It turns out that the more you repeat the same action, no matter how reprehensible, the more you can make an excuse for it in your own mind.

There are some things we do because we convince ourselves it would be better for everyone involved. We tell ourselves that it's the right thing to do, the altruistic thing to do. It's far easier than telling ourselves the truth.

I love it when my justifications for avoiding housework are actually legitimate.

Everyone has lied for some reason or the other.

Lying is the most simple form of self-defence.

When you don't win, people have to make up a reason.

But how," said Charles, who was close to tears, "how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?" Henry lit a cigarette. "I prefer to think of it," he had said, "as redistribution of matter.

People, even crazy, evil people, tended to believe they have a good reason for doing what they do. Though some consider religion the opiate of the masses, others use it to further their obsessions, or rationalize their crimes.

When we turn away from evidence that seems relatively straightforward to others we are using denial.