Quotes About Rationalization

You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.

philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.

The philosophy that rationalizes power politics and justifies war and military training is always (whatever the religion of the politicians and the war makers) some wildly unrealistic doctrine of national, racial, or ideological idolatry, having, as inevitable corollaries the notions of Herrenvolk and "lesser breeds without the law.

how could anyone manage to negotiate their way through life's complexities without at least a smidgen of self deception here and there? Alexander Mccall Smith Precious and Grace.

Moral commonplaces are amazingly useful when we can find little in ourselves with which to justify our actions.

The real hell of life is that everyone has his reasons.

Maybe I wanted to be crazy so I wouldn't have to go through the normal rationalizations and self-justifications of unfettered indulgence.

We sort of tell ourselves what we want to hear and the more we do that, the more we begin to agree with ourselves—and maybe get fooled into thinking what is wrong is actually right.

Every man has his excuses, and the more vile the man becomes, the more touching the story has to be. What is my story now, I wonder?

Everyone finds a way to make their side the right one, after all.

lies. The hardest kind to see through. The kind you tell yourself.

frame: the smarter you are, the better you are at constructing a narrative that supports your beliefs, rationalizing and framing the data to fit your argument or point of view.

As with visual illusions, we can't make our minds work differently than they do no matter how smart we are. Just as we can't unsee an illusion, intellect or willpower alone can't make us resist motivated reasoning.

Now for the bad news: Being smart doesn't make you less susceptible to the inside view. If anything, it makes it worse. It straps your beliefs into the driver's seat more firmly. Research across a variety of settings has shown that being smart makes you better at motivated reasoning, the tendency to reason about information to confirm your prior beliefs and arrive at the conclusion you desire.

Progressives and conservatives alike lean, unconsciously, towards particular conclusions, and then scrabble around to rationalise those conclusions to themselves.

I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified.

As many people have chronicled, the decision to fight in Vietnam was a years-long accretion of step-by-step choices, each of which could be rationalized at the time. Invading Iraq was an unforced, unnecessary decision to risk everything on a 'war of choice' whose costs we are still paying.

My general philosophy of playing bad guys, which I've sort of done, you know, half the time is, you know, very few people who we view as bad guys get out of bed and think, 'What evil, terrible thing am I going to do today?' Most people see their motivations as justified - as, you know, justifying whatever they do.

Ever notice folks can justify damned near anything, 'cause they're always the heroes n their own stories?

Of all the people I could lie to, I'd always been best at lying to myself.

In the middle of deep emotional pain, immorality can be rationalized and appear justified because our vision is blurred. We are viewing through the eyes of one focused on relief, not on the Lord.

Whenever he was about to commit some particularly heinous act, he first found a character flaw in the victim then proceeded with a serene conscience.

Human beings have a remarkable talent for persuading themselves of the authenticity and nobility of aspects of themselves which are in fact expedient, spurious, base.

From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable. He moves in mysterious ways: men say.