Stephen Jay Gould Quotes

The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.

It is the habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire

Men prefer the false due to habit, passion, will. Preference for truth is rare. Men are ruled by their fear of truth.

Our nature is to desperately want to believe and to take what we believe is the quickest path there even against our better judgment.

What ardently we wish, we soon believe.

I don’t like facts, because facts get in the way of my feelings.

How can you take seriously someone who likes to believe something because he finds it 'comforting'?

People believe what they want to believe.

So much is man the slave of his heart that he will shut his eyes to what does not please him and believe all that he hopes.

It is in the nature of human beings to bend information in the direction of desired conclusions.

When it comes to believing things without actual evidence, we all incline to what we find most attractive.

People readily believe what they want to believe.

The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

Man's ability to delude himself is infinite.

So much is man the slave of his heart that he will shut his eyes to what does not please him and believe all that he hopes.

For what a man would like to be true, that he more readily believes.

Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions.

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.

We are eager to believe that others are flawed because we are eager to believe in what we wish for.

We are so constituted by Nature that we easily believe the things we hope for, but believe only with difficulty those we fear, and that we regard such things more or less highly than is just. This is the source of the superstitions by which men everywhere are troubled. For the rest, I don

You believe what you want to believe

We see what we want to believe.

You can't reason people out of beliefs they weren't reasoned into.