Thomas Balogh Quotes

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

People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.

Some people choose not to believe the truth because it disagrees with what they fundamentally want.

Some people will believe anything if you whisper it to them.

What we wish, that we readily believe.

Men freely believe that which they desire.

One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we've developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.

People don't want to hear the truth; they never do. They wanna live in some kind of fantasy.

Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn't -it's human.

People do think that if they avoid the truth, it might change to something better before they have to hear it.

I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe.

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

…the ignorance, the credulity, and the stupid pride of the people, particularly the Boers. The most absurd ideas as to their strength and importance are prevalent among them, nor indeed is there any opinion on any subject too ridiculous…not to be adopted by them.

He doubts nothing who knows nothing.

Credulity is the man’s weakness, but the child’s strength.

Credulity without enquiry is a sure way to deceive oneself.

Nothing is easier than self-deceit, since what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a given belief, they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief, but assume that their own needs none.

Another source of fallacy is the vicious circle of illusions which consists on the one hand of believing what we see, and on the other in seeing what we believe.

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.

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.

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

Do not believe just because you want to believe.

Those who know nothing must believe everything.

We are willing to believe anything other than the truth.