Brooks Atkinson Quotes

Finding that no religion is based on facts and cannot be true, I began to reflect what must be the condition of mankind trained from infancy to believe in error.

Some people would believe anything, especially if it eliminates awkward social and political problems.

The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp. Above all, it fits more snugly than the truth into a universe of false appearances—of complex and irrational phenomena, defectively grasped.

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

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

Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

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

There are mighty few people who think what they think they think.

The wretched world lies now under the tyranny of foolishness; things [witches and witchcraft] are believed by Christians of such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen to believe.

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.

I surely don't think ignorance is bliss. But like everything else that has survived thousands of years of human evolution, ignorance - like denial, self-delusion, and magical thinking - seems to have its uses.

We are willing to believe anything other than the truth.

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.

Intellectual labor is a common technique for the avoidance of thinking.

Sometimes I wanted to believe something so badly, I deliberately manufactured excuses and ignored painful reality.

…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 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.

I told myself it was the snow—she couldn’t possibly get to Philadelphia on the roads. I told myself a hundred lies. Children do that. It’s amazing the sorts of things you’ll make yourself believe.

Things we wish to be true are apt to gain too ready credit with us.

Most people like to live in illusions.

The enemy of science is not religion. Religion comes in endless shapes and forms... The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.

It's not mere extremism that makes folks at the fringes so troubling; it's extremism wedded to false beliefs. Humans have long been dupes, easily gulled by rumors and flat-out lies.

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.

I have noticed that many who do not believe in God believe in everything else, even in the evil eye.