John Dewey Quotes

It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

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

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance with his instincts, he will accept it even on the slenderest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

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.

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.

I like to go after the foibles, basically of beliefs that are held without question. If people still want to believe in their stuff after that, that's great - as long as they just have a chance to step back and look at it for a second. Sometimes, you don't even realize what you've been thinking for 20 years.

If you have high IQ, you're really good at finding post-hoc arguments to support your feelings of truthiness.

We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposed to rob us of their companionship.

A man can believe a considerable deal of rubbish, and yet go about his daily work in a rational and cheerful manner.

We never stop to consider that our beliefs are only a relative truth that's always going to be distorted by all the knowledge we have stored in our memory.

People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it.

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.

Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.

When people move from one extreme set of views to embrace another equally batty picture of the world, they expect us to applaud their choice, as if the fact that they have rejected one form of nuttiness somehow validates the screwball views they hold now.

People believe what they want to believe.

It's not denial. I'm just selective about the reality I accept.

The simplest principles become difficult of practice, when habits, formed in error, have been fixed by time, and the simplest truths hard to receive when prejudice has warped the mind.

We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.

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.

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought

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

Propaganda today relies for the most part on repetition of catchwords that leaders wish listeners to accept on their face value without critical scrutiny, suppression of information that debates those catchwords, and rationalization of their cause to foment passions in the interest of the state or party.

The longer you hold a belief, the less likely it is to be true.

Most of us employ the Internet not to seek the best information, but rather to select information that confirms our prejudices.