Daniel Hannan Quotes

Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.

We not only want to believe that our party is superior to the opposing party, but also we want to believe that we are justified in believing this to be true.

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

Those indoctrinated by leftist thinking become largely incapable of making accurate moral judgments.

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

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.

You don't change anybody's mind with political humor. You just reinforce what people already believe.

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

In an ideological, polarized political environment, people see the reality that they want to see.

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.

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

We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to them. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.

When you know the answer you want, it is often all too easy to figure out a way of getting it.

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.

Research suggests that people are typically unaware of the reasons why they are doing what they are doing, but when asked for a reason, they readily supply one.

I think that there is something that happens, a phenomenon that happens around a conspiracy theory, where if you believe in a conspiracy theory, then every critique of that theory is simply more proof that the conspiracy exists. And I think that that's something that goes on in the person of Donald Trump.

People try to make sense of things, and if they don’t know the answers, they make them up,because for some, a wrong answer is better than none.

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

You do not convince me. You rationalize your actions and because the result is favorable you become right.

If partisanship makes us abandon intellectual honesty, if we oppose what our opponents say or do simply because they are the ones saying or doing it, we become mere political short-sellers, hoping for bad news because it's good for our ideological investment.

Amazing what we can self-rationalize when we really want something

In my experience, you always think you know what you're doing; you always think you can explain, but you always discover, years later, that you didn't and you couldn't. This leads me to suspect that the principal function of human reason is to rationalize what your lizard brain demands of you. That's my idea.

For too many of us, it's become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighborhoods or on college campuses, or places of worship or especially our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions. And increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we start accepting only information, whether it's true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that is out there.

No evidence is powerful enough to force acceptance of a conclusion that is emotionally distasteful.