Tina Brown Quotes

There are a whole host of psychological phenomenon humans have developed to protect ourselves from the sting of failure, from holding ourselves less accountable for our failures than we do other people, to letting our fear paralyze us and keep us from even trying.

We are slow to believe that which if believed would hurt our feelings.

Everyone's constantly scrambling around trying to justify their own cruel behavior, trying to come up with psychological tricks to make themselves not feel bad.

I'm very good at denial.

I don't like to show my weaknesses.

The ego does not want to be wrong, ever.

Denial is not always a bad thing. Without it, you couldn't function. For instance, if you were hyperaware and hypervigilant regarding all the dangers in the world - from driving your car to crossing the street to eating food that might have contaminants in it to taking medications that have many side effects, etc. - you would become frozen.

Obviously I wasn't playing well at the time. But as a player, you lie to yourself. You say, "There's nothing wrong. I'm just not on time [at the plate]." You make something else up because pain is not an option.

Our love of being right is best understood as our fear of being wrong

I convinced myself I hadn't seen anything, ... I had done this many times before ... I was adept at erasing reality.

Truth be told, most of us are faking our way through life. We pick only those battles we are sure to win, only those adventures we are sure to handle, only those beauties we are sure to rescue.

In case you haven't noticed, people get hard-hearted against the people they hurt. Because they can't stand it. Literally. To think we did that to someone. I did that. So we think of all the reasons why it's okay we did whatever we did.

Fussing over children who cry only encourages them. That's positive reinforcement for negative behavior.

[P]erhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.

We create the illusions we need to go on.

The instinct for self-deception in human beings makes them try to banish from their minds dangers of which at bottom they are perfectly aware by declaring them non-existent.

The more you defend a lie, the angrier you become.

Denial can be a pathology or a survival mechanism - and sometimes it's both.

I'll tell you that for me, one when someone used to say something that was true, one way I knew it was true was that I immediately felt defensive. I blocked it off, and I went to war with them in my mind and suffered all that goes with it. And they were only saying what was true.

I use hate as a weapon to defend myself; had I been strong, I would never have needed that kind of weapon.

It is only in his head that man is heroic; in the pit of his stomach he is always a coward.

Don't knock rationalization. Where would we be without it? I don't know anyone who'd get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex. Have you ever gone a week without a rationalization?

Realize that the surface personality has no interest in anything which might disturb its darling delusions.

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

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