William E. Gladstone Quotes

The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.

How can you take seriously someone who likes to believe something because he finds it 'comforting'?

My point is that perceptual bias can affect nut jobs and scientists alike. If we hold too rigidly to what we think we know, we ignore or avoid evidence of anything that might change our mind.

Man associates ideas not according to logic or verifiable exactitude, but according to his pleasure and interests. It is for this reason that most truths are nothing but prejudices.

Most men, when they think they are thinking, are merely rearranging their prejudices.

Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.

To the fantastic mental illness of Rationalism, hard facts are regrettable things, and to talk about them is to create them.

I'm supposed to be a scientific person but I use intuition more than logic in making basic decisions.

There are no such self-deceivers as those who think they reason when they only feel.

I became a sceptic of one way of seeing the world. And I think it is what started me in my awareness that any worldview is superstitious.

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

Men freely believe that which they desire.

The modern believer is not suspicious enough, which is perhaps why, when they try to construct arguments in their defence, the convictions are left doing all the work and reason, debilitated by neglect, weakly fails to prop them up.

No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical.

At the constitutional level where we work, 90 percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.

An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.

Men willingly believe what they wish.

When everyone thinks alike, no one is thinking clearly.

It's a disease of critics that once they've labeled someone, it's very hard to change their perspective. It's laziness.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

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.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

Logic is one thing, the human animal another. You can quite easily propose a logical solution to something and at the same time hope in your heart of hearts it won't work out.

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.

Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.