Alycia Debnam-Carey Quotes

Self-justification is a treacherous servant.

Dishonesty is all about the small acts we can take and then think, 'No, this not real cheating.' So if you think that the main mechanism is rationalization, then what you come up with, and that's what we find, is that we're basically trying to balance feeling good about ourselves.

Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

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.

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.

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.

There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster;' instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.

What amazes me is how far some people will go to justify their behavior to themselves, just to preserve that self-perception.

Once you start lying, you get kind of comfortable. You start believing it. Especially if you truly believe you didn't really cheat because you were doing what everybody else was doing.

The truth is, narratives of self-justification burble beneath more of our relationships and endeavors than we would care to admit.

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.

There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.

Men quickly find a theory that adapts itself to their desires.

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

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

Every vice has its excuse ready.

We did what our people do all the time, we told ourselves something we did was right and we found a way to justify it, even though we knew it was wrong.

The truth is far from you, so you know you got to lie. Then you're all the time defending what you can never justify.

If you cannot endure to be thought in the wrong, you will begin to do terrible things to make the wrong appear right.

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.

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

We humans, you see, have an infinite capacity for self-rationalization.

The more bad choices you make, the less bad your choices seem.

We can always find noble reasons for what we want to do.