Jane Austen Quotes

We are all very ready to believe what we like.

Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.

PREFERENCE, n. A sentiment, or frame of mind, induced by the erroneous belief that one thing is better than another.

Men first make up their minds (and the smaller the mind the sooner made up), and then seek for the reasons; and if they chance to stumble upon a good reason, of course they do not reject it. But though they are right, they are only right by chance.

Men indulge those opinions and practices that favor their pretensions.

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.

Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.

I am biased to my show as a whole but it is still very entertaining.

Men are often biased in their judgment on account of their sympathy and their interests.

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.

Personality is lower than partiality.

It is not impossible to think that the minds of philosophers sometimes act like those of other mortals, and that, having once been determined by diverse circumstances to adopt certain views, they then look for and naturally find reasons to justify these views.

Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

All know the influence of interest on the mind of man, and how unconsciously his judgement is warped by that influence.

In intelligence you can justify almost anything you want to if you go about it with enough zeal and effort which is what happened.

Men can reason themselves into almost any sort of opinion if they are so inclined.

To hold an idea and convince ourselves we arrived at it rationally, we go in search of evidence to support our view.

If people say I paid someone more because I liked them, okay. I don't think that's a bad thing.

I always put people with my kind of background first.

You can't judge people for favouring somebody. That happens in every field.

One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity.

Logic: an instrument used for bolstering a prejudice.

Amazing what we can self-rationalize when we really want something

In my experience, you always think you know what you're doing; you always think you can explain, but you always discover, years later, that you didn't and you couldn't. This leads me to suspect that the principal function of human reason is to rationalize what your lizard brain demands of you. That's my idea.

Somehow even a popular fallacy has an aspect of truth when it suits one's own case.