Elbert Hubbard Quotes

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.

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.

People never want to be told anything they do not believe already.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it. The moment we want to disbelieve anything we have previously believed we suddenly discover not only that there is a mass of evidence against it but that this evidence was starting us in the face all the time.

All of us show bias when it comes to what information we take in. We typically focus on anything that agrees with the outcome we want.

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

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.

People readily believe what they want to believe.

What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.

The more we are committed to believing that something is true, the less likely we are to believe that its opposite is true, even in the face of clear evidence that shows we are wrong.

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.

…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.

Facts might be false if they challenge the conviction of a mind already made up.

We see what we want to believe.

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.

When people believe a conclusion is true, they are also very likely to believe arguments that appear to support it, even when these arguments are unsound.

Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove. And if the Thinker thinks passionately enough, the Prover will prove the thought so conclusively that you will never talk a person out of such a belief, even if it is something as remarkable as the notion that there is a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft ("GOD") who will spend all eternity torturing people who do not believe in his religion.

The reason facts don’t change most people’s opinions is because most people don’t use facts to form their opinions. They use their opinions to form their “facts.”

People believe what they want to believe.

We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.

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.