John Burdon Sanderson Haldane Quotes

The matter does not appear to me now as it has appears to have appeared to me then.

You change the most permanent-seeming conditions of your life constantly through the varying attitudes you have toward them.

Nine times out of ten it's a minor shift in your focus and your attitude that makes the difference.

To ensure that our views are credible, our brain accepts what our eye sees. To ensure that our views are positive, our eye looks for what our brain wants. The conspiracy between these two servants allows us to live at the fulcrum of stark reality and comforting illusion.

I had learnt from experience that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are made.

We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think in fact they do so.

When we stand the truth on its head we generally fail to notice that our head is not standing where it should be standing either.

The human mind has an infinite capacity for self-deception.

But people as a rule believe only what they want to believe, and if you tell them anything else they'll call you a trouble-maker and get rid of you and never give you your job back, even if what you said is proved spot on right by time.

Our ability to turn off empathy for specific kinds of humans and then use faulty logic to justify our beliefs is messily sociopathic.

The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies "out there" in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition.

We are anxious when there is a dissonance between our "knowledge" and the perceivable facts. Since our "knowledge" is not to be doubted or questioned, it is the facts that have to be altered.

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.

It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense

Fundamental assumptions in general and scientific assumptions in particular are so hard to overturn because they are based on belief. Beliefs are so hard to overcome because they are irrational and therefore do not yield to logical argument.

The key here in my view is not having to change people's minds, it's just allowing them to know.

Our everyday, traditional ideas of reality are delusions which we spend substantial parts of our daily lives shoring up, even at the considerable risk of trying to force facts to fit our definition of reality instead of vice versa.

Everyone, including skeptics, will generate delusions that match their views. That is how a normal and healthy brain works. Skeptics are not exempt from self-delusion.

People never want to be told anything they do not believe already.

Replace the words "have to" with "get to" and watch how the cold rain on your life changes to sunshine.

Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.

The average man believes a thing first, and then searches for proof to bolster his opinion

The fact is that people would rather cling when they're afraid of something to a priori beliefs than rather open their minds about it.

Your trust in rationality makes you irrational.