Samuel Johnson Quotes

One theme we look at is what psychologists call motivated reasoning; lay people refer to it as self-deception, wishful thinking or rationalization. The list of creative ways people have for reaching conclusions they wish to reach and dismissing conclusions they find threatening is amazing. We've shown that it goes down even to the level of visual perception: You literally see what you want to see.

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

It's the easiest thing in the world for a man to deceive himself.

We have a never sated appetite for self deception.

Man's ability to delude himself is infinite.

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.

I think the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Fooling ourselves may even be a necessary precondition for fooling others.

Our capacity for self-deception has no known limits

Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

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

A form of self-delusion.

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.

Self-deception is sometimes as necessary a tool as a crowbar.

We humans, you see, have an infinite capacity for self-rationalization.

…the majority of men do not think in order to know the truth, but in order to assure themselves that the life which they lead, and which is agreeable and habitual to them, is the one which coincides with the truth.

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

You can fool yourself, you know. You'd think it's impossible, but it turns out it's the easiest thing of all.

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.

The human capacity for self-delusion is boundless, and the effects of belief are overpowering.

In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant. One motto on the show is, 'Keep your facts, I'm going with the truth.'

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

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

To hold an idea and convince ourselves we arrived at it rationally, we go in search of evidence to support our view.

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.

People readily believe what they want to believe.