Thomas Sowell Quotes

If people tell an untruth long enough and loud enough, they begin to believe it themselves.

This is in us: a certain sense of denial, a certain sense of groupthink. This is not something that sits on one party line or the other. We've seen it in all permutations throughout history, and at the core of it is a certain insistence that what we want to be true is now true, and what we don't like is now false.

You can convince yourself of just about anything when you want to believe a conspiracy theory.

In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads.

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

The thing is, when everyone is trying to persuade you that a thing you know to be true isn't actually true, you start to believe them: not because it is true but because it's easier. It's just the easy way out.

If you believe something enough, it comes true eventually, and that's so true even with lies. If you tell yourself a lie, after a few years you'll think it's true.

Yet, isn't it strange, isn't it weird, how we can KNOW that someone is not behaving in the way we imagine, and at the same time we can be totally convinced that he is! How clever the human mind is, that it can accept two contradictory things as 'facts.' Yes, I know that in this case one 'fact' was untrue. But the human mind can KNOW something is untrue and still accept it as a 'fact,' and act on it as if it were true.

False beliefs can be every bit as consoling as true ones, right up until the moment of disillusionment.

If you want something to be true badly enough, you can rewrite it that way, in your head. You can even start to believe it.

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.

It's very difficult to lie to yourself about certain things. I'm not necessarily convinced about how information is gathered and I don't think the credence that's given to it is valid.

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.

They that never peeped beyond the common belief in which their easy understandings were at first indoctrinated are strongly assured of the truth of their receptions.

Logic is something the mind has created to conceal its timidity, a hocus-pocus designed to give formal validity to conclusions we are willing to accept if everybody else in our set will too.

Just because you want something to be true doesn’t make it that way.” -The Host

The greater your powers of self-delusion, the greater will be the apparent efficacy of this untruth.

It is in the ability to deceive oneself that the greatest talent is shown.

How baffling it was that even the most cunning and clever people would frequently see only what they wanted to see, and would rarely look beyond the thinnest of facades. Or they would ignore reality, dismissing it as the facade. And then, when their whole world fell to pieces...they would tear their topknots or rend their clothes and bewail their karma, blaming gods or kami or luck or their lords or husbands or vassals-anything or anyone-but never themselves.

I'm really interested in self-deception. Really interested in how people live in bubble universes. How people can fail to see the seemingly obvious.

The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we confuse our beliefs with reality.

When we successfully deceive others, they are not aware of it; the same is true with self-deception.

Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking processes attempt to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organizing our life.

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

The worst derangement of the spirit is to believe things because we want them to be so, not because we have seen them for what they are.