Henri Frederic Amiel Quotes

Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.

We believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.

But we all recognise the primary foible of frail humanity - our propensity for embracing hope and shunning logic, our tendency to believe what we desire rather than what we observe.

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.

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.

Men are nearly always willing to believe what they wish.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.

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

People believe what they want to believe.

So much is man the slave of his heart that he will shut his eyes to what does not please him and believe all that he hopes.

Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

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.

Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire

We have a never sated appetite for self deception.

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

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.

We are willing to believe anything other than the truth.

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

My life is devoted to self-delusion - and I have a great capacity for that - but it's the thing that gives me the most pleasure, so I can't complain about it.

Man's ability to delude himself is infinite.

Our nature is to desperately want to believe and to take what we believe is the quickest path there even against our better judgment.

The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.

We believe what we want to, what we need to. The corollary is that we choose not to see what we'd rather pretend doesn't exist.

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.