David Brin Quotes

I have a very highly developed sense of denial.

I would make people who bullied me laugh, so that's my defense mechanism.

People use irony as a defense mechanism.

We have developed this unbelievable ability to deny. We have to. If we didn't, we'd go crazy.

Narcissism and self-deception are survival mechanisms without which many of us might just jump off a bridge.

Everyone is a little bitter. We're born bitter. The personality itself is really just a very complex defense mechanism. A reaction to the first time someone said, "No you can't.

Self-deception is sometimes as necessary a tool as a crowbar.

The neurotic's strongest fantasy is that he has no fantasies. The real is very real to him, the unreal even more so.

My personal feeling is that human beings have this incredible capacity for denial.

Men follow their sentiments and their self-interest, but it pleases them to imagine that they follow reason. And so they look for, and always find, some theory which, a posteriori, makes their actions appear to be logical. If that theory could be demolished scientifically, the only result would be that another theory would be substituted for the first one, and for the same purpose.

The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure.

Sorrow comes with so many defense mechanisms. You have your shock, your denial, your getting wasted, your cracking jokes, and your religion. You also have the old standby catchall—the blind belief in fate, the whole "things happening for a reason" drill.

Rationalizing is the self-exculpation which occurs when we feel ourselves, or our group, accused of misapprehension or error.

Even as your body betrays you, your mind denies it.

We tend to defend vigorously things that in our deepest hearts we are not quite certain about. If we are certain of something we know, it doesn't need defending.

Desires should never be justified,' Tehol said, wagging a finger. 'All you end up doing is illuminating the hidden reasons by virtue of their obvious absence.

Paranoia reduces anxiety and guilt by transferring to the other all the characteristics one does not want to recognize in oneself. It is maintained by selective perception and recall. We only see and acknowledge those negative aspects of the enemy that support the stereotype we have already created.

We're as good at talking ourselves out of fear as into it, aren't we? Maybe better.

But when a man suspects any wrong it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing and tried to think nothing.

Another technique for fending off suffering is the employment of the displacements of libido which our mental apparatus permits of and through which its function gains so much in flexibility. The task here is that of shifting the instinctual aims in such a way that they cannot come up against frustration from the external world.

Human beings have an almost unlimited capacity for self-delusion. We can justify any amount of sadness if it fits our own particular standard of reality.

Man has a tendency to try to give clear reasons to be rational, but often you can see how all those reasons are not convincing and turn out to be a big nonsense.

In fact I've reached the stage where I look at people and say - he or she, they are whole at all because they've chosen to block off at this stage or that. People stay sane by blocking off, by limiting themselves.

In order to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves.

Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.