Herman Melville Quotes

I can intellectualize myself out of anything.

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

Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

I'm very good at denial.

I surely don't think ignorance is bliss. But like everything else that has survived thousands of years of human evolution, ignorance - like denial, self-delusion, and magical thinking - seems to have its uses.

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

We lie best when we lie to ourselves.

Human beings have the incredible capacity for denial. I think they do. And although it's really hard to believe, I have my doubts. But my feeling is that first they have to convince themselves. First they have to justify this stuff to themselves and if they can do that, even for just the moment that it's coming out their mouth, then they can kind of mouth it with kind of believable sincerity, even if some of us.

It doesn't matter if the truth is right there out in front of your eyes. You will find a way, a mechanism, in order to keep your own system of denial. So as I always say it, denial is a river that runs in the - in Egypt. So we became very good in that.

It's easier to lie to yourself when you say things out loud.

Sometimes people need to lie to themselves most of all.

Where belief is painful we are slow to believe.

I have a very highly developed sense of denial.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

I think denial's fascinating. It's a jokey word, but it really happens, and sometimes in enormous ways.

People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.

Self-justification is a treacherous servant.

There is the natural tendency that all of us are vulnerable to, to deny unpleasant realities and to look for any excuse to push them away and resolve to think about them another day long in the future.

When you can't change what's bothering you, one typical response is to convince yourself that it doesn't actually bother you.

The human mind has infinite capacity to rationalize, and evil characters just push that boundary a bit. Whatever they're doing, they think it makes sense to do it, and they think they have a good reason to do it. In short, they feel justified.

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.

He would have lied to himself as facilely as an alcoholic lies to himself to justify the 10 a.m. tumbler of vodka : it may be early here, but in Baghdad it's almost evening.

Sometimes the biggest lies we tell are to ourselves.

Someone once said to me, 'Some of us choose to live with a lifeboat just a little bit out of our reach.' I'd like to reach a point where I no longer bullshit myself. I think that's the natural human condition - to lie to yourself. Because the truth is painful.

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