Francis Bacon 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 average man believes a thing first, and then searches for proof to bolster his opinion

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

A man who has bought a theory will fight a vigorous rearguard action against the facts.

…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.

When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.

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

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.

The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.

The key to all fanatical beliefs is that they are self-confirming....(some beliefs are) fanatical not because they are "false", but because they are expressed in such a way that they can never be shown to be false.

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 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.

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.

Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

From time to time, everyone distorts. We all tend to believe what supports our side of the question and doubt what weakens it. When we are under stress, we tend to believe what we need to believe.

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.

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.

No executive devotes effort to proving himself wrong.

One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity.

People who believe their unquestioned thoughts cannot see what is obvious and directly in front of their faces at all times, because they are invested in what they believe to be true. As long as they live out of an unquestioned mind, they must continue to argue with what they believe is happening rather than the reality of what is really happening.

People readily believe what they want to believe.